Theo Padnos’s long piece on Syria is welcome reading as the U.S. Government begins to seriously consider declaring Assad’s rule illegitimate. It’s a sign of how complex it is to navigate the Middle East that Israel, which has been in an official state of war with Syria longer than I’ve been alive, is not interested in seeing the Assad regime toppled. They’d rather deal with the devil they know. At least they’ve had a stable border situation with Syria, they apparently reason.
Personally, I’ve always thought that the Syrian regime was the most troublesome for Israel. Their alliance with Iran is the key to many of Israel’s problems, from instability in Lebanon, to the arming of Hizbollah, to the strength of Hamas. Assad’s prior popularity was mostly derived from the fact that he puts up an active resistance to Israeli occupation, while the King of Jordan does not, Mubarak did not, the Saudis do not.
We don’t have any leverage over the Syrian government and, like with Iran, any shaming we do on the international stage has the potential to be counterproductive and undermine the legitimacy of the opposition. As with Libya, we probably would be wise to let others take the lead. Right now, Europe is vacillating and the Arab world is divided. Our closest ally in the region, Israel, wants stability. It doesn’t seem like a situation ripe for American intervention. Of course, I said the same thing about Libya, but so far I think by opinion about Libya has been vindicated.
I honestly have no idea what might replace the Assad regime. If the regime has been successful at anything, it has been in keeping the diverse ethnic and religious pieces of Syria from fighting amongst themselves. Syria may have a lousy economy and a terrible record on civil liberties, but it functions. Or, at least, it functioned until March of this year. It no longer functions. There are signs that military cohesion is breaking down. My first prediction is that the Alawite military elite will come under attack from their Sunni Arab and Kurdish underlings. The intelligence elite will be next. And then the possibility opens up of a general purge of Alawites. From there, it’s uncertain whether Syria can be put back together close to the way it has been for years, or if other groups will turn on each other and a sectarian/ethnic bloodbath will occur. If the Alawites are thrown out of power, regardless of how strongly they are pursued, it will disrupt Syria’s alliance with Iran. And I would think that such an outcome would be pleasing to every other government in the world.
Yet, Israel doesn’t want to take that gamble. So, what do I know?
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Heh:
Good Egyptian source just back from Washington says israel is syrian regime’s most ardent advocate with congress, Obama administration.
~Ben Wedeman
My sense is that Padmos, like a lot of analysts overestimates the role of al-Jazeera in the spread of the opposition to Assad and the Baath Party. It is highly likely as Padmos seems to believe that Bashar is allowing his brother to drive the response to the protests.
I would not automatically assume sectarian conflict within the ruling elite. It is not sectarianism that drives the conflicts between the elite Sunnis, Alawites, Kurds, non-Alawite Shias and even Christians. Those groups use sectarianism as a political organizing tool to rally their public to their side. What confounded Mubarak was that the people in the streets saw through the way these division play into the perpetuation of the regime and did not take the bait. The failure of sectarian provocation to split the movement (and those provocations continue by remnants of the old regime) is what finally moved the military to ease out Mubarak before things moved to a full-scale sustained general strike throughout the country. Only the privileged among the Alawites will support the continuation of the regime. And most of them are in the intelligence services, Presidential Guard, and among the business cronies of the regime.
For this reason, the situation in Syria is moving in the direction that Libya did (the purported division in Libya being tribal). The opposition outside Syria and the youth movement within Syria independently are now working hard to ensure that sectarian conflict doesn’t characterize their various opposition efforts. And they have constantly been pushing an anti-sectarian “people against the regime” message. But the key fact is the sheer size of the security apparatus and the checks that the individual pieces of it put on the other pieces of the security apparatus.
Why Syria does not appear like Libya is the fact that the security state has used small-caliber weapons to kill people. And have not killed people at the rate that Gaddafi was killing peaceful protesters in the early stages of the uprising there. Gaddafi’s forces killed 400 people in two weeks. It has taken Assad’s regime two months to reach that total. The Syrians are aware of Gaddafi’s missteps. Just enough repression not to trigger an international movement toward sanctions. But somehow along the way they lost it, either through Maher Assad’s pride in his work or for other reasons. The US and the European Union are paying attention now.
What happens if the regime starts collapsing depends on how well the opposition has coalesced into a unity governing body and how widespread technocratic skills exist outside the regime’s loyalists. And how fast the regimes security apparatus collapses, for replacing security personnel for policing criminal behavior is going to be key to avoiding disorder.
Israel is more threatened by a democratic and unified Syria than by the Assad regime. That, along with the Egyptian Revolution and the recent reconciliation of Fatah and Hamas threatened the entire Likud project. The last thing Israel needs for its policies is peace on all its borders. Because then the issue is focused on their 45-year long occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. And the appropriation of its territory for Jewish settlers. Israel wants to keep Assad, not because it fears chaos but because Assad provides them a foil for their policies. It makes perfect sense.
Other than freezing the Syrian elite’s assets in US and Europe (and by telegraphing their actions the US and EU are allowing time for those assets to be moved), I’m not sure that declaring Assad’s regime illegitimate in the absence of the consensus of the permanent members of the UN Security Council is helpful.
When situations like this unfold internally without outside interference, they either result in the reassertion of state power or so many people in the elite have relatives who been touched by repression that the regime collapses.
Most likely, we will stand by witnessing helplessly whatever unfolds in Syria. US-EU intervention in another country could at this point undercut the Arab Awakening in other countries and taint it Tunisia and Egypt and Yemen. It the international community wants intervention in Syria, the intervention force must not include any permanent members of the UN Security Council or more activist members of the EU. And total up how many of those remaining countries have regimes that would not be happy with the example set by the overthrow of a repressive autocracy or repressive oligarchy.
I spoke too soon about the Assad regime using only small caliber arms to repress the protests. Although tanks have been deployed is not until yesterday that they and artillery were used–and that was in Homs.
Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq very soon might see a flood of refugees. That is, if the regime allows them to leave.