The Syrian vortex

FOUR years ago, soon after the uprising in Syria had begun, I met a young American diplomat in New York while on my book promotion tour. He had just spent some months in the Middle East, polishing his Arabic and studying the region at first hand before his first posting.

In those heady days of the Arab Spring, I was naive enough to expect Arab dictators, decadent emirs and kings to be toppled soon, following the Tunisian example. But the young diplomat disagreed, saying he expected Bashar al-Assad to hang on for quite a bit longer.

Four years later, the Arab Spring has been killed off by the Saudi-led counter-revolution, while Assad is still in power, albeit precariously. As time goes on, more and more states are getting involved in the Syrian tragedy unfolding before our eyes. Some want to see the end of Assad, while others, like the United States, are more interested in destroying the self-styled Islamic State. And still others like Saudi Arabia want to topple the minority, secular Alawite regime and replace it with a Sunni leadership more amenable to instructions from Riyadh.

Into this maelstrom of conflicting interests and ambitions, enter Russia with its own agenda of propping up the Assad government. While it seeks to protect its Mediterranean base at Tartus, its basic aim is to keep the Syrian president in power. As Putin has argued repeatedly, when dictators are toppled, as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qadhafi and Hosni Mubarak were, what follows is almost invariably worse. In the latter case, the army is still in charge, but Egypt is teetering on the edge of civil war as Islamists see themselves robbed of power after having won the election.

In a perfect world, the United States, Iran and Russia — as well as the lesser regional powers — would have coordinated their policies in Syria to supervise the elimination of IS, as well as a managed transition to more representative rule. But the Western powers, prodded by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, refuse to accept that Assad has any role in the transition.

For more detail   The Syrian vortex

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