Syria intrigue points to palace
coup Victor Kotsev
Bashar al-Assad is flexing his military
muscles to a background of two high-ranking
political defections and ever-more ominous threats
from the United States. The Syrian president
remains adamant that his people support him: so
much can be gleaned from a number of interviews he
gave over the past week, scoring a sharp increase
in his media activity.
Assad's words have
found some implicit support in the behavior of the
United Nations envoy for Syria, Kofi Annan, who
first announced over the weekend that his efforts
to negotiate a truce have failed, only to
backtrack days later and say that talks between
him and Assad on Monday were "constructive and
candid".
Annan, who visited Iran after
Damascus, also said recently that
Russia and Iran must
participate in a solution of the Syrian crisis,
further raising eyebrows in the West. His
flip-flops were mirrored by a spectacular
pirouette of Russian diplomacy: the Kremlin first
announced that it would not sell any new arms to
the Syrian regime, as if to back Annan's earlier
claims that its position had changed dramatically,
[1] and subsequently ostensibly backpaddled. On
Tuesday, it sent a flotilla of warships to the
Mediterranean (with the implicit suggestion that
they are there to protect Syria from an
international intervention), and on Wednesday it
tabled its own draft resolution at the UN Security
Council, which fell far short of Western demands.
The Russian draft called for an extension
of the UN observer mission in Syria, which is
largely confined to its hotels at present, and
changing its mandate to help negotiate a political
solution to the conflict. It avoided any mention
of Chapter VII of the UN charter, which can
authorize further sanctions or a military
operation in the country. According to most
analysts (and in the words of a diplomat at the
Security Council cited by al-Jazeera), the draft
fails to provide for "real pressure on the
parties".
Meanwhile, as the death toll
climbs (the latest estimates claim that over
17,000 have died, including more than 4,000 from
the security services of the regime), the Syrian
regime is becoming increasingly unstable. The most
recent defections - the Syrian ambassador in Iraq
and a Sunni general from a key family - may not,
by themselves, bring about Assad's end, but they
are the most senior defections so far and portend
worse to come.
In particular, Brigadier
General Manaf Tlas, who escaped to France via
Turkey last week, has been hailed as the possible
next Syrian leader by elements of the Syrian
opposition. While his family has been one of
closest and most influential Sunni allies of the
regime for decades - his father, a long-standing
former defense minister, helped to cement the
Assad clan's rule - his hands are clean of the
current bloodshed, which may soften the distrust
of many rebels.
Moreover, it seems that he
still has at least basic comport with the regime -
otherwise it is hard to imagine that he would have
been able to leave undisturbed, and to smuggle his
family out as well. As an anonymous acquaintance
of his poignantly put it (in a report that could
not be verified), "Nobody stopped him from leaving
and nobody worked on him to stay."
Tlas's
defection fits in neatly with the feverish
diplomatic and military intrigue surrounding
Syria. It also highlights another important
dynamic within the Syrian regime that could raise
the likelihood of a coup in the near future.
Several unconfirmed reports in the past have
claimed that a cohort of senior generals,
particularly Sunni Muslims, were forcefully
retired in the past year as a way of papering over
their criticism of the regime. According to the
BBC, Tlas himself had been confined to house
arrest since last May. [2]
This would
leave a pool of disgruntled generals, each of whom
could step in for Assad in the future. It is not
entirely unlikely even that the Syrian president
orchestrated this situation consciously, with a
view of the possibility that he may not be able to
stay in power indefinitely.
The
American-based intelligence analysis organization
Stratfor has long argued that all foreign powers
involved in the Syrian crisis - including the US,
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran and Russia - have been
looking for a suitable replacement for Assad
(regardless of what they say publicly). While this
is in the realm of speculation at present, it is
not impossible that the heavy Russian and Iranian
military presence in Syria - not to mention the
Western buildup on its borders - will eventually
increase pressure on Assad to step down in favor
of a compromise candidate.
We can call it
the Egyptian scenario, in which the military bear
hug of friendly nations helps orchestrate a
(soft?) coup against the dictator. The parallel is
imperfect: in Syria, for example, the sectarian
civil war has progressed quite some way and it is
hard to imagine that any action will bring even a
modicum of stability in the near future. For now,
moreover, Assad is still strong enough, despite
the defections, to continue to cling on to power.
Over the next weeks and months, however,
as the Syrian regime weakens under pressure from
the foreign-backed rebels, Assad's position will
grow increasingly untenable, and his Russian and
Iranian backers will also be forced to cut their
losses. The specter of chaos looms: this is,
perhaps, what US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton referred to when she said last week that
"The sooner there can be an end to the violence
and a beginning of a political transition process,
not only will fewer people die, but there is a
chance to save the Syrian state from a
catastrophic assault that would be very dangerous
not only to Syria but to the region."
In a
recent analysis, Stratfor writes:
''As one astute observer of the
Syrian conflict explained, the al Assad regime
is like a melting block of ice. The Alawite core
of the block is frozen intact because the
minorities fear the consequences of losing power
to a Sunni majority. We have not yet seen the
mass defections and breakdown in command and
control within the military that would suggest
that large chunks of this block are breaking
off. But the Sunni patronage networks around
that core that keep the state machinery running
are slowly starting to melt. The more this block
melts, the more fragile it becomes and the more
likely we are to see cracks form closer and
closer to the center. At that point, the al
Assad regime will become highly prone to a
palace coup scenario.''
In the same
article, Stratfor analyses the regional
implications of the Syrian intrigue:
'Thus, the regional campaign against
Iran is unlikely to end in Syria. Should Sunnis
gain the upper hand in Syria, the Shiite-led
bloc in Lebanon (led by Hezbollah and its
allies) will likely lose its dominant status.
Turkish, Saudi and Qatari backing for Sunnis in
the Levant and the rise of Islamists in the Arab
states will be focused on creating a more
formidable bulwark against Iran and its Arab
Shiite allies.
The most important
battleground to watch in this regard will be
Iraq. There are a number of regional
stakeholders who are not satisfied with
Baghdad's Iranian-backed Shiite government.
There also likely will be a healthy Sunni
militant flow to draw from the Syrian crisis.
These militants will not only need to be kept
occupied so that they do not return home to
cause trouble, but they can also serve a
strategic purpose in reviving the campaign of
marginalized Sunnis against Shiite domination.
Iran may feel comfortable in Iraq now, but the
domino effect from Syria could place Iran back
on the defensive in Iraq, which has the
potential to re-emerge as the main arena for the
broader Arab Sunni versus Persian Shiite
struggle for regional influence. These trends
will take time to develop, and the pace of Sunni
empowerment in Syria remains in question,
especially as the Alawite core of the regime is
so far enduring. That said, it doesn't hurt to
look ahead.' [3]
It seems, for now,
that despite the saber-rattling, the West and the
Middle Eastern powers seeking Assad's replacement
will confine themselves to covert operations and
support for the rebels. However, since a complete
descent of Syria into chaos would likely
necessitate a Bosnia-style military intervention
anyway - and a more active involvement in Assad's
overthrow would help the West accomplish its
geopolitical objectives in the region, such as
isolating Iran - a debate is raging at all levels
of the US political establishment over whether an
overt military operation in the near future may
not be advisable.
As Brian Fishman
observes in an article published by Foreign Policy
magazine, "both conservative and liberal voices in
the United States now favor military intervention
in Syria. There is indeed a striking synergy
between the United States' strategic and
humanitarian goals in Syria, [4] either of which
could potentially motivate military action."
Fishman argues that, at present, the
United States is unlikely to be able to accomplish
its strategic objectives in Syria. While many, if
not most, analysts concur - and this explains the
restraint so far - Clinton's threatening remarks
underscore that, if the big powers fail to reach a
compromise, a military operation may soon become
the preferred option.
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