Syria and its environs
We can only work and hope for the best; it has been a long, bloody, and awful 13 years to get rid of the Assad tyranny. The US is not particularly well positioned to help in the aftermath, and the incoming Administration is not so inclined; however, the UN should be, or maybe the neighboring states or the Arab League could play a role in rebuilding the nation. The US could and should play a supporting economic and diplomatic role in the rebuilding of a shattered, beleaguered, and exhausted nation. We should seize every opportunity to increase peace opportunities in the Middle East. We really do not yet know who and what we are dealing with in the rebels who have combined to oust Assad.
Meanwhile the Israelis are bombing the remains of Assad’s military and occupying neighboring parts of Syria. The Turks and their proxies are attacking and killing Syrian Kurds. The US is bombing ISIS remnants.
Turkey and Israel might take this opportunity to take over and seize parts of Syria, citing their own security concerns. The Russians want to keep their bases (naval and air) on the Syrian coast but will have to negotiate or leave. The US wants to keep its air bases close to the oil fields to prevent them from ISIS takeover; likewise, we would have to negotiate or leave.
The Iranians and Hezbollah in next door Lebanon want to transship arms, personnel and supplies through Syria. That is not likely to be approved. Iran has lost a major ally in the Assads to whom they have been closely aligned for about 40 years; they do not yet have an obvious ally on the ground.
Millions of Syrians who are refugees in neighboring countries and Europe want to come home, but there are no jobs and great uncertainty about their nation’s future. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/syria/overview The nation is impoverished and exhausted by the wars and killings, and it is divided among the many opposition groups whose only common cause was getting rid of the Assad regime.
The leading rebel group in Syria was affiliated with Al Qaeda in the past; there is genuine concern that it could become a theocratic revolutionary state like the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Iranians. The Gulf Arab oil leaders want nothing to do with a new radical Sunni regime in the middle of the Middle East peddling and exporting its revolutionary ideas and ideology to their nations.
There is potential for a prolonged Syrian Civil War, as occurred in Lebanon, among the various sects and religious and political ideologies competing for power and control. This could be fueled by the competing interests of the Gulf States, Iran, Turkey, Israel and others. Turkey has proxies on the ground and the determination to block the Kurds in Syria from making common cause with the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq to create an independent Kurdish state; meanwhile the US has been supporting the Iraqi and Syrian Kurds.
But what about the Syrian people? What do they want?
We know what they do not want – corruption of a ruling Baath party, Alawite elite, dictatorship, prisons, and torture, poverty, and endless warfare. The Assads leave behind them an unparalleled fifty-four-year legacy of region wide murder, war, impoverishment, and destruction.
The Baath regime had started as a secular, socialist movement allied with Russia, Egypt, and Iraq. It had pan Arabist aspirations and was hostile to Israel on its southern border. The neo-Baathists were a hard left group that broke with Iraq and Egypt and aligned tightly with the USSR. Assad (père) was a member of that group, and he overthrew the civilian, leftist government, and brought in the military regime, with his aligned Alawite leadership to govern the nation. The French had originally brought members of the deeply impoverished and oppressed Alawite religious sect into leadership positions in the army and bureaucracy.
The Assads and their military allies turned Syria into the corrupt hellhole it became over 50 years. Those allies included the Alawite elite that enriched themselves by association with the Assads, the Iranians, Russians, and the Hezbollah in Lebanon. They will all likely be anathema to the new government that emerges. It looks as if terrible crimes against humanity have been committed by the Assad regime against the Syrian people. He and his murderous henchmen ought to be tried before an international criminal court and spend the rest of their lives in prison, if convicted.
Syria had allied with Iran against Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War of the early 80’s and has remained so ever since. This alliance held even though Assads were Arab, secular socialists while the Iranians were revolutionary, theocratic, Persian Shia. They shared common enemies in Iraq, Lebanon, the US, and Israel.
Syria has been aligned with the Russians and opposed to the US roles in the Middle East since the Cold War beginning in the early 50’s. Although Russia is no longer the USSR and the beacon for socialist nations that it once was, the Russian Syrian alliance (two like-minded, brutal kleptocracies) has endured; the Russians still have bases in Syria and have just welcomed Assad into exile in Moscow. Their military bases are in Latakia, the population center of the Alawites. The Russians have not endeared themselves to the rebels as they played a key role in bombing them and keeping Assad in power.
Most Syrians are Sunni Muslims; most are Arab. The major religious minorities are Alawite and Christian; the major ethnic minorities in Syria are Kurds and Turks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Syria We could see sectarian violence emerge in the struggle for power to govern Syria; it could be based on religion or on ethnicity, as has occurred in neighboring Lebanon and Iraq. Let’s think about the internal flashpoints.
The Alawites are a Muslim sect, living along the coast and the inland mountains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alawites They are an offshoot of the Shia back in the 9th Century, but they are neither Shia not Sunni in their beliefs and alignment; they are very secretive about their religious beliefs, which include a tri-une god. Some of them have helped to govern Syria for the last 50 years under the Assad regimes. They were first brought into the military and high government posts under the French back in the 1920’s. Historically they had been poor and discriminated against and sometimes massacred by the Ottoman Turks, and Sunni Arabs; many still are. The Assads brought some of them into positions of great prominence in Syria’s government and military. The entire community could now be the targets of retribution by the new rulers whoever they turn out to be.
Christians used to be about 10% of Syria’s population, but many left during the Civil War and there are only about 2-3% remaining in Syria. They represent all manner of Catholic sects dating back to the time of Paul the Apostle when Damascus was a vital part of the Roman Empire. They are not politically affiliated with the Assad regime, are not numerous, and unlikely to be persecuted.
The Kurds live in eastern and northern Syria; other Kurds live in Iraq, Iran and Turkey. Many Kurds emigrated to Syria due to Turkish oppression of the Kurds in Turkey. The Kurds would like to have their own independent state or at least autonomous region of Kurdistan; this was part of the original Peace Treaty of Sevres ending WW I. This is opposed by all the nations in which they live; however, in post-Saddam Iraq, the Kurds with US support now have a largely autonomous and quite successful region; it should be noted they have significant oil reserves. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/14/us-kurdish-relationship-history-syria-turkey-betrayal-kissinger/ During Syria’s Civil War, the Kurds established an autonomous region. Neighboring Turkey has been seeking to suppress the Kurds for over 100 years since the times of Kemal Ataturk in the 1920’s. The Kurds have moved from peaceful protests to armed conflicts and back and forth again and again. Turkey has attacked Kurds living in Iraq and Syria in their efforts to extirpate the PKK (the armed faction of the Kurdish people’s struggle). The US supports the Kurds struggles for their rights to language, culture, and political autonomy, but not the military and terrorist aspects of the PKK and not an independent Kurdish state. They have been supporting the Syrian Kurds in their efforts for autonomy against the Syrian state as led by Assad. It is unclear how this will unfold as Assad has left the scene, but the Turkish backed militias and Kurdish militias are now fighting each other in Northeastern Syria; the rebels backed by Turkey are attacking the villages and lands controlled by the Syrian Kurds with US support.
The US has been working with the Kurds to prevent a resurgence of ISIS and to guard the Syrian oil fields from ISIS. How this will be handled when Trump accedes to power is highly problematic.
On the external side of the regional friends and enemies list, Syria and Lebanon have had a fraught relationship. They were a part of the Ottoman Empire, before that the Byzantine Empire and the Arab Empire, and before that the Roman Empire and before that the Greek Empire. After WW I, the French and British divided up the portions of the Middle East that had earlier been parts of the Ottoman Empire, which had been allied with the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires during the First World War. Syria and Lebanon were parts of the “French Mandate” from the League of Nations while Jordan and Palestine were parts of the “British Mandate”. The French subdivided their Mandate to create local governments in Lebanon, Damascus, Aleppo, Alawites, and Druze communities, that corresponded to religious and regional differences. Lebanon was designed by the French for local governance by the then Maronite Christian majority. During the middle of WW II, Lebanon and Syria negotiated and secured their sovereign statehoods and independence from France, which was at that time occupied by Germany. They collaborated closely during this period; however, after the war Lebanon sought to align itself with the West, while Syria chose to align with Russia.
Syria did not even recognize Lebanon as a state until 2008; it contended that Lebanon should be a part of Greater Syria. It invaded and occupied Lebanon for over thirty years. It assassinated those Lebanese politicians with whom it disagreed. It disbanded the warring Lebanese militias who were killing each other during the Lebanese Civil War, except for Hezbollah. Syria under the Assads typically aligned with Hezbollah, the front-line Shia fighting militia, as opposed to Amal, the more moderate Shia political party.
Over time with a changing population, Lebanon became a majority Shia state; however, the Sunnis and Christians were politically dominant pursuant to the outdated Lebanese Constitution. The Lebanese Civil War brought political and military power to the Shia, and to Hezbollah in particular. The resulting government divided by religious sectarianism has been chaotic, frequently paralyzed, financially profligate, subject to overriding control from Syria and the Saudis, and unresponsive to people’s needs.
The Lebanese Civil War was fought among the Christians, Sunnis, Shia, with interventions from Syria, Iran and Israel. Syria had a strong majority Sunni population but was governed by the Alawite Assad family. We must do what we can to avoid a repeat of the Lebanese and Iraqi sectarian debacles in the emerging Syrian government.
To Syria’s north is Turkey. Turkey is the inheritor of the Ottoman Empire which ruled Syria and many other parts of the Middle East; it has a large population, a large army, a NATO membership, US bases, and it controls marine and naval access between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea through the Bosporus. It was the principal supporter of the armed groups opposing Assad in the North. Turkey’s main goal now is to sever the supporting linkages between the Turkish and Syrian Kurds. Its militia proxies (the Syrian National Army) are fighting the US supported Syrian Kurds (Syrian Democratic Forces) who are guarding ISIS captives and the Syrian oil fields in the East. Turkey is the temporary home of millions of Syrian refugees who want to return home, and Turkey wants them to be able to do so.
To Syria’s east is Iraq. They both have large Sunni Arab populations, but Iraq had a large Shia population that experienced discrimination by the Sunnis and poverty under Hussein. They both have been allied with Iran. They both have been allied with Russia. They both have had Baath leaders (Assad and Hussein) with BIG pan-Arab leadership aspirations. And due to these personal rivalries, their nations were often at odds. For example, Syria allied with Iran against Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War, and Syria allied with the West in repelling Iraq’s attack on Kuwait. On the other hand, both cooperated in the effort to defeat ISIS which was a mortal danger to both regimes. With Assad gone, there is a potential for cooperation between Iraq and Syria in developing the scant water resources in the region and to build on that.
To Syria’s South are Israel and Jordan. Jordan has generally allied with the West and the Gulf oil states, and it eventually evicted the PLO after it tried to take over Jordan. It turned over the West Bank to PLO control and has tried to broker relations between Israel and the Palestinians. Eventually it made peace with Israel while Syria has been allied with Iran and Hezbollah to confront Israel across a broad resistance front. Jordan and the Arab Gulf states could become important allies and resources for a new Syrian regime dedicated to improving the lives of its peoples; however they would not welcome, to put it gently, a Taliban-lite theocracy seeking to spread and export its ideology and further disrupt the Middle East.
Syria shares a disputed border with Israel in the Golan Heights. It has been in near constant armed conflict with Israel since Israel’s founding in 1948, and has been defeated in every instance. Its first set of allies, including Egypt, Jordan and the PLO each made their separate peace. Syria has been allied with Iran and Hezbollah which show no interest in peace, simply endless, relentless war to eliminate the state of Israel. Syria has aided first the PLO and then Hezbollah in their attacks on Israel from Lebanon. Occasionally, the two sides have sought to broker a peace agreement that founders on issues like control of the Golan Heights, the waters of the Jordan River, and the sea of Galilee.
Israel fears that the new leaders in Syria could become sponsors of religious terror as Iran has been and the Taliban have been, and the new regime could be even worse than the Assad regime. Israel has destroyed much of Syria’s navy and military equipment and has invaded Syria. It is unclear that this is the best approach to the new leaders of a heretofore implacable foe whose country and economy are in shambles after 13 years of civil war.
President Erdogan of Turkey holds most of the cards; he financed the rebels, and he is next door with a large capable military, and he surely does not want a chaotic failed state or a Taliban-lite on his doorstep. He wants the millions of Syrian refugees living in Turkey to be able to go home sooner than later.
Syria needs to have elections, free and fair and overseen by the UN with an educated and informed electorate to make its choice of new leaders and then a new Constitution. There needs to be a sufficient timely transition period with knowledgeable skilled technocrats.
The New York Times recently reported that the rebels’ administration of Idlib province was disciplined and pragmatic; however dissenters ended up in jail. The BBC reported today on the efforts to protect Alawites from reprisals in the city of Latakia. So far, the transition to the new rebel governance has gone reasonably smoothly.
Syrians should not be forced to choose their leaders under the threat of the guns of the different militias and the potential for imprisonment of political dissenters. Syrians ought not repeat the mistakes of the US in Iraq where the Baath party members were purged and turned into embittered, disenfranchised, armed dissidents.
Arab neighbors and the UN need to take the lead in helping with the transition, to the extent that the new rebel government is willing for them to do so. The US needs to be wise, patient, and generous in helping to build towards regional peace step by step given the new opportunities that might now open up.