Sunanda K. Datta-Ray | Many dangers in Mideast ahead; Syria up for grabs
Syria is up for grabs. The victorious Hayat Tahrir al-Sham activists (who are officially still designated as terrorists) have suspended the constitution and Parliament. The Kurdish rebels have carved out their own state in the east. Turkey controls vast chunks of territory in the northern part of the country. Israel, whose bombing has pulverised Syria’s defences, controls a so-called buffer zone as well as the Golan Heights that it seized in 1967. An American base straddles the Iraq border.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden’s description of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s fall as an “historic opportunity” recalls Richard M. Nixon exulting when the Soviet Union collapsed 33 years ago that the time had come for America to “reset its geopolitical compass”. “We have a historic opportunity to change the world”, he burbled from retirement.
What West Asia needs is not ecstatic triumphalism but peace and reconciliation that will allow all factions in Syria, including the foreign-controlled enclaves, to unite in a single moderate Muslim nation such as Iraq was under Saddam Hussain.
Although more dominoes are expected to fall, impartial observers the world over must heave a sigh of relief that the HTS chief, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, who has reverted to his pre-revolutionary name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has not insisted on a bloody regime change as in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. There may be less of a vacuum in Damascus than in Dhaka.
The British military commentator and veteran of West Asian wars who wrote that while Mr Assad’s fate was not known, the “speculation is that his aircraft fell victim to a Russian-made missile system operated by his enemies” was clearly indulging in wishful thinking. In Western eyes, that might be the most desirable outcome. But given their elaborate support system, Mr Assad’s death alone would solve nothing.
The Assad family could not have held power for half a century without reinforcing their affiliations with the syncretic Alawite sect with links to early Shia networks, which are especially influential in the eastern Mediterranean and around Aleppo, Syria’s second most important city. Since taking power in 1970, the clan has exploited Alawite loyalty to legitimise their dynastic rule. Those tribal bonds are not easily suppressed. Although Mohammed al-Bashir, the new interim Prime Minister appointed by the HTS chief, has pledged to protect minority rights and bring security to the country, reports of the tomb of Hafez al-Assad, the exiled President’s father who was in power from 1971 until his death in 2000, being torched in Latakia has revived fears of purges by the Islamist theocracy that is expected sooner or later to take over.
Christians, who account for five per cent of 25 million Syrians, are reportedly especially nervous. Syria’s Iranian-officered auxiliary military forces – the Pakistani Liwa Zainebiyoun and the Afghan Hazara Shia Fatemeyoun – fear elimination. The Iranian-sponsored popular militias in next-door Iraq are also in danger.
One reason for Western jubilation is that Mr Assad’s ouster is seen as a disaster for Russian President Vladimir Putin, with his dreams of conquering Ukraine and reviving the Russian empire. Another is that it is a defeat for Iran’s ayatollahs who are anathema for the United States, and who must have been seething at the so-called Abraham or Abrahamic Accords that Donald Trump rushed through in the dying embers of his last presidency to win support for a beleaguered Israel.
Petrol is a third significant factor. The reserves of 2,500 million barrels of oil make Syria the 31st most important energy power with 0.2 per cent of global stocks. Human rights in Syria, the reported oppressiveness of the Assad regime, horror stories of the Sednaya detention centre and the disappearance of thousands of prisoners, rank a low fourth for the pragmatic Americans who seek no moral compulsion beyond the need to succour Israel.
Hence the Abraham Accords, a series of treaties to normalise Israel’s relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, that the Trump administration facilitated between August and December 2020. The name was derived from the Old Testament’s Abraham -- supposed patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- as a PR ploy to stress the commonalty between warring parties. In the span of five months, the four Arab states joined Egypt and Jordan in making peace with Israel, but with no sign of the millions of Palestinians who were uprooted by the Zionist influx ever gaining the independent homeland they were promised under the Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
Much will depend on how the HTS conducts itself in power and how Mr Trump, due to take office in only a few weeks, responds to an organisation that the US now brands as terrorist. Syria’s northern neighbour, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is another imponderable. Will he make peace with the Kurds who were promised a sovereign homeland at the 1920 Treaty of Sevres but are still a persecuted minority spread across several borders? Punishing Russia by denying it access to warm water ports may further American strategic goals but will not help the West Asian situation specifically.
Several other dangers lurk ahead. The Ukraine crisis merits attention. And so does Sudan. A triumphant incoming Trump administration may seek to implement its MAGA agenda by toppling the ayatollahs in Tehran. How far will it go in trying to crush the Houthi rebels in Yemen? The ambitions of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham cannot be ignored. Flanked by theocratic Pakistan and an increasingly enigmatic Bangladesh, India is said to be as concerned as the US over the threatened re-emergence of ISIS in Syria.
It would be unrealistic to expect much from Mr Biden’s last throw of a 64-page document, which maps out more than 100 executive branch actions which the Council on American Islamic Relations has already dubbed as “too little, too late”. Mr Biden’s admission that “Muslims and Arabs deserve to live with dignity and enjoy every right to the fullest extent along with all of their fellow Americans,” and that “policies that result in discrimination against entire communities are wrong and fail to keep us safe” still avoids coming to grips with the heart of the matter.
That is Palestine. A solution to the refugee problem will not automatically solve the challenge of Islamist fundamentalism and terrorism but not solving the problem of homelessness caused entirely by Israel’s racist aggressiveness will keep the Muslim dilemma alive and bleeding.