SYRIA AND THE POLITICAL STRUGGLE FOR INFLUENCE IN THE REGION

The Syrian conflict has already spilled over to its neighbours. There are approximately 1.6 million registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, and Egypt and military operations have already spread beyond Syria’s borders into Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Israel.

The fact that the Syrian conflict has taken on a sectarian dimension has had serious effects on Lebanon, whose political system depends on a fragile balance among Shi‘is, Sunnis, and Christians. As the self-proclaimed protector of Lebanon’s Shi‘i community, Hizbullah has sided with the Syrian government, which has been an important ally and which, it claims, is fighting militant Sunni Islamists. Hizbullah has expanded its influence throughout eastern Lebanon, even into areas that are predominantly Sunni. For their part, Lebanese Sunnis resent the Syrian regime for its repression of the community during Syria’s thirty-year occupation of Lebanon and blame Syria for the assassination of Lebanon’s Sunni prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, in 2005.

What is actually going on is not a religious struggle; it is an old-fashioned political struggle for influence in the region between Iran and its allies, on the one hand, and Saudi Arabia and its allies, on the other. Syria has been allied with Iran since the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War, when it became the only Arab country to side with Iran. Its reasons for doing so were not religious, but geo-strategic: by being the only country which sided with Iran, Syria’s importance in the region increased dramatically, as Iran did everything in its power to maintain the alliance, from selling Syria discounted oil to forgiving Syrian debt, the Arab states did everything in their power to attract Syria to their side, including paying for Syria’s Lebanon adventure. With the emergence of Hizbullah in Lebanon in roughly the same period, Iran found that it could extend its influence even further. Saudi Arabia, along with its allies, views toppling the Syrian government as a means of diminishing Iran’s influence in the region and hence enhancing its own.

There are a number of reasons why this fight for dominance is taking place now. To be sure, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the outbreak of the Arab uprisings in 2010 upset the previously-existing balance of power in the region, and Iran hastened to use the opportunity to increase its power as Saudi Arabia attempted to defend its position and that of its allies and even push back against Iran. In the background, however, was the perception that the United States was no longer the power in the Middle East it once was and that it was unreliable as an ally. For Iran, this meant that regional powers could take advantage of America’s diminished role. For Saudi Arabia, this meant that it had to step in to fill in for the United States.

There is little to no chance that Bashar al-Assad will step aside. The reason has to do with the nature of the regime: Before the 1970s, Syria was the most unstable government in the Arab world. It had experienced ten coups d’état since independence in 1946. After Hafez al-Assad took over, there were none. The reason is that Assad effectively “coup-proofed” Syria by restructuring the regime. He brought members of his family and members of his sect (Alawites) into key positions in the government (along with members of other minority communities) and created multiple and overlapping security agencies and military commands. He also outsourced much of the repression to hoodlums (ashbah) who hailed from his sect and home region. When Bashar al-Assad took power in 2000, he retained this structure. As a result, one part of the regime cannot turn on another, as had happened in Egypt and Tunisia during their uprisings, nor will the regime fragment, as had happened in Libya and Yemen during theirs. Members of the regime realize that if they don’t stick together they will all die. The opposition also fears the consequences should they lose. For them, there is no difference between the regime with Assad and the regime without Assad—it’s the same regime. Hence, the Syrian conflict is a fight to the death.
 

Perhaps the greatest concern for the West when considering whether or not to send military support to the rebels has to do with the composition of the opposition. Amongst the opposition are a number of groups that are unsavory, to say the least, including both local jihadi groups and groups of foreign jihadis. The most famous of these groups is the Jabhat al-Nusra, which, depending on the source, might have merged with al-Qaeda’s Iraq affiliate to form the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. At first, there was another reason, however: except for the Iranian and Hizbullah alliances, the United States was not all that hostile to the Syrian regime. As a matter of fact, in spite of its bluster, the Assad government was actually quite moderate on the Israel question: It not only kept its border with Israel quiet since 1973, it was engaged in peace negotiations with Israel up through the outbreak of the Syrian conflict.