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Robert Fisk: Syria is used to the slings and arrows of friends and
enemies
Bashar al-Assad is clinging to power despite the slow growth of a
civil war. But if the regime should survive, what sort of country will
it rule?
Robert Fisk
Wednesday 01 February 2012
The violence grows worse. The Arab League throws up its hands in
despair. Madame Clinton may huff and puff at the United Nations. But
the Syrian regime and the stalwarts of the old Baath party don't
budge. Only the Arabs are unsurprised. For Syria - the "Um al-Arabia
wahida", the Mother of One Arab People, as the Baathists would have it
- is a tough creature, its rulers among the most tenacious in the
Middle East, used to the slings and arrows of their friends as well as
their enemies. Syria's "No" to anything but total Israeli withdrawal
from the Golan Heights in return for peace is almost as famous as De
Gaulle's "No" to British entry to the European Union.
True, the Syrian regime has never confronted opposition on such a
scale. If the fatalities do not yet come close to the 10 or 20
thousand dead of the 1982 Hama uprising, which old Hafez al-Assad
crushed with his customary ruthlessness, the widespread nature of
today's rebellion, the defections from the Syrian army, the loss of
all but one Arab ally - little Lebanon, of course - and the slow
growth of a civil war make this the most dangerous moment in Syria's
post-independence history. How can Bashar al-Assad hang on?
Well, there's Russia, of course, and the Putin-Medvedev determination
not to be caught out by the West at the United Nations as they were
when they failed to oppose the no-fly zones over Libya that led
directly to Gaddafi's collapse. And there's Iran, for which Syria
remains the Arab bridgehead. And Iranian suspicion that Syria is under
international attack principally because of this alliance may well be
correct. Strike down Baathist Syria and its Alawi-Shia President, and
you cut deep into the soul of Iran itself. And there's Israel, which
utters scarcely a word about Syria because it fears that a far more
intransigent regime might take its place.
But Syria is also a symbol. In Arab eyes, it alone defied the West in
refusing an unjust peace in the Middle East. Alone, it refused Anwar
Sadat's peace with Israel. Alone, it turned its back on Yasser Arafat
after his doomed agreement for "peace" with Israel. And historically,
Syria alone defied its French occupiers in 1920 and then again in 1946
until its Damascus parliament was burned down over the heads of its
defenders. And while many Lebanese choose to forget their own history,
it remains a fact that after the First World War, most Lebanese wished
their land to remain part of Syria - see the results of the King-Crane
commission - rather than live in a separate nation under French
patronage.
And far from being a state based on expansion, as America likes to
claim, Syria has steadily lost territory. It lost Lebanon to French
machinations. It lost Alexandretta in 1939 when the French handed it
over to Turkey after a fraudulent referendum in the vain hope that the
Turks would join the Allied alliance against Hitler. And it lost Golan
to Israel in 1967. For Syria as a nation - rather than a regime -
there is much sympathy as well as respect in the Arab world. Bashar
al-Assad - neither a toady like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak nor mad like
Libya's Gaddafi - knows all this.
But Baathism is not "Arabism", however much its supporters may claim
the opposite. Decades of stability did not rid Syria of corruption. It
fostered dictatorship along the same, dull rules which the Arabs
tolerated for so many years: better autocracy than anarchy, better
peace than freedom, albeit controlled by a Shia minority, better
secular than sectarian. Why, if any Syrian wanted to see the results
of a confessional state, they had only to look at the civil war in
Lebanon.
With embarrassment, I look back now to that terrible conflict and the
cruel words I wrote so many years ago; that one day, after years of
Syrian military "peacekeepers" in Lebanon, the Lebanese army may be
asked to fulfil the role of "peacekeepers" in Syria. At the time, it
was a wicked joke. Not now, perhaps. Indeed, a Lebanese peace force in
Syria - where all of Lebanon's communities (Sunni, Shia, Christian
Maronite, Orthodox, Druze, Armenian) are represented - might just be
one way of damping down the civil conflict there. A supreme irony,
perhaps, after the 1976-2005 Syrian army's presence in Lebanon. An
impossibility, of course. But it shows the nature of political change
in the Middle East.
In reality, the Syrian government is likely to fight on alone. It
always has. The Assad father-and-son doctrine has always been one of
patience. Hold on tight - however great the condemnation by the rest
of the world, however terrible the threats from Israel or America -
and eventually the wheel of fortune will turn once more in your
favour.
The awful carnage in Homs and the rest of Syria, the beheadings and
the torture, however, suggest that Assad rule really is running out of
time. Syria's people are dying just as the people of Egypt and Libya
and Yemen have died, because they want the dignity of governing
themselves. Their own battle is already infecting the sectarian
divisions in northern Lebanon and they exist inside the Lebanese
parliament, although this will not be the Syrian government's primary
concern.
Robert Fisk: Syria is used to the slings and arrows of friends and
enemies
Bashar al-Assad is clinging to power despite the slow growth of a
civil war. But if the regime should survive, what sort of country will
it rule?
Robert Fisk
Wednesday 01 February 2012
The violence grows worse. The Arab League throws up its hands in
despair. Madame Clinton may huff and puff at the United Nations. But
the Syrian regime and the stalwarts of the old Baath party don't
budge. Only the Arabs are unsurprised. For Syria - the "Um al-Arabia
wahida", the Mother of One Arab People, as the Baathists would have it
- is a tough creature, its rulers among the most tenacious in the
Middle East, used to the slings and arrows of their friends as well as
their enemies. Syria's "No" to anything but total Israeli withdrawal
from the Golan Heights in return for peace is almost as famous as De
Gaulle's "No" to British entry to the European Union.
True, the Syrian regime has never confronted opposition on such a
scale. If the fatalities do not yet come close to the 10 or 20
thousand dead of the 1982 Hama uprising, which old Hafez al-Assad
crushed with his customary ruthlessness, the widespread nature of
today's rebellion, the defections from the Syrian army, the loss of
all but one Arab ally - little Lebanon, of course - and the slow
growth of a civil war make this the most dangerous moment in Syria's
post-independence history. How can Bashar al-Assad hang on?
Well, there's Russia, of course, and the Putin-Medvedev determination
not to be caught out by the West at the United Nations as they were
when they failed to oppose the no-fly zones over Libya that led
directly to Gaddafi's collapse. And there's Iran, for which Syria
remains the Arab bridgehead. And Iranian suspicion that Syria is under
international attack principally because of this alliance may well be
correct. Strike down Baathist Syria and its Alawi-Shia President, and
you cut deep into the soul of Iran itself. And there's Israel, which
utters scarcely a word about Syria because it fears that a far more
intransigent regime might take its place.
But Syria is also a symbol. In Arab eyes, it alone defied the West in
refusing an unjust peace in the Middle East. Alone, it refused Anwar
Sadat's peace with Israel. Alone, it turned its back on Yasser Arafat
after his doomed agreement for "peace" with Israel. And historically,
Syria alone defied its French occupiers in 1920 and then again in 1946
until its Damascus parliament was burned down over the heads of its
defenders. And while many Lebanese choose to forget their own history,
it remains a fact that after the First World War, most Lebanese wished
their land to remain part of Syria - see the results of the King-Crane
commission - rather than live in a separate nation under French
patronage.
And far from being a state based on expansion, as America likes to
claim, Syria has steadily lost territory. It lost Lebanon to French
machinations. It lost Alexandretta in 1939 when the French handed it
over to Turkey after a fraudulent referendum in the vain hope that the
Turks would join the Allied alliance against Hitler. And it lost Golan
to Israel in 1967. For Syria as a nation - rather than a regime -
there is much sympathy as well as respect in the Arab world. Bashar
al-Assad - neither a toady like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak nor mad like
Libya's Gaddafi - knows all this.
But Baathism is not "Arabism", however much its supporters may claim
the opposite. Decades of stability did not rid Syria of corruption. It
fostered dictatorship along the same, dull rules which the Arabs
tolerated for so many years: better autocracy than anarchy, better
peace than freedom, albeit controlled by a Shia minority, better
secular than sectarian. Why, if any Syrian wanted to see the results
of a confessional state, they had only to look at the civil war in
Lebanon.
With embarrassment, I look back now to that terrible conflict and the
cruel words I wrote so many years ago; that one day, after years of
Syrian military "peacekeepers" in Lebanon, the Lebanese army may be
asked to fulfil the role of "peacekeepers" in Syria. At the time, it
was a wicked joke. Not now, perhaps. Indeed, a Lebanese peace force in
Syria - where all of Lebanon's communities (Sunni, Shia, Christian
Maronite, Orthodox, Druze, Armenian) are represented - might just be
one way of damping down the civil conflict there. A supreme irony,
perhaps, after the 1976-2005 Syrian army's presence in Lebanon. An
impossibility, of course. But it shows the nature of political change
in the Middle East.
In reality, the Syrian government is likely to fight on alone. It
always has. The Assad father-and-son doctrine has always been one of
patience. Hold on tight - however great the condemnation by the rest
of the world, however terrible the threats from Israel or America -
and eventually the wheel of fortune will turn once more in your
favour.
The awful carnage in Homs and the rest of Syria, the beheadings and
the torture, however, suggest that Assad rule really is running out of
time. Syria's people are dying just as the people of Egypt and Libya
and Yemen have died, because they want the dignity of governing
themselves. Their own battle is already infecting the sectarian
divisions in northern Lebanon and they exist inside the Lebanese
parliament, although this will not be the Syrian government's primary
concern.