Syria – Why Assad Has Become Irrelevant
11 September 2016
By Amir Taheri
Hearing diplomats and policymakers talking about Syria, one is bound to
quickly come across a cliché: There is no military solution! But what if the
opposite were true in the sense that the five-year plus ''problem'' couldn't
be solved except through military action?
It is interesting that all those who talk of ''no military solution'' are
doing nothing but taking military action in Syria which, in practice, means
dropping bombs from the air and killing vast numbers of Syrians. Just days
after US Secretary of State John Kerry came out with the ''no military
solution'' cliché, the Pentagon unveiled a new plan for intensified bombings
in Syria.
Kerry's Iranian ''buddy'' Muhammad Javad Zarif, playing the role of Foreign
Minister, repeated the mantra while touring Cuba just a day before his masters
in Tehran granted ''base facilities'' to Russia from which to intensify
bombing Syria and kill even more Syrians.
Zarif's Turkish counterpart, Mevlut (Moloud) Cavusoglu peddled the slogan
hours before Ankara announced a new plan for ''massive military operations
across the border with Syria.'' A day later, Turkish tanks rolled into Syria.
Joining the chorus, Russian President Vladimir Putin echoed the ''no military
solution'' slogan just as his heavy bombers were killing Syrians on an even
larger scale.
Theoretically at least, there can be a military solution to almost any problem
in the context of national or international conflicts. Just imagine if we had
a power or group of powers capable of committing enough troops and firepower
to dislodge Bashar Al-Assad, the Islamic Caliphate, the various freelance
groups, and tribal chiefs, each controlling a chunk of Syria.
Such a scheme may take time, but it certainly is doable, especially when one
remembers that without foreign money and arms, Assad and other characters who
have divided Syria cannot last for long.
The honest analysis is that while there is a military solution no one is
willing to contemplate it on the scale necessary. So the kiling continues.
Why has military action so far failed to end the Syrian crisis?The reason is
that powers involved in this imbroglio could be divided into three categories.
First there are the midgets like the Islamic Republic in Iran and Erdogan's
Turkey that suffer from folie de grandeur, having high ambitions but not the
means to achieve them.
Next there are me-tooist nations, medium-sized powers such as Britain and
France that wish to play in the big league but lack the wherewithal.
They opt for token bombings that certainly kill many Syrians but achieve
little in military terms. (The UK has carried out 52 sorties in more than six
months!)
Finally, we have the United States and Russia which do have the military
power, including potential allies, to wield the really big hammer needed.
However, they too have opted for tokenism for different reasons.
The US has been chained by President Barack Obama's deep-rooted anti-American
analysis of contemporary history in which a nation he now heads is cast in the
role of villain and bully. (Obama says he is pained by the US forcing the
Emperor of Japan to come to the radio in Tokyo and personally declare his
country's surrender to the US at the end of the Second World War.)
That Obama's ideological penchant may be the product of noble intentions is
not the issue here. What is at issue is the fact that he has prevented the US
from performing a role it has held since the Second World War as custodian of
stability in various regions, including the Middle East of which Syria is a
significant part.
Russia, too, has the firepower and troop numbers to re-write the Syrian script
by force, especially now that the US is determined to remain on the ringside.
However, Putin is an opportunist determined to win a maximum of advantages
with a minimum of investment.
He knows that because of deepening economic crisis and rising social
discontent, his regime is heading for a bumpy ride which would make massive
military intervention in Syria that much riskier.
For the time being, therefore, he is trying to grab what he can: base rights
in Iran, expanded bases in Syria, casting himself as a true friend of Arabs
defending his friends while Americans stab their friends in the back, and the
champion of the global war on terror.
With military action off the table, everyone is focused on a simulacrum of
diplomacy centered on two issues: episodic ceasefires and the future of Assad
Junior.
As far as the broader compass of the Syrian tragedy is concerned, both issues
have become largely irrelevant. Patchy ceasefires are no more than brief
intervals in a struggle to the death, only prolonging it.
Assad's future is also a non-issue because he has no future. No one would
imagine Assad to regain a position he lost in 2011 or even be able to emerge
from his foxhole for a meaningful sortie in Syria.
Assad has already entered history as the only head of state that invited
foreign powers to come and kill his fellow citizens from the air. He has
betrayed the first and most important duty of any head of state: to protect
the lives of his people.
Almost 80 years ago General Fransisco Franco invited Nazi Germany and Fascist
Italy to come and kill Spaniards by aerial bombardment. They did, and one
result was the massacre of Guernica which was to become the epitome of infamy
in modern history.
Assad is worse than Franco if only because, at the time he invited the
Fascists, the general was not head of state but a rebel fighting against the
government. Even then, the German-Italian bombing of Guernica claimed under
300 lives, a ''trifle'' compared to victims of Russian bombings in Aleppo in a
single weekend.
Franco won the civil war but never recovered from the tragic error of inviting
foreigners to come and kill his people. Assad has no qualms about spreading
the red carpet for ''protectors'' of non-existent shrines from Iran, not to
mention mercenaries from Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan coming for
killing sprees in Syria.
The Syrian crisis started as a popular uprising demanding reforms. It morphed
into a national revolt against the one-party system led by Assad. Because of
errors by all sides it degenerated into a mixture of civil war, sectarian
conflict and terrorist atrocities.
It has now become a human tragedy on a scale not seen since the Second World
War.To end it we have to first scale it back to its origins.
But that is another story.
Amir Taheri was born in Ahvaz, southwest Iran, and educated in Tehran,
London and Paris. He was Executive Editor-in-Chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran
(1972-79). In 1980-84, he was Middle East Editor for the Sunday Times. In
1984-92, he served as member of the Executive Board of the International Press
Institute (IPI). Between 1980 and 2004, he was a contributor to the
International Herald Tribune. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, the
New York Post, the New York Times, the London Times, the French magazine
Politique Internationale, and the German weekly Focus. Between 1989 and 2005,
he was editorial writer for the German daily Die Welt. Taheri has published 11
books, some of which have been translated into 20 languages. He has been a
columnist for Asharq Alawsat since 1987. Taheri's latest book "The Persian
Night" is published by Encounter Books in London and New York.
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