For months, neither the Syrian
regime, the international community, nor the opposition in exile have offered
much hope in a dangerously deteriorating crisis. Increasingly, they seem to be
unintentionally conniving in bringing about a civil war although it will serve
no one's interests, destabilize Syria for years, and suck in the rest of the
region. Their enduring pursuit of maximalist demands may sabotage what chance
still exists for a negotiated transition.
The regime's vision consists in
cracking down decisively against residual pockets of foreign-backed
trouble-makers, then opening up politically within sensible boundaries --
similar to Jordan's or Bahrain's promise of limited reforms. Outside players
currently bent on its demise, it wagers, ultimately will realize it cannot be
destroyed; already hesitant for lack of good options and fear of ensuing chaos,
they will grudgingly move to softer forms of pressure and, in time, even resume
engagement. The regime's sympathizers and allies are all too keen to believe
that it is strong, that the reach of the protest movement is wildly exaggerated
by hostile media, that the foreign conspiracy is both all-encompassing and
impotent, and that Syrian society is so disease-ridden -- a hodgepodge of
fundamentalists, thugs, and third party proxies -- that it cannot but
deserve the security services' tough medicine.
This narrative is flawed in more
ways than one. For ten months, the regime has been collapsing in slow-motion,
and it is showing. Its political structures, weak at the outset, have eroded
beyond repair; the executive has lost any ability it once had to implement
policy and the ruling party is an empty shell. The security services remain
largely cohesive and ready to fight, but in many places they increasingly
resemble at best an occupying force cut off from society, at worst a collection
of sectarian militias on a rampage. The military is fragmenting, slowly but
surely. The regime's territorial control depended on the protest movement
remaining largely peaceful. Now that an insurgency is spreading, it is losing
its grip. Arguably, the regime has refrained from using much of the firepower at its
disposal, for fear of tilting the balance decisively against it within the
international community. It could easily muster enough troops to put down
resistance in any specific area, but at the expense of letting things slip
elsewhere in a losing game of whack-a-mole; other rebellious areas would go for
broke, knowing their turn would soon come if the regime was allowed to deal
with them sequentially. Meanwhile, the economy's collapse is accelerating. Because
none of this is lost on a majority of Syrians, once spectacular demonstrations
of loyalists have narrowed to the point where official footage prefers
close-ups to aerial photography. The "silent majority" the regime claimed to
have on its side is now angry and scared: it both blames the country's
leadership for spelling disaster and distrusts the protest movement, exiled
opposition, and outside world for offering no clear prospect for the future
other than growing chaos.
On a popular level, the picture also
differs from what the regime, its sympathizers, and allies would like to
believe. The protest movement, which to this day remains conspicuously absent
from the official narrative, is remarkably broad-based, intuitively cohesive,
and in many ways sophisticated. Until now, it has effectively contained the
more thuggish, criminal, sectarian, and fundamentalist strands that clearly
exist within society. In fact, the protest movement's better sides are the only
bulwark against such demons, at a time when the regime's course of action --
exacerbating communal tensions as a divide-and-rule tactic, targeting
non-violent activists, and compartmentalizing its territory while losing
control within screened-off areas -- is making things worse by the day.
Unlike the case of Libya, it took months of bullying, disruption, and despair
for Syrians to call for international intervention (which they ordinarily would
loath), to pick up arms on a large scale (an option the vast majority agreed
should be kept as the last resort), and to allow a political struggle to give
way insidiously to civil strife (as is occurring in some parts of central
Syria). If chaos deepens further, criminals, foreign volunteers, and home-grown
fundamentalists are bound to become more striking features of this crisis -- a
self-fulfilling prophecy come true.
The conspiracy theory also has its
limits. True, the protest movement may not have survived, let alone thrived,
without a sympathetic -- and in some cases deeply biased and unprofessional --
international media, as well as considerable logistical support from abroad,
notably from within an expansive and mobilized diaspora. But even taking such
factors into account, realities on the ground don't come anywhere close to the
regime's narrative. Bloodthirsty Islamist terrorists sponsored from abroad are
hard to find in a sea of angry ordinary citizens motivated by local grievances,
and above all the brutal, unaccountable behavior of the security services
(which by now is all that a large proportion of Syrian society sees of the
regime). Emerging armed groups complain bitterly about inadequate weapons and
shortage of ammunition, suggesting for the time being a dearth of strategic
depth.
The international community,
powerless and deeply divided, has so far not been acting decisively. The West,
which initially hoped the regime would do a better job at managing the crisis
-- and thus spare it from a risky adventure in a sensitive part of the world --
has come full circle: although the practicalities remain unclear, the consensus
now favors regime-change, with dreams of regional change lurking in the
background giving a hoped-for domino effect on Hezbollah in Lebanon and a
besieged leadership in Iran. Russia appears concerned about heightened
instability in the area at large, the prospect of further empowering Islamists,
and the West's typically cavalier attempts to push its agenda under the guise
of noble moral values.
The Arab League has been engaged
constructively, sending observers that may have failed to solve the crisis but which
have staved off the escalation in violence on all sides one could have expected
in their absence. Unfortunately, its more assertive members are those with the
least credibility to take the lead -- Gulf monarchies that united to put down
popular protests in Bahrain tend to adopt a sectarian perspective on regional
events, and have paid only lip service to reforms at home. Other Arab countries
are essentially in disarray, bogged down by domestic tensions, fearful of more
regional instability, and distrustful of the West, given its track record of
making things worse, not better, in this part of the world. The result has been
a slow-moving but determined effort to lock the regime into a set of
constraints that could force it to recognize the reality of its domestic crisis
and negotiate an exit, while fending off any risk of hands-on Western
involvement. Thus the transition plan announced this week, involving a caretaker
role for the Syrian vice-president, the establishment of a national unity
government, the election of a constitutional committee, and reforming the
security apparatus, offers a mechanism that can be built upon and consolidated.
If support for a negotiated transition comes from all quarters, critical
pressure will be brought to bear on a regime whose primary asset now consists
in playing Russian support and Western brinkmanship off each other.
Part of the problem has been the
dismal performance of the opposition in exile. Its members, even as they
repeatedly talk on satellite channels about the sufferings of their kin back
home, have in fact spent the better part of their energy squabbling over
personal rivalries, lobbying for international recognition, and debating a
foreign intervention that -- whether it is desirable or not -- simply will not
happen in the foreseeable future. Focused on following the mood on the Syrian
street rather than leading the way forward, they have shut the door on any
negotiated transition, decried the Arab League's initiative instead of
suggesting ways to optimize it, and failed to articulate a credible, workable
strategy. Even the more obvious political imperatives, such as offering the
prospect of a reconciliation process with those who, although carrying out the
repression have not ordered it, have run up against the opposition's
preference for echoing the frustration felt by ordinary citizens after months
of escalating regime violence. However, key to any resolution of the deep
social divide that has emerged within Syria will be a firm but smooth process
to overhaul the existing security apparatus, as the lessons of the Iraqi
disaster make clear.
All sides have been incapable of
agreeing on what would be a reasonable U.N. Security Council resolution: making
clear it does not endorse foreign military intervention, both to reassure
Russia and because within the current parameters of the conflict it is not in
the cards anyway; calling all parties to cease fire; blaming the regime for
bringing the country to the brink; holding it fully accountable for seeking a
solution; demanding it implements the Arab League's transition plan; and
insisting it respects peaceful protests under a reinforced observers mission,
with the additional deployment of Arab monitors embedded within the security
apparatus where required in the face of armed groups. The regime may choose to
ignore what some would describe as a toothless resolution. In fact, what has
enabled it to shun international pressure until now is the sense that key
players like Russia and others condoned its approach, a decisive factor of
self-confidence within its own ranks. A Security Council resolution is the one
available lever that could be brought to bear on a Syrian leadership that feels
sheltered by the prevailing divisions on the international scene, and would rather
take the country down the road to civil war than negotiate in order to obtain
what still can be achieved (not least guarantees for the Alawite community, a
phased hand-over of power, and the assurance of institutional continuity) at
the cost of giving up on the hope that hunkering down and making reforms that
only satisfy its supporters somehow will enable it to stay in power.
It should come as no surprise that
in the absence of any glimmer of hope, despair has been taking hold of Syrian
society. It is already expressed in multiple forms, all of them disturbing, but
things are poised to get worse. As more Syrians come to believe that their
collective efforts are in vain, that the world has forsaken them, and that the
regime can only be fought with its own methods, the nature of the struggle
could be transformed into something more fragmented, narrow-minded, and brutal.
Those who have given up on everything but God will be easy recruits for the
Islamists. The logistical needs of armed groups will offer opportunities for
whoever is willing to sustain them. Communal rifts may further deepen. Violence
predictably will serve as a vehicle for the advancement of the more thuggish
components within each community. The creative, responsible, and
forward-looking activists within the protest movement could soon feel
overpowered -- many already do. That feeling, combined with unrelenting
pressure from the security services, is gradually pushing some to give up or
even flee abroad.
Until now, the regime and a majority
of its supporters, allies, critics, and foes appear to have been operating
under the same assumption: that the deadly stalemate the crisis is locked in
will endure a while longer, until the other side gives way. This could still be
true, but within the current parameters, it is becoming increasingly improbable that the
power structure will suddenly unravel, that it will succeed in regaining lost
ground, or that its opponents will accommodate it in any way. If this impasse
endures any longer, the struggle could quickly mutate into an open-ended civil
war. Although the regime bears most of the responsibility for bringing the
situation up to this point, the international community and exiled opposition
have no excuse for moving it further along this terrifying path.
Peter Harling is director for Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon with the
International Crisis Group
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