President Bashar al-Assad, a British-trained doctor who inherited Syria’s harsh dictatorship from his father, Hafez al-Assad, at first wavered between force and hints of reform. But in April 2011, just days after lifting the country’s decades-old state of emergency, he set off the first of what became a series of withering crackdowns, sending tanks into restive cities as security forces opened fire on demonstrators. In retrospect, the attacks appeared calculated to turn peaceful protests violent, to justify an escalation of force.
Neither the government violence nor Mr. Assad’s offers of political reform — rejected as shams by protest leaders — have brought an end to the unrest. Similarly, the protesters have not been able to overcome direct assault by the military’s armed forces or to seize and hold significant chunks of territory.
In the summer of 2011, as the crackdown dragged on, thousands of soldiers defected and began launching attacks against the government, bringing the country to what the United Nations in December called the verge of civil war. An opposition government in exile was formed, the Syrian National Council, but the council’s internal divisions have kept Western and Arab governments from recognizing it as such. The opposition remains a fractious collection of political groups, longtime exiles, grass-roots organizers and armed militants, divided along ideological, ethnic or sectarian lines.
The conflict is complicated by Syria’s ethnic divisions. The Assads and much of the nation’s elite, especially the military, belong to the Alawite sect, a minority in a mostly Sunni country. While the Assad government has the advantage of crushing firepower and units of loyal, elite troops, the insurgents should not be underestimated. They are highly motivated and, over time, demographics should tip in their favor. Alawites constitute about 12 percent of the 23 million Syrians. Sunni Muslims, the opposition’s backbone, make up about 75 percent of the population.
The United States and countries around the world condemned President Assad, who many had hoped would soften his father’s iron-handed regime. Criticism has also come from unlikely quarters, like Syria’s neighbors, Jordan and Turkey, and the Arab League. Syria was expelled from the Arab League after it agreed to a peace plan only to step up attacks on protesters. In late 2011 and early 2012, Syria agreed to allow league observers into the country. But their presence did nothing to slow the violence.
In February 2012, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to approve a resolution condemning President Assad’s unbridled crackdown on the uprising, but China and Russia, Syria’s traditional patron, blocked all efforts for stronger Security Council action.
Tensions have also spilled over borders into Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and Jordan, and fears have increased with evidence that Al Qaeda was behind a rise in suicide bombings in 2012.
By the summer of 2012, the conflict had greatly increased in tempo and violence on all sides, as advocacy groups estimated that about 400 died in June 2011 and more than 3,000 people in June 2012. According to estimates from the United Nations, the conflict has left more than 10,000 dead, thousands more displaced. The Syrian government has waged an unrelenting campaign of arrests that has snared tens of thousands of people.
In cities throughout Syria, including the capital, Damascus, and the largest city, Aleppo, the opposition had coalesced around armed groups identifying themselves as elements of the Free Syrian Army. From bases in refugee camps on the Turkish side of the border, the flow of weapons, medical supplies and money increased.
As the conflict has continued without resolution, Syrians involved in the struggle say it is becoming more radicalized: homegrown Muslim jihadists, as well as small groups of fighters from Al Qaeda, have been taking a more prominent role and demanding a say in running the resistance.
Recent months have witnessed the emergence of larger, more organized and better armed Syrian militant organizations pushing an agenda based on jihad, the concept that they have a divine mandate to fight. Even less-zealous resistance groups are adopting a pronounced Islamic aura because it attracts more financing.
Peace Plan Fails; Annan Resigns as Special Envoy
In April, Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general acting as a special envoy, reported that the Assad government had agreed to a six-point peace plan, which laid out a framework for a cease-fire that does not involve the president leaving power. Syria agreed, but only a week after the plan was put into effect, Ban-ki Moon, the current secretary general of the United Nations, said that Syria had failed to implement almost every aspect of the peace plan. Still, without a better alternative, the United Nations sent 300 cease-fire observers to Syria.
In late May, international efforts to pressure Syria intensified in the wake of a massacre that left at least 108 villagers dead in central Syria, most of them women or children. But in June, the United Nations suspended its observer mission in Syria because of the escalating violence. It was the most severe blow yet to months of international efforts to negotiate a peace plan and prevent Syria’s descent into civil war. That month, a representative of the United Nations characterized the Syrian conflict as a civil war, a term that was echoed in July by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
In early August, Kofi Annan submitted his resignation as special envoy, having grown increasingly frustrated over his failure to achieve even a basic cease-fire in the conflict. Despite a pledge from Mr. Assad to abide by the six-point peace plan brokered by Mr. Annan in April, the Syrian government has never implemented the plan.
Stymied at U.N. Efforts, U.S. Refines Plan to Remove Assad
In July, The New York Times reported that the Obama administration had for now abandoned efforts for a diplomatic settlement to the conflict, and instead was increasing aid to the rebels and redoubling efforts to rally a coalition of like-minded countries to forcibly bring down the Assad government, American officials say.
Administration officials insisted they will not provide arms to the rebel forces. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are already financing those efforts. But American officials said that the United States would provide more communications training and equipment to help improve the combat effectiveness of disparate opposition forces in their widening, sustained fight against Syrian Army troops. It’s also possible the rebels would receive some intelligence support, the officials said.
Mr. Obama has come under criticism from some Republican hawks, who say that the United States should intervene militarily in Syria, and from the Republican presidential aspirant Mitt Romney, who has said that he would arm the Syrian opposition — a course which the administration has not taken.
Instead, Mr. Obama had been backing United Nations efforts, and had been pushing Russia to join the United States in calling for Mr. Assad to step down from power. But Russia and China on July 19 blocked tougher United Nations action in the Security Council. This prompted Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, to say that the Security Council had “utterly failed” Syria and to pledge that the United States will now instead work “with a diverse range of partners outside the Security Council” to pressure the Assad government.
Battles in Damascus and Aleppo
During July, the conflict appeared to reach new levels, with a surge in high-level defections and heavy fighting in the capital of Damascus, whose residents had initially held back from joining the uprising. On July 19, the regime was rocked by a brazen suicide attack against a crisis meeting of senior security officials that killed the country’s defense minister and Mr. Assad’s influential brother-in-law.
Since the uprising began, Syria has been run by an ever tighter circle of army and security officials close to the president. The killings represented as much a psychological blow as a physical one, emboldening the opposition, and challenging Mr. Assad to demonstrate quickly that his forces can still confront the rebels.
In the days after the bombing, government forces fought their way into the areas of Damascus the rebels had seized, leaving behind a string of reports of reports of heavy bombardments, atrocities and extrajudicial killings, according to U.N. officials. At the same time, rebels took control of portions of Aleppo, the nation’s commercial capital, which had also been slow to join the revolt.
Government forces massed outside Aleppo but appeared to be waiting for reinforcements. Military experts have long speculated that President Assad’s army, which has been scrambling to crush rebel resistance in urban areas like Homs, Hama and more recently neighborhoods of Damascus, lacked the military resources to take on an armed rebellion in all major cities at once.Background to Protests
The country’s last serious stirrings of public discontent had come in 1982, when increasingly violent skirmishes with the Muslim Brotherhood prompted Hafez al-Assad to move against them, sending troops to kill at least 10,000 people and smashing the old city of Hama. Hundreds of fundamentalist leaders were jailed, many never seen alive again.
Syria has a liability not found in the successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt — it is a majority Sunni nation that is ruled by a religious minority, the Alawite sect of Shiite Islam. Hafez Assad forged his power base through fear, cooption and sect loyalty. He built an alliance with an elite Sunni business community, and created multiple security services staffed primarily by Alawites. Those security forces have a great deal to lose if the government falls, experts said, because they are part of a widely despised minority, and so have the incentive of self-preservation.
In July 2011, the Obama administration, in a shift that was weeks in the making, turned against Mr. Assad but stopped short of demanding that he step down. By early August, the American ambassador was talking of a “post-Assad” Syria.
In October, Syrian dissidents formally established the Syrian National Council in what seemed to be the most serious attempt to bring together a fragmented opposition. The group’s stated goal was to overthrow President Assad’s government. Members said the council included representatives from the Damascus Declaration group, a pro-democracy network; the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Islamic political party; various Kurdish factions; the Local Coordination Committees, a group that helps organize and document protests; and other independent and tribal figures.
In the U.S.: Different Views on Intervention
The Obama administration has made a point of working through the Arab League and the United Nations rather than giving the appearance that the United States is trying to intervene in Syria. This is partly to avoid giving Iran any excuse to get involved on behalf of its regional ally, analysts say.
However, some politicians favor more direct intervention. On Feb. 19, two senior American senators spoke out strongly in favor of arming the Syrian opposition forces.
The senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both Republicans, laid out a series of diplomatic, humanitarian and military aid proposals that would put the United States squarely behind the effort to topple President Assad. Mr. McCain and Mr. Graham, both of whom are on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that rebel fighters deserved to be armed and that helping them take on the Syrian government would aid Washington’s effort to weaken Iran.
The next day, two Iranian warships docked in the Syrian port of Tartous as a senior Iranian lawmaker denounced the possibility that the Americans might arm the Syrian opposition. Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency called the ships “a serious warning” to the United States.
“The presence of Iran and Russia’s flotillas along the Syrian coast has a clear message against the United States’ possible adventurism,” said Hossein Ebrahimi, a vice chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, Fars reported.
Syria relies on Iran for financial and military support, and the governments in Damascus and Tehran have sectarian ties as well: Iran has strongly backed the Syrian Shiite minority and the offshoot Alawite sect that makes up Syria’s ruling class.
Arms Anchor the Relationship With Russia
As the violence has worsened throughout Syria, amateur video has shown government troops rolling through the besieged city of Homs in vintage Soviet battle tanks. Seemingly undeterred by an international outcry, Moscow has worked frantically to preserve its relationship with the increasingly isolated government of Mr. Assad, even as the Syrian leader turns his guns on his own citizens, and the death toll mounts.
Russia has praised Mr. Assad’s call for a constitutional referendum, a step that the United States and other governments have dismissed as meaningless. On Feb. 16, 2012, Russia was one of just a dozen countries, among them China, Iran and North Korea, to vote against a General Assembly resolution urging Mr. Assad to step down.
And many analysts say that without Russia’s backing, including a steady supply of weapons, food, medical supplies and other aid, the Assad government will crumble within a matter of months if not sooner.
While Moscow has a number of reasons to guard its relations with Damascus, the most concrete, many analysts say, is the longstanding arms sales to Syria. Arms exports have long anchored the relationship between Moscow and Damascus, including sales over the years of MIG fighter jets, attack helicopters and high-tech air defense systems.
While the ouster and death of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya and the imposition of sanctions on Iran have sharply curtailed other formerly lucrative arms markets for Russia, Syria has increased its weapons purchases.
Regional political events have also played a part. The Arab Spring and the American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have dissipated Russia’s once-powerful influence in the region, transforming the relationship into one of critical importance to Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, who is running for president and wants to expand Russia’s role as a global powerbroker.
Conflict in Syria Poses Risk of a Wider Strife
For decades, Syria was the linchpin of the old security order in the Middle East. It allowed the Russians and Iranians to extend their influence even as successive Assad governments provided predictability for Washington and a stable border for Israel, despite support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.
But the burgeoning civil war in Syria has upset that paradigm, placing the Russians and Americans and their respective allies on opposite sides. It is a conflict that has sharply escalated sectarian tensions between Shiites and Sunnis and between Iran and Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf nations. And it has left Israel hopeful that an enemy will fall, but deeply concerned about who might take control of his arsenal.
Washington is keenly aware of the larger forces at play and of the dangers of another military intervention in an Arab country.
For Russia, the fall of Mr. Assad, an ally and arms customer, would further diminish its influence in the region. If Mr. Assad goes, any new government will note Russia’s support for him, including a steady supply of weapons. Arabs across the region, who are demanding their rights and freedoms, may resent it, too.
For the United States, the conflict is a bundle of risks and contradictions that has made Washington’s stance — frustrating those who favor a more robust intervention — far more cautious than it was in Libya.
For Washington, Europe and the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia and the gulf, the impact on Iran is as important as the fate of Mr. Assad. Syria is one of Iran’s closest allies. It was nearly alone in supporting Iran, not Iraq, in their war in the 1980s. Syria has been Iran’s main conduit to supply aid and weapons to Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The United States and Europe — with tenuous Russian and Chinese support — have isolated Iran economically and diplomatically to try to forestall Tehran from being able to build a nuclear weapon. The conflict in Syria complicates that delicate diplomacy, but a new Syrian government could be a greater blow to Iranian influence than any sanction the West has mustered so far. It could also revive democratic protests in Iran.
But the administration is ruling out direct military intervention in this conflict. After a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a limited intervention in Libya that was harshly criticized by Republicans, President Obama wants no new military adventure in an election year. Nor does the Pentagon, especially given Syria’s integrated air defense system, supplied by Russia.
Not least, American officials point out the murky nature and incoherence of the armed opposition to Mr. Assad and note that the Free Syrian Army, formed by exiled Syrian Army officers, defectors and militias, does not control significant territory in Syria where arms could be supplied.
Aggravating Regional Sectarian Tensions
The insurrection in Syria, led by the country’s Sunni majority in opposition to a government dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiism, is increasingly unpredictable and dangerous because it is aggravating sectarian tensions beyond its borders in a region already shaken by religious and ethnic divisions.
For many in the region, the fight in Syria is less about liberating a people under dictatorship than it is about power and self-interest. Syria is drawing in sectarian forces from its neighbors, and threatening to spill its conflict into a wider conflagration. There have already been sparks in neighboring Lebanon, where Sunnis and Alawites have skirmished.
And in Iraq, where Shiites are a majority, the events across the border have put the nation on edge while hardening a sectarian schism. Iraq’s Shiites are now lined up on the side of a Baathist dictatorship in Syria, less than a decade after the American invasion of Iraq toppled the rule of Saddam Hussein and his own Baath Party, which for decades had repressed and brutalized the Shiites.
The paradox, of Shiites supporting a Baathist dictator next door, has laid bare a tenet of the old power structure that for so long helped preserve the Middle East’s strongmen. Minorities often remained loyal and pliant and in exchange were given room to carve out communities, even if they were more broadly discriminated against.
As dictators have fallen in neighboring countries, religious and ethnic identities and alliances have only hardened, while notions of citizenship remain slow to take hold.
Syria’s minorities have the example of Iraq in considering their own future, should the Assad government fall: Assyrian Christians, Yazidis and others were brutally persecuted by insurgents. In Egypt, where a similar paradigm was toppled with the long-serving dictator Hosni Mubarak, Christians have experienced more sectarian violence, increasing political marginalization and a growing link between Islamic identity and citizenship.
New Constitution Approved As Troops Pursue Rebels
On Feb. 27, 2012, the Syrian government announced that nearly 90 percent of voters in a referendum had approved a new Constitution. But Western leaders labeled the referendum a farce. In a bulletin across the bottom of the screen on state television, the ministry said 89 percent of the voters, or nearly 7.5 million of the 8.4 million people who cast ballots, had voted in favor of the Constitution — an offer of reform that critics dismissed as too little, too late.
The new Constitution’s most important changes include ending the political monopoly of the Baath Party and introducing presidential term limits.
Those changes come with enormous caveats, however. The president would be limited to two terms of seven years each, but the clock would start only when Mr. Assad’s current term expires in 2014. That would allow him to serve two more terms and potentially to remain in office until he is 62, a total of 28 years. His father, Hafez al-Assad, ruled for 30 years until his death in 2000 at age 69.
The document also includes provisions that appear to be intended to prevent the political opposition from entering politics or winning the presidency. It requires candidates to have lived in Syria for 10 successive years and to have a Syrian-born wife, and it prohibits parties that are based on religion or ethnicity, which would bar groups like the Muslim Brotherhood or representatives of the Kurdish minority from participating.
Before the Revolt: Syria’s Foreign Policy
Under the administration of President George W. Bush, Syria was once again vilified as a dangerous pariah. It was linked to the 2005 killing of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. In 2007, Israeli jets destroyed buildings in Syria that intelligence officials said might have been the first stage in a nuclear weapons program. And the United States and its Arab allies mounted a vigorous campaign to isolate Damascus, which they accused of sowing chaos and violence throughout the Middle East through its support for militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.
President Obama came into office pledging to engage with Syria, arguing that the Bush administration’s efforts to isolate Syria had done nothing to wean it from Iran or encourage Middle East peace efforts. So far, however, the engagement has been limited. American diplomats have visited Damascus, but have reiterated the same priorities as the Bush administration: protesting Syria’s military support to Hezbollah and Hamas, and its strong ties with Iran.
Secret State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to several news organizations show that arms transactions involving Syria and Hezbollah continue to be of concern to the Obama administration. Hezbollah’s arsenal includes up to 50,000 rockets and missiles, including some 40 to 50 Fateh-110 missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv and most of Israel, and 10 Scud-D missiles.
“Syria’s determined support of Hizballah’s military build-up, particularly the steady supply of longer-range rockets and the introduction of guided missiles could change the military balance and produce a scenario significantly more destructive than the July-August 2006 war,” said a November 2009 cable from the American chargé d’affaires in Damascus.
According to cables, Syrian leaders believed that the weapons shipments increased their political leverage with the Israelis. But they made Lebanon even more of a tinderbox and increased the prospect that a future conflict might include Syria.
The Hariri Case
In August 2011, the United Nations-backed international tribunal investigating the assassination of Rafik Hariri, a former Lebanese prime minister, released the full indictment against the members of Hezbollah named in the killing.
The United States withdrew its ambassador in 2005 after Mr. Hariri was killed in a car bombing in Beirut along with 22 others. Syria was widely accused of having orchestrated the killing, though it denied involvement. The Bush administration imposed economic sanctions on Syria, as part of a broader effort to isolate the government of Mr. Assad.
Turkish Opposition to Assad
Once one of Syria’s closest allies, Turkey is hosting an armed opposition group waging an insurgency against the government of President Assad, providing shelter to the commander and dozens of members of the group, the Free Syrian Army, and allowing them to orchestrate attacks across the border from inside a camp guarded by the Turkish military.
The group is too small to pose any real challenge to Mr. Assad’s government, but support from Turkey underlines how combustible, and resilient, Syria’s uprising has proven. The country sits at the intersection of influences in the region — with Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Israel — and Turkey’s involvement is being closely watched by Syria’s friends and foes.
Turkish officials said that their government has not provided weapons or military support to the insurgent group, nor has the group directly requested such assistance.
Factions Among the Opposition
Sniping among Syrian opposition figures have begun. As they face a military machine half a million strong their lack of political unity makes it difficult for international backers to focus their support.
Even the Syrian National Council is a mixture of many factions, and Free Syrian Army officers have yet to acknowledge any particular political leadership. A Free Syrian Army commander, Col. Riad al-Assad, and other rebel officers have at times been openly critical of the Syrian National Council.
In a statement by the Syrian National Coalition, a group led by a Syrian human rights activist, Ammar Qurabi, said the council should be considered one of many factions. “Negotiating or having dialogue with any one opposition faction is against the will of the people and the Syrian revolution,” the group said.
Al Qaeda Stepping Up Its Role in the Conflict
In February 2012, American counterterrorism officials said that Sunni militants with ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq had moved into Syria to exploit the political turmoil.
By the summer, it was clear that Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists were doing their best to hijack Syria’s revolution, with a growing although still limited success that has American officials publicly concerned, and Iraqi officials next door openly alarmed.
Evidence was mounting that Syria had become a magnet for Sunni extremists, including those operating under the banner of Al Qaeda. An important border crossing with Turkey that fell into Syrian rebels’ hands in mid-July 2012, Bab al-Hawa, quickly became a jihadist congregating point.
The presence of jihadists in Syria accelerated in late July in part because of a convergence with the sectarian tensions across the country’s long border in Iraq. Al Qaeda, through an audio statement, made an undisguised bid to link its insurgency in Iraq with the revolution in Syria, depicting both as sectarian conflicts — Sunnis versus Shiites.
Since the start of the uprising, the Syrian government has sought to depict the opposition as dominated by Al Qaeda and jihadist allies, something the opposition has denied and independent observers said was not true at the time. While leaders of the opposition continue to deny any role for the extremists, Al Qaeda has helped to change the nature of the conflict, injecting the weapon it perfected in Iraq — suicide bombings — into the battle against Mr. Assad with growing frequency.
Syrian state media have routinely described every explosion as a suicide bombing — as they did with a bombing on July 18 that killed at least four high-ranking government officials. Beginning in December, analysts began seeing what many thought really were suicide bombings.
Since then, there have been at least 35 car bombings and 10 confirmed suicide bombings, 4 of which have been claimed by Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, according to data compiled by the Institute for the Study of War.
A Hostile Reception in Iraq for Syrian Refugees
Alone among Syria’s Muslim neighbors, Iraq has been resistant to receiving refugees from the conflict, and was making those who did arrive anything but comfortable. Baghdad has been worried about the fighters of a newly resurgent Al Qaeda flowing both ways across the border, and about the Sunni opponents of the two governments making common cause.
The Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, while officially neutral, has been supportive of Mr. Assad, whose ruling Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shiite Islam. In July 2012, for instance, Iraq abstained from supporting a resolution by the Arab League calling for Mr. Assad to step down, calling it unwarranted interference in Syria’s internal affairs.
Though Syrians have been fleeing the unrest in their country for months, Iraq did not open its borders to refugees until late July, after protests from the Sunni tribes in Anbar Province. The Bukamal border crossing, near Qaim, is the most problematic one for Iraq, with the Syrian side now under the control of opposition forces.
The restrictions Baghdad has imposed on refugees proved so severe that on July 27, representatives of the Anbar tribes and hundreds of followers took to the streets in the 125-degree midday heat to protest the treatment of the newly arriving Syrians, many of whom have family and tribal connections with Iraqis here.
Turkey Sends Troops to Syrian Border
There are mounting concerns in Turkey that the conflict in Syria has opened a Pandora’s Box from which an autonomous and potentially hostile Kurdish entity will emerge.
As global attention focused on events in Aleppo, Turkey sent troops, armored personnel carriers and missile batteries to the border with Syria after chunks of Syria fell into the hands of Kurdish militias.
Turkish concerns are focused on the apparent ascendancy in the region of the Democratic Union Party (P.Y.D.), a Syrian Kurdish movement regarded as an offshoot of Turkey’s banned Kurdish Workers Party (P.K.K.).
The P.Y.D. has been playing a double game in the Syrian conflict. While the country’s marginalized Kurds were generally wary of being sucked into the expanding internal war, the P.Y.D. stood accused of siding with the Assad regime by cracking down on rival Kurdish movements.
In recent weeks, Syrian forces were reported to have withdrawn from areas of Syrian Kurdistan, effectively handing them over to P.Y.D. militias who proceeded to raise the flag of their P.K.K. ally.
Although the P.Y.D. in July formally turned its back on the Assad regime by entering an agreement with rival Kurdish opposition movements, suspicion is still rife within the Kurdish camp.
Creative Commons License
I Am Syria.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
No comments:
Post a Comment