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  • Syrian vicious circle

    Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt
    July 27, 2012

    Syrian vicious circle


    Will Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad resign and what will the
    regional repercussions be? Who will be the new ruler of Syria and how
    will that impact the country's neighbours? Lebanon, for one, will not
    be the same. It is the one country that will inevitably be
    tremendously impacted by a regime change in Syria.

    While North Africa is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, with the notable
    exception of a large Coptic Christian community in Egypt, the
    religious composition of the people of the Middle East, or the Asiatic
    section of the Arab world, is much more complex.

    Shia Muslims constitute a majority of the population of Iraq, the most
    populous country in Arab Asia. Sunni Muslims are a majority in much of
    the Arabian Peninsula. There are pockets of Shia Islam, notably in
    eastern Saudi Arabia and Bahrain as well as Yemen. Christian
    minorities are found in considerable numbers in Syria, Lebanon,
    Palestine, Jordan as well as Iraq. There are other religious
    minorities such as the Druze of Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.

    Ethnically, there are large concentrations of Kurds in northern Iraq
    and Syria. Throughout the region historically called the Fertile
    Crescent -- Mesopotamia and the Levant -- there are numerous ethnic
    and religious minorities such as the Armenians, the Assyrian
    Christians, the Chaldean Christians and countless others. However, the
    main religious divide is the Shia Muslim/Sunni Muslim one.

    A further complication is the imposition of the Zionist entity, the
    state of Israel, as a homeland for Jews. Syria is at the crossroads
    and its geographical location, straddling the Mediterranean and
    Mesopotamia, makes it of paramount importance.

    The nature of the Syrian regime that will inherit the corridors of
    power in Damascus will determine the direction of the entire region.
    Two other non-Arab regional players -- Sunni Muslim Turkey and Shia
    Muslim Iran -- have been fighting wars by proxy in Syria. Iran
    supports the Al-Assad regime, which is controlled by the Alawite sect,
    considered Shia Muslim even though they differ from the type of Shia
    Islam practised in Iran and Iraq.

    Turkey, on the other hand, is a staunch supporter of the Syrian Free
    Army and forces fighting the Baath regime in Syria. So while in North
    Africa the main political polarisation is between Islamists and
    secularists or liberals, in the Middle East the likely power struggle
    is decidedly religious in nature between Shia Muslims and Sunni
    Muslims.

    There are definite signs Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf
    Arab states are sympathetic to the anti-Assad forces. Meanwhile Iran,
    Hizbullah in Lebanon, and probably Shia dominated Iraq are partial to
    Al-Assad's regime. While the civil war in Syria, unlike the civil war
    in Libya, or the revolutions of Egypt and Tunisia, have had no serious
    regional ramifications beyond their borders so far, the grave
    implications on Syria's immediate neighbours, Arab and non-Arab, will
    be felt soon.

    It would be sad to see the region split along religious lines because
    this will certainly slow down the pace of democracy and lock the
    Fertile Crescent and Arabian Peninsula into a long-term fight between
    the Shia/Sunni confessional divide.



    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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