Syria is key in the war on ISIS

At the end of 2010, after a devastating four-year drought, the worst ever in Syria’s history, more than a million Syrian farmers had fled to the cities, their livestock had perished. Rural communities had been devastated. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Palestinians and Lebanese were refugees in Syria. Meaningful employment was hard to secure for all these people. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation warned that Syria was facing “social destruction”. Popular unrest had become a distinct possibility even for non-political reasons. It was in this milieu that the unprecedented revolutionary fervour sweeping across the Arab world since December 2010 hit Syria in March 2011.

For some sections of the population chafing under prolonged repressive rule, this was a great opportunity to vent their anger. After the first protests started in Deraa, alarmed by the swift regime changes in Egypt and Tunisia, Assad panicked and cracked down brutally on the protesters. But the unrest gradually spread to other cities, with demands for political reforms. Unlike in Tunisia and Egypt, though, this did not quickly mushroom into a mass movement demanding regime change, giving Assad valuable time to think and plan.

The father-son rule of the Assads, an absolute dictatorship, like what most Arab countries have, began in 1970 and, till the advent of the current troubles in 2011, it had provided Syria its most stable political environment in more than a century. In fact, under their rule, Syria had, compared to other Arab dictatorships, a relatively multi-hued and liberal society, with the regime enjoying near total support of the minority communities such as Alawites, Christians and Druze and considerable support amongst the upper and middle class Sunnis, particularly the business community in all major cities. As a NATO report acknowledged, “Syria’s uprising was initially rooted in a poor rural underclass now living in urban environments far away from their support networks”.

Under the Assads, the elite units of the Syrian army have been Alawite dominated and officered by relatives, clan members and carefully handpicked people, part of a close coterie, as also, the intelligence and internal security services. Therefore, in Syria’s case, the Army stood steadfastly with the regime.

All these factors enabled the regime to ride out the protests relatively unscathed till the end of 2011 through increasingly brutal and indiscriminate attacks against stubborn pockets of revolt. This approach was meant to serve as a deterrent to any large scale spread of protests. It must also be put on record here that the resistance behaved almost equally brutally with the regime’s army and security personnel.

The situation started deteriorating significantly from early 2012, partly due to growing desertions of Sunni soldiers who started organized resistance to the regime and partly due to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey as well as the US and its Western allies beginning to pump in arms and money to defectors from the Syrian Army and the Sunni fighters from Iraq coming through the porous borders; the infiltration of thousands of other armed Islamists from abroad was actively encouraged, particularly by and through Turkey. These countries viewed this as a god-sent opportunity to get rid of the long loathed Assad. This foreign intervention is the single major reason for Syria slipping into a civil war.

The effort to unseat Assad had nothing to do with democracy per se which Arab rulers deny their subjects, or even broad-based governance; the simple, straightforward and only real reason was that Syria under Assad was the only Arab country that had forged and maintained an alliance with Iran after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, becoming the main conduit of the ingress and spread of Iranian influence in the Levant, and had continued to maintain a strategic alliance with Russia, forged during the Soviet era. As this situation unfolded in Syria, these past relationships started impacting heavily on the present.

A new element in the war in Syria was the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), aka Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), aka Daesh, which in June 2014 declared itself to be the Islamic State or Caliphate. By end-2014, it had spread rapidly and controlled more than half of Iraq and more than half of Syria, including most of the oil producing areas, making Raqqa in Syria its capital.

This has changed the whole situation. What we are seeing is a bizarre, if tragic, war of all against all. At least 12 Western and Sunni Arab countries are carrying out air strikes against a variety of targets on Syrian territory. A total of approximately 8,000 strikes have taken place against Daesh targets in Iraq and Syria. The Assad regime is being assisted by Hezbollah and Iranian fighters, Russian air strikes and large arms supplies by Russia and Iran as well as generous financial help by Iran.

The primary objective of Assad’s opponents, particularly Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, is to oust him from power. The primary objective of Assad’s supporters now is to ensure that the war can be ended through a smooth transition process during which they believe Assad needs to remain in power. This is a far more realistic and pragmatic approach, and it is quite likely that the Western countries, too, will perforce embrace this, especially after the Paris attacks.

“ the struggle for the future of the Middle East is being played out in Syria The Syrian conflict has transformed over the last four years from a local to a regional to a global conflict. It is clear that there is no going back to the status quo ante. Western powers have clearly signaled that they do not see a viable military option for direct intervention into the Syrian conflict. Inviting all of the relevant players that elevated the conflict to such a level to the negotiating table is the only way forward toward a solution.”

In the light of the realities pointed out in the report, the Western world would do well to stop its own and its Gulf allies’ continuing arming of rebels and follow the path of negotiations. Once that happens, Russia and Iran could be persuaded to stop arms supplies to the Assad regime. Participants in the negotiations must absolutely include Iran - without Iran being on board there can be no solution in Syria. The Vienna conference of last month on Syria is the way to go forward when Iran was invited for the first time at an international conference to determine the future of Syria. A very broad timetable for a transition process seems to have been broadly agreed upon in the second such meeting last week.

With Russia’s and Iranian intervention in Syria there is no possibility of regime change through such means. The huge array of different and competing Islamist Jihadi groups, including thousands of foreigners, cannot possibly come up with a cohesive and acceptable alternative government. Given the current ground realities in Syria and its diverse ethnic and sectarian makeup, regime change in Syria could lead to a much worse outcome than in Iraq and Libya.

Those advocating regime change need to seriously ponder over the fact that that the internal situation today in both Iraq and Libya is far worse than it was when Saddam and Gaddhafi were in power. Intrusive military interventions by foreign countries in Libya and Iraq are not examples to be emulated but shunned. Indeed, externally encouraged efforts towards regime change in Arab countries must stop forthwith.

Ranjit Gupta has served as India’s ambassador to several countries, including Yemen (North) and Oman, and as head of the MEA’s West Asia and North Africa division. This article is an edited excerpt from a lecture delivered at a Joint ICWA-Asia Centre seminar recently.