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MEDITERRANEAN AND MIDDLE EAST SPECIAL GROUP

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Original: English

NATO Parliamentary Assembly

Developments in Syria: Security Implications for the Region and Beyond

Report

Raynell ANDREYCHUK(Canada)

Rapporteur

International Secretariat 22 October 2012

Assembly documents are available on its website,

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I.INTRODUCTION

II.SYRIA’S POLITICAL ORDER AND INBUILT TENSIONS

A.SYRIA’S SLOW SLIDE INTO CIVIL WAR

B.OPPOSITION FORCES IN SYRIA

III.SYRIA, IRAN AND THE REGIONAL SECURITY EQUATION

IV.INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY

V.CONCLUSIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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I.Introduction

  1. The tragic crisis in Syria has now endured for nearly two years. Theregime’s refusal to broker any dissent, to engage the international community in an honest fashion, and to conduct a genuine dialogue with the opposition has triggered a vicious cycle of violence and repression, with resistance to the regime growing ever more pervasive.This only radicalised some elements of an opposition that the West is still struggling to understand and to engage.
  1. The crackdown has also isolated the regime internationally, although it continues to enjoy support from Iran, Russia and China. The support of the latter two countries for the al-Assad regime contrasts sharply with Western condemnation of the horrific crackdown it has unleashed. A common position on Syria has so far eluded the UN Security Council, even though all its membersclaim that the goal must be to stem the violence and prevent the situation from evolving into a regional war. Although the Security Council endorsed Kofi Annan’s efforts tolay the grounds for a political settlement, Annan ultimately resigned his position out of frustration with the unwillingness of the parties to compromise. Lakhdar Brahimi,a highly experienced Algerian diplomat, has replaced Annan and has just conducted his first set of meetings in Damascus. His task will be enormously difficult, but his effort is extremely important.
  1. The Syrian government now confronts a classic insurgency; a kind of military stand-off has emerged in which the government can exploit significant advantages in equipment to seize territory occupied by the opposition but then confronts grave difficulties holding terrain because its forces are spread so thin and confront growing constraints on their mobility due to the increasing effectiveness of that insurgency. The al-Assad regimeclaims that it is defending stability and fighting terrorism, while the opposition argues that the government has forfeited all vestiges of political legitimacy and is brutally suppressing the will of the people. The government and its supporters claim to see in the opposition a set of forces dedicated to conducting a sectarian rebellion and exacting revenge on those communities supporting the regime –including Alawites and Christians. In a manner not entirely dissimilar from the Balkan wars, this fear of sectarian retribution constitutes a central catalyst in this conflict.
  1. Many in that opposition feel that time is on their side but nobody can definitely say how compact that opposition actually is. It is even more difficult to assert what might transpire among the ranks of the opposition if the al-Assad government were to fall. Concerns about possible “day after” scenarios are driving much of the discussion about international approaches to Syria today. Would the overthrow of al-Assad result in a power vacuum and a certain kind of anarchy? WouldSyria descend into a war of factions, where tribal and communal loyalties take priority over national obligations? Could the international community help these groups construct coherent modalities of transition that could first be agreed and then be implemented to build a new kind of Syria? Would a successor regime possess the requisite authority to be recognised as legitimate and to hold the country together? The answers to these important questions are simply not known today.Moreover, recent experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya suggest how unpredictable Middle Eastern regime change can be. Those experiences are tempering expectations that some kind of transition to democracy is imminent if only the current conflict might somehow be settled. The challenges are far too great for that kind of facile reflection.Two things are clear, however: a catastrophe is unfolding in this strategically important country of 25 million people; and, the resulting crisis could extend well beyond Syria if a political settlement is not reached with the strong support of the international community.
  1. Events in Syria cannot be entirely divorced from international tensions with Iran.The two countries are close allies and occupy a critical role in Middle Eastern politics, both in their own right as regional powers and as a foil to Western interests in the region. The advent of the Arab Spring, however, has dramatically altered the geopolitical context in which the Iranian-Syrian axis has long operated. Popular uprisings essentially caught both regimes off guard and they have had to scramble to adjust. While Iran has so far avoided serious domestic disturbance (largely through the governments’harsh suppression of the earlier “Green Revolution”), Syria has not been able to quell inexorably rising demands for fundamental political and economic change.
  1. This report will survey recent developments in Syria and explore the implications for regional security. The first sections examine Syria’s political order and regime responses to the popular uprising. The ensuing sections assess the Syrian opposition, and the regional security implications of the Syrian uprising, particularly with regard to current and potential international responses to the crisis. The report concludes by exploring possible international and Western responses.

II.Syria’s Political Order and Inbuilt Tensions

  1. Since its independence in 1946, the Syrian Arab Republic has been compelled to manage sharp internal divisions and instability. A series of military coups in the late 1940s and 1950s undermined efforts of reformers to build a more pluralist order in that country. After 1956 various military governments ruled the country. These governments were prepared to employ harsh tactics to maintain control over a country beset by tribal, regional, ethnic and sectarian divisions. No Syrian government ever genuinely mitigated those divisions which were dealt with either throughrepression or through selective concessions in exchange for loyalty. In 1963, the Syrian Ba’ath Party, initially a pan-Arabic nationalist and secular party, seized power and established an enduring single-party system. But that regime was unstable and vulnerable to internal coups. In 1970, Hafezal-Assad imposed a harsh kind of order in Syria that endured until recently. The alAssad regime survived several failed uprisings, including aSyrian Muslim Brotherhood insurgency, which the statebrutally suppressed and ultimately defeated in 1982. It also managed to put down a palace coup in 1983-1984. Following the death of Hafez al-Assad in 2000, his son BasharalAssad assumed the reins of power and has ruled since then, although his position has grown ever more tenuous during the current crisis.
  1. Among the defining features of Syria’s political order has beena strong patronage network reinforced by a highly loyal and brutal security apparatus. As is often the case throughout the region, the ruler’slegitimacy has long been premised on a tacit “authoritarian bargain” in which the state ensured most citizens basic economic benefits in exchange for political acquiescence. The most privileged groups were also expected to furnish shock troops to defend the regime in times of internal dissent. The al-Assad familyassiduously cultivated strong clientelist relationships in which political loyalty represented an essential prerequisite to economic enrichment and political access. During the Cold War, Soviet support to Syria helped underwrite this system(Landis, 2012). The end of the Cold War reduced this important source of economic and diplomatic sustenance, although Russia continues to support Syria for reasons not altogether divergent from those of the Soviet Union.
  1. Syria’s grand political bargain- stability in exchange for acquiescence -also rendered its economy rigid, opaque, inefficient and uncertain. The economyhas been characterised by growing income inequality due to corruption and clientelism, deepening rural poverty, high youth unemployment, and inflation. Syria was slow to engage in liberal reform precisely because doing so would likelyundermine this core political bargain. So-called economic reforms in the 1990s and 2000s only further entrenched a class of well-connected elites who long exploited their ties to the regime for economic gain (Landis, 2012).
  1. Most of Syria’s leaders, including the al-Assad family, are Alawite and their minority status has infused the governing elite with a siege mentality (George, 2012). Although the great majority of Syrians are Sunni Arabs, Syria is also home to a very heterogeneous mixture of religious (Christian, Druze, Alawite) and ethnic (Kurds, Armenians, Turkmens)minorities. The actual size of each of these groups has long been a closely guarded secret precisely because these numbers could be usedto undermine the legitimacy of Alawite political hegemony.
  1. The current ruling order is certainly not all of Syria’s making.Indeed, the French mandate authorities recruited the Syrian Alawites, who constituted no more than 10% of the population, to assume the leading role in the military. By the 1950s, 65% of the Syrian army’s noncommissioned officers were from the Alawite sect and ten years later, the Alawites dominated the upper echelons of that country’s military and, for all intents and purposes, controlled the political process as well. Alawite hegemony was formalised when Hafez al-Assad launched a bloodless coup within the Ba’ath Party in 1969 and then became president in 1970 (Landis, 2012).
  1. The Alawites have since been disproportionately represented in the highest echelons of the Syrian state and, vitally, the military (Landis, 2012). The regime has relied on overlapping security forces to maintain an iron grip on the state apparatus and to complicate planning for those who might contemplate launching a coup d’état (Phillips, 2012). Alawite-controlled praetorian units and intelligence services have helped the regime to suppress dissent both within and outside of ruling circles. Non-Alawites were integrated in the military but in an essentially subordinate fashion in order to reduce the likelihood of a coup d’état initiated by Sunni military units.
  1. The regime has courted allies and clients within Syria’s other minority communities and expertly exploited their sense of vulnerabilityin order to win broader support. Syrian Christians, for example, have long supported the al-Assad regime and have been reluctantto move into opposition during the current crisis. The Constitution reflects the secular-nationalist ethos of the Ba’ath party,and thishas helped reinforce this loyalty among minorities, many of which fear the implications of majority Sunni rule (Phillips, 2012). For these groups, the recent experience of Iraq with jihadist terrorism has been instructive.
  1. Theal-Assad regime’s divide-and-rule approach has created clear “losers” in the Syrian system: Syria’s Kurds, and many Sunnis have essentially been cut out of the grand bargain and have had no vehicle to protest peacefully. In 2004, Syrian forces crushed a Kurdish uprising; and Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood engaged in a violent insurgency from 1976-1982 which triggered tragic reprisal bombings in the city of Homs and elsewhere. The elevation of Bashar al-Assad to the presidency in 2000 raised short-lived hopes of a “Damascus Spring” – but these hopes vanished once it became apparent that the son was simply a product of the system his father had fashioned.
  1. Indeed, early in his tenure, Bashar al-Assad cultivateda reformist image and also sought to win over support from elements within the Sunni community. For example, he recognised conservative Islam as a legitimate social force and accorded it a more prominent role in the Syrian order. At the same time, the regime sought to down play the separateness of the Alawite community– preferring to highlight the unifying bond of Islam rather than draw attention to the ancient Sunni-Shia divide and the pervasive view in much of the region that the Alawites represent a heretical branch of the faith. These efforts coincided with Syria’s deepening alliance with ShiaIran and Hezbollah in Lebanon(Gladstone, 2012).

A.Syria’s Slow Slide into Civil War

  1. Since March 2011, Bashar al-Assad’s regime has confronted an ever-broadening popular uprising, which began with calls for reforms that, in turn, were greeted with ever-harsher repression. Opposition calls today are for nothing short of regime change. There has thus been an important evolution in the dynamics of the uprising. What began as a set of peaceful protests in early 2011 had evolved into violent protest by late 2011. Since then, the conflict has essentially turned into a civil war, but one which has grown increasingly internationalised as both sides look to external backers for vital support and legitimacy. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has estimated that 32,895 Syrians have so far died in the violence. Half of those killed have been civilians. It is difficult, however, to ensure the precision of these estimates because of the very confused situation on the ground. Tens of thousands of Syrians have also fled the country - a phenomenon which also threatens to internationalise the conflict. Some estimates suggest that as many as 3 million people have been displaced within Syria itself.
  1. Syria’s uprising shares many of the patterns of the broader Arab Awakening: long-standing socio-economic grievances, the failure of theregime to respond to legitimate demands and the emergence of cross-societal and non-sectarian opposition movements were all present early on. In Syria, however, the pace of protest gathered more slowly than in Tunisia and Egypt, and the opposition was more fragmented. Before March 2011, there had been very few demonstrations; but accumulated grievances coupled with the dramatic events unfolding in Tunis and Cairo ultimately encouraged disillusioned Syrians to take to the streets to press their demands.
  1. In Daraa, small-scale protests spiralled into large demonstrations after a harsh government crackdown. That response thus helped transform complaints about local conditions into a broader movement making more fundamental political demands (International Crisis Group, 2011a). Regime opponents capitalised on social networks to share photos and videos of the brutalities meted out by the regime’s security force. This bred indignation and anger and helped spark new protests in an ever-widening area [Baniyas, Homs, Hama, Latakia, Damascus and Aleppo which at the time of writing has become the very centre of the conflict between the military and the Free Syrian Army (FSA)].
  1. Because of the harsh security response and the regime’s implicit willingness to sanction the murder of its opponents, the numbers of street protestors in Syria never reached sizes comparable to those in Tunis or Cairo. The regime was initially able to deny the protesters key symbolic public spaces in Damascus and elsewhere so as not to appear to be ceding legitimacy to regime opponents. Now that the fighting war has spread to Damascus and Aleppo, the government can no longer claim that the situation is under control or that its forces fully control the country’s territory.
  1. In many respects, the Syrian regime has long prepared for the current crisis and had been structured purposefully to cope with an uprising. Its first line of defence was to pre-empt discontent by extending benefits and presenting a more open attitude towards reforms (International Crisis Group, 2011a). After the initial protests, Assad held out the possibility of reform and enacted several essentially symbolic policy changes. The government lifted a longstanding Emergency Law, although its acolytes continued to shoot at protestors. It courted conservative Islamists by closing Syria’s only casino and relaxing a ban on veils in schools. Nonetheless, al-Assad made it very clear that reform would not stray into any quest for regime change. This has remained the central government line during uprisings, and the regime has used the security forces to communicate that message in the harshest manner imaginable. As suggested earlier in this paper, the regime has since killed, arrested, tortured or driven into exile thousands of its own citizens. Finally it is holding a regional ‘wild card’ as a kind of ultimate guarantee and has already hinted that it would willingly set the region ablase if it is threatened from abroad.
  1. As protests mounted, the regime sought both to contain and to delegitimise the opposition. It painted protestors as foreign schemers and dangerous Islamist fundamentalist-terrorists. Much of this was code language designed to signal to the Alawite and other minority communities that they too were now under siege from the majority Sunni community and their foreign supporters.