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Syria’s Breakup is a Levantine Norm: Rami G. Khouri, The Daily Star, Feb. 23, 2013—The talk about Syria has turned increasingly pessimistic in recent weeks, with expectations ranging across a span of many bad outcomes. These range from Syria becoming a Levantine Somalia, where power is in the hands of hundreds of local warlords and tribal chieftains, to a totally fractured state defined by a combination of raging civil war and sectarianism that pulls in interested neighbors and perhaps ignites new regional wars.
Syrian Rebel Leader Deals With Ties to Other Side: Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times, Mar. 1, 2013—Gen. Salim Idris, convinced that the last stand of the Syrian Army in the long, grisly fight to control Aleppo will take place soon at the Academy of Military Engineering, dreads the moment. It is not just the 2,000 or so well-armed soldiers holed up there, inside the square-kilometer campus on Aleppo’s eastern outskirts. Nor is it the reinforced concrete bunkers built under every building to withstand an Israeli air raid.
Rebel Factions Work Against Each Other in Syria's Civil War: Alan Philps, The National (UAE), Mar 1, 2013—There are now said to be more than 1,000 separate rebel units fighting the regime of Bashar Al Assad. Despite American attempts to unite the disparate forces, it seems they are becoming more factionalised with every passing week.
John Kerry's Syrian Second Chance: Fouad Ajami, Real Clear Politics, Mar. 1, 2013—As the war that has degraded and all but partitioned Syria enters its third year, the amorphous coalition known as the Friends of Syria continues to hover just off-stage. The Western democracies, moderate Arab governments and international organizations that constitute the coalition are indeed friends of the opposition to the despotic regime of Bashar Assad—but at arm's length.
Don’t Give Weaponry to the Syrian Rebels: Michael Rubin, Commentary, Mar. 2, 2013
Syrian Rebels Reported to Take Key City After Heavy Fighting: Hania Mourtada, New York Times, Mar. 4, 2013
U.S. Policy on Syria is Self-Defeating: Rami G. Khouri, The Daily Star (Lebanon), Mar. 2, 2013
It's Too Late to Stop Syria Disintegrating: Emanuele Ottolenghi, Standpoint, March 2013
Syrian War Is Everybody's Problem: Frida Ghitis, CNN, Mar. 3, 2013
SYRIA’S BREAKUP IS A LEVANTINE NORM
Rami G. Khouri
The Daily Star, Feb. 23, 2013
The talk about Syria by knowledgeable friends and colleagues whose views I respect has turned increasingly pessimistic in recent weeks, with expectations ranging across a span of many bad outcomes. These range from Syria becoming a Levantine Somalia, where power is in the hands of hundreds of local warlords and tribal chieftains, to a totally fractured state defined by a combination of raging civil war and sectarianism that pulls in interested neighbors and perhaps ignites new regional wars.
Speculation about the future of Syria is a growth industry these days, for good reason: What happens in Syria will have an impact on the region, given its central role in the political geography, ideologies and security of the Levant and areas further afield. The events in recent years in Iraq and Libya remind us that developments in one state in the region can have repercussions in neighbouring countries, sometimes immediately and sometimes a few years down the road.
The longer Syria’s domestic war goes on, the more fragmented the country becomes, alongside three other dangerous trends: Sectarianism increasingly becomes the option of choice for Syrian citizens who seek security but cannot get it from the state; revenge killings will become a more likely occurrence after Bashar Assad’s downfall; and militant Salafists may increasingly take root in local communities across the country as they prove to be well organized and funded adversaries of the Assad regime.
Next month we will mark two years since the outbreak of protests against the regime, as the domestic battle continues to rage. Syrians have paid a very heavy price for their desire to remove the Assad regime and replace it with a more democratic and accountable system of governance, but there are no signs that either side is tiring of this fight. Despite the destruction of the economy and urban infrastructure, Syrians seem determined to keep fighting until one side defeats the other. The chances of a negotiation or dialogue to end the fighting and usher in a peaceful transition of power seem slim, given the wide gap between Assad and the opposition groups.
The trend on the ground seems to favour the slow advances of the opposition groups, whose access to more sophisticated weapons and control of key facilities around the country sees the Assad regime’s sovereignty footprint shrinking by the week. The regime has reverted to what has always been its vital core: thousands of armed troops in just a few parts of the country, controlled by officers from, or close to, the extended Assad family, disproportionately anchored in the Alawite minority community. This is a recipe for imminent collapse.
Yet the timing and nature of the transition to a new governance system in Syria both remain highly speculative. I personally expected the Assad regime to have fallen long ago, but clearly its staying power is great. The weakness and lack of unity of the opposition forces make it impossible to predict a post-Assad scenario.
More and more analysts expect chaos, violence, sectarian revenge killings and deep fragmentation to occur, and these become more likely with every passing month of fighting. Some analysts expect a post-Assad Syria to be dominated by Islamists, whether mainstream Muslim Brotherhood types or more militant Salafists who are now playing a major role in the military resistance against Assad. Others, including myself, are more sanguine, expecting Syria’s 5,000 years of cosmopolitan history and more recent legacy of inter-communal coexistence to shape the new governance system that emerges from the wreckage of the current war.
Syria’s problem, like Iraq’s and Lebanon’s, is that the nature of its pluralistic population means that major demographic groups have strong ties with fellow populations in nearby countries, such as Alawites, Kurds, Druze, Sunnis and even Christians. The main lesson of the current situation in Syria strikes me as being the fragility of the modern Arab state in the Levant and beyond, where countries like Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine in the past three generations have alternated between strong or shattered central governments. These have been either fragmented states or centralized police states since the 1940s, with no chance to live as normal states where citizens agree on the rules and values of national governance.
We are now passing through a period in which fragmenting states are forcing us to discuss Lebanon, Syria and Iraq in terms of Alawites, Druze, Shiites and Sunnis, rather than in terms of coherent states with satisfied citizenries. The slow-motion destruction of the centralized Syrian state will enhance this trend toward the retribalization of the Arab Levant, until the day comes when the many distinct tribes can sit down and agree on how to reconnect as citizens of single states, governed by the rule of law that they can define themselves in meaningful constitutions.
SYRIAN REBEL LEADER DEALS WITH TIES TO OTHER SIDE
Neil MacFarquhar
New York Times, Mar. 1, 2013
Gen. Salim Idris, convinced that the last stand of the Syrian Army in the long, grisly fight to control Aleppo will take place soon at the Academy of Military Engineering, dreads the moment. It is not just the 2,000 or so well-armed soldiers holed up there, inside the square-kilometer campus on Aleppo’s eastern outskirts. Nor is it the reinforced concrete bunkers built under every building to withstand an Israeli air raid.
The toughest part for him is his fondness for both the officers in charge and the campus itself. When he defected in July 2012, General Idris, now chief of staff of the rebel forces, was a brigadier in the Syrian Army and dean of the academy after teaching there for 20 years. “I cannot imagine that we will attack the academy,” General Idris said in a wide-ranging interview in a hotel cafe. “All the officers inside the academy are my colleagues. I don’t want to fight against them; I don’t want to see them killed or injured. I hope they leave before we attack.”
General Idris, 55, a stocky figure with a neatly trimmed mustache who was wearing a dark suit and tie, said he planned to deploy outside the academy when the fight begins, to make one last-ditch attempt to convince his old colleagues to defect. “We cannot do anything about it if they don’t,” he said with a shrug.
Much of Syria’s future rests on General Idris’s success on the battlefield. Critics say the newly unified command structure he presides over lacks both the ground presence and the heavy weapons that are so desperately needed. Without both, they say, it will be impossible for him to forge a cohesive force from the thousands of fractious, fiercely independent rebel brigades arrayed against the still formidable military of President Bashar al-Assad. Under intense pressure from Western and Arab backers, hundreds of Free Syrian Army commanders gathered in Turkey last December to select a 30-member Supreme Military Council, which in turn chose General Idris as chief of staff. They unified, grudgingly, because they were promised heavy weapons, they said, in particular antiaircraft and antitank weapons, and other, nonlethal aid.
Some has materialized, although not nearly enough to transform the rebel effort, General Idris said. Secretary of State John Kerry this week pledged $60 million in additional nonlethal aid and training. The general stressed that the rebels need weapons and ammunition to fight the government, but would take anything they could get. “The fighter also needs food and medical aid and care and cotton and bandages and sterilizers — the fighters need to live,” he said in a brief phone interview from northern Syria. “I was just visiting one of the military field hospitals. I swear that the situation there would make your heart bleed. The hospitals are so basic with very limited resources.”
Previous American aid seemed to amount to a trickle of small, odd lots. The Americans gave him nine ordinary black and gray Toyota pickup trucks, for example. General Idris kept three to move around with his staff and turned over the rest to field commanders. The communications equipment provided is too weak to reach across the country, he said, so he uses Skype. There were enough fatigues from the United States for 10,000 soldiers, which were nowhere near enough, given the roughly 300,000 rebel fighters, he said.
In addition to planned training efforts by the Americans, General Idris is urging Washington to train handpicked commando teams to help secure Syria’s suspected stock of chemical weapons if the government teeters. As for financial support, General Idris said very little had been forthcoming. “We were promised a lot,” he said, “but when the moment of truth arrives they think a lot and give very little.”
SYRIA'S REBEL FACTIONS WORK AGAINST EACH OTHER
Alan Philps
The National (UAE), Mar 1, 2013
There are now said to be more than 1,000 separate rebel units fighting the regime of Bashar Al Assad. Despite American attempts to unite the disparate forces, it seems they are becoming more factionalised with every passing week. This a topic of anguished debate in the region. Rami Khouri, a commentator and former editor of The Daily Star in Beirut, concludes that the fragmentation of the Lebanese, Iraqi and now Syrian states is part of a trend under which the whole region is being "re-tribalised". The fracturing of Syria among local warlords, he concludes, is the norm for the states of the Arab Levant.
In a bitter dispatch to the London Review of Books from the front lines of Syria, Baghdad-born Ghaith Abdul-Ahad puts Arab factionalism in a broader historical context: it is "the main reason for all our losses and defeats, from al-Andalus to Palestine". The Palestinians in their heyday had only a dozen factions, and the Lebanese in their 15 years of civil war never exceeded 30, but the Syrians have reached new heights.
Many of these so-called factions are no more than a man and his cousins, with perhaps a few country boys. What matters more than ideology or arms is to have a multimedia producer who can upload videos of the battalion's exploits and so gain funding from foreign sponsors. This is war by YouTube, where the faction's virtual presence on the web is as important as its footprint on the ground.
Against the background of this jockeying for foreign sponsorship by groups of limited or non-existent military capacity, there is a second trend: the increasing domination of the struggle by jihadist elements who have years of experience in Iraq of rigging and exploding roadside bombs. At the start of the rebellion these foreign warriors were clear interlopers in a movement which prided itself on representing Syria's patchwork of religious and ethnic groups. But with their experience in battle, ruthless discipline, clear goals and close links with Islamist sources of funding, the jihadists have emerged as the leaders of the struggle, with Jabhat Al Nusra, declared by the US to be a terrorist organization, at their head.
The new US secretary of state, John Kerry, thus faces a near-impossible task. US efforts to unify the resistance movement have failed, because Washington is reluctant to get fully engaged. Attempts to bolster the secular forces against the Islamists have only made the Free Syrian Army, the US- and Turkish-supported grouping, look like stooges of the West. President Barack Obama has refused to lift the arms embargo on the Syrian factions, on the basis of a simple political calculation: if US arms ended up in the hands of the jihadists, it would be far more damaging to him in the eyes of US voters than two more years of civil war in Syria, with a further 70,000 dead.
After much lobbying by the Free Syrian Army, it is now likely to receive some "non-lethal" support – training, vehicles and body armour. This is a typical diplomatic fudge: enough to show support for the FSA, while not risking any American lives or the possibility of weapons ending up in the wrong hands. If this judgment seems cynical, it is by and large shared by the Europeans. The FSA has not earned full confidence either in its effectiveness or morality. In the city of Aleppo, which is largely in rebel hands, the FSA are known as the "bread stealers". While they were in control of the city, bread was scarce, prompting accusations that the officers had sold all the flour for their own profit. With the bakeries now under the control of the Islamist militants of Jabhat Al Nusra, reports from the city suggest that bread rationing is under tight control.
With the conflict in stalemate and the rebels not yet strong enough to topple the regime, it seems that everything is for sale. Given the financial backing enjoyed by the Islamists, it is quite likely that sophisticated weapons given to the FSA could be sold to jihadists.
The regime may have its back to the wall, but the situation could have been far worse. Few commentators had expected Mr Al Assad still to be in power almost two years after the start of the uprising. He has made some territorial gains – the city of Homs is now safe enough for the regime to escort foreign journalists there. He enjoys the strong support of Iran, while the western powers do not trust their allies. American military calculations are overshadowed by the prospect of deep Pentagon budget cuts made necessary by the mounting federal debt burden.
The strength of the jihadists in rebel ranks only complicates western calculations. Policy-makers cannot see Syria as an island on its own. What effect would a hard-line Sunni Muslim regime in Damascus have on Syria's neighbours? For Iraq, it would be a springboard for anti-Shia revanchist forces.
The feeling that America's hands are tied has spurred the regime to use its missiles against civilian targets in Aleppo, including in one strike that killed more than 140 people last week. This is a dangerous tactic: such outrages in past conflicts have inflamed public opinion in the West and forced governments to act. But the regime clearly feels that fatigue has set in, and they can use their heavy weapons with impunity. That may not always be the case.
Efforts are meanwhile under way to convene the first peace talks in Moscow between the opposition and representatives of the regime. But it is not clear to what extent the leader of the Syrian Opposition Coalition, Moaz Al Khatib, represents fighters on the ground. Until the opposition forces coalesce, or at least form a recognisable coalition, the chances of meaningful negotiation are vanishingly slim.
Such a coalition is not in sight at the moment. It could perhaps happen if the rebels established firm control over a swathe of the northern borderlands, and used it to set up some realistic power structures and thus end the factional free-for-all. But we are a long way from that.
JOHN KERRY'S SYRIAN SECOND CHANCE
Fouad Ajami
Real Clear Politics, March 1, 2013
As the war that has degraded and all but partitioned Syria enters its third year, the amorphous coalition known as the Friends of Syria continues to hover just off-stage. The Western democracies, moderate Arab governments and international organizations that constitute the coalition are indeed friends of the opposition to the despotic regime of Bashar Assad—but at arm's length….
The latest meeting comes Thursday in Rome, where Secretary of State John Kerry's get-to-know-you European tour will bring him together with the Friends of Syria—and with representatives of the Syrian rebellion. The Friends of Syria would like to broker peace negotiations, but what the Syrian opposition wants and needs is not negotiations: The rebels want to overthrow the murderous Assad regime.…
Mr. Kerry, for his part, promises a new beginning: "We are determined that the Syrian opposition is not going to be dangling in the wind wondering where the support is or if it's coming," he said Monday. "We are determined to change the calculation on the ground for President Assad." Yet the European arms embargo remains in place and official U.S. policy remains "nonlethal" aid only. If Mr. Kerry merely picks up where his predecessor had left off, there is no salvation in sight for the Syrian people. For the length of two brutal years, while tens of thousands died, Hillary Clinton engaged in "lead from behind" diplomacy and ran out the clock on the Syrian rebellion.
To Mrs. Clinton's credit, news recently came to light that she and the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency had argued in favor of arming the Syrian opposition last year but were overruled by a president who wanted no new burdens in an Arab theater of war. One doesn't know what to make of the revelation, or its seriousness. No one resigned on principle.
For Mr. Kerry, there is yet another burden—his own role in the disastrous U.S. policy that the Obama administration pursued in Damascus when it came into office. Obama advisers were convinced that the Bush policy had needlessly antagonized the Damascus regime, and that the Americans could "flip" the regime away from Tehran. To that end, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon was sacrificed at the altar of engaging the Syrian ruler.
The WikiLeaks cables from Damascus of 2009 and 2010 bear testimony to the American solicitude shown Bashar Assad. He was told that President Bush's "diplomacy of freedom" was a thing of the past. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Kerry took it upon himself to serve as an interlocutor with the Syrian dictator. He was part of the chorus that saw hope in reasoning with the son of Hafez Assad, the military man and Baathist who seized control of Syria in 1970. In Bashar, and his stylish British-born wife, they saw a modern couple bent on opening up a drab and sterile dictatorship.
In his defense, Mr. Kerry would maintain that he was only testing the intentions of Damascus, that he had trod a path pursued by such seasoned diplomats as Henry Kissinger and James Baker: The isolation of Damascus had failed as a policy, and he had given "engagement" a try.
This is in the past, but not entirely. Mr. Kerry wants to change Assad's calculus, but the despot knows his mind and the rules of the terrible sectarian war he ignited. It would take a major break with the passivity of the past two years to upend the regime.…
If Mr. Kerry wants to break the stalemate, he must will the means. The promise to provide "nonlethal" aid directly to the opposition that he is said to have taken to Rome is a step in the right direction. Past humanitarian assistance from the U.S. was channeled through the regime or neighboring countries. Now the push will be to empower the opposition with financial support and equipment.
But there is no substitute for military aid that neutralizes the Assad regime's deadly firepower. We must be done with the alibi that we can't arm and see this rebellion to victory because the jihadists now have the upper hand in the ranks of the rebels.
The idea that a nation willing to pay such a terrible price for its freedom, to brave fighter jets and Scud missiles, is eager to slip under the yoke of fighters from Libya and Chechnya is manifestly false. Yes, the Nusra Front, a band of non-Syrian jihadists that the U.S. considers a terrorist organization, brought guns and money into the fight. But the opening for the Nusra Front was born of the abdication of those who had it within their means to tip the scales in favor of the rebellion….
The fight for Damascus, and the specter of an Iranian victory as it backs Assad in that big Sunni-Shiite struggle, terrifies the moderate Arab regimes. But they, too, have not given this fight their all. Largely because they haven't had the U.S. to lead them.
This is "the East," with a scent for power and weakness, with a feel for the intentions and the staying power of strangers. Syria is the place where the will of Iran could be broken. Daily, it seems, we warn Iran of the consequences of its defiance and of its pursuit of nuclear weapons. But could it be that the Iranian theocrats pay U.S. power little heed because they see American passivity not so far from them?
Don’t Give Weaponry to the Syrian Rebels: Michael Rubin, Commentary, Mar. 2, 2013—Earlier this week, Senator Marco Rubio gave a speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in which he called for the United States to provide ammunition to the Syrian opposition. His colleague, Senator John McCain, has long advocated a more forceful line on Syria, including arms for the Syrian opposition.
It's Too Late to Stop Syria Disintegrating: Emanuele Ottolenghi, Standpoint, March 2013—I still remember seeing him in my parents' garden, fresh from a trek from hell, running for his life. What remains seared in my memory is how swollen his feet were — covered in sores and too big to fit inside a new pair of shoes without causing him more pain than he could bear. It was the summer of 1992, and the young man I shall call Sasha, then barely 18, had walked from Sarajevo to Italy, in a roundabout way that took him through central Europe and Austria.
U.S. Policy on Syria is Self-Defeating: Rami G. Khouri, The Daily Star (Lebanon), Mar. 2, 2013—The big question people ask is whether the U.S. should provide military aid to help the Syrian rebels improve their chances of defeating the Assad family regime. The hesitancy of the Obama administration to do this is a classic example of why American foreign policy in the Middle East is so erratic, often leading to the growth of groups that feed off anti-American sentiments.
Syrian War is Everybody's Problem: Frida Ghitis, CNN, Mar. 3, 2013—Last week, a huge explosion rocked the Syrian capital of Damascus, killing more than 50 people and injuring hundreds. The victims of the blast in a busy downtown street were mostly civilians, including schoolchildren In the northern city of Aleppo, about 58 people — 36 of them children — died in a missile attack last week. The world looked at the awful images and moved on..
Syrian Rebels Reported to Take Key City After Heavy Fighting: Hania Mourtada, Alan Cowell and Rick Gladstone, New York Times, Mar. 4, 2013—Syrian rebel fighters seized much of the contested north-central city of Raqqa on Monday after days of heavy clashes with government forces, smashing a statue of President Bashar al-Assad’s father in the central square and occupying the governor’s palace, according to activist groups and videos uploaded to the Internet.
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