Going… Going… Gone? Not Quite Yet!
The Assad Regime on the Middle East Geopolitical
Chessboard
Elie Al-Chaer*
August 25, 2011
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Bashar, the Loyal Son
For the last decade or so, western analysts
puzzled over the portrayal of the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad,
trying to understand his beliefs on important issues and how much
real power he exercised within a regime that his father built and
nurtured for over 30 years. The lack of consensus on whether he was
“a neophyte”, “a closet reformer” or “a loyal son” exacerbated the
lack of consensus on the appropriate course for policy towards
Syria. This debate began in the aftermath of the September 11
attacks, almost a year into Assad’s first term, intensified after
the American occupation of Iraq and became most notable following
the Hariri assassination in Lebanon in 2005. More than 10 years into
his reign, Bashar Al-Assad can no longer be seen as a neophyte and
has done very little to advance reform and democracy in Syria. The
“loyal son” has proven to be a force for continuity and stasis (if
not retrogression) in Syrian domestic and foreign policy. A
thoroughgoing product of the system his father built up, whose
principal goal is to protect the core constituencies of the Assad
regime and preserve the main elements of his father’s foreign
policy. Today, as the echoes of the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt,
Libya and Yemen reverberate across the Middle East, the voices of
Syrian dissidents - silenced for over 40 years by the Assad Regime -
are given an audience and used as the backdrop of an international
coalition to topple young Bashar. The brittle system in Damascus is
in a fight to keep intact its old ways of control. This makes him
very much part of the “problem” in Syria rather than a prospective
part of the solution.
The Shift in US Policy
Over the past few weeks, we have seen US
President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, along
with a number of European leaders call on President Bashar Al-Assad
to “step down” and “go out of the way”. This represents quite a
shift, at least in US policy, towards the Assad regime and an end to
the conditional engagement1 adopted by the previous
administration; an engagement that has failed to yield the desired
results. Under Bashar’s watch, Syria continued to be on the State
Department's list of states that sponsor terrorism, it is said to
pursue weapons of mass destruction in the shape of chemical and
possibly nuclear weapons and has proven time and again that
democracy is not on its regime’s menu. Most importantly Bashar’s
regime - unlike his father’s - has openly aligned itself with the
Iranian camp in the Middle East region, not just rhetorically but
also on the ground in Iraq and Lebanon. Iran’s policy since the
Islamic Revolution has been persistently aimed at building a
regional coalition resistant to US influence and opposed to American
interests. This Iranian-led anti-American camp includes today many
Iraqi and Bahraini Shi’a-Muslim groups on the basis of sectarian
affinity, the Shi’a-Muslim Hezbollah party-cum-militia as a
strategic arm in Lebanon and the Alawite (Shi’a sect) Assad’s regime
as a willing ally in Syria. Assad’s strategic alliance with Iran
divested him of the Saudi “laissez faire” afforded his dad for more
than thirty years and with it the approval of the pro-American camp
in the region. Gone is the steady hand of the old juggler, Hafez
Al-Assad. Gone, too, is the tortured US diplomacy that had courted
Damascus and catered to its sense of importance as a big player in
the Fertile Crescent. With his regime increasingly isolated and
facing unprecedented pressure from within and on the outside, there
is little Bashar can do to weather the storm.
Persian Chessboards and Saudi Bishops
The unrest in Syria today, although similar in
appearance to the popular uprisings in other Arab countries, carries
within it the imprint of a regional conflict between the Iranian-led
anti-American camp and a Saudi-led pro-American one. The ethnic and
sectarian dimensions of this conflict go back several centuries but
at heart today is the control of the Middle East geopolitical space.
America's primary interest in the Middle East is to help ensure that
no other power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the
global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it.
As Zbigniew Brzezinski2 puts it in his book The Grand
Chessboard, "that puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in
order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could
eventually seek to challenge America's primacy." This “hostile
coalition” is led today by Iran with Syria’s Assad as its primary
regional partner and Lebanon’s Hezbollah as its prominent military
arm.
Following the Iraq War and banking on the
suffering of Iraqi Shi’as under Saddam’s regime and their justified
mistrust of US policy, Iran extended its hegemony over Iraq politics
in a direct affront to US military presence there. The US and its
allies responded on many fronts; in addition to direct pressure and
sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, they passed UN Security
Council resolution 1559 in 2004, which mandated among other things
the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon - meaning primarily
Hezbollah - and the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Lebanese
territories - meaning the Syrian army, which had occupied Lebanon
for close to thirty years.
This resolution effectively reactivated
Lebanon’s front on the Middle East “chessboard” where pro- and anti-
American camps play their game. The assassination of Rafiq Hariri -
Saudi tycoon and former prime minister of Lebanon - in 2005 was seen
by many as a response to UNSC 1559 and a hit by Iran - via Syria -
on Saudi Arabia’s number one man in Lebanon. If Hezbollah represents
a “Rook” for Iran in this game of chess, Rafiq Hariri
represented the “Wazir” (Queen in Arabian chess) for
Saudi Arabia. His removal could have very well precipitated a
checkmate on American interests in Lebanon and significantly
broadened Iranian influence in the region, something that did not
happen immediately.
The chess game that unfolded in Lebanon with
the Hariri assassination continued to be played over the coming
years through a back and forth between the two camps that manifested
in a number of key events: the Cedar Revolution, assassination of
Lebanese public figures, withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon,
UNSC 1595 establishing an international Special Tribunal for
Lebanon, Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006, Nahr El-Bared War in 2007,
the May 7th conflict in 2008, the Doha accord,
appointment of a president, parliamentary elections, etc. Through it
all, Syria has consistently been a key player on the anti-American
side and Lebanon’s political crisis has been spiraling out of
control until the collapse of the Lebanese cabinet headed by PM Saad
Hariri (Rafiq Hariri’s son) in January 2011. The ousting of Saad
Hariri from government, through a constitutional maneuver staged by
the pro-Syrian camp in Lebanon, took place while Hariri was meeting
with Obama at the White House. If Rafiq Hariri was the Saudi “Wazir”
on the chessboard, his son Saad was one of its “Bishops”.
His removal from power dealt a major blow to the pro-American camp
and necessitated a firm response against the Iranian “Vazīr”
(Queen in Persian Chess) itself on the board: Bashar Al-Assad.
Few weeks after the government of Saad Hariri
gave way in Lebanon to a Hezbollah-led coalition, a Shiite uprising
- supported by Iran and Hezbollah - came to light in the Kingdom of
Bahrain (February 14, 2011). In the span of one month, the Iranian
coalition managed to launch attacks on two fronts against
pro-American forces and was gearing to take control. Retaliation was
swift on both fronts. On March 14, troops from Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates entered Bahrain with the stated purpose of
protecting essential facilities including oil and gas installations
and financial institutions. The maneuver was carried out under the
aegis of the Gulf Cooperation Council. On March 15, less than two
months after Hariri’s fall and one month after the attempt in
Bahrain, the Syrian “street” was ablaze demanding the fall of the
dictator!
The Pitfalls if Assad Falls
The Assad dynasty has controlled Syria for more
than forty years, “raising” generations of loyalists to a regime
that advocated secularism but practiced, in a strict sense, “Assadism”.
The exile, imprisonment, torture and assassination of dissidents and
opposition figures over the Assad years in power left Syria with
very few independent leaders who have any significant presence on
the ground or influence amongst the people and who can assume the
country’s charge in a post-Assad era. The massacres carried against
the Muslim Brotherhood in Hama in 1982 - gone unnoticed by Arab and
International communities - instilled in young Syrians fear of the
Assad regime and a sense of awe at its might and invincibility. At
the same time, it galvanized the hate of many Sunni Muslims, namely
radicals, towards Assad and strengthened their resolve to exact
revenge from his regime at the right time. This situation,
compounded with Syria’s diverse ethnic and sectarian mix, makes a
smooth transition of power an unlikely scenario.
In fact, ethnic and sectarian minority groups
in Syria make up more than 30% of the population (which include
Alawites, Shi’a, Druze, Kurds, Christians and Jews); despite their
muted hopes and aspirations for change and democracy, they would
rather hold-on to the devil they know than face possibly a fate
similar to that of the Iraqis after Saddam. Iraq is viewed by many
observers today as a gangland rather than a nation in order.
Minorities - namely Christians - are brutally maimed, their women
raped and children kidnapped and killed, ultimately forcing them to
seek refuge outside their homeland. The fear of a similar fate in
Syria if Assad is forced out of power is keeping minority groups by
his side. The slogans shouted by the demonstrators help, in many
cases, to inflame those fears. Therefore, minority participation in
the current uprisings is abysmal not to say absent. Admittedly, it
is difficult - especially on the outside - to get an objective
assessment of the size and make-up of the demonstrations in Syria,
but most of them seem to follow Friday prayers in a limited number
of Syrian towns. Furthermore, Damascus and Aleppo - the two largest
Syrian cities with Sunni majorities - have seen very little movement
on the ground, if any. For a country of more than 22 Million
citizens, the numbers on the streets are nominal. For a society with
a complex demographic mosaic, which prides itself in its historic
ethnic, cultural and religious diversity and its so-called “secular”
government, the demonstrators do not seem to represent a true
cross-section of the population, but rather disgruntled groups of
radicals who may have a feud with Assad’s father and with an agenda
that remains ambiguous at best. Besides, more than five months since
the beginning of the unrest, the Syrian armed forces seem to be
holding together with Assad. No defections to speak of, certainly
nothing like the world saw in Egypt, Yemen or Libya.
With the internal conditions unripe yet for change, and given the
tremendous Iranian interest in the survival of Assad’s regime, any
attempt at ousting him by force could spell a civil war in Syria and
ultimately breaking-up the country. Furthermore, the unrest may not
remain limited only to Syria.Assad’s
Strategic Choices
At present, it would seem that two important
pieces of the Iranian coalition are forked on the chessboard:
Hezbollah, implicated in the Hariri assassination by the Special
Tribunal for Lebanon, and the Assad regime in a fight for its
survival. Iran’s options are limited: letting go of Hezbollah is out
of question for ideological and strategic reasons; on the other
hand, letting go of Assad strips it of a strong ally and disrupts
Hezbollah’s arms supply route. Both parties are vital to the
survival of the anti-American coalition in the region. That being
the case, it would be safe to assume that any outside military
intervention against Assad will unavoidably clash with massive
resistance on several fronts. Inside Syria, Assad can always count
on a cache of armed loyalists whose interests are intertwined with
those of the regime. Hezbollah could mobilize the “resistance” from
military training camps throughout the country. This move may
substantially weaken the “Party of God” in neighboring Lebanon, but
rescuing the Assad regime is a primary strategic goal. Assad’s
defense strategy may as well stretch beyond Syria’s borders. This
could spell trouble for Saudi Arabia and the UAE in Bahrain, for the
pro-American camp in Lebanon, for Israel on the Lebanese and Syrian
borders, for Egypt in Sinai and for the United States in Iraq. In
fact, the Iraqi insurgency is known to often wax and wane with the
“mood” of the Syrian-American entente. Egypt, right before the fall
of Mubarak, arrested a number of Hezbollah cells operating on the
border with Gaza. Similar cells may be ready in Bahrain and other
Arab countries. Iran and Venezuela will make sure Assad has enough
liquidity to survive and he can always rely on Russia and China to
protect him at the UNSC.
At present, a smooth change of guard in Syria
seems unlikely. It is more likely that Assad may stay in power,
possibly for years. The situation could remain in flux for a long
time and the unrest could progress into chaos and possibly a civil
war. On the other hand, Assad’s regime could very well weather the
storm à la Saddam after Desert Storm. He may even reinvent his
policies and seek international acceptance like Gadhafi did in 2007.
That may cease to be the case if a handful of senior army officers
were to take charge of Syria on a transitional basis, appease
minorities’ fears and institute necessary reforms that take into
account Syria’s diverse society, rich history, its aspirations for a
secular democratic government and its rightful place in the world.
That would mean for starter a Syria oblivious to Iranian and Saudi
influences and focused on the rebuilding of its institutions. The
coming few months will tell.
1 For
more on the conditional engagement with Syria, see “Inheriting
Syria: Bashar’s Trial by Fire” (2005) by Flynt Leverett, former
director of Middle Eastern affairs at the National Security Council
in Washington.
2
Zbigniew Brzezinski: United States National Security Advisor to
President Jimmy Carter and author of “The Grand Chessboard: American
Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives” (1998).
* Elie D. Al-Chaer, PhD, JD is an advocate
for human rights and democracy in Lebanon and the Middle East. He is
a lawyer, a scientist and a strategist and founder of the Center for
Democracy in Lebanon. * Elie D. Al-Chaer, PhD, JD. Scientist and
lawyer; director of the Center for Democracy of Lebanon.
