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Syrian end game?
Syria’s turmoil began with protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in March 2011as an apparent extension of the “Arab Spring”. He had succeeded his father who had staged a coup in 1970. The protests crossed an important threshold a year and a half later, when the International Red Cross formally declared it a civil war. After over 100,000 dead, almost 2 million becoming refugees and another 4.25 million internally displaced, an end game might be in sight.
Support for Bashar al-Assad has held firm among the Alawite minority of which he is a member. They make up about 12 per cent of the country’s population, but while Muslims are not part of the 75% Sunni Majority. Much of the 10% Christian minority have also backed Assad in the past, preferring his secular rule to an Islamist alternative. While the US is concerned about the Syrian regime’s friendship with Iran and its staunch opposition to Israel, much of the domestic opposition that make up the rebel movement were more concerned with establishing Sunni dominance.
As the war has gone back and forth, the quick, expected victory of the rebels, backed by the US and the Sunni states, failed to materialise. But it presented the intriguing sight of the US supporting troops heavily infiltrated by Al Qaida and other foreign Islamist forces. A year ago President Obama had indicated that if the Bashar regime used chemical weapons, a ‘red line” would have had been crossed. But support for direct intervention by the US into the Syrian civil war has never been popular with the American public.
Last week, after thousands were stricken and more than three hundred persons were killed in a suburb by what appeared to be a nerve gas, the rebels and the US accused the Assad regime of unleashing weapons of mass destruction on its citizens. After some hesitation, the Syrian government accepted international inspectors to investigate the allegation, but the US has retorted that it was too little too late.
Though the Bashar al-Assad regime possesses stocks of chemical weapons, earlier allegations of their use by the government have never been conclusively verified. Ironically, U.N. investigators arrived in Syria right before the attack in which chemical munitions were allegedly used; only a government looking to discredit itself would have timed their deployment in this manner.
Because there is the certainty of a Russian veto in the UN Security Council since Russia is an ally of the Syrian regime, the US has been lobbying its allies and it appears certain that it is on the verge of entering the fray directly. It will most likely do so under the auspices of NATO or the regional Arab governments’ invitation to stave off a “humanitarian” disaster. This was the technique used in 1999 against Yugoslavia to justify what would otherwise be an act of aggression. The latest poll has indicated, however, that more than 60% of Americans are opposed to intervention, with only 9% supportive.
Over the last week, President Obama has been accused of being indecisive for following through on the crossing of his “red line”. One fear might be that in the event of a rebel victory, the chemical weapons in the possession of the Assad regime might fall into the hands of radical Islamist forces such as Al Qaida. Another might be the reaction of Iran, which has admitted that it has non-combatant troops in Syria. Iran has warned the USA after the allegations of the use of chemical weapons, not to cross its “red line”. If the Assad regime falls in Syria, the Iranian supply lines to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Syria would be broken. Iran would not look kindly at this breaking of the “Shia Crescent” in the Middle East.
With the confluence of so many volatile factors in a region that has defined the word “volatile” in International Relations, we would urge caution to the US in proceeding with any plans to stage any sort of attack on Syria. It would place the US in an untenable position, just when it is withdrawing from Afghanistan.
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