Marcella Emiliani - 23/02/2012

    It is now beyond question that Syria is undergoing a civil war. And nobody seems minded to intervene and stop it. The latest feat by the Bachar al-Assad regime was on 18th February when troops in Damascus opened fire on the crowd attending the funerals of those who died the day before. The machinery of repression would not even pause to save the government’s face, though that same day it had welcomed a Chinese delegation sent to Damascus to sound out the gravity of the situation. And yet the regime owes much to China which has hitherto, along with Russia, caused the UN Security Council to suspend approval of a transition plan drawn up by the Arab League to halt the butchery. Russia and China are not particularly sensitive to human rights, but both are concerned to save appearances. Meanwhile the Syrian government has lost all restraint: clinging to an implausible conspiracy theory, it is daily massacring the population in a vain display of muscle.
    The official version is that the country is being destabilised by a plot hatched by Israel, the US and even al-Qaeda – an ill-assorted trio which only serves to shed all the responsibility for civil war onto foreign shoulders. In reality it is the Bachar al-Assad regime that has lashed out at what began as – and still despite all remains – a peaceful protest. It is the regime that has tried to sow discord among the country’s various creeds and races, such that the Assad family’s own ethnic minority of Alawites are forced to fight off the Kurds, Druses and Sunni majority who see them en bloc as government supporters. When the revolt started, there were Alawites among those who demonstrated for “bread, dignity and democracy”; but today none dare show their faces in public for fear of reprisal. The Christians have met with the same fate: until eleven months ago the regime claimed it was “protecting” them in order to show the world, and the Middle East in particular, how tolerant and secular it was. Today those Christians are having to defend themselves both against the armed forces and against neighbouring Muslims. Again, it is the regime that has exploited to the full rivalries among municipalities and regions – which a blanket of national rhetoric once studiously concealed; it has now been deliberately branding as eternal “troublemakers” such cities and districts as Aleppo, Homs and Damascus itself.
    Not content, then, with using unprecedented violence to curb the revolt, the government has contrived to prevent any nationwide coordination of movements to kick out the Bachar al-Assad regime once and for all. Since protest began, the main weakness of the Syrian opposition has been the need to organise itself in the thick of ongoing revolt and under the hammer of repression. In other words, Syria lacked nationwide parties and organisations like the Muslim Brothers in Egypt or Ennahda in Egypt and Tunisia; there were no trade unions capable of mobilising the population with any competence or the least experience along Tunisian lines. The Ba’th – de facto the only party – has all along been the regime’s main tool of control over the people. When the current president’s father, Hafez al-Assad, came to power by a 1970 coup, the Ba’th became an empty vessel entirely serving the interests of the Assad family and the Alawite clique that supported it. Lastly, Syria lacked an army able to take the country’s destiny in hand as happened in Egypt when Mubarak fell. The Assads have weakened the armed forces whilst bolstering security corps and intelligence systems under their own or their allies’ control.
    All of which means that, although the young president’s regime is condemned, its death throes may last for months, made all the worse not just by rampant violence, but by sanctions inflicted on Syria by the international community and the European Union in particular. The transition-to-democracy plan drawn up by the Arab League envisages a peaceful end to civil war with the ousting of Bachar al-Assad, the formation of a Constituent assembly, and the holding of free elections. But neither Bachar nor Russia (whose only ally he now is in the Middle East) are willing to run that risk. In the surrounding area only Iran for the moment is flexing her muscles. Strategic allies of Damascus these last 33 years, on 18th February the Iranians thought fit to despatch two warships into the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal: to “protect” the coast of Syria.

Marcella Emiliani