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FOREIGN AFFAIRS: THE REMAPPING OF SYRIA
By AMOTZ ASA-EL
05/15/2014 22:58
http://www.jpost.com/Features/Front-Lines/Foreign-Affairs-The-remapping-of-Syria-352449
While basking in his gains on the battlefield, Bashar Assad has lost
for good the nation his father bequeathed him.
Rubble of damaged buildings in Syria Photo: Reuters US campaign
advisers Arthur Finkelstein and James Carville have not been hired,
but Bashar Assad will still win next month's election, and proceed
to a third seven-year term as president of Syria.
Coupled with Egypt's election - to be held one week earlier, with Gen.
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's victory also predestined - and the world may
be resigned to the conclusion that three-and-a-half years of upheaval
have landed the Arab world back at square one. This impression may
be right in Egypt, but it is unfounded in Syria, whose future will
be markedly different from its past.
The feeling of déja vu is justified in Egypt, where Sisi is indeed
a product of the previous establishment, and where the country has
survived its upheaval intact, if bruised. Syria's situation is entirely
different. Though Assad has indeed defied early assessments that his
political days are numbered, and despite gains on the battlefield,
the process of Syria's breakup is under way - and irreversible.
Impressions that Syria is also returning to square one were enhanced
this week, with the resignation of Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN special
envoy who has spent nearly two years trying to get Assad and his
enemies to agree to a cease-fire.
Brahimi, a seasoned Algerian diplomat who had been an effective
negotiator in Afghanistan and Iraq, gave up after two unfruitful rounds
of talks in Geneva were followed by Assad's announcement that he would
hold the election as planned. That move has rendered Brahimi's efforts
obsolete, because the splintered Syrian opposition's most common
denominator, and most consistent demand, has been that Assad depart.
Assad's diplomatic success has been more than defensive. Not only
has he managed to stem the momentum that might have unseated him,
he also cultivated alliances with two superpowers, Russia and China,
and with one regional power, Iran, all of which keeps arms supplies
and cash flowing in, if insufficiently. This configuration has so far
proved far more solid and efficient than the much more reluctant and
loosely connected counter-alliance behind Assad's enemies.
With the US failing to deliver on its vow to attack Syria's chemical
weapons installations, Assad saw the rest of the coalition he faced,
including Turkey, France, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League, all fail
to unseat him, or even seriously equip and train the rebels.
At the same time, Assad's cause has been consistently backed by Moscow
and Beijing, so much so that UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon this
week decried the Security Council's failure to bring an end to the
bloodshed - which has cost over the past three years some 150,000
fatalities, and displaced an estimated 6.5 million Syrians.
Assad's diplomatic success has been compounded by gains in the
battlefield.
After having consolidated his grip on Damascus, Assad has just
registered a significant breakthrough in Homs, just outside Lebanon's
northeastern tip. The town that now looks as devastated as Stalingrad
the morning of its liberation, last week saw its last 1,000 rebels
leave through a negotiated corridor.
The triumphant return of Assad's troops to the city where three
years ago thousands filled the streets demanding his regime's end,
understandably enhanced the impression that he is in the process of
fully offsetting the effort to topple his regime and reinvent his land.
North of there, in Aleppo, Assad's air force has been dropping
so-called barrel bombs on neighborhoods where the rebels have also
been pushed to the defensive, this while, according to France, the
Syrian president launched multiple gas attacks - even after signing
the deal to dismantle his chemical weapons.
Chances are Assad's troops will in upcoming months be marching into
Aleppo, prewar Syria's commercial heart, thus consolidating the
impression that his victory is nearly complete.
Assad the son, many will rush to conclude, has done in 2014 what his
father did in 1982 when he leveled the town of Hama. It may not have
been as swift, conventional wisdom will go, but like his father,
the son will lord over Syria for many more years, having bled its
dissenters white.
Well, he won't.
BACK WHEN he inherited his father's estate, many wondered whether
Bashar Assad, a soft-spoken ophthalmologist, was built to deploy
the kind of brutality that animated his father's 30-year reign. That
question has since been answered, as the son has already killed more
than his father, and is apparently not done.
However, while the individuals at play may not be significantly
different, times have changed. Assad the father could surround a city
with artillery batteries and pound it with its inhabitants inside,
knowing the world would take months to learn what he did.
Assad the son has to contend with Facebook, YouTube and Twitter,
all of which empower the masses in ways the father would doubtfully
manage to address any more efficiently than the son.
That is why the formula on which Syria ran in recent decades, which
imposed the Alawite minority over the Sunni majority, will not be
fully restored. Assad has lost most Syrians' respect, even to the
minimal extent necessary for dictatorial rule, and the people have
learned how to stand up to authority, even the Syrian leadership's.
There are accumulating indications - geographic, ethnic and social -
that this assumption is shared by many on all sides of the civil war.
Geographically, Assad's offensive is limited to the west. That is
why Homs, which sits between Damascus and Aleppo, not far from the
coast and also on Lebanon's edge, is so vital to him. That is also why
Assad's army has been fighting hard to defend Quneitra, which borders
Israel on the Golan Heights, and is on the southern end of the western
realm that he seems out to carve. Indeed, even here Assad's grip is
shaky, as local rebel groups this week seemed to be closing in on
Quneitra while Assad was unable to send them sufficient reinforcements.
Ethnically, and in line with his operations' geographic pattern,
Assad seems for now to have given up on the Kurds. Numbering about
2 million, this minority is split by rival parties, one of which
intends to elect at the end of this month a regional assembly.
Just how Syria's Kurds end up managing their effectively seceded
region remains to be seen, but no one expects Assad's return there
anytime soon.
Lastly, the war is depleting Syria socially. With the currency
decimated, food prices trebled and assorted armed bands roaming many
parts of the country unpoliced, a generation of children is growing
up in a moral moonscape of shortage and crime, never even entering,
let alone graduating, elementary school.
While this is happening on the lower end of the social ladder, on the
upper end there is a growing readiness to flee. For instance, over
the past two years more than 70 doctors belonging to the Armenian
minority fled Syria to Armenia, part of a larger exodus of at least
a 10th of this ancient and relatively affluent minority, which before
the war numbered 100,000, more than half of whom lived in Aleppo.
This is a voting by the feet. Armenians leaving Syria are effectively
saying they do not believe Assad will restore the Syria they recall,
where that minority had an unwritten loyalty- for-protection deal
with the regime.
And the damage of such a flight is immeasurable, as the Armenians
were part of the country's commercial class and professional elite.
Assad, in short, has gained the tactical initiative, but strategically
the Syria he is salvaging will be very different from the one he
inherited. What then, if anything, can be said at this stage about
what it will be like?
SYRIA'S FUTURE will be the result of a new Sunni-Shi'ite arrangement.
Back in the days of Hafez Assad and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein,
few in the West understood the meaning of the two's ethnicities and
denominations.
In fact, they represented minorities that oppressed majorities -
in Syria the Sunnis, in Iraq the Shi'ites.
This schism is what drives most of the violence that has raged in
both countries since the two's departures.
Eventually, the roughly 25 million Sunnis on both sides of today's
Syrian- Iraqi border will be pushed into each other's arms by the
Shi'ites who pressure them from the east, and the Alawites and Lebanese
Shi'ites who pressure them from the west.
Indeed, this realignment would have already been under way, had this
cause not been seized by Islamist extremists who are anathema to most
of the relevant external powers. Even so, this is where the local
Sunni powers - Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, along with equally
Sunni Jordan - will eventually head. The West's backing of this will
depend on the extent to which the fanatics remain a factor.
This is the context in which the US this week formally blacklisted
two al-Qaida leaders currently active in Syria, Abd al-Rahman Muhammad
Safir al-Daysi al-Juhni and Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Kaduli, who had
come to fight Assad from Saudi Arabia and Iraq, respectively. While
labeling the two "specially designated global terrorists," and
prohibiting any American's financial association with them, the US
conducted joint maneuvers with the Jordanian army and air force,
not far from the Syrian border.
It will likely take years, maybe decades, for the remapped Iraq and
Syria to emerge, and many of the questions it raises - most notably,
where Damascus and Baghdad will be - will have to wait for local
thinkers to emerge with a vision for the country they want.
However, religious and ethnic dynamics from below coupled with the
Sunni powers' interests from outside will eventually breed this child,
with or without Western blessing.
As for Russia, its attitude toward a trimmed Syria remains to be seen,
though it should be noted that Moscow's main interest in Syria, the
naval base Assad has given it in Tartus, should emerge from such a
reconfiguration on Assad's turf.
This is besides the fact that a sectarian remapping in Syria will be
but a variation on Russia's own theme in Ukraine.
www.MiddleIsrael.net
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
By AMOTZ ASA-EL
05/15/2014 22:58
http://www.jpost.com/Features/Front-Lines/Foreign-Affairs-The-remapping-of-Syria-352449
While basking in his gains on the battlefield, Bashar Assad has lost
for good the nation his father bequeathed him.
Rubble of damaged buildings in Syria Photo: Reuters US campaign
advisers Arthur Finkelstein and James Carville have not been hired,
but Bashar Assad will still win next month's election, and proceed
to a third seven-year term as president of Syria.
Coupled with Egypt's election - to be held one week earlier, with Gen.
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's victory also predestined - and the world may
be resigned to the conclusion that three-and-a-half years of upheaval
have landed the Arab world back at square one. This impression may
be right in Egypt, but it is unfounded in Syria, whose future will
be markedly different from its past.
The feeling of déja vu is justified in Egypt, where Sisi is indeed
a product of the previous establishment, and where the country has
survived its upheaval intact, if bruised. Syria's situation is entirely
different. Though Assad has indeed defied early assessments that his
political days are numbered, and despite gains on the battlefield,
the process of Syria's breakup is under way - and irreversible.
Impressions that Syria is also returning to square one were enhanced
this week, with the resignation of Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN special
envoy who has spent nearly two years trying to get Assad and his
enemies to agree to a cease-fire.
Brahimi, a seasoned Algerian diplomat who had been an effective
negotiator in Afghanistan and Iraq, gave up after two unfruitful rounds
of talks in Geneva were followed by Assad's announcement that he would
hold the election as planned. That move has rendered Brahimi's efforts
obsolete, because the splintered Syrian opposition's most common
denominator, and most consistent demand, has been that Assad depart.
Assad's diplomatic success has been more than defensive. Not only
has he managed to stem the momentum that might have unseated him,
he also cultivated alliances with two superpowers, Russia and China,
and with one regional power, Iran, all of which keeps arms supplies
and cash flowing in, if insufficiently. This configuration has so far
proved far more solid and efficient than the much more reluctant and
loosely connected counter-alliance behind Assad's enemies.
With the US failing to deliver on its vow to attack Syria's chemical
weapons installations, Assad saw the rest of the coalition he faced,
including Turkey, France, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League, all fail
to unseat him, or even seriously equip and train the rebels.
At the same time, Assad's cause has been consistently backed by Moscow
and Beijing, so much so that UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon this
week decried the Security Council's failure to bring an end to the
bloodshed - which has cost over the past three years some 150,000
fatalities, and displaced an estimated 6.5 million Syrians.
Assad's diplomatic success has been compounded by gains in the
battlefield.
After having consolidated his grip on Damascus, Assad has just
registered a significant breakthrough in Homs, just outside Lebanon's
northeastern tip. The town that now looks as devastated as Stalingrad
the morning of its liberation, last week saw its last 1,000 rebels
leave through a negotiated corridor.
The triumphant return of Assad's troops to the city where three
years ago thousands filled the streets demanding his regime's end,
understandably enhanced the impression that he is in the process of
fully offsetting the effort to topple his regime and reinvent his land.
North of there, in Aleppo, Assad's air force has been dropping
so-called barrel bombs on neighborhoods where the rebels have also
been pushed to the defensive, this while, according to France, the
Syrian president launched multiple gas attacks - even after signing
the deal to dismantle his chemical weapons.
Chances are Assad's troops will in upcoming months be marching into
Aleppo, prewar Syria's commercial heart, thus consolidating the
impression that his victory is nearly complete.
Assad the son, many will rush to conclude, has done in 2014 what his
father did in 1982 when he leveled the town of Hama. It may not have
been as swift, conventional wisdom will go, but like his father,
the son will lord over Syria for many more years, having bled its
dissenters white.
Well, he won't.
BACK WHEN he inherited his father's estate, many wondered whether
Bashar Assad, a soft-spoken ophthalmologist, was built to deploy
the kind of brutality that animated his father's 30-year reign. That
question has since been answered, as the son has already killed more
than his father, and is apparently not done.
However, while the individuals at play may not be significantly
different, times have changed. Assad the father could surround a city
with artillery batteries and pound it with its inhabitants inside,
knowing the world would take months to learn what he did.
Assad the son has to contend with Facebook, YouTube and Twitter,
all of which empower the masses in ways the father would doubtfully
manage to address any more efficiently than the son.
That is why the formula on which Syria ran in recent decades, which
imposed the Alawite minority over the Sunni majority, will not be
fully restored. Assad has lost most Syrians' respect, even to the
minimal extent necessary for dictatorial rule, and the people have
learned how to stand up to authority, even the Syrian leadership's.
There are accumulating indications - geographic, ethnic and social -
that this assumption is shared by many on all sides of the civil war.
Geographically, Assad's offensive is limited to the west. That is
why Homs, which sits between Damascus and Aleppo, not far from the
coast and also on Lebanon's edge, is so vital to him. That is also why
Assad's army has been fighting hard to defend Quneitra, which borders
Israel on the Golan Heights, and is on the southern end of the western
realm that he seems out to carve. Indeed, even here Assad's grip is
shaky, as local rebel groups this week seemed to be closing in on
Quneitra while Assad was unable to send them sufficient reinforcements.
Ethnically, and in line with his operations' geographic pattern,
Assad seems for now to have given up on the Kurds. Numbering about
2 million, this minority is split by rival parties, one of which
intends to elect at the end of this month a regional assembly.
Just how Syria's Kurds end up managing their effectively seceded
region remains to be seen, but no one expects Assad's return there
anytime soon.
Lastly, the war is depleting Syria socially. With the currency
decimated, food prices trebled and assorted armed bands roaming many
parts of the country unpoliced, a generation of children is growing
up in a moral moonscape of shortage and crime, never even entering,
let alone graduating, elementary school.
While this is happening on the lower end of the social ladder, on the
upper end there is a growing readiness to flee. For instance, over
the past two years more than 70 doctors belonging to the Armenian
minority fled Syria to Armenia, part of a larger exodus of at least
a 10th of this ancient and relatively affluent minority, which before
the war numbered 100,000, more than half of whom lived in Aleppo.
This is a voting by the feet. Armenians leaving Syria are effectively
saying they do not believe Assad will restore the Syria they recall,
where that minority had an unwritten loyalty- for-protection deal
with the regime.
And the damage of such a flight is immeasurable, as the Armenians
were part of the country's commercial class and professional elite.
Assad, in short, has gained the tactical initiative, but strategically
the Syria he is salvaging will be very different from the one he
inherited. What then, if anything, can be said at this stage about
what it will be like?
SYRIA'S FUTURE will be the result of a new Sunni-Shi'ite arrangement.
Back in the days of Hafez Assad and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein,
few in the West understood the meaning of the two's ethnicities and
denominations.
In fact, they represented minorities that oppressed majorities -
in Syria the Sunnis, in Iraq the Shi'ites.
This schism is what drives most of the violence that has raged in
both countries since the two's departures.
Eventually, the roughly 25 million Sunnis on both sides of today's
Syrian- Iraqi border will be pushed into each other's arms by the
Shi'ites who pressure them from the east, and the Alawites and Lebanese
Shi'ites who pressure them from the west.
Indeed, this realignment would have already been under way, had this
cause not been seized by Islamist extremists who are anathema to most
of the relevant external powers. Even so, this is where the local
Sunni powers - Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, along with equally
Sunni Jordan - will eventually head. The West's backing of this will
depend on the extent to which the fanatics remain a factor.
This is the context in which the US this week formally blacklisted
two al-Qaida leaders currently active in Syria, Abd al-Rahman Muhammad
Safir al-Daysi al-Juhni and Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Kaduli, who had
come to fight Assad from Saudi Arabia and Iraq, respectively. While
labeling the two "specially designated global terrorists," and
prohibiting any American's financial association with them, the US
conducted joint maneuvers with the Jordanian army and air force,
not far from the Syrian border.
It will likely take years, maybe decades, for the remapped Iraq and
Syria to emerge, and many of the questions it raises - most notably,
where Damascus and Baghdad will be - will have to wait for local
thinkers to emerge with a vision for the country they want.
However, religious and ethnic dynamics from below coupled with the
Sunni powers' interests from outside will eventually breed this child,
with or without Western blessing.
As for Russia, its attitude toward a trimmed Syria remains to be seen,
though it should be noted that Moscow's main interest in Syria, the
naval base Assad has given it in Tartus, should emerge from such a
reconfiguration on Assad's turf.
This is besides the fact that a sectarian remapping in Syria will be
but a variation on Russia's own theme in Ukraine.
www.MiddleIsrael.net
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress