Arab World Is the Loser In Syria War

[Surenas]

Arabs continue to sit, immobile, in front of their TV screens, tracking the latest news from the Syrian crisis. Their glances shift from one world capital to another, following the latest statements issued by heads of state and senior officials. They follow the debate surrounding the forthcoming strike on Syria: How large it will be, to what extent it will run, when it will happen. Media outlets of all stripes and ideological tendencies vie with one another in carrying scenes of killing and destruction within Syria, portraying one party as pure evil that alone bears responsibility for what is happening.

This ostensible monopoly of evil lends an ease and facility to reigning political analysts, so that Arabs can lie down to sleep, or be lulled into sleep, having surrendered to the false apologetics that absolve one party for what is happening while condemning the other side to meet the full measure of punishment.

Supporters of the Syrian regime talk about its being targeted for its regional alliances, about how the takfiri groups that have settled in Syria are eliminating Syrian citizens of different religious sects and do not behave anything like a “liberation” movement — and, so far as it goes, this is true. As for the regime's opponents, they cite the destruction wrought by the Syrian regime upon its people, the more than 100,000 dead, its use of airplanes, tanks and artillery to bombard villages and wide swaths of Syria for more than two and half years — and, so far as it goes, this is true as well.

This logic leads both parties to the conclusion that the war must inevitably continue until the total eradication of “the enemy.” And so the flames of hell are stoked ever higher by a regional contest over Syria, with all seeking the victory of one party over another [by supplying] weapons, fighters and ideology; through the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars; and the vicious back and forth of various rival media outlets. And so the killing machine grinds on, laying waste to the pillars of the Syrian state one after another. In the final analysis, Syria has entered a hellish cycle whose price will be paid in the coin of Syrian lives, of their lost country, of the land of their forefathers and the future of their children, no matter who prevails in the current fighting.

The Iraq scenario, once again

The historical binaries of the East have proved unequal to interpreting the Syrian crisis, where the Manichean dichotomies between good and evil, light and darkness contribute nothing to evaluating the conflict, for the “bad guy” cannot alone bear sole responsibility. Just as the binaries of the East have failed to shed any light, the Arabs have failed to provide a solution to the Syrian tragedy, allowing non-Arab regional parties to reap the benefits.

It is here that the tragedy of Iraq in 2003 repeats itself. A ruler is oppressing and killing his people, after plundering the society and laying waste to the people's liberties and threatening their neighbors. But the ruler's overthrow is not his own; rather, a great Arab country is crushed, with Arab blessing and support. The result is tragic, allowing other regional powers to take control of that country's decision making and dominate its territory. The Arab regimes rid themselves of the old Iraqi regime, and everyday Arabs tethered themselves to American tanks as they rolled through the capital of Haroun al-Rashid, before departing and handing over effective control to Iran. Today, the Arabs await an attack on, and occupation of, the capital of the Umayyads, again with Arab cover and financing, in circumstances eerily similar to what transpired 10 years ago. Most likely, this chapter will conclude with northern Syria in Turkish custody. History repeats itself, with neither lesson learned nor reflection pondered. Of course, there are superficial differences: America's main ally in its upcoming military strike on Syria is France, given its historic interests in Syria, whereas Britain was the principal partner in the occupation of Iraq, for the same reasons.

Iran and its axis

At the same time, Iran is expanding its reach through Arab territory by raising the banner of “the resistance,” as if riding atop an Arabic stallion that it summoned from the national mythology of Ferdowsi's epic “The Book of Kings.” Iran is enjoying itself in Arab lands, which Tehran effectively dominates, chanting revolutionary slogans themselves tinged with sectarianism. It is as though Tehran wished to take revenge for its [defeats in] historical battles with the Arabs at Jalula, Helwan and Qadisiyyah, which took place more than 14 centuries ago, in an attempt to rewrite history according to a reactionary bent.

The Iranian axis has yet to encounter an Arab state that has developed and internalized real institutions. Its basic goal is to arrange the Arabs in an ideological-sectarian alignment that accords with Iran's national interests. Iran is waging regional battles to influence and control Arab lands remote from the Iranian plateau, enlarging the scope of its current influence to an extent rivaling the era of Cyrus the Great through an amazing combination of Iranian shrewdness and Arab torpor. This comes at a time when its regional ambitions require extorting Washington and it rumbles to be recognized as a regional power broker. Arab land is ready to be taken, Arab blood is available to be shed, and the slogans of “the resistance” can be reproduced as circumstances require.

In this manner, open season was declared on Iraq, under the slogans of “the resistance,” after it was occupied by the Americans and its state institutions destroyed so that it could become a staging point for Iran's regional role. In this manner, open season is now being declared on Syria. What little remains of its institutions will be destroyed as well. Its people have been killed en masse for two and a half years, with intense cover from the devotees of “the resistance” seeking to preserve the extension of Iranian power to the Mediterranean coast. In short, Arab lands and great cities, Baghdad and Damascus, have been reduced to bargaining chips in negotiations with the “Great Satan” in exchange for Iran's regional role and nuclear program.

Saudi Arabia

Parallel to this, Riyadh is financing the civil war in Syria through a wide range of armed jihadist and takfiri groups within the country and its political fronts abroad, keeping its eye on Iran's metastasizing influence. As a result of the absence of a regional project, and the adherence to a fait accompli, it announced its readiness to finance the upcoming American strike out of its desire to topple President Bashar al-Assad's regime to reduce Iranian influence in the Arab East and strengthen its position as a unique regional player.

Riyadh's attempt to pull Assad away from the so-called Resistance Axis failed, and the meeting of the Syrian president and the Saudi monarch in Lebanon in 2010 constituted the final Arab attempt to positively incentivize Assad to alter his positions. Riyadh is doing today exactly what it did in 2003, allowing its rivalry with the Baathist regimes in Iraq and Syria to reach the point of providing political and financial cover for toppling both regimes, even if the price is the destruction of two great Arab countries. In the regional scramble of Arab countries afflicted with “chemical” rulers, the great issues are sidelined, as the sects become addresses for alliances, or fertile ground for political alignments, and the tragi-comedy grows ever darker, such that even a group like Jabhat al-Nusra can become a vehicle for combating brutal regimes.

Official Arab behavior is facilitating the war in Syria through its finances, giving literal expression to the adage “cutting off the hand that aches.” Politics and regional balancing have been replaced by a market where loyalties are bought and sold, where wars are financed, and countries and societies are toppled, all under the banner of removing dictatorial regimes that kill their people. The Iraq experience reminds us that the sacrifice will ultimately be at the expense of the peoples and their lands, and the hour of Arab lamentation will come again and again.

Turkey, Israel and Egypt

As for Turkey, it completely lost its credibility in the Arab Spring. Over the course of the Syrian uprising, it has made an inelegant transition from a regional power that gradually built up its reserves of “soft power” into a party aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and sharing a single regional agenda with Qatar. If Turkey fails in winning its share of the Iraqi pie because of Iranian cleverness, Kurdish resistance and the sectarian factor, then it will satisfy itself with military, political and economic hegemony over northern Syria, which lies on favorable ground in both a geographic and sectarian sense.

Turkey, whose political rhetoric over the last seven years stressed objection to foreign interference in regional affairs — apparently so that it could play the role of maestro — has gone back on itself. After the Syrian crisis exposed its limited capabilities, it invited foreign intervention to pave the way for a regional competition that would play to its advantage. In this way, the head of the Syrian regime went from a friend with whom to share a dinner table and break bread on the banks of the Bosporus, with both Erdogan's and Assad's wives seated alongside them against a backdrop of Aleppan Maqamat and Ottoman flavors — to an enemy whose existence rallies armies and who is suddenly “transformed” into a brutal dictator.

Egypt accepted bearing the burdens of history and the role that was, turning a blind eye to what was happening and sharing in the Arab League's decision to provide cover for air strikes on what was once the northern region of the United Arab Republic [of Egypt and Syria]. The new rulers in Cairo are indebted to the Gulf states, which are financially backing them, rescuing Egypt's collapsing economy and offering it political cover for its regime, after the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood and its representative in the presidential palace.

In the past, oil surpluses were the price for averting one's eyes from the strike on Iraq, and those surpluses are again the reason for the current role in the Syrian situation. Absent from Cairo's calculations is that Syria's partition, God forbid, would spell the end of any future Egyptian role of any sort in the region. For Syria's geographic and historical fate is bound up with Egypt's strategic fate, according to the laws of history and geography. It comes before emotions, before Arab identity, even before any theory of regional roles. Meanwhile, all parties will continue to brand their rivals as being in the service of the Israeli agenda. In reality, all possible scenarios for the Syrian crisis appear favorable to Israel's interests. The continuing killing and destruction of what remains of Syria is an Israeli interest par excellence; the partition of Syria would constitute the crown jewel of the Zionist dream of a region filled with fractured statelets of various tribes and denominations. Even the ideal situation on the basis of Geneva II — reorganizing the Syrian state so that it resembles its Lebanese counterpart — is favorable to Israel.

The exodus

And so the Arabs, both in the “moderate” and “resistance” camps, will come out the losers of the Syrian crisis and its various likely scenarios, none of which they control. The Arabs have come out of history previously, and appear today regardless of their alignments, to be coming out of geography as well. Let us continue to glue ourselves in front of TV screens to soon hear the buzzing of American aircraft and see them dropping their bombs on Syrians, both supporters and opponents of the regime. So let some of the Arab “intellectuals” ponder why modern science has not yet invented American aircraft capable of asking the slain, or those likely to be slain, about their sectarian affiliations before covering them with their bombs and their fire.

Arab World Is the Loser In Syria War - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

Great article.