AI
Friday, May 31, 2013 10:50:15 PM
As Syria Free-Falls . . . A Return to the Basics (Part 1)
.. this post a result of my fedupwith feverish state .. not all butttt .. grrr lol .. created by reading so many shallow shouts of conspiracy 'around' Syria that i yearned for something with more depth than a toddlers wading pool .. i think it reads pretty fair at a glance .. after reading the first, because i didn't know them .. Jadaliyya .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadaliyya ..ok .. i've only kinda skimmed through Part 2 and Part 3, for now .. hope y'all enjoy ..
Aug 31 2012 by Bassam Haddad
Listen
[Homs, KArm Al-zaitoun. Freedomhouse]
Lest we forget, or forget why, it has become important to consult the basics regarding the Syrian uprising. This might very well be the best time for such a review. For as the death toll rises and the gradual destruction of the social fabric continues, the Syrian tragedy is increasingly more about the fall of Syria(ns) than the fall of the Syrian regime. One result has been analytical helplessness, which prompts a return to the basics.
Those of us who follow Syria coverage in every major outlet in both Arabic and English know well that we are getting into diminishing returns. Worse, the political polarization around Syria has produced an interestingly problematic phenomenon: analysis is no longer important. You can always rely on the gatekeepers and die-hard supporters on either side to stand by you so long as you are politically on their side. Your analysis matters less/not. Only your position does, eve if under changing circumstances. It is all ex post facto at this point, as both camps have solidified into two concrete walls, crushing both nuance and humanity.
In such political fog—and I make no pretense of saying that it is an insignificant political fog—it might be a good idea to review some of the basic realities, causes, and contours surrounding the Syrian case. Every word in this and any other article will be hotly contested, but not all contestations—nor all my claims—will stand the test of time.
I will briefly review the complexity of the Syrian uprising and then address what can be called the “stubborn facts” in condensed form. I end by discussing the structural causes of the uprising and the thorny issue of “sectarianism.”
[I will try to address these points in a less prose-ish form, anticipating a more detailed formulation in the future. The points below have been made by many, including myself, at the various venues in which Syria was the topic. Apologies for the elementary nature of some of the claims, but that is perhaps what is also needed during the current fog and tragedy.]
1. The Evident Complexity of the Syrian Case
All the other Arab uprisings are complex, but the Syrian case is endowed with added complexity because it is at the heart of various historical struggles in the region and beyond: the Arab-Israeli conflict; the related question of resistance to imperialism; regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the one hand and Iran on the other, with Syria squarely in the latter camp since the uprising; a cold but real tension between the United States and Russia; and, finally, the question of Hizballah, which merits its own category. Increasing regional sectarian tensions also add another ugly layer. Thus, the Syrian uprising is at once a local, regional, and international affair. Adding to the complexity is the fact that the majority of forces who wish to remove the Syrian regime from power, or those who historically opposed it, are themselves the dominant political/economic forces regionally and, to a large extent, internationally (i.e., the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel, among others). This is to be contrasted with the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen, which were largely domestic affairs and excluded the support for regime change by the aforementioned dominant forces (and in the case of Bahrain, included these forces' intervention to preserve autocracy). Such differentials explain, in part, why many historical critics of the Syrian regime’s domestic policies continue to hold this stance but not from the perspective of—nor in accordance with—the interests of the forces listed above. The protracted nature of the Syrian uprising and the lack of an evident exit or solution is a direct function of the intertwining of its local, regional, and international dimensions.
Since the summer of 2011, we have been in a situation in which we are no longer comparing good and bad alternatives. We are facing a choice between the horrible and the catastrophic, at least in the short to medium run. To seek the optimal outcome is to be unrealistic or uninformed.
[Saudi, Qatari, American, Israeli, Syrian, Iranian, Hizballah, Turkish EU, French, Chinese, and
Russian leaders. Collage by author.]
Discursively, the nature of the divide that makes up the complexity is thick and varied, but has been dominated by the authoritarian/imperial contest (i.e., what is worse, authoritarianism or imperialism?). Some of us have critiqued this binary by saying we are against both, but we were in turn critiqued because that position was no longer real, as there was no local agency that espoused it. Yet there are no metrics to determine whether the binary positions that pit regime (or status quo) supporters against supporters of the now multi-faceted uprising is any better. Ultimately, it could very well be a matter of horizons in time and space. In other words, how far is one’s gaze and regarding what issues?
2. Three Stubborn Facts: Dictatorship, Suspect Opposition, and Their Supporters
Two elementary interrelated and stubborn facts animate the uprising and cannot be oversimplified or ignored, whatever one’s politics. Their discursive and empirical relevance to the ongoing conflict cannot be underestimated, and will likely animate how history books will distill the thick lines in retrospect.
First, in analyzing the situation in Syria today, and despite the unsavory actors lined up against the Syrian regime, we cannot consider March 2011 to be the starting point of the unfolding events. We are witnessing an opposition to decades of dictatorship in Syria, irrespective of the twists, turns, and marring of the uprising. This fact cannot be compromised or limited in space and time to the nitpicking about who did what since March 2011. In other words, the sins of the Syrian regime—primarily against the majority of Syrians—must take the lead in animating one’s understanding of the developments on the ground: in March 2011, only the regime was standing, unrivaled. This is a thick and sometimes uncomfortable file for those who are ambivalent about the uprising. Yet it is not likely to be written off, nor should it. When people argue or write about Syria, even proponents of the opposition, they tend to overvalue the post-March 2011 period at the expense of the past few decades. Analytically, to discount the pre-March 2011 period is to fail to understand why after March 2011 the Syrian regime has lost its ability to govern Syria, whatever one’s political/ideological leanings. And many of those who support(ed) the status quo (e.g., minorities) have/had their reasons, the most important of which had nothing to do with the regime’s character. Instead, it is about protection, survival, and now, instinct, as a function of aligned strategic interests. This is in part why many observers fail to make good sense of the distribution of views and positions on Syria.
The second stubborn fact is that, for some time now, we can no longer take this uprising for granted (some say this is a gross understatement, and it may well be). We are no longer witnessing a clear-cut event where an independent pro-democracy movement is facing a dictatorship. Though the latter part holds, the former does not. The dependence, weakness, fragmentation, and divisiveness of the especially external opposition and its internal correlates are now evident to all. Beginning sometime during the summer of 2011, this conflict has become a war of position in which the opposition's moral high ground has diminished considerably as a result of some of its own tactics and a good deal of its external relations and related factors. In other words, we passed the point where the opposition can depend on the mere fact that it is opposing a dictatorship. Those who still write about the Syrian uprising—and they are many—as though the first days of the uprising were frozen in time are speaking of a world that no longer exists. Reasonable observers and participants can disagree on the extent to which many parts of the opposition have been tainted by the same tactics/behaviors that characterize the regime, but it is difficult to dismiss the fact that the fight has been, in par though not in whole, hijacked by exogenous factors, actors, and sentiments for purposes that do not serve the interests and aspirations of the majority of Syrians. Still, that does not mean that a return to the status-quo ante should be acceptable. But the binary that increasingly imposes itself today (i.e., the regime or the externally supported uprising) is in practice difficult to dismiss in favor of good sense, though it must be overcome.
The third stubborn fact is that external supporters of regime change in Syria were perhaps one of the biggest impediments to a genuine movement towards a better future there, because of their brutal policies, duplicitous politics, and/or human rights record. These external actors include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, and the United States. Ironically, Israel fits in this group by association, though its ambivalence until recently regarding regime change in Syria kept it on the sidelines. (The ambivalence is caused more by a desire for a “strong” regime that can protect its northern border, as the current regime has done for nearly four decades.) Significantly, all these states constitute the spearhead of counter-revolution in the region. This third stubborn fact is what buttresses the binary discussed above and creates despair among those inside and outside Syria who are satisfied by neither.
[Some may retort: “what about Syria’s supporters, Russia, China, or Iran, not being democratic and having their own brutal/repressive records, etc.?” Certainly. But these countries are not seeking to change this regime, and whoever argued that the Syrian regime is democratic or is seeking democracy for this association with non-democratic states to even be relevant? Furthermore, democracy is only one factor in this conflict. There are more visceral/existential issues related to the region as a whole, and that have animated the dominant conflicts since World War II (e.g., the Arab-Israeli conflict and Israel’s consolidation of Apartheid-type rule with ample backing, and the hegemony of various mutations of neoliberal economics, which fermented difference, exploitation, and instability across the board)].
With these stubborn facts, I will move on in “Part 2” to discuss the causes of the revolt, putative and actual, and to the question of sectarianism.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/7147/as-syria-free-falls-.-.-.-a-return-to-the-basics-%28
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A Nation of Pain and Suffering: Syria (Part 2)
Dec 11 2012 by Vijay Prashad
Listen
[Syrian refugees cross from Syria to Turkey
by the Orontes river, near the village of
Hacipasa, Turkey, 8 December 2012.
Image by Manu Brabo/AP Photo.]
Our enemies did not cross our borders
They crept through our weakness like ants.
-- Nizar Qabbani, “Footnotes to the Book of Setback”
(Hawamesh ‘ala Daftar al-Naksah), 1967.
II. Neighbors.
As the refugees pour into Syria’s neighbors, tensions come with them. The most thorough report on these tensions was written by the International Crisis Group, whose A Precarious Balancing Act: Lebanon and the Syrian Conflict (November 22, 2012) is probably being scrutinized very closely not only in Beirut, but also in Amman, Ankara, and Baghdad. The “combination of heightened insecurity and continued state impotence” in Lebanon, says the ICG, has led to non-state action – abductions, assassinations, and the creation of beltways to send arms into Syria. ICG exaggerates the arms deliveries. Credible reports show that these are tiny and often without impact.
These deliveries are mainly of small arms, not the kind of heavy artillery that only a state can provide to the rebels. There is certainly the scandal of former journalist, Hariri chevalier, and Saudi courier ‘Uqab Saqr. Caught on tape (released by al-Akhbar), Saqr said he was involved in funneling arms, including rockets, into northern Syria from Lebanon and Turkey. (He denies this, saying that he is actually sending in blankets and milk for babies). The rebels begged him, implored him to fill their arsenal; he was aloof and nasty. It was a window into the kind of operation that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia runs.
The arms pipelines from northern Lebanon and the entry of terrified refugees have agitated the country. In Tripoli armed clashes across the Syrian divides continue, most recently on 9 December when at least six died in the gunfire.
The ICG’s exaggerations and omissions can be set aside for a moment. What the ICG report reveals is the atmosphere of fear that has begun to pervade the policy community.
The “stakes are too grave for Lebanon – the most vulnerable of Syria’s neighbors,” says the ICG, but they are no less grave for Turkey and Jordan. With a flare-up of the conflict between Ankara and the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), and with the fragile authority of the Jordanian monarch tested by the recent protests, there is little comfort in Erdogan’s cabinet and in Abdullah II’s Privy Council. For Jordan, there are few pleasant memories of the uprisings in its substantial camps that ring Amman. The revolts of early November over inflation came from these areas, where suffering and protest has become a way of life for the Palestinians, whose new Syrian neighbors might learn their customs.
Turkey took the most advanced policy in favor of the rebellion. Ankara hoped that the Assad regime would crumble, but as the military phase of the rebellion went over a year with limited impact, the Erdogan cabinet balked. Assad, who had in 1998 thrown out the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan at the behest of Turkey, now pivoted in the other direction. He cleverly ceded northeastern Syria to various Kurdish groups, who are not averse to the PKK. Assad set a grave chess problem for Erdogan – increased PKK activity in Turkey derived from confidence about the new safe zone in Syria and threatened Erdogan with mayhem (violence broke in Hakkari province, with the PKK seizing control of Semdinli, and in Gaziantep province, where a bomb blast in the main city in August rattled the government).
Turkey’s standoff against Syria over the mortar attacks in October was a final gasp. Ankara turned quickly to Brussels. NATO headquarters had signaled no interest in the conflict, but the Turks wanted some kind of assurance. A promise of defensive batteries was the best that could come. Six Patriot batteries, two from each of the agreeable NATO states (German, Netherlands and the US), will take several weeks to set up and will not come anywhere near being sufficient to defend Turkey’s 560-mile border with Syria. It is an utterly symbolic gesture.
Turkey had gone ahead of the West in its call for the removal of Assad, and found, to its surprise that no Western power was willing to follow it. The geopolitical dynamics are not clear-cut. The Europeans and the US would like to manage a transition from Assad to another strongman and to maintain Syria’s role as the security guard for Israel’s northern border (since 1973). The West is not averse to political Islam in power, just as long as the new rulers properly manage the situation to the West’s advantage. The US and the Europeans were quick to come to terms with the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Nahda. What they fear are the less manageable Islamists, the brigands who drive rough across the Libyan countryside, or who might emerge out of the bowels of the Syrian resistance. This latter option has led policy makers in Washington and Brussels to be circumspect about the opposition in Syria.
The US has affirmed its intention to ban the Jabhat al-Nusra (Front for the Aid of the People of the Levant), which seems to have a very small number of members. Al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham (Free Men of Syria) appeared in early 2012, conducting massive bombing campaigns against military targets in Aleppo and elsewhere, which is what inflated their influence. The State department let squeak that the banning of al-Nusra should send a signal that the US would like to set aside the Islamists in the Syrian opposition and bring the liberals to the forefront. Such a policy was followed in Libya as well, where the Islamists were used to fight the Qaddafi regime and then attempted to be corralled after his fall.
Word comes from Aleppo that al-Nusra and its partners have put into place an ambitious plan to set up a jihadi social order. The International Crisis Group released a report in mid-October, Tentative Jihad: Syria’s Fundamentalist Opposition, which provides a clear-cut assessment of the reasons for their growth. “Conditions were favorable,” writes the ICG, with Salafi preachers reaching out to the dislocated rural underclass, and as the violence escalated and hope for a resolution receded, “many flocked to Salafi alternatives.” As the Western bombers did not appear to pulverize Assad’s army, these groups found material support amongst the private money from the Gulf Arabs who “bolstered both the Salafis’ coffers and their narrative, in which Europe and the US figure as passive accomplices in the regime’s crimes.”
Small outfits such as al-Nusra shrink before the much more influential and largely unreported Syria Liberation Front (SLF). The SLF, unlike the Syrian National Army, is a platform for the various jihadi currents, funded by the Gulf Arabs and the Muslim Brotherhood, whose own vehicle, Liwaa al-Tawhid, has steadily built up its networks from its exile bases after being devastated in the 1980s. Aron Lund, author of Drömmen om Damaskus (The Dream of Damascus, SILC Förlag 2010) and regular contributor to SyriaComment, notes that these platforms have “an outsized political role, by pushing the parameters of the conflict towards sectarian violence and coloring international perspectives on the uprising.” This latter point is significant. Such news rattles Washington, where there is little appetite for the kind of blowback that all but a handful of Senators (McCain is the main doubter) fear might come from too generous support to such groups. Even if there is scaremongering from defenders of the Assad revolution or exaggerations from minorities who fear the next social order, the upshot is a skittish bureaucracy on both sides of the Atlantic.
Gone from all this is talk of the Syrian Contact Group, the regional platform pushed by Egypt and including Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Turmoil in Egypt matched by rumbles in the Kurdish region of Turkey and the death agony around the Saudi monarch as well as an increased isolation of Iran has put the SCG into mothballs. It is perhaps the reason why UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi met in Dublin on 6 December with Lavrov (Russia) and Clinton (US), with no regional actor in the room. Brahimi left the meeting saying that the situation in Syria is “very, very bad,” and that Russia, the US, and the UN would “continue to work together to see how we can find creative ways of bringing this problem under control and hopefully starting to solve it.” The word creative might upend all the moves afoot, but that is too optimistic a reading of the Dublin meeting. The most significant message was that despite Turkey going out on a limb, despite Lebanon and Jordan bearing the immense cost of the refugee crisis, and despite Egypt bringing Iran and Saudi Arabia to the same table, these regional actors have no role in the Brahimi process. The Contact Group remained in Cairo, with its tail between its legs.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8924/a-nation-of-pain-and-suffering_syria-%28part-2%29
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A Nation of Pain and Suffering: Syria (Part 3)
Dec 13 2012 by Vijay Prashad
Listen
[Thawra Street, Damascus, closed by regime
forces. 13 December 2012. Via Lens Young
Dimashqi.]
[From Vijay Prashad's three-part series "A Nation of Pain and Suffering: Syria." See Part 1: Refugees here .. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8887/a-nation-of-pain-and-suffering_syria-(part-1) [above] and Part 2 : Neighbors here .. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8924/a-nation-of-pain-and-suffering_syria-(part-2).] [above]
Our enemies did not cross our borders
They crept through our weakness like ants.
-- Nizar Qabbani, “Footnotes to the Book of Setback”
(‘ala Daftar al-Naksah), 1967.
III. Western Plans.
On 12 December, the Friends of Syria (FoS) met for their fourth conference in Marrakech, Morocco. Hilary Clinton could not go because she contracted a stomach virus. The FoS gave full political recognition to the Syrian National Coalition (SNC). They stopped short of calling it the government in exile and naming a cabinet to take charge when the Assad regime falls. Two reasons prevented this from happening: firstly, the Russians would not countenance a new government that does not have parts of the Assad regime in place; secondly, the Syrian National Coalition itself is rife with disagreements, with more secular sections nervous about the increased power of political Islam in its combine. The declaration reiterated the integrity of Syria, called for an immediate ceasefire, and also recognized “the legitimate need for the Syrian people to defend themselves against the violent and brutal campaign of al-Assad regime.”
Based on her reading of western intelligence reports, Hilary Clinton had said a week ago, “It appears as though the opposition in Syria is now capable of holding ground, that they are able to bring the fight to the government forces.” The recognition of the right of the Syrian people to “defend themselves” comes somewhat late in the game. Syrians have already been in the thick of an uneven military battle since at least September 2011. Massive casualties amongst the poorly armed and untrained fighters did not deter the resistance, which remarkably continued to take on a regime that was willing to use considerable force – having already demonstrated its cruelty with the arrest and torture of children in Banyas, Daraa, Damascus, Douma, Homs, and al-Tal, including the brutal torture and murder of Hamza Ali al-Khateeb on 29 April, 2011. The state security, Amn al-Dawla, the political security, Amn al-Siyasi, and the military security, Amn al-Askari, had no compunction about age or culpability; a young boy at a peaceful demonstration had to be crushed before the rebellion went into its armed phase. Such painful incidents hardened the opposition, whose resilience against the regime now seems to have turned the tide.
The US has decided to put its snout more deliberately into the process because, the New York Times notes, “it appeared the opposition fighters were beginning to gain momentum – and were becoming dominated by radical Islamists.” While the Eminencies gathered in Morocco, in Turkey, the rebel commanders formed the Supreme Military Council. Reports suggest that the Qataris and the Saudis had pushed for this formation to better canalize their military assistance. Radical Islamists who have been very effective in the Syrian battlefield are unwilling to be shut out of this Council even though the recently banned al-Nusra Front was not invited.
As a sign that al-Nusra might not be as marginal as the White House hopes, senior Brotherhood leader Mohammed Farouk Tayfour said that this decision was “too hasty.” Tayfour, who is the deputy comptroller general of the Brotherhood and on the executive board of the Council, is from Hama, bombed to oblivion in 1982 by the senior Assad, but not after Tayfour’s Combatant Vanguard, Attali'a el-Moukatillah, had itself taken the armed struggle to the regime. His group conducted the infamous Aleppo Artillery School massacre in 1979 against Alawite officers, so he has some sympathy for the means deployed by al-Nusra, and probably has an acute understanding that the West wishes to weaken the political Islamists in the future Syria.
Washington is in two minds about the harder edge of the Islamists, and their capability. New details of the Qatari arms pipeline in Libya have challenged the US on whether arming the Syrians rebels is a good idea. The Qataris, a US Defense Department official told The New York Times, were giving out weaponry to groups in Libya that are “more antidemocratic, more hard-line… closer to an extreme version of Islam.” One US arms dealer says that the Qataris had no method to their disbursement, “They just handed [weapons] out like candy.” Reports of rebel groups beheading children and massacring civilians (such as on 11 December in the ‘Alawite village of Aqrab in Hamah – several hundred reported dead or injured) bring an air of complexity to the Syrian conflict. The attack on the US consulate in Benghazi (Libya) sits between the lines of such stories.
The West is in a bind. There is reticence to arm fully the Syrian rebellion. This creates the potential for those who have been doing the arming (the Qataris and other Gulf Arabs) to influence the kinds of groups on the ground, which lean more to the side of extremism. If the West does not begin to send in more sophisticated weaponry, there is no guarantee that these would not go to the extremists anyway – since they, unlike the liberals, have a presence on the ground alongside the resistance committees, which are neither extremist nor run by the liberals. The Western backed liberals, in other words, will not be able to control or have purchase over the groups that get the arms. Such fears are not Washington’s alone. As the US signaled it would recognize the Coalition, Doctor Kamal Labwani, one of the most prominent liberals, said on 11 December from Turkey, “If the Americans want to recognize this Coalition then they take the responsibility of putting the Muslim Brotherhood in power and all the consequences that entails.”
A third theory is that the West covertly approves the support to the hardline groups, hoping that once the game is up for Assad, these irritants will be a worry to the liberals who will be weak and beholden to the West. This third theory suggests that there is less of a gap between the maneuvering of Qatar and the supposed reticence of the US government. My conversations with US policy makers suggests that things are not so clear to them, and that there is indeed a divide in the Obama White House, with one part of the apparatus very cautious about any on-the-ground action, and another part raring to go.
Alerts from Tel Aviv over fears of an Islamist take-over of Syria play well amongst the Washington elite who does not want to extend the US into Syria. They prefer the bloodbath to continue, Syria be bled to death, and then the Opposition’s liberals miraculously show up in Damascus as the new leadership. Washington does not want a repeat of the Libyan Model for Syria. It prefers the Yemen Model, although with few options left in the inner circle around Assad, it will be left to one of the suits in the Coalition to take charge. Washington and Tel Aviv want Assadism without Assad, what is known as “authoritarian moderation,” (a term coined by Anthony Cordesman and Ahmed Hashim in 1997 regarding regime change in Iraq).
The Brotherhood holds forty seats of the Council’s one hundred twenty seats. This does not bother the US, which has had a long relationship with the Syrian Brotherhood, including using them as “surrogates” (in the words of former CIA officer Robert Baer) against the Assad regime since the 1980s. But the Israelis are allergic to the titular head of the Coalition, Mouaz al-Khatib. Last year, al-Khatib wrote an essay in which he called Zionism “a cancerous movement,” insulting Israel’s governing ideology. There was no care that he differentiated this movement from “Jews as followers of a religion greatly respected in Islam.” It was enough that he is anti-Zionist to alert Tel Aviv to make the case against him, despite the fact that al-Khatib has moderated his views since his elevation in early November. The Israelis are nervous about the end of Assad. They liked their ambivalent dictator – he allowed them to brag about being “the only democracy in the Middle East,” and he defended their border since 1973. Israel’s strategic defeat in Gaza must open a period of rethinking in Tel Aviv over whether it wants to risk one more hostile government on its borders.
The USS Eisenhower has now sailed into the Eastern Mediterranean. It would only have been allowed to approach the area around the Russian base of Tartus (Syria) if Moscow had given it permission to do so. Russia’s Prime Minister Putin was in Ankara, where he kissed the Pasha’s hand in the hope of increasing Russian-Turkish trade. There was bold talk about tripling the economic ties to warm up the frosty relations between these old Cold War adversaries. In Paris, Putin shrugged off the ties between Moscow and Damascus, “Russia has no special relations with President Assad. Such relations existed between the Soviet Union and his father, but they do not exist between our country and the incumbent Syrian President.” Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov told Argumenty & Fakty that his country was not prepared to back Assad to the very end, and that they were seeking to open direct talks between Ankara and Damascus to restart the stalled regional dialogue. It has become reasonably clear to Moscow that the Sultan of Damascus is fighting for his survival, and that this has left him with no options: there is no flexibility for Assad, so there is no influence for the Russians. They are seeking other avenues for their own national interest.
Russia’s fear is the expansion of NATO’s influence, and so Lavrov is worried about the NATO defensive batteries that will be set in place in southern Turkey. NATO has indicated on several occasions that it does not want to enter the conflict in Syria. The batteries are, NATO’s General Secretary Anders Fog Rasmussen indicated, the maximum position for the alliance. It comes alongside talk of Weapons of Mass Destruction, which is a legitimate fear given the casualness with which the Assad regime has used violence against the population. It is because of this casualness that Washington might wish to learn a lesson that Moscow has already digested: Assad is fighting to the very end, he feels that the lack of international action thus far (despite the forty thousand dead) gives him impunity to act, and the idea that he will go into exile in Latin America is a cruel joke against his overblown sense of his own patrimony.
The recognition of the Council by the US, the NATO batteries, the ships in the eastern Mediterranean, the familiar talk of WMDs – none of this will pressure Assad to negotiations. As the writer and dissident Yassin al-Haj Saleh put it in a recent interview from Damascus, the pressure on Assad, absent a change in the balance of forces on the ground, will only push him to more extreme steps of self-defense. “Whoever wants a serious negotiation with the regime must be stronger than the regime,” he notes. If the Russians begin to dry up their supply lines to the Syrian army, this will certainly further isolate and weaken it. Syrians who oppose Assad call the regime a “gang” or an “occupation force,” an indication that their fear of the regime has evaporated. All that remains for it is superiority in arms. When that will eventually cease, Assad will have to sue for peace. “This is a painful reality for our country,” says Saleh, “which makes it a playground for a very violent and large scale battle. But this is our situation, and we need to acknowledge it with a very clear mind. Illusions about the Assad regime may be more costly and more painful than anything that’s happened today.” The emphasis on the words our situation is very important. Syrians have this in hand, at great cost of life. If the West decides to enter on a White Horse now, it will be simply to take charge of the post-Assad situation. It will not be on humanitarian grounds.
A fragile hope rests on the revitalization of Syrian or Arab nationalism as a cord that binds the people across the widening sectarian divides. But, in the dungeons of the Ba’ath, Syrian nationalism was asphyxiated. Perhaps it is too much to hope for its revival in the midst of this tortured struggle. The politics are bewildering, the human suffering, intolerable.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8994/a-nation-of-pain-and-suffering_syria-%28part-3%29
.. this post a result of my fedupwith feverish state .. not all butttt .. grrr lol .. created by reading so many shallow shouts of conspiracy 'around' Syria that i yearned for something with more depth than a toddlers wading pool .. i think it reads pretty fair at a glance .. after reading the first, because i didn't know them .. Jadaliyya .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadaliyya ..ok .. i've only kinda skimmed through Part 2 and Part 3, for now .. hope y'all enjoy ..
Aug 31 2012 by Bassam Haddad
Listen
[Homs, KArm Al-zaitoun. Freedomhouse]
Lest we forget, or forget why, it has become important to consult the basics regarding the Syrian uprising. This might very well be the best time for such a review. For as the death toll rises and the gradual destruction of the social fabric continues, the Syrian tragedy is increasingly more about the fall of Syria(ns) than the fall of the Syrian regime. One result has been analytical helplessness, which prompts a return to the basics.
Those of us who follow Syria coverage in every major outlet in both Arabic and English know well that we are getting into diminishing returns. Worse, the political polarization around Syria has produced an interestingly problematic phenomenon: analysis is no longer important. You can always rely on the gatekeepers and die-hard supporters on either side to stand by you so long as you are politically on their side. Your analysis matters less/not. Only your position does, eve if under changing circumstances. It is all ex post facto at this point, as both camps have solidified into two concrete walls, crushing both nuance and humanity.
In such political fog—and I make no pretense of saying that it is an insignificant political fog—it might be a good idea to review some of the basic realities, causes, and contours surrounding the Syrian case. Every word in this and any other article will be hotly contested, but not all contestations—nor all my claims—will stand the test of time.
I will briefly review the complexity of the Syrian uprising and then address what can be called the “stubborn facts” in condensed form. I end by discussing the structural causes of the uprising and the thorny issue of “sectarianism.”
[I will try to address these points in a less prose-ish form, anticipating a more detailed formulation in the future. The points below have been made by many, including myself, at the various venues in which Syria was the topic. Apologies for the elementary nature of some of the claims, but that is perhaps what is also needed during the current fog and tragedy.]
1. The Evident Complexity of the Syrian Case
All the other Arab uprisings are complex, but the Syrian case is endowed with added complexity because it is at the heart of various historical struggles in the region and beyond: the Arab-Israeli conflict; the related question of resistance to imperialism; regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the one hand and Iran on the other, with Syria squarely in the latter camp since the uprising; a cold but real tension between the United States and Russia; and, finally, the question of Hizballah, which merits its own category. Increasing regional sectarian tensions also add another ugly layer. Thus, the Syrian uprising is at once a local, regional, and international affair. Adding to the complexity is the fact that the majority of forces who wish to remove the Syrian regime from power, or those who historically opposed it, are themselves the dominant political/economic forces regionally and, to a large extent, internationally (i.e., the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel, among others). This is to be contrasted with the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen, which were largely domestic affairs and excluded the support for regime change by the aforementioned dominant forces (and in the case of Bahrain, included these forces' intervention to preserve autocracy). Such differentials explain, in part, why many historical critics of the Syrian regime’s domestic policies continue to hold this stance but not from the perspective of—nor in accordance with—the interests of the forces listed above. The protracted nature of the Syrian uprising and the lack of an evident exit or solution is a direct function of the intertwining of its local, regional, and international dimensions.
Since the summer of 2011, we have been in a situation in which we are no longer comparing good and bad alternatives. We are facing a choice between the horrible and the catastrophic, at least in the short to medium run. To seek the optimal outcome is to be unrealistic or uninformed.
[Saudi, Qatari, American, Israeli, Syrian, Iranian, Hizballah, Turkish EU, French, Chinese, and
Russian leaders. Collage by author.]
Discursively, the nature of the divide that makes up the complexity is thick and varied, but has been dominated by the authoritarian/imperial contest (i.e., what is worse, authoritarianism or imperialism?). Some of us have critiqued this binary by saying we are against both, but we were in turn critiqued because that position was no longer real, as there was no local agency that espoused it. Yet there are no metrics to determine whether the binary positions that pit regime (or status quo) supporters against supporters of the now multi-faceted uprising is any better. Ultimately, it could very well be a matter of horizons in time and space. In other words, how far is one’s gaze and regarding what issues?
2. Three Stubborn Facts: Dictatorship, Suspect Opposition, and Their Supporters
Two elementary interrelated and stubborn facts animate the uprising and cannot be oversimplified or ignored, whatever one’s politics. Their discursive and empirical relevance to the ongoing conflict cannot be underestimated, and will likely animate how history books will distill the thick lines in retrospect.
First, in analyzing the situation in Syria today, and despite the unsavory actors lined up against the Syrian regime, we cannot consider March 2011 to be the starting point of the unfolding events. We are witnessing an opposition to decades of dictatorship in Syria, irrespective of the twists, turns, and marring of the uprising. This fact cannot be compromised or limited in space and time to the nitpicking about who did what since March 2011. In other words, the sins of the Syrian regime—primarily against the majority of Syrians—must take the lead in animating one’s understanding of the developments on the ground: in March 2011, only the regime was standing, unrivaled. This is a thick and sometimes uncomfortable file for those who are ambivalent about the uprising. Yet it is not likely to be written off, nor should it. When people argue or write about Syria, even proponents of the opposition, they tend to overvalue the post-March 2011 period at the expense of the past few decades. Analytically, to discount the pre-March 2011 period is to fail to understand why after March 2011 the Syrian regime has lost its ability to govern Syria, whatever one’s political/ideological leanings. And many of those who support(ed) the status quo (e.g., minorities) have/had their reasons, the most important of which had nothing to do with the regime’s character. Instead, it is about protection, survival, and now, instinct, as a function of aligned strategic interests. This is in part why many observers fail to make good sense of the distribution of views and positions on Syria.
The second stubborn fact is that, for some time now, we can no longer take this uprising for granted (some say this is a gross understatement, and it may well be). We are no longer witnessing a clear-cut event where an independent pro-democracy movement is facing a dictatorship. Though the latter part holds, the former does not. The dependence, weakness, fragmentation, and divisiveness of the especially external opposition and its internal correlates are now evident to all. Beginning sometime during the summer of 2011, this conflict has become a war of position in which the opposition's moral high ground has diminished considerably as a result of some of its own tactics and a good deal of its external relations and related factors. In other words, we passed the point where the opposition can depend on the mere fact that it is opposing a dictatorship. Those who still write about the Syrian uprising—and they are many—as though the first days of the uprising were frozen in time are speaking of a world that no longer exists. Reasonable observers and participants can disagree on the extent to which many parts of the opposition have been tainted by the same tactics/behaviors that characterize the regime, but it is difficult to dismiss the fact that the fight has been, in par though not in whole, hijacked by exogenous factors, actors, and sentiments for purposes that do not serve the interests and aspirations of the majority of Syrians. Still, that does not mean that a return to the status-quo ante should be acceptable. But the binary that increasingly imposes itself today (i.e., the regime or the externally supported uprising) is in practice difficult to dismiss in favor of good sense, though it must be overcome.
The third stubborn fact is that external supporters of regime change in Syria were perhaps one of the biggest impediments to a genuine movement towards a better future there, because of their brutal policies, duplicitous politics, and/or human rights record. These external actors include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, and the United States. Ironically, Israel fits in this group by association, though its ambivalence until recently regarding regime change in Syria kept it on the sidelines. (The ambivalence is caused more by a desire for a “strong” regime that can protect its northern border, as the current regime has done for nearly four decades.) Significantly, all these states constitute the spearhead of counter-revolution in the region. This third stubborn fact is what buttresses the binary discussed above and creates despair among those inside and outside Syria who are satisfied by neither.
[Some may retort: “what about Syria’s supporters, Russia, China, or Iran, not being democratic and having their own brutal/repressive records, etc.?” Certainly. But these countries are not seeking to change this regime, and whoever argued that the Syrian regime is democratic or is seeking democracy for this association with non-democratic states to even be relevant? Furthermore, democracy is only one factor in this conflict. There are more visceral/existential issues related to the region as a whole, and that have animated the dominant conflicts since World War II (e.g., the Arab-Israeli conflict and Israel’s consolidation of Apartheid-type rule with ample backing, and the hegemony of various mutations of neoliberal economics, which fermented difference, exploitation, and instability across the board)].
With these stubborn facts, I will move on in “Part 2” to discuss the causes of the revolt, putative and actual, and to the question of sectarianism.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/7147/as-syria-free-falls-.-.-.-a-return-to-the-basics-%28
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A Nation of Pain and Suffering: Syria (Part 2)
Dec 11 2012 by Vijay Prashad
Listen
[Syrian refugees cross from Syria to Turkey
by the Orontes river, near the village of
Hacipasa, Turkey, 8 December 2012.
Image by Manu Brabo/AP Photo.]
Our enemies did not cross our borders
They crept through our weakness like ants.
-- Nizar Qabbani, “Footnotes to the Book of Setback”
(Hawamesh ‘ala Daftar al-Naksah), 1967.
II. Neighbors.
As the refugees pour into Syria’s neighbors, tensions come with them. The most thorough report on these tensions was written by the International Crisis Group, whose A Precarious Balancing Act: Lebanon and the Syrian Conflict (November 22, 2012) is probably being scrutinized very closely not only in Beirut, but also in Amman, Ankara, and Baghdad. The “combination of heightened insecurity and continued state impotence” in Lebanon, says the ICG, has led to non-state action – abductions, assassinations, and the creation of beltways to send arms into Syria. ICG exaggerates the arms deliveries. Credible reports show that these are tiny and often without impact.
These deliveries are mainly of small arms, not the kind of heavy artillery that only a state can provide to the rebels. There is certainly the scandal of former journalist, Hariri chevalier, and Saudi courier ‘Uqab Saqr. Caught on tape (released by al-Akhbar), Saqr said he was involved in funneling arms, including rockets, into northern Syria from Lebanon and Turkey. (He denies this, saying that he is actually sending in blankets and milk for babies). The rebels begged him, implored him to fill their arsenal; he was aloof and nasty. It was a window into the kind of operation that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia runs.
The arms pipelines from northern Lebanon and the entry of terrified refugees have agitated the country. In Tripoli armed clashes across the Syrian divides continue, most recently on 9 December when at least six died in the gunfire.
The ICG’s exaggerations and omissions can be set aside for a moment. What the ICG report reveals is the atmosphere of fear that has begun to pervade the policy community.
The “stakes are too grave for Lebanon – the most vulnerable of Syria’s neighbors,” says the ICG, but they are no less grave for Turkey and Jordan. With a flare-up of the conflict between Ankara and the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), and with the fragile authority of the Jordanian monarch tested by the recent protests, there is little comfort in Erdogan’s cabinet and in Abdullah II’s Privy Council. For Jordan, there are few pleasant memories of the uprisings in its substantial camps that ring Amman. The revolts of early November over inflation came from these areas, where suffering and protest has become a way of life for the Palestinians, whose new Syrian neighbors might learn their customs.
Turkey took the most advanced policy in favor of the rebellion. Ankara hoped that the Assad regime would crumble, but as the military phase of the rebellion went over a year with limited impact, the Erdogan cabinet balked. Assad, who had in 1998 thrown out the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan at the behest of Turkey, now pivoted in the other direction. He cleverly ceded northeastern Syria to various Kurdish groups, who are not averse to the PKK. Assad set a grave chess problem for Erdogan – increased PKK activity in Turkey derived from confidence about the new safe zone in Syria and threatened Erdogan with mayhem (violence broke in Hakkari province, with the PKK seizing control of Semdinli, and in Gaziantep province, where a bomb blast in the main city in August rattled the government).
Turkey’s standoff against Syria over the mortar attacks in October was a final gasp. Ankara turned quickly to Brussels. NATO headquarters had signaled no interest in the conflict, but the Turks wanted some kind of assurance. A promise of defensive batteries was the best that could come. Six Patriot batteries, two from each of the agreeable NATO states (German, Netherlands and the US), will take several weeks to set up and will not come anywhere near being sufficient to defend Turkey’s 560-mile border with Syria. It is an utterly symbolic gesture.
Turkey had gone ahead of the West in its call for the removal of Assad, and found, to its surprise that no Western power was willing to follow it. The geopolitical dynamics are not clear-cut. The Europeans and the US would like to manage a transition from Assad to another strongman and to maintain Syria’s role as the security guard for Israel’s northern border (since 1973). The West is not averse to political Islam in power, just as long as the new rulers properly manage the situation to the West’s advantage. The US and the Europeans were quick to come to terms with the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Nahda. What they fear are the less manageable Islamists, the brigands who drive rough across the Libyan countryside, or who might emerge out of the bowels of the Syrian resistance. This latter option has led policy makers in Washington and Brussels to be circumspect about the opposition in Syria.
The US has affirmed its intention to ban the Jabhat al-Nusra (Front for the Aid of the People of the Levant), which seems to have a very small number of members. Al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham (Free Men of Syria) appeared in early 2012, conducting massive bombing campaigns against military targets in Aleppo and elsewhere, which is what inflated their influence. The State department let squeak that the banning of al-Nusra should send a signal that the US would like to set aside the Islamists in the Syrian opposition and bring the liberals to the forefront. Such a policy was followed in Libya as well, where the Islamists were used to fight the Qaddafi regime and then attempted to be corralled after his fall.
Word comes from Aleppo that al-Nusra and its partners have put into place an ambitious plan to set up a jihadi social order. The International Crisis Group released a report in mid-October, Tentative Jihad: Syria’s Fundamentalist Opposition, which provides a clear-cut assessment of the reasons for their growth. “Conditions were favorable,” writes the ICG, with Salafi preachers reaching out to the dislocated rural underclass, and as the violence escalated and hope for a resolution receded, “many flocked to Salafi alternatives.” As the Western bombers did not appear to pulverize Assad’s army, these groups found material support amongst the private money from the Gulf Arabs who “bolstered both the Salafis’ coffers and their narrative, in which Europe and the US figure as passive accomplices in the regime’s crimes.”
Small outfits such as al-Nusra shrink before the much more influential and largely unreported Syria Liberation Front (SLF). The SLF, unlike the Syrian National Army, is a platform for the various jihadi currents, funded by the Gulf Arabs and the Muslim Brotherhood, whose own vehicle, Liwaa al-Tawhid, has steadily built up its networks from its exile bases after being devastated in the 1980s. Aron Lund, author of Drömmen om Damaskus (The Dream of Damascus, SILC Förlag 2010) and regular contributor to SyriaComment, notes that these platforms have “an outsized political role, by pushing the parameters of the conflict towards sectarian violence and coloring international perspectives on the uprising.” This latter point is significant. Such news rattles Washington, where there is little appetite for the kind of blowback that all but a handful of Senators (McCain is the main doubter) fear might come from too generous support to such groups. Even if there is scaremongering from defenders of the Assad revolution or exaggerations from minorities who fear the next social order, the upshot is a skittish bureaucracy on both sides of the Atlantic.
Gone from all this is talk of the Syrian Contact Group, the regional platform pushed by Egypt and including Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Turmoil in Egypt matched by rumbles in the Kurdish region of Turkey and the death agony around the Saudi monarch as well as an increased isolation of Iran has put the SCG into mothballs. It is perhaps the reason why UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi met in Dublin on 6 December with Lavrov (Russia) and Clinton (US), with no regional actor in the room. Brahimi left the meeting saying that the situation in Syria is “very, very bad,” and that Russia, the US, and the UN would “continue to work together to see how we can find creative ways of bringing this problem under control and hopefully starting to solve it.” The word creative might upend all the moves afoot, but that is too optimistic a reading of the Dublin meeting. The most significant message was that despite Turkey going out on a limb, despite Lebanon and Jordan bearing the immense cost of the refugee crisis, and despite Egypt bringing Iran and Saudi Arabia to the same table, these regional actors have no role in the Brahimi process. The Contact Group remained in Cairo, with its tail between its legs.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8924/a-nation-of-pain-and-suffering_syria-%28part-2%29
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A Nation of Pain and Suffering: Syria (Part 3)
Dec 13 2012 by Vijay Prashad
Listen
[Thawra Street, Damascus, closed by regime
forces. 13 December 2012. Via Lens Young
Dimashqi.]
[From Vijay Prashad's three-part series "A Nation of Pain and Suffering: Syria." See Part 1: Refugees here .. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8887/a-nation-of-pain-and-suffering_syria-(part-1) [above] and Part 2 : Neighbors here .. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8924/a-nation-of-pain-and-suffering_syria-(part-2).] [above]
Our enemies did not cross our borders
They crept through our weakness like ants.
-- Nizar Qabbani, “Footnotes to the Book of Setback”
(‘ala Daftar al-Naksah), 1967.
III. Western Plans.
On 12 December, the Friends of Syria (FoS) met for their fourth conference in Marrakech, Morocco. Hilary Clinton could not go because she contracted a stomach virus. The FoS gave full political recognition to the Syrian National Coalition (SNC). They stopped short of calling it the government in exile and naming a cabinet to take charge when the Assad regime falls. Two reasons prevented this from happening: firstly, the Russians would not countenance a new government that does not have parts of the Assad regime in place; secondly, the Syrian National Coalition itself is rife with disagreements, with more secular sections nervous about the increased power of political Islam in its combine. The declaration reiterated the integrity of Syria, called for an immediate ceasefire, and also recognized “the legitimate need for the Syrian people to defend themselves against the violent and brutal campaign of al-Assad regime.”
Based on her reading of western intelligence reports, Hilary Clinton had said a week ago, “It appears as though the opposition in Syria is now capable of holding ground, that they are able to bring the fight to the government forces.” The recognition of the right of the Syrian people to “defend themselves” comes somewhat late in the game. Syrians have already been in the thick of an uneven military battle since at least September 2011. Massive casualties amongst the poorly armed and untrained fighters did not deter the resistance, which remarkably continued to take on a regime that was willing to use considerable force – having already demonstrated its cruelty with the arrest and torture of children in Banyas, Daraa, Damascus, Douma, Homs, and al-Tal, including the brutal torture and murder of Hamza Ali al-Khateeb on 29 April, 2011. The state security, Amn al-Dawla, the political security, Amn al-Siyasi, and the military security, Amn al-Askari, had no compunction about age or culpability; a young boy at a peaceful demonstration had to be crushed before the rebellion went into its armed phase. Such painful incidents hardened the opposition, whose resilience against the regime now seems to have turned the tide.
The US has decided to put its snout more deliberately into the process because, the New York Times notes, “it appeared the opposition fighters were beginning to gain momentum – and were becoming dominated by radical Islamists.” While the Eminencies gathered in Morocco, in Turkey, the rebel commanders formed the Supreme Military Council. Reports suggest that the Qataris and the Saudis had pushed for this formation to better canalize their military assistance. Radical Islamists who have been very effective in the Syrian battlefield are unwilling to be shut out of this Council even though the recently banned al-Nusra Front was not invited.
As a sign that al-Nusra might not be as marginal as the White House hopes, senior Brotherhood leader Mohammed Farouk Tayfour said that this decision was “too hasty.” Tayfour, who is the deputy comptroller general of the Brotherhood and on the executive board of the Council, is from Hama, bombed to oblivion in 1982 by the senior Assad, but not after Tayfour’s Combatant Vanguard, Attali'a el-Moukatillah, had itself taken the armed struggle to the regime. His group conducted the infamous Aleppo Artillery School massacre in 1979 against Alawite officers, so he has some sympathy for the means deployed by al-Nusra, and probably has an acute understanding that the West wishes to weaken the political Islamists in the future Syria.
Washington is in two minds about the harder edge of the Islamists, and their capability. New details of the Qatari arms pipeline in Libya have challenged the US on whether arming the Syrians rebels is a good idea. The Qataris, a US Defense Department official told The New York Times, were giving out weaponry to groups in Libya that are “more antidemocratic, more hard-line… closer to an extreme version of Islam.” One US arms dealer says that the Qataris had no method to their disbursement, “They just handed [weapons] out like candy.” Reports of rebel groups beheading children and massacring civilians (such as on 11 December in the ‘Alawite village of Aqrab in Hamah – several hundred reported dead or injured) bring an air of complexity to the Syrian conflict. The attack on the US consulate in Benghazi (Libya) sits between the lines of such stories.
The West is in a bind. There is reticence to arm fully the Syrian rebellion. This creates the potential for those who have been doing the arming (the Qataris and other Gulf Arabs) to influence the kinds of groups on the ground, which lean more to the side of extremism. If the West does not begin to send in more sophisticated weaponry, there is no guarantee that these would not go to the extremists anyway – since they, unlike the liberals, have a presence on the ground alongside the resistance committees, which are neither extremist nor run by the liberals. The Western backed liberals, in other words, will not be able to control or have purchase over the groups that get the arms. Such fears are not Washington’s alone. As the US signaled it would recognize the Coalition, Doctor Kamal Labwani, one of the most prominent liberals, said on 11 December from Turkey, “If the Americans want to recognize this Coalition then they take the responsibility of putting the Muslim Brotherhood in power and all the consequences that entails.”
A third theory is that the West covertly approves the support to the hardline groups, hoping that once the game is up for Assad, these irritants will be a worry to the liberals who will be weak and beholden to the West. This third theory suggests that there is less of a gap between the maneuvering of Qatar and the supposed reticence of the US government. My conversations with US policy makers suggests that things are not so clear to them, and that there is indeed a divide in the Obama White House, with one part of the apparatus very cautious about any on-the-ground action, and another part raring to go.
Alerts from Tel Aviv over fears of an Islamist take-over of Syria play well amongst the Washington elite who does not want to extend the US into Syria. They prefer the bloodbath to continue, Syria be bled to death, and then the Opposition’s liberals miraculously show up in Damascus as the new leadership. Washington does not want a repeat of the Libyan Model for Syria. It prefers the Yemen Model, although with few options left in the inner circle around Assad, it will be left to one of the suits in the Coalition to take charge. Washington and Tel Aviv want Assadism without Assad, what is known as “authoritarian moderation,” (a term coined by Anthony Cordesman and Ahmed Hashim in 1997 regarding regime change in Iraq).
The Brotherhood holds forty seats of the Council’s one hundred twenty seats. This does not bother the US, which has had a long relationship with the Syrian Brotherhood, including using them as “surrogates” (in the words of former CIA officer Robert Baer) against the Assad regime since the 1980s. But the Israelis are allergic to the titular head of the Coalition, Mouaz al-Khatib. Last year, al-Khatib wrote an essay in which he called Zionism “a cancerous movement,” insulting Israel’s governing ideology. There was no care that he differentiated this movement from “Jews as followers of a religion greatly respected in Islam.” It was enough that he is anti-Zionist to alert Tel Aviv to make the case against him, despite the fact that al-Khatib has moderated his views since his elevation in early November. The Israelis are nervous about the end of Assad. They liked their ambivalent dictator – he allowed them to brag about being “the only democracy in the Middle East,” and he defended their border since 1973. Israel’s strategic defeat in Gaza must open a period of rethinking in Tel Aviv over whether it wants to risk one more hostile government on its borders.
The USS Eisenhower has now sailed into the Eastern Mediterranean. It would only have been allowed to approach the area around the Russian base of Tartus (Syria) if Moscow had given it permission to do so. Russia’s Prime Minister Putin was in Ankara, where he kissed the Pasha’s hand in the hope of increasing Russian-Turkish trade. There was bold talk about tripling the economic ties to warm up the frosty relations between these old Cold War adversaries. In Paris, Putin shrugged off the ties between Moscow and Damascus, “Russia has no special relations with President Assad. Such relations existed between the Soviet Union and his father, but they do not exist between our country and the incumbent Syrian President.” Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov told Argumenty & Fakty that his country was not prepared to back Assad to the very end, and that they were seeking to open direct talks between Ankara and Damascus to restart the stalled regional dialogue. It has become reasonably clear to Moscow that the Sultan of Damascus is fighting for his survival, and that this has left him with no options: there is no flexibility for Assad, so there is no influence for the Russians. They are seeking other avenues for their own national interest.
Russia’s fear is the expansion of NATO’s influence, and so Lavrov is worried about the NATO defensive batteries that will be set in place in southern Turkey. NATO has indicated on several occasions that it does not want to enter the conflict in Syria. The batteries are, NATO’s General Secretary Anders Fog Rasmussen indicated, the maximum position for the alliance. It comes alongside talk of Weapons of Mass Destruction, which is a legitimate fear given the casualness with which the Assad regime has used violence against the population. It is because of this casualness that Washington might wish to learn a lesson that Moscow has already digested: Assad is fighting to the very end, he feels that the lack of international action thus far (despite the forty thousand dead) gives him impunity to act, and the idea that he will go into exile in Latin America is a cruel joke against his overblown sense of his own patrimony.
The recognition of the Council by the US, the NATO batteries, the ships in the eastern Mediterranean, the familiar talk of WMDs – none of this will pressure Assad to negotiations. As the writer and dissident Yassin al-Haj Saleh put it in a recent interview from Damascus, the pressure on Assad, absent a change in the balance of forces on the ground, will only push him to more extreme steps of self-defense. “Whoever wants a serious negotiation with the regime must be stronger than the regime,” he notes. If the Russians begin to dry up their supply lines to the Syrian army, this will certainly further isolate and weaken it. Syrians who oppose Assad call the regime a “gang” or an “occupation force,” an indication that their fear of the regime has evaporated. All that remains for it is superiority in arms. When that will eventually cease, Assad will have to sue for peace. “This is a painful reality for our country,” says Saleh, “which makes it a playground for a very violent and large scale battle. But this is our situation, and we need to acknowledge it with a very clear mind. Illusions about the Assad regime may be more costly and more painful than anything that’s happened today.” The emphasis on the words our situation is very important. Syrians have this in hand, at great cost of life. If the West decides to enter on a White Horse now, it will be simply to take charge of the post-Assad situation. It will not be on humanitarian grounds.
A fragile hope rests on the revitalization of Syrian or Arab nationalism as a cord that binds the people across the widening sectarian divides. But, in the dungeons of the Ba’ath, Syrian nationalism was asphyxiated. Perhaps it is too much to hope for its revival in the midst of this tortured struggle. The politics are bewildering, the human suffering, intolerable.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8994/a-nation-of-pain-and-suffering_syria-%28part-3%29
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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