The Impasse of the Syrian Revolt

Sharing is caring!

Older blog 4 October, 2011

It has been almost seven months since the beginning of the Syrian uprising and no solution is visible in the future. Being the cynic that I am, I would go as far as saying that the revolt had since the beginning all the elements for its slow pace and deadlock status of today. As a child of Syria, I am certainly proud of the achievements of this collective endeavor; because breaking fear barrier and taking on a brutal dictatorship like that of the Assad dynasty is no less a miracle than the fall of Saddam Hussein without the intervention of a superpower. It is exactly this observation that makes the impasse of the Syrian revolt, for many observers knew it, and many Syrians have just come to know it, that dislodging the dictator and his cronies from power needs a considerable military force. The gap of about ten to fifteen years between the eighties generation and the nineties generation can actually explain the rashness of decision that characterized the beginning of this revolt
I am wholeheartedly with the revolt and will continue supporting it until its conclusion whatever it may be; but this moral and militant decision should not obscure the vision of the critical historian I claim to be. If the study of history does not make you emotionally stoic and intellectually cynical, then, in my opinion, you should reevaluate your bias or discover it if you were not initially aware of its existence. Not that the historian can ever be immune of it, but he/she can at least be aware of its approximate magnitude. What does that “analytical frigidness” imply in terms of understanding the current situation and predicting the future is the subject of this short essay.
Consider it venting, or consider it pessimism, or even analytical frigidness, one must say that the Syrian revolt today is at an impasse. As much as it pains me to say that, but it will be of no surprise to me that the resolution of this conflict, be it in favor of the protesters or against them, take several years. This impasse was possible to predict since the third week of the revolt because both sides pushed the conflict to a point of no-return, and because both sides did not have the means to break the other thus bringing the conflict to an end. The protesters brought the revolt to that point by their boldness, while the regime contributed to that push by its insensible brutality and its utter immaturity in managing the challenges. Once the protesters defied the arrogance of a leading clique born into absolute and uncontested lordship over their population they knew far too well that halting the movement and the streams of demonstrators would spell their certain death. Not only the leaders of the local coordination groups, but every single protester who took to the streets and was filmed by the government spies knew that going home meant years of imprisonment and severe torture before a certain death in the regime’s notorious dungeons. A regime that never in its long life tolerated the slightest dissent was not going to be trusted this time. It is this exact inflexibility that the regime was not going to abandon at any price, for in its own mind that tool was tried and proven to be effective over a period of forty years. The leading clique, and its gigantic security apparatus, cannot imagine a world where it is not in absolute control, where it does not have an unchallenged imperium, and where it does not have the powers of a medieval monarch over a population of sheepish subjects.
At the material level, the protesters do not possess the fighting power to topple a regime that always saw itself in military terms and knows nothing but using force to solve any problem. Despite some minor attempts at theorizing pacifism, the Syrian revolt is, until now at least, pacifist for lack of any other alternative. I am not mocking the untold numbers of activists who courageously met their death while firmly and genuinely believing in some sort of pacifism (absolute and unyielding pacifism or tactical and temporary pacifism). I am simply saying that in the absence of any repositioning of the military vis-à-vis its civilian leadership, and despite the slow but steady bleeding of the army at the rank and file level, I do not see any end to the conflict in the foreseeable future. If the protesters, by choice or by default, do not possess the means to end the conflict, the regime as well does not have the right combination of means to end it. The disproportionate use of violence that we see today from the regime’s side barely adds up to a statistical significance if seen in comparison with the formidable fire power that the Syrian army possesses. It is certainly not a fire power strong enough to pose a threat to any regional power, but strong enough to annihilate half of the Syrian people and keep them in check for the next fifty years. Of its 4000 tanks the regime has used a couple of hundreds. Of its 500 jet fighters the regime has used none. Of its thousands of artillery, fixed, towed, or carried, the regime has used none. Of its hundreds of field helicopters it has only used a few. The equipment most used and deployed is the armored infantry vehicle, the so called BMP 1. Based on the videos posted by activists on the web, I estimate that the regime have used about a thousand of these vehicles. While Assad the father had no problem shelling an entire city with heavy artillery in 1982 thus killing more than twenty five thousand civilians, Assad the son seems very reluctant to commit such an atrocity. The son has always focused on the opinion of the international community, and seems to be still working with the same mindset. Not that he lacks the guts to kill as many people as his father did, but he seems to be obsessed with the question of legitimacy of such a move in international eyes. He is convinced that a sectarian war such as started in the late 70s by the Muslim Brotherhood should give him enough legitimacy to outdo his father. For those who complained about having a young and inexperienced president, I say it turned out to be a blessing.
In fact this is not the only reason for Assad’s inability to use his army’s full force to crush this revolt. He simply does not have the same loyal army that his father did have, and does not have the same loyal civilian base that his father did also have. Ten years of unbridled one-person liberalization (I mean his cousin Rami Makhlouf) of the economy has stripped the Baath party of its most loyal supporters, i.e. the peasantry and their sons who served in the army. Assad is simply incapable of moving entire divisions of his impoverished and resentful army. In addition, Clientelism and favoritism, whether to Alawites or others, has destroyed any loyalty to the person of the president such as his father built posing as the savior of minorities and peasants. The two gigantic welfare establishments, i.e. the party and the army, that Assad the father used to distribute favors and gain loyalty in return gave way under the son to savage liberalism and even more savage security apparatus. For a country that doubled its population in the past twenty years there is simply not enough favors to go around. In fact, Assad’s push for sectarian strife between a supposed base of Alawites and a supposed Sunni revolt is probably his best bet at winning the war (for him it is definitely a war). But this sectarian war is yet to happen and may never happen. Despite all the doom and gloom continuously reported by the NY Times’ Anthony Shadid from the city of Homs, this much feared sectarian war is probably too feared to happen.
Certainly neither micro nor macro management but two important practical considerations prevented the Syrian revolt from mutating into a full blown sectarian war: one is the striking imbalance of force between the regime and the protestors; another is the freshness of the memory of the terrifying Lebanese and Iraqi examples. Many said that the Syrian revolt is paying the price of its unfortunate timing during a period when the NATO intervention in Libya looked like another Middle Eastern quagmire. However, looking at the full half of the glass, we can confidently say that if we extend our observational period three or four years to include the Iraqi civil war we can see how fortunate the timing of the Syrian revolt is. Describing the timing of killing innocent civilians as fortunate is certainly analytical frigidness, but when we can imagine that a tough case like the Syrian one can be solved at the price of twenty thousand deaths instead of the two hundred thousand deaths of the Iraqi civil war, we are plenty justified for counting our blessings. This being said, the bloodshed, albeit at a low rate (compared to that of a civil war), will continue for the next months or even year before a drastic event or an accumulation of incremental changes could push the Syrian situation out of the impasse; in which direction it is hard to tell so I can leave it to my heart to believe in whatever pleases it. That is my only solace these days.