Events have not been kind to the Syrian rebels of late.
Bashar al-Asad’s* victories in Damascus and its environs and suspected use of chemical weapons were the first blows. The arms shipment from
Russia, Lebanon’s Hezbollah declaring outright military assistance to the
regime, and the continued refusal of the
West to provide meaningful aid have almost certainly spelled an end to the
rebels’ hopes of military victory. Even the lifting of an E.U. embargo on arms
to Syria does not mean that the arms will be forthcoming any time soon. The
looming question remains: even if we wanted to support the rebellion with arms,
who exactly would we give them to?
Sen. John McCain pays a surprise visit to Syrian rebels this week. Too bad for them he didn't bring any guns.
Certainly not Jabhat al-Nusra, the Al-Qaeda affiliate that
has emerged as a power player on the rebel side. Despite their odious ideology,
the Nusra Front has proved a great asset to the rebels, assisting greatly in
the battle for Aleppo. Any rebel victory would mean that the group would have a
say in Syria’s future, and if their positions thus far give any indication,
most Syrians – who have traditionally been one of the most secular societies in
the Middle East – would not like it. Aside from Jabhat Al-Nusra, a
proliferation of other extremist Islamist groups have taken control of towns
throughout Syria, as indicated in this
Crisis Group report. They, too, have had enough military successes now that the
Islamist share in a new government would be quite large.
What about the Syrian opposition’s leader, Gen. Salim Idris?
Could we funnel the weapons through him? This, too, proves a challenging
proposition. The West would have no way of knowing who the weapons were going
to, especially given the shifting loyalties of rebel fighters on the ground to
one faction or another. As the bloody conflict drags on, more and more fighters
are being radicalized or simply want to join the strongest side, and that has
been the Islamist groups. As discussed above, these groups are also
intrinsically linked to the rest of the Free Syrian Army. If the West were to
provide arms to the Free Syrian Army, it would have to accept that these groups
are part and parcel of that movement, and that one day we could regret our
decision to arm anti-American militias. Think Afghanistan, but in the dead
center of the Middle East, right across the border from Iraq.
If Western leaders find it too risky to provide arms, the
only two options left are to intervene with our own militaries, or let the
Syrians fight it out and continue attempts to reach a negotiated settlement.
The first option is not on the table. In fact, it’s so far off the table it’s
down the street hiding in the neighbor’s house hoping to never be brought to
the table. The second seems to be the most likely policy pursued by the West,
said or unsaid. The rebels have already said they will boycott upcoming peace
talks in Geneva, although Asad has committed to attending. It appears that they
either still have hope of Western assistance, or the violence has been to such
a degree that reaching an agreement with a man who slaughtered thousands of his
own people is to onerous to imagine. It is an understandable sentiment, but at
the same time a negotiated settlement might be the best option left for the
opposition. It would guarantee them a place in a new government, and perhaps
even offer the option of an exit by Asad. Otherwise, there is no telling how
many more lives will be lost, how many more people will be displaced, and how
much of a ruin Syria will be when the dust and blood settle.
The aftermath of a recent government massacre in Bayda.
The sick irony of Lebanon interfering in Syria’s conflict
less than a decade after the Syrian government pulled out of its own thirty-year-long
occupation of Lebanon should be lost on no one. Syria is becoming Lebanon circa
1975-1990. This is a good and bad thing: despite a protracted civil conflict
that dragged out for decades and spilled over into its neighbors, Lebanon’s
civil war did not cause the region to implode. Yet the degree of spillover is
might higher in the Syrian conflict. Lebanon’s civil war generated a million
refugees in 15 years. Syria reached that number in two. Its potential to ignite
a region that has already experienced so many upheavals in the last decade is
much greater than that of Lebanon.
As I write this article, I hate the words I have to say. I
loathe Bashar al-Asad. Any human being that is capable of the crimes he has
committed deserves to be in a very, very small cell for the rest of his days. I
wanted the rebels to win militarily from the outset of the conflict. If the
West had acted a year ago, six months ago even, that could still be an option.
But the hard truth is, there are no more good guys in this conflict. The rebel
side has committed atrocities of its own and has increasingly been taken over
by radicals and extremists. The “good guys” lost this civil war a long, long
time ago. It’s not an answer than anyone wants, but the West and especially the
United States chose it. We chose it by not acting. We chose it by not helping.
Now we have to live with it; that, and the blood of nearly a hundred thousand
Syrian people on our already very unclean hands. Unfortunately, the only
outcome of this civil war appears to be the maintenance in power of a dictator,
a proliferation of extremism, and millions of Syrians whose lives have
unalterably changed for the worse. Faced with these facts, I can’t help but
ask, what was it all for?
*Since I’ve been getting a lot of comments on this spelling,
I believe I owe the readers an explanation. In Arabic, Assad indicates an
actual doubling of the “s” sound, marked by a symbol known as a “shadda.” There
is no “shadda” on Asad’s name, meaning that it is pronounced without the
doubling of the “s.” Therefore, the proper transliteration is “Asad” with one
“s.” BOOM four years of Arabic! Now you can go forth with that knowledge and feel superior about it.
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