Sunday, 5 August 2012

Five Syrian Nightmares



Tony Karon wrote an important if depressing article in Time last week, entitled, "Five Syria Nightmares: The Middle East Can’t Live with Assad, but Living Without Him Won’t Be Easy" He lists five things that could (and probably will) go badly wrong when (not if) the Assad regime falls

1. The Sectarian Bloodbath Continues, or Intensifies

Renewed Arab offers of safe passage for President Bashar Assad if he agrees to abdicate miss the point: his isn’t simply a personality-cult regime; it survives because many thousands of Syrians remain willing to kill for Assad — or at least, to hold the rebellion at bay. Assad runs a system of minority rule that has empowered the Alawite minority, supported by Christians, Druze and other minorities and an elite from within the Sunni majority. And the reason the regime’s core forces remain intact, able and willing to fight on despite the defection of many thousands of Sunni conscripts and even senior officers, is fear of their fate if the rebellion triumphs. The 18 months of violence that has killed as many as 19,000 Syrians and seen many thousands more wounded, tortured, raped and displaced may have helped make protracted violent retribution a self-fulfilling prophecy... read more

2. Jihadists Fill the Post-Assad Vacuum

The presence of an al-Qaeda-inspired element in the Syrian rebellion has long been established — U.S. intelligence concluded that some of the spectacular suicide bombings early on in Damascus were the work of such groups. And in response to a question in the German Parliament last week, it was revealed that Germany’s intelligence service estimates that about 90 bombings in Syria over the past six months were the work of “organizations that are close to al-Qaeda or jihadist groups.” Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in February called on supporters in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq to join the fight against Assad, and a number seem to have responded, with opportunities expanding as the Syrian state frays at the edges. Last weekend, AFP reported that a border crossing near Turkey had been taken over by some 150 foreign fighters proclaiming themselves loyal to al-Qaeda... read more

3. Chemical Weapons Let Loose?

The Assad regime’s stocks of chemical weapons — developed decades ago ostensibly as a strategic hedge against the presumed nuclear capability of its prime enemy, Israel — have become an urgent focus of discussion among Western powers and Israel as the regime has begun to teeter. Fears that Assad would use such weapons to suppress a domestic rebellion may be overblown — they don’t exactly lend themselves to urban combat, and Assad’s conduct until now has suggested a keen sense of keeping the level of violence his regime unleashes below a threshold that would bring direct foreign intervention. Chemical weapons would not only cross that threshold but also almost certainly result in him seeing out his days in a prison cell at the Hague. President Obama on Monday warned Assad that he would be “held accountable” should those weapons be used... read more

4. Syria Breaks Up

Given the sectarian lines on which Syria’s power struggle is being waged, it’s widely assumed that the regime won’t simply shatter into smithereens when the rebels arrive at the gates of Assad’s home. Instead, it’s assumed that those fighting to keep Assad in power will, when forced by overwhelming odds to do so, retreat to more defensible lines from which they can protect themselves and their core communities. It’s been widely noted that Alawites are moving in large numbers to their coastal heartland and that the pattern of communal violence in Sunni villages and towns that abut it suggest a process of ethnic cleansing to prepare the way. An Alawite coastal ministate that folds in the port cities of Latakia and Tartus, home to the Russian navy’s key warmwater port, may not be viable in the long run, but that doesn’t mean the regime’s core won’t try for one. Even before that, though, a scenario could emerge in which rival armed formations control adjacent territories, as occurred in Lebanon during its 17-year civil war and during Iraq’s civil war in 2006 ... read more

5. What Happens in Syria Doesn’t Stay in Syria

Look at the map of the modern Middle East and what jumps out are the number of ruler-straight lines that describe the borders defining Syria and its neighbors Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Israel. These nation-states were all invented less than a hundred years ago, on the drawing boards of France and Britain as they gerrymandered what became a series of minority-ruled states out of what had been a series of Ottoman provinces. The Sunni minority came to rule Iraq; the Alawites came to rule Syria; Lebanon was created to give Maronite Christians a state of their own, but they too were reduced to a minority and then lost power; Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy ruled over a state whose majority today is Palestinian; and in the British colonial entity of Palestine, Jewish immigrants from Europe (who comprised about 45% of the population in 1948) emerged in control.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq ended Sunni minority rule and sent sectarian political shockwaves across the region. Shi’ite majority rule may have been the democratic outcome, but it was never accepted by Iraq’s Sunnis or by their patrons in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Sunni-Shi’ite tensions have simmered across the region, flaring up in Lebanon and Bahrain — but Syria could prove to be a game changer... read more


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