Bashar is already out of power in Syria
Michael Young/The Daily Star/Jul. 02, 2015
While the calls for President Bashar Assad to step down continue, in many respects the Syrian president has already lost power. Assad has become a figurehead as Iran has taken control of Syria’s regime and its praetorian military units, and is even manipulating sectarian dynamics in parts of the country.
That’s why the death of Mohammad Nassif last weekend had symbolic importance. Early on Nassif had been the link between the Islamic Republic and Syria, but it was a different Syria then. No less a criminal enterprise than today, Hafez Assad’s regime was yet more selfish about its sovereignty. For a time Bashar replicated this attitude, which, for instance, shaped Syria’s approach to Ayad Allawi after the Iraqi elections of 2010. Whereas Syria wanted Allawi to form a government, Iran successfully backed his rival, Nouri al-Maliki. This led to momentary tensions in the Iranian-Syrian alliance.
As the Assad regime lost ground in the aftermath of Syria’s 2011 uprising, however, political survival took precedence over principles of political affirmation. Syrian-Iranian interaction reverted completely to a relationship of dependency and domination, with Bashar Assad finding himself on the bottom.
As was their way in Iraq, the Iranians built up their power in Syria on two pillars: the effective partitioning of the country and the deployment of pro-Iranian militias. Partition weakened the credibility of the Assad regime, while virtually ensuring that the Alawite community would pursue a sectarian agenda in defense of its core zones of control, which only benefited Iran. The proliferation of militias allowed Tehran to create an alternative power structure to that of Syria’s regime, giving it the latitude to circumvent the Syrian authorities when needed.
According to unconfirmed media reports, the Russians have expressed concern to Syrian officials about this situation and the way it has spread sectarianism. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Russian and Iranian strategies in Syria are different. Russia always seemed more concerned about ensuring that the Syrian security hierarchy remained intact to stabilize the country, whatever happened to Assad himself. Iran’s aim has been to undermine this security network and replace it with one entirely under its own sway, even if it means that Syria is broken up into sectarian entities and becomes debilitated.
At the heart of these different paths are considerations of power. And here someone like Mohammad Nassif could have been useful. Hafez Assad’s cronies had an instinctual sense of power and how to retain it. While their state was based on brutality, the old regime was less prone than Bashar and his entourage to resort to violence when alternatives existed. That’s not to say that Nassif disagreed over how to address the 2011 uprising, but that in his day Syria was in better health in the sense of crime, to borrow from the writer Leonardo Sciascia.
As someone astutely remarked, Bashar probably does not realize how superfluous he has become; he imagines that he will be able to reassert his influence in the future. He doesn’t seem to see that in wanting so desperately to preserve his power, he created a situation virtually guaranteeing he would be unable to do so.
This message should have been obvious a decade ago, when the Syrians either ordered or signed off on the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister. This had followed their systematic efforts to weaken Hariri through the services of President Emile Lahoud. But what the Assad regime didn’t grasp was that in marginalizing then eliminating Hariri, it also undermined the foundation of Syrian rule over Lebanon, namely the Syrian-Saudi understanding that came after the Taif Accord and that had earned American approval.
Things were little different in Deraa in 2011. The incident that sparked the Syrian uprising, namely the arrest and torture of school children who had written anti-government slogans, could have been managed in a more subtle way, without humiliating the families and immediately reaching for a gun. But to Bashar Assad power means violence, when his father shrewdly sensed that the essence of power was ensuring that violence only remained latent. He knew that once force was employed, it could unleash unpredictable dynamics.
What does Bashar’s future hold? Nothing that should reassure him. At best he may remain the nominal leader of a rump Syrian state, his survival determined by a foreign power playing the role of puppet master. His Alawite minority, meanwhile, will have lost everything thanks to the hubris and blunders of their president. They will continue to play second fiddle to Iran and the Shiites after decades of dominating Syria, their main purpose to ensure that Iran’s ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah, enjoys geographical and strategic depth in any conflict with Israel.
No wonder Assad has no intention of falling back on the Alawite heartland. If he does the mirage of his power will dissipate, so that the Alawites themselves may do him in. But the price to pay for remaining in Damascus is that the Iranians are reportedly changing the sectarian physiognomy of the capital, installing imported Shiites on the southern edges of the city to act as a barrier against a possible rebel offensive.
Assad has become an afterthought, so the insistence on removing him from power may be overdone. No one will regret his departure, but can Syrians accept what replaces him? That’s unlikely in the long term. Syria may have been ravaged by decades of Assad rule, but it is a country with an honorable past. To be Iran’s pawn is not a destiny Syrians will readily accept.
**Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR. He tweets @BeirutCalling.
Will the ISIS threat force a new strategy for Syria?
Thursday, 2 July 2015
Manuel Almeida/Al Arabiya
It is becoming difficult to keep track of all the atrocities committed by ISIS, the biggest beneficiary of the Arab world’s severe crisis of sovereign statehood. Beyond Syria and Iraq, only over the last seven days its followers killed dozens of innocent civilians in Tunis, North Sinai, Kuwait City, Sanaa and Lyon.
Yet the expansion of ISIS, and its followers’ ability to strike across the region and beyond, might achieve what the death of more than a quarter of a million people in Syria and the suffering of many millions more did not: turn the Syrian tragedy into an absolute priority for the international community.The regional and potentially global repercussions of the expansion of ISIS may force a change of approach on Syria. This change might already be in motion
Different priorities
Four years into the Syrian war, various players with capacity to shape events on the diplomatic, political, military and economic fronts have not done enough. The U.S. administration remains stuck between its obsession with the nuclear deal with Iran, and the belief that the current talks with Tehran have to be insulated from all other crises. Russia has been too preoccupied with challenging the Western sphere of influence, despite being very active diplomatically on the Syrian file. European Union heavyweights such as Germany and France have been bogged down with the Greek financial crisis and Europe’s slow economic recovery. In the Middle East, Ankara has been unable to distinguish between the very different nature of the threat posed by ISIS and the challenge of its relations with the Kurds. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) naturally remains reluctant to focus all its military power on a full confrontation with ISIS, while the majority of the Sunni populations of Syria and Iraq remain trapped between a brutal Assad regime and myriad ruthless militias backed by Iran.
However, the regional and potentially global repercussions of the expansion of ISIS may force a change of approach on Syria. This change might already be in motion. Reports emerged this week of Jordan’s preparations to set up a buffer or protection zone in the southern Syrian provinces of Deraa and Suwayda for refugees and moderate opposition forces.
The prospect of ISIS occupying areas on its border with Syria seems to be the main driver of the Jordanian decision. Nevertheless, it would inescapably be a blow for the Assad regime. It would provide a safe haven for the moderate opposition groups trained in Jordan with Western support, and represent one of the strongest statements so far that the Assad government has lost all credibility. In Syria’s northern neighbor Turkey, there is intense debate between the outgoing government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the opposition about the prospect of taking military action in Syria.
The creation of a buffer zone by the Turkish armed forces following a government directive is allegedly being delayed by talks to establish a coalition government. Yet the AKP seems to be at least as concerned with the territorial gains of the Syrian Kurdish forces of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) as with the presence of ISIS militants on its border.
Speculation
Recent weeks have also been rife in speculation about a possible modification of Russia’s stance on the Assad regime. On the one hand, there are reports that Moscow is already reducing its military, economic and logistical support to the regime as it considers a future without President Bashar al-Assad. On the other, a couple of Russian analysts with close ties to the government have rejected the idea that the Russian position on Syria has changed at all.
What is certain is that Moscow is increasingly concerned about the threat that radical Islamists can come to represent to its own security, and is willing to compromise provided its basic interests in Syria are safeguarded. This means that the Russians might already be recognizing the flaws in the notion that the Assad regime is the last bulwark against ISIS. With some of Syria’s neighbors increasingly inclined to do their share to contain ISIS’s expansion and push for a solution for Syria, what is still missing is the trigger to bring in a more decisive strategy to deal with the problem. That will not come from a more flexible Iranian approach on Syria if and when a nuclear deal is signed, as some commentators oddly expect.
