Older blog<\/a> 4 October, 2011<\/p>\n\n\n\n\nIt\n has been almost seven months since the beginning of the Syrian uprising\n and no solution is visible in the future. Being the cynic that I am, I \nwould go as far as saying that the revolt had since the beginning all \nthe elements for its slow pace and deadlock status of today. As a child \nof Syria, I am certainly proud of the achievements of this collective \nendeavor; because breaking fear barrier and taking on a brutal \ndictatorship like that of the Assad dynasty is no less a miracle than \nthe fall of Saddam Hussein without the intervention of a superpower. It \nis exactly this observation that makes the impasse of the Syrian revolt,\n for many observers knew it, and many Syrians have just come to know it,\n that dislodging the dictator and his cronies from power needs a \nconsiderable military force. The gap of about ten to fifteen years \nbetween the eighties generation and the nineties generation can actually\n explain the rashness of decision that characterized the beginning of \nthis revolt
\n I\n am wholeheartedly with the revolt and will continue supporting it until\n its conclusion whatever it may be; but this moral and militant decision\n should not obscure the vision of the critical historian I claim to be. \nIf the study of history does not make you emotionally stoic and \nintellectually cynical, then, in my opinion, you should reevaluate your \nbias or discover it if you were not initially aware of its existence. \nNot that the historian can ever be immune of it, but he\/she can at least\n be aware of its approximate magnitude. What does that \u201canalytical \nfrigidness\u201d imply in terms of understanding the current situation and \npredicting the future is the subject of this short essay.
\n Consider\n it venting, or consider it pessimism, or even analytical frigidness, \none must say that the Syrian revolt today is at an impasse. As much as \nit pains me to say that, but it will be of no surprise to me that the \nresolution of this conflict, be it in favor of the protesters or against\n them, take several years. This impasse was possible to predict since \nthe third week of the revolt because both sides pushed the conflict to a\n point of no-return, and because both sides did not have the means to \nbreak the other thus bringing the conflict to an end. The protesters \nbrought the revolt to that point by their boldness, while the regime \ncontributed to that push by its insensible brutality and its utter \nimmaturity in managing the challenges. Once the protesters defied the \narrogance of a leading clique born into absolute and uncontested \nlordship over their population they knew far too well that halting the \nmovement and the streams of demonstrators would spell their certain \ndeath. Not only the leaders of the local coordination groups, but every \nsingle protester who took to the streets and was filmed by the \ngovernment spies knew that going home meant years of imprisonment and \nsevere torture before a certain death in the regime\u2019s notorious \ndungeons. A regime that never in its long life tolerated the slightest \ndissent was not going to be trusted this time. It is this exact \ninflexibility that the regime was not going to abandon at any price, for\n in its own mind that tool was tried and proven to be effective over a \nperiod of forty years. The leading clique, and its gigantic security \napparatus, cannot imagine a world where it is not in absolute control, \nwhere it does not have an unchallenged imperium, and where it does not \nhave the powers of a medieval monarch over a population of sheepish \nsubjects.
\n At\n the material level, the protesters do not possess the fighting power to\n topple a regime that always saw itself in military terms and knows \nnothing but using force to solve any problem. Despite some minor \nattempts at theorizing pacifism, the Syrian revolt is, until now at \nleast, pacifist for lack of any other alternative. I am not mocking the \nuntold numbers of activists who courageously met their death while \nfirmly and genuinely believing in some sort of pacifism (absolute and \nunyielding pacifism or tactical and temporary pacifism). I am simply \nsaying that in the absence of any repositioning of the military vis-\u00e0-vis<\/em>\n its civilian leadership, and despite the slow but steady bleeding of \nthe army at the rank and file level, I do not see any end to the \nconflict in the foreseeable future. If the protesters, by choice or by \ndefault, do not possess the means to end the conflict, the regime as \nwell does not have the right combination of means to end it. The \ndisproportionate use of violence that we see today from the regime\u2019s \nside barely adds up to a statistical significance if seen in comparison \nwith the formidable fire power that the Syrian army possesses. It is \ncertainly not a fire power strong enough to pose a threat to any \nregional power, but strong enough to annihilate half of the Syrian \npeople and keep them in check for the next fifty years. Of its 4000 \ntanks the regime has used a couple of hundreds. Of its 500 jet fighters \nthe regime has used none. Of its thousands of artillery, fixed, towed, \nor carried, the regime has used none. Of its hundreds of field \nhelicopters it has only used a few. The equipment most used and deployed\n is the armored infantry vehicle, the so called BMP 1. Based on the \nvideos posted by activists on the web, I estimate that the regime have \nused about a thousand of these vehicles. While Assad the father had no \nproblem shelling an entire city with heavy artillery in 1982 thus \nkilling more than twenty five thousand civilians, Assad the son seems \nvery reluctant to commit such an atrocity. The son has always focused on\n the opinion of the international community, and seems to be still \nworking with the same mindset. Not that he lacks the guts to kill as \nmany people as his father did, but he seems to be obsessed with the \nquestion of legitimacy of such a move in international eyes. He is \nconvinced that a sectarian war such as started in the late 70s by the \nMuslim Brotherhood should give him enough legitimacy to outdo his \nfather. For those who complained about having a young and inexperienced \npresident, I say it turned out to be a blessing.
\n In\n fact this is not the only reason for Assad\u2019s inability to use his \narmy\u2019s full force to crush this revolt. He simply does not have the same\n loyal army that his father did have, and does not have the same loyal \ncivilian base that his father did also have. Ten years of unbridled \none-person liberalization (I mean his cousin Rami Makhlouf) of the \neconomy has stripped the Baath party of its most loyal supporters, i.e. \nthe peasantry and their sons who served in the army. Assad is simply \nincapable of moving entire divisions of his impoverished and resentful \narmy. In addition, Clientelism and favoritism, whether to Alawites or \nothers, has destroyed any loyalty to the person of the president such as\n his father built posing as the savior of minorities and peasants. The \ntwo gigantic welfare establishments, i.e. the party and the army, that \nAssad the father used to distribute favors and gain loyalty in return \ngave way under the son to savage liberalism and even more savage \nsecurity apparatus. For a country that doubled its population in the \npast twenty years there is simply not enough favors to go around. In \nfact, Assad\u2019s push for sectarian strife between a supposed base of \nAlawites and a supposed Sunni revolt is probably his best bet at winning\n the war (for him it is definitely a war). But this sectarian war is yet\n to happen and may never happen. Despite all the doom and gloom \ncontinuously reported by the NY Times\u2019 Anthony Shadid from the city of \nHoms, this much feared sectarian war is probably too feared to happen.
\n Certainly\n neither micro nor macro management but two important practical \nconsiderations prevented the Syrian revolt from mutating into a full \nblown sectarian war: one is the striking imbalance of force between the \nregime and the protestors; another is the freshness of the memory of the\n terrifying Lebanese and Iraqi examples. Many said that the Syrian \nrevolt is paying the price of its unfortunate timing during a period \nwhen the NATO intervention in Libya looked like another Middle Eastern \nquagmire. However, looking at the full half of the glass, we can \nconfidently say that if we extend our observational period three or four\n years to include the Iraqi civil war we can see how fortunate the \ntiming of the Syrian revolt is. Describing the timing of killing \ninnocent civilians as fortunate is certainly analytical frigidness, but \nwhen we can imagine that a tough case like the Syrian one can be solved \nat the price of twenty thousand deaths instead of the two hundred \nthousand deaths of the Iraqi civil war, we are plenty justified for \ncounting our blessings. This being said, the bloodshed, albeit at a low \nrate (compared to that of a civil war), will continue for the next \nmonths or even year before a drastic event or an accumulation of \nincremental changes could push the Syrian situation out of the impasse; \nin which direction it is hard to tell so I can leave it to my heart to \nbelieve in whatever pleases it. That is my only solace these days.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local","wpcat-9-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230,"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions\/230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}