Syria can never have peace so long as President Bashar al-Assad remains in the saddle as a vast majority of the country’s population has no faith in his regime’s ability to take care of their interests owing to the strong Sunni-Shia factor guiding its thinking, opines SYED NOORUZZAMAN.
The seven-year-old Syrian crisis is likely to acquire new dimensions in the wake of the beleaguered Bashar Al-Assad regime using banned chemical weapons to recapture the rebel-held Douma area on April 7. The killing and maiming of hundreds of people in this manner led to US, British and French forces making retaliatory strikes on Syria’s military facilities to send across a strong message that recourse to the proscribed weapons on any pretext would invite punitive action.
Earlier, in April 2017 US forces launched Tomahawk missile strikes on a Syrian Air Force base when Damascus was accused of a ‘sarin’ gas attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province.
The latest pounding of government-controlled areas by the US and its European allies came with President Donald Trump warning the Syrian government and its supporters like Russia and Iran that their inhuman acts against civilians would not go unchallenged. However, the Russian response to this was, “It is necessary to once again caution that military intervention under false and fabricated pretexts in Syria, where Russian servicemen stay at the request of the legitimate government, is absolutely unacceptable and may trigger the gravest consequences.”
The posturing by the backers of the repressive Bashar al-Assad government and its opponents fighting for a regime change shows that the emerging scenario may take a turn for the worse if an urgent and meaningful drive is not initiated for establishing peace in Syria. In view of this apprehension, a renewed United Nations-led diplomatic move has been launched for fresh intra-Syrian talks. The UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, is doing all he can for kick-starting a UN-facilitated political process in accordance with Security Council resolution number 2254 (passed in 2015) to bring about peace through democratic elections in the war-torn nation. In this connection he has met foreign ministers of many countries, including members of the Arab League, Russia, Iran and Turkey. The outcome of his efforts may change the course of events in Syria, which has most of its cities flattened with nearly five lakh people killed, over 10 lakh injured and as many as 12 million having got displaced in the seven-year-long civil war.
Earlier, such efforts led to the signing of the Geneva Communique in 2012 which called for setting up of a governing body in Syria “on the basis of mutual consent” but in vain. Nine rounds of UN-mediated peace negotiations – the Geneva II process – launched in 2014 also failed to produce the desired results because of the Syrian dictator refusing to agree to step aside. Despite so much death and destruction during his rule, he is just not prepared to see the writing on the wall owing to his unending lust for absolute power.
Russia, which has been openly providing all kinds of assistance to the Assad regime since 2015 on various pretexts, came out with the idea of hosting a Congress of National Dialogue, also called the Astana process, in January this year. However, this dialogue process died in infancy as it had inbuilt infirmities owing to its being primarily aimed at saving the Syrian dictator’s interests which compelled most opposition representatives to boycott the Russian initiative.
It appears that at this stage the Assad regime is in a stronger position as it has recaptured most of the areas earlier under the rebel control after much bloodshed with the help of its staunch allies – Russia and Iran – yet it cannot silence the change-seekers forever. Opposition armed groups like the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Arab and Kurdish militias, may continue to get financial and other kinds of support from regional governments and non-Arab sources because of the growing rivalry for influence in West Asia between Russia and Iran with clandestine Chinese backing being on the one side and the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and their allies on the other.
Syria can never have peace so long as President Bashar al-Assad remains in the saddle as a vast majority of the country’s population has no faith in his regime’s ability to take care of their interests owing to the strong Sunni-Shia factor guiding its thinking. As is well known, the Syrian dictator happens to be an Alawi (a Shia) whereas the overwhelming majority of the country’s population is Sunni. The population complexion is unlikely to change to suit his dirty designs despite lakhs of people having been killed and an equally large number of them having migrated to neighbouring Jordan and Lebanon as well as to European countries like Turkey.
According to a UN estimate, over 13.1 million people living in Syria will be in need of humanitarian assistance in 2018. They cannot be loyal to the present government as they have suffered untold miseries because of its highhandedness in dealing with those who initially raised their voice seeking better employment opportunities, elimination of rampant corruption and restoration of their human rights. These disgruntled people, who held large-scale demonstrations against the dictatorial regime, demanding its replacement by a democratically elected government in 2011, were hopeful of getting their objectives achieved in the wake of what had come to be known as the Arab Spring, which swept many countries in the region and toppled the then dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya. The people’s hopes, however, got shattered because of various reasons.
The anti-Assad regime protests that began on March 15, 2011, were met with the Syrian security forces killing hundreds of demonstrators and throwing a large number of others into jails. The strong-arm tactics of the authoritarian regime, ignoring the just aspirations of the people, caused defections in the Syrian Army, leading to the formation of the Free Syrian Army aimed at overthrowing the government in Damascus. This is how the Syrian civil war broke out, putting the future of the Alawite dictatorship in jeopardy.
The repressive tactics used to contain the anti-government protests ultimately acquired a sectarian hue as the Syrian security forces, dominated by Shias, though in minority, began to target mainly Sunnis. The Sunni-Shia divide got further sharpened with the emergence of the Sunni extremist movement called the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now a part of history. Heinous activities of the ISIS and the Assad regime attracted global attention with the US along with its Western allies, Russia, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran deciding to play their role to protect their own political, commercial and other interests.
As it appears today, the people’s outbursts in Syria, initially against their repressive government, have led to the eruption of a three-cornered war for the domination of the Muslim world with Iran with the help of Russia fighting for safeguarding Shia interests, and Saudi Arabia and Turkey competing for the leadership of the Sunni Muslim world. However, all this is not in the larger and long-term interests of West Asia. Unending instability in Syria has already affected most economies in the region. It is time to devise a fresh strategy to bridge the yawning Sunni-Shia gulf to establish long-lasting peace in the region.
[Syed Nooruzzaman, a former Deputy Editor of The Tribune, Chandigarh, had been the editor-in-charge of the paper’s edit page for nearly 22 years. With a career spanning over 43 years, he specialises on foreign affairs. He contributed to The Tribune a popular weekly column on Pakistan besides writing editorials and edit page articles on different subjects on a regular basis during his over 34-year-long association with the highly respected daily. He is currently based in New Delhi and contributes to different papers as a political columnist. [email protected]]