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29 February 2012, Gateway House

Where is Syria headed?

As the al-Assad regime faces increasing international pressure to step down from power, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad attempted to make political reforms recently. However, Syria has strong relations within West Asia and the denouement will profoundly impact developments in this region.

Professor, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University

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Syria sits astride the confluence of many different currents in the Middle East: geographically, between the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris, and those which descend from Mount Hermon. Ethnically, it accommodates the Semitic races like Assyrians and Jews and the non-Semitic like the Kurds and the Turks. Politically, it lies between a secular and a theocratic ethos, and in terms of religion between the many sects of Islam and Christianity with its divisions.

Therein lies the complexity of the situation that the world confronts.

The referendum for a new Constitution held on 26 February is a tangible sign that the Assad regime has finally bowed to the relentless international pressure to bring in democratic reforms. It should have happened long before violence by both sides escalated to current, unacceptable levels. Parliamentary elections are to be held in three months and international efforts must now be geared to ensuring them.

The turnout of 8.7 million registered voters out of a total of 14.6 million was fair by any reckoning. According to available figures, 89.4 % supported the new Constitution while a little over 9 % opposed it.

The single most important feature of the new Constitution is that it removes the primacy of the Baath party, allows a multi-party system and religious pluralism. It still has features like the successive seven-year term limit, and the salience of Islam, which will need re-casting under the aegis of a more representative elected Parliament.

The issue boils down to what kind of polity a people want to see in their country. In contrast with Egypt and Tunisia, the Syrian regime has opted for a new Constitution before parliamentary elections. In the former case, where elections were held before a new Constitution was approved, there are already conflicts brewing relating to the composition of constitutional bodies, military oversight, and party representations. Only time will tell which strategy serves the people best.

Conventional wisdom holds that without the massive support of Iran and of China and Russia within the UN Security Council, the situation in Syria would have evolved differently. Russia and China provoked Western ire for raising three pertinent points: first that any UNSC resolution should apply equivalently to the government and the opposition; second, it should not pre-determine the outcome; and third, it should not pave the way for foreign military intervention as happened in Libya.

That Syria is seen as a proxy for Iran’s multi-dimensional reach in the eastern Mediterranean, with its interests in Lebanon through the Hezbollah and in Palestine through Hamas, is the second part of this discourse. While there may be some truth in this, accepting it in toto minimises the many reasons why Bashar al-Assad continues the violent suppression of the opposing groups which now include good number of foreign commandos and weaponry. Neither is his paranoid intention to stay in power, the entire story. The issue is far too complex and destabilising to take such partial views of a volatile situation.

With Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda head, having come out exhorting support  for the opposition groups, it appears that he would like nothing other than a radical Taliban-type government in Syria modelled on the retrograde Afghan regime of the late 1990’s. Most surprisingly, this goal of supporting and arming (even clandestinely) the Syrian opposition, articulated at the sterile Tunis conference of the “Friends of Syria” on Feb 24, is now also shared by the U.S., other Western countries, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The U.S.’s anti-Iran, pro-democracy agenda has now coalesced with the Saudi-Turkey anti-Iran, pro-Sunni agenda.

India’s ambivalent diplomacy has now placed it with this group – even if it is loath to see Al Qaeda’s disruptive footprint in India or have the UNSC use the Libyan criteria of  ‘protecting civilians and civilian-populated areas’ elsewhere.

The issue now is not the longevity of Bashar al- Assad and his coterie, but the disruption of the long-standing culture of tolerance in which minorities of all hues, including those within Islam, have been living for generations. It is the only such country left in the Middle East, as evidenced by the ambivalent pronouncements of the winning Islamic parties in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.

At the present juncture the best course for the ‘international community’ is to call a ‘time-out’ for all parties involved, use it to halt further violence and provide support and assistance to the current regime to make good on its promise of parliamentary elections in three months. This is what Kofi Annan’s mission should aim for.

The denouement in Syria will profoundly impact developments in the Middle East monarchies, which have so far immunised themselves from the fall-out of the ‘Arab Awakening.’

Rajendra Abhyankar served as India’s former Ambassador to various countries, including Syria, and is currently Chairman at the Kunzru Centre for Defence Studies and Research, Pune.

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