What Happens in Damascus Decides Syria's Fate
23 October 2016
By Eyad Abu Shakra
When everybody was talking about Turkish troops entering the northern Syrian
border town of Jarablus, the dirty deal in greater Damascus was approaching
its completion. The long suffering suburb of Darayya was being handed to the
cut-throats of Bashar Al-Assad's regime and its supportive militias with full
international collusion under the UN flag against brazen Arab and world
disinterest.
This was taking place in what was once a ''Syrian Arab Republic'', while
somewhere else, in Geneva to be precise, the US Secretary of State John Kerry
and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were following up their
smoke-screen bluffing. However, in the spirit of things, and in order to make
the bluff plausible, both were keen to claim that there was still a big gulf
between Washington's and Moscow's positions on Syria.
Actually, what has and will happen in Geneva should not surprise or convince
any serious follower of the Syrian crisis for more than five years; and those
who have observed its evolution – thanks to international collusion and bloody
suppression that seeks a ''military solution'' – from a spontaneous moderate
popular uprising to a civil, regional and open-ended sectarian one aiming at
the uprooting and expulsion of the Sunni Arabs of Iraq and Syria.
Given the above, it could be said that some groups within the Syrian
opposition may be blamed for ''militarizing'' the uprising, thus falling in
the trap that Assad and his backers prepared for them. They may deserve the
blame because they were supposedly aware of the nature of a police state built
by ruthless and suppressive sectarians.
The huge popular demonstrations that filled the streets and squares of the
city of Hama in the summer of 2011 were the turning point. Seeing hundreds of
thousands demonstrating that day, in a city brutally attacked and devastated
by the regime, and that lost between 20,000 and 40,000 of its inhabitants
within less than a month in 1982, must have shocked Assad. The ensuing panic
was bound to lead to the declaration of all-out war against any town,
neighbourhood or village that challenges its authority.
Indeed, this is exactly what the regime – or those who decide on matters of
war and peace – did, adopting a three-part strategy:
• Calling on non-Syrian sectarian Shi'ite militias to fight for the regime
under the religious order and military command of the Vali-e-Faqih in Iran.
• Exploiting its ''fifth column'' of extremist Sunnis or those who claim to be
fighting for the Sunnis, after releasing them from its prisons, on overseeing
their emergence from 'hideaways' well known to the regime's intelligence
agencies in order to undermine the uprising from within. They would achieve
its goal by outbidding rhetoric and diverting the opposition away from
moderation and peaceful means to belligerency and flagrant sectarian
confrontation.
• Exploiting the notion of 'Alliance of Minorities' long kept in reserve for
the opportune moment. In fact, some senior Christian clergymen, Syrian and
non-Syrian, actively incited Western governments against the uprising; and one
of them summed up his views during a European visit in the early months of the
uprising that by saying ''Assad's regime may be bad and corrupt, but what the
uprising would bring is worse''.
This strategy has created the political, humanitarian and political
humanitarian catastrophe we witness today. Sectarian Shi'ite militias have
temporarily managed to save the regime from collapse, and given rise to a
sectarian (Sunni) counter-reaction that, as time passed, marginalized
nationalist, liberal, moderate currents within the uprising. Planting the
regime's extremist ''fifth column'' to undermine the uprising has proved a
success. Finally, religious and sectarian incitement in the West completed the
mission as it provided an excuse, not only to ignore the uprising, but also to
deprive it of the means to even defend itself, either by refusing to provide
it with suitable defensive weapons or adamantly rejecting its pleas for 'safe
havens' and 'no-fly zones'.
The other day many celebrated 'a great victory' when Ankara sent its troops to
a small Syrian border town, with the western 'green light'. The fact of the
matter, however, is that today's Turkey is not the Turkey of 2011. Its freedom
of movement has been drastically curtailed after being cowed by Russia, let
down by NATO and shaken internally; which means she is not allowed to have any
regional say except in what may harm it on the Kurdish front.
In the meantime, Russia and Iran continue the implementation of their
respective geo-political plans in other parts of Syria, especially Damascus
and its environs, through religious, sectarian and ethnic cleansing, mainly
targeting Sunni Arabs with US and international blessings.
What Secretary Kerry said about him and Sergei Lavrov making clearer steps to
move forward in terms of more temporary ceasefires and human aid, and agreeing
on most 'technical' issues that may lead to negotiations on steps on how to
end the fighting, is it just 'tragicomic' lying. Kerry thinks he can still
sell the Syrian people the illusion that Washington is sincere about ending
their suffering and finding the elusive 'political solution', when they know
full well the following:
Firstly, that in the last months of Barack Obama's presidency, Washington
which failed to respect its 'red lines' on Assad's usage of chemical weapons,
would never confront Russia and Iran.
Secondly, that Washington refused from the outset to depose Assad by force;
and later when the ISIS excuse became available, its approach to the Syrian
crisis became hardly distinguishable from that of Moscow and Tehran. Its focus
has been on 'confronting terrorism' (exclusively Sunni terrorism!).
Thirdly, American political and military support of the Syrian uprising has
never been serious. A good proof is how the southern fronts (south of
Damascus) have been strangely silent, while Washington was working overtime to
concoct artificial 'pan-Syrian' militias which are in fact Kurdish militias
with dubious previous links to the regimes with Arab and Turkmen 'facades' in
northern Syria.
Fourthly, the only declared 'change' in Washington's position vis-à-vis Syria
during the last five years has been its continuous convergence with Moscow's;
even when the Russians decided on direct military intervention to help keep
Assad in power.
Lastly, any talk about a 'political solution' is meaningless as long as
military operations – especially from the air – continue, and while the Assad
regime, the Russians, the Iranians and their henchmen carry on with their
crimes of 'demographic change', the latest example is Darayya!
What has befallen Darayya is extremely dangerous because the fate of Syria is
decided in Greater Damascus, and the fate of Greater Damascus is decided by
the silenced southern fronts and the cheap theatricals of the Geneva 'talks'!
Eyad Abu Shakra is the managing editor of Asharq Al-Awsat. He has been with
the newspaper since 1978.
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