Is Syrian upheaval the first step to a stabler Middle East?
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Ned Temko Columnist
| London
The drama surrounding the collapse of the Assad family’s dynastic dictatorship in Syria has obscured the single most important aspect of Bashar al-Assad’s demise.
It offers a rare chance for regional powers to build not only a new Syria but a stabler Middle East. Will they take this opportunity, or will their own national interests override efforts to make common cause?
Why We Wrote This
The fall of the Assad regime in Syria offers an opportunity to build a less combustible Middle East. Will regional leaders work together toward that goal, or will they allow their narrow national interests to prevail?
Everyone knows what is at stake. Turkey, Israel, Qatar, and the United States all have their own reasons to want a stable, inclusive new government in Damascus, focused on rebuilding Syria from the horrors of the old regime and the destruction caused by years of civil war.
All want to avoid the worst-case alternative: a resurgence of ethnic tensions, infighting among anti-Assad rebels, and the prospect of jihadist groups like the Islamic State using the situation to regroup.
But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants a military hold on northern Syria and an end to the enclave held by a Kurdish militia allied with Washington. He is reportedly massing troops on the Syrian border. Israel has seized the opportunity to occupy Syrian territory in the Golan Heights area.
Donald Trump says that Syria is a “mess” and that Washington should stay out of it. But the scale of the upheaval could convince him to change his mind.
The dizzying pace of events since the collapse of Syria’s dictatorship, including daily revelations of its brutality leavened by inspiring images of celebration, has risked obscuring the single most important aspect of President Bashar al-Assad’s demise.
It has opened up a rare and unexpected opportunity for regional powers – and their most important outside ally, the United States – to help build not only a new Syria, but a stabler, less combustible Middle East.
And that has raised a question in a part of the world where opportunities have been missed more often than they have been grasped. Will regional leaders keep their eyes on that prize, and work together to try to win it?
Why We Wrote This
The fall of the Assad regime in Syria offers an opportunity to build a less combustible Middle East. Will regional leaders work together toward that goal, or will they allow their narrow national interests to prevail?
Or will their own national interests and political agendas override efforts to make common cause?
Even if they do manage to act together, a lot will have to go right inside Syria for them to succeed. Without them, the task facing Ahmed al-Sharaa, leader of the main rebel group that toppled the dictatorship, will be even harder.
The good news is that both Mr. Sharaa and the key outside powers – America, Turkey, Qatar, and Israel – know what’s at stake.
All have their own reasons to want a stable, inclusive new government in Damascus, focused on rebuilding Syria from the horrors of the old regime and the destruction caused by years of civil war.
All want to avoid the worst-case alternative: a resurgence of ethnic tensions, infighting among anti-Assad rebels, and the prospect of jihadist groups like the Islamic State (ISIS) using the situation to regroup.
Yet each outside power also has its own concerns.
Qatar and Turkey view themselves as the lead players. They wanted Mr. Assad out from the start of the civil war, and backed Mr. Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other rebel groups.
They are also well placed to help provide tools needed to rebuild the country: security ballast from Turkey, the NATO military power on Syria’s northern border, and oil millions from the Gulf.
But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also wants something else: a military hold on the north of the country, and an end to the enclave controlled by a U.S.-backed Kurdish militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which he sees as an extension of Kurdish separatist forces inside Turkey.
Turkish-backed militias have wasted no time in attacking SDF positions, and Mr. Erdoğan has reportedly been mobilizing Turkish army units along the border.
The SDF is more than America’s key ally in defeating ISIS. It now runs internment camps where some 9,000 captured ISIS fighters remain confined.
On Syria’s southern frontier, another regional military power – Israel – seems equally determined to try to shape Syria’s future.
When Mr. Assad fell, the Israelis moved their troops on the Golan Heights – captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war – across the U.N.-policed demarcation line with Syria.
Their reasoning was that with Mr. Assad’s army gone, they needed to prevent other armed groups from taking control of the dividing line.
They have since advanced further into Syrian territory and taken additional positions atop Mt. Hermon, the northern Golan peak overlooking Damascus and southern Lebanon.
Israel’s key goal, it appears, is to prevent Mr. Assad’s successors from reviving Syria as a route for arms shipments from Iran to its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.
Mr. Sharaa has said that won’t happen. But the Israelis aren’t ready, at least not yet, to take him at his word. They point out that while he broke with jihadi Islam in 2016, his political roots lie with Al Qaeda.
And what of the U.S., which has strong ties to all the key regional players?
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been playing an active role in bringing together a regional coalition seeking an orderly transition. He has stressed the need to keep Syria together, head off infighting, and empower a government that respects all the country’s ethnic and faith groups.
But President-elect Donald Trump’s initial response to Mr. Assad’s ouster was a social media post pronouncing Syria a “mess” and saying America should stay out of it.
Still, the sheer scale of the political upheaval could convince both Mr. Trump and the key regional leaders to help create a stable and inclusive new Syria.
The rarity of this opportunity also makes it precious. The closest parallel was nearly 50 years ago, when then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat jettisoned decades of enmity and abruptly announced his readiness to travel to Israel, kickstarting diplomacy that led to a peace treaty.
There are reasons for caution, too. They are perhaps best summed up in an old fable I heard when I arrived as a young correspondent in civil-war-wracked Lebanon in the 1970s.
It’s about a frog and a scorpion. The scorpion asks the frog to ferry him across the Nile, only to be told, “No! What if you sting me halfway across, and I drown?”
“Why would I do that?” the scorpion replies. “I’d drown, too!”
So the frog agrees. Halfway across, the scorpion does sting him. “Why?” the frog asks plaintively, as they sink.
The answer? Hayda ash-Sharq al-Awsat. “This is the Middle East!”
