Syria

Eduardo del Buey
Foto: Ap
La Jornada Maya

Miércoles 21 de marzo, 2018

On March 6, 2011, fifteen teenagers were arrested for spraying graffiti in Daraa, Syria, protesting the government and calling for regime change.

The government of Bashar al-Assad struck back viciously, and thus began a long and bloody civil war that has claimed over 500,000 lives and created over 6 million refugees.

it has also destroyed much of Syria and its economic, power, and transportation infrastructure.

It will likely take generations to rebuild it to a degree that can absorb and sustain the millions of refugees currently stuck in Europe, North America, and neighboring Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.

Various peace plans have been proposed and have failed.

Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s dictator, has maintained his power through brutal military tactics, including the use of chemical weapons against his own people. Certain opposition groups have also committed crimes against humanity.

Russia, determined to keep its only client in the Middle East in power, along with access to its only warm water port in the Mediterranean (at Tartus), has supported al-Assad and participated in the war directly, using its base to bomb civilian and military targets under the guise of fighting terrorism.

Western support has been hesitant since the opposition is composed of both democracy-seeking forces as well as Islamist terrorists (ISIS) and Al Qaeda operatives. Given the heterogeneous nature of the opposition, it has been nearly impossible for Western powers to support and strengthen fully the Syrian opposition without appearing to support Islamic terrorists.

For seven years the slaughter has continued unabated.

Cease-fires have proven elusive, multiple peace conferences have ended in stalemates, and innocents continue to die by the tens of thousands.

When I served at the United Nations (2011-2013), people would continuously ask me why the United Nations didn’t intervene forcefully. The answer was as simple as it was pathetic – because the permanent members of the Security Council with veto power, primarily Russia, could not or would not agree to a binding settlement that would ensure a cessation of hostilities and the ongoing carnage.

As a dictatorship for all of its history, Syria has had no democratic institutions or traditions upon which to build proper structures for representative government.

Moreover, Syria suffers many of the ills that plague many countries in the region – the presence of varied religious groups who hate each other and have only been held together by the force of a strong leader and a centralized power structure. Religious sectarianism isn’t going to disappear any time soon.

Foreign intervention continues to plague Syria.

Al-Assad has successfully retaken much of the land originally lost to the opposition at the beginning of the conflict. He has done this with massive outside assistance all fighting with his regime to support al-Assad’s war on his own people.

Besides Russia, the Lebanon based terrorist group Hezbollah has supported the regime with troops and materiel. Iran also strongly supports al-Assad, whose Alawite religious group is related to Iran´s Shia Islam. Iran seeks to create a Shiite crescent from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, and Yemen to Lebanon.

The Shiites and Sunnis hate one other. Indeed, Sunni Saudi Arabia has supported the Syrian opposition as a result of its apprehensions about Iranian expansion. This despite the presence of ISIS forces in their midst.

Turkish President Erdogan also opposes al-Assad and is currently undertaking an invasion of the north of Syria to eliminate the Kurdish minority there, closely allied to Turkish Kurds whom Erdogan blames for terrorist attacks on Turkish soil.

In Syria as in the rest of the Islamic world Shiites (with whom al-Assad is allied) despise the majority Sunni population. The Christian Syrians support the regime since a takeover by the Sunni Muslim opposition would likely lead to their demise, especially if the Sunnis were allied with Islamic State militants.

It is a tragic Rubik’s cube of diplomatic and military alliances all pursuing their own geo-political interests at the expense of the hundreds of thousands of dead Syrians and the millions of Syrians who have had to leave their homes, perhaps forever.

So, what can we do?

The sad answer is, not much at this stage.

If al-Assad manages to beat down the armed opposition as is currently predicted, he will be faced with a massive rebuilding process that will require huge amounts of funding and technical expertise. Where this will come from is anyone’s guess, since Western powers who would normally be expected to underwrite such an endeavor despise al-Assad and his regime.

The Arab oil-producing states will fight any Iranian presence in Syria and should not be expected to provide the financing required for rebuilding the infrastructure and resettling the millions of displaced people.

Iran cannot provide Syria with the financing it would require to regenerate the economy and ensure that it can absorb the huge demand for resources that will be required.

Russia as well lacks the financial and industrial wherewithal to reconstruct Syria or offer al-Assad a market for eventual Syrian exports.

Many questions remain.

Can the global community turn its back on its hatred for al-Assad and undertake a massive humanitarian reconstruction process?

Can the Russians be convinced to end their support for al-Assad and allow him to be replaced, with guarantees that their rights to their base in Tartus will be respected and guaranteed?

Can Iran be convinced to forgo its expansionist policies that are so opposed by Arab neighbors and allow Syria to be governed independent of its interests?

Can a Syrian state be established that doesn’t pose a threat to Israel, that has thus far mostly avoided involvement, but has a life or death challenge if an unfriendly regime comes to or remains in power in Damascus?

Can Syria remain a united country if the dictatorship disappears and a fragmented and weak democratic regime is put in place?

And, finally, can the United States and its allies not freeze the funds available to the Syrian government in overseas banks, identify how members of the regime are laundering their money and confiscate these funds, and make it difficult for anyone to finance the al-Assad regime? Surely money trails must be everywhere and hitting the regime in its pocketbook could well lead them towards dialogue.

These are difficult questions to address and pose a matrix of challenges.

In the meanwhile, while we await answers, thousands die, and millions flee.

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