<p>I did a search on the forum and was surprised to see that there isn’t a thread on the civil war there. It appears that Israel has fired missiles at weapons shipments from Iran in Syria from Lebanese airspace and that Syria has attacked inside Turkey (this was some time ago) and Jordan (more recently). This is weapons fire aimed at rebels near the borders of those countries. This whole thing seems messy right now - any concerns about this growing into a wider confrontation?</p>
<p>All I hope is that America stays out of it. if the rebels win they will form a government that hates America. If the existing government stays in power they will still hate America. There is no upside and only the downside of wasting even more money and possibly American lives in that region.</p>
<p>I have no concern about this growing into a bigger war. </p>
<p>Here are the main issues. Note that most of them are internal to Syria:</p>
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<li><p>Like all these Arab countries, they are divided between Sunni and Shia. Syria is almost the opposite of Iraq, where a Sunni minority ruled over a Shia majority. In Syria, the Shia - there mostly Alawite Shia - are about 12%. The rift between Sunni and Shia can lie dormant but when it gets violent it has all the worst aspects of religious wars over heresy. (The Sunni and Shia have substantially different beliefs about the nature of revelation.)</p></li>
<li><p>Most of Syria is barely inhabited so you have a kind of warfare built around roads and towns. The inhabited areas are gathered around the cities we know. Aleppo, sadly, has become the biggest battlefield. That’s a great pity because it was one of the best preserved ancient cities - not meaning to ignore the harm to people. The regime controls the area around the coast and inward to Damascus. </p></li>
<li><p>Iran backs the regime. The regime has pulled the strings in Lebanon since the Lebanese Civil War destroyed the then existing Lebanese social compact that shared power among Christians and Sunni - with the Shia largely being left alone in the southern part of Lebanon with less participation in government. Syria has effectively occupied sections of Lebanon. </p></li>
<li><p>The Syrian regime backs Hizbollah and supplies Hizbollah with arms from Iran. Hizbollah is a Shia group. They have effective control of the Lebanese power structure now. They arose less as anti-Israel group - which was more rhetorical - than as a Shia group backed by Shia Iran and the Shia rulers of Syria. Shia in Lebanon were historically poorer and excluded from power. The area from S. Lebanon through Syria into Iran has sometimes been called the “Shia Crescent”, playing on the Muslim crescent. BTW, the real winners of Israel destroying Iranian weapons are the people of Lebanon. Hizbollah has a long history of embedding its weapons among civilians. The more potent the weapon, the more necessary it is to destroy it absolutely so the more likely innocent people will be killed.</p></li>
<li><p>Israel’s interest is in stopping Iranian weapons from getting to Hizbollah. While the Syrian regime had real power, they kept a sort of lid on what Hizbollah could get. Why? Because they wanted to keep power over Hizbollah and because they wanted to avoid an actual war with Israeli in which Syria would get hammered. An actual war, unlike the 1 month of airstrikes and limited ground “incursions” of the so-called Lebanese War, is something the Assads have long avoided. They like having Hizbollah to poke at Israel but don’t want to provoke disaster.</p></li>
<li><p>There is no group pushing for this conflict to get bigger. The rebels like the Israeli strikes because they show the regime can’t protect itself. The regime can’t attack Israel: it clearly doesn’t have the capacity. There have been stories, hard to verify, that Hizbollah has at times fought with the Assad forces. My bet is that Hizbollah is trying to arm itself as much as they can both opportunistically and because they fear a Sunni regime will be openly or covertly hostile to them. </p></li>
<li><p>As an FYI, Israel has been taking in small numbers of rebel wounded. They come to the border for care. Some have been treated in Syria and the more injured have been taken to Israeli hospitals. AFAIK, they wounded have simply been treated and sent back to Syria, not held. As a further FYI, a number of people in Israel are Syrian, mostly Druse, with family on both sides of the border. I said people rather than Israelis because it’s often unclear how they view their own status though they are on the whole now Israeli citizens. I’m trying to be sensitive. There has been talk that the Druse on both sides would come together to keep the border with Israel quiet so the Druse would not be hurt. The Druse are yet another religious group, sort of Shia but not considered Shia by most Shia. They really don’t fit. I suspect Israel would support the Druse efforts to keep themselves safe. I also suspect but can’t know that most of the treated injured rebels have connections to the Druse.</p></li>
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<p>So bottom line, no. The conflict won’t widen. There is no heart for it in Syria. The Israelis have no interest in it at all. Hizbollah has no interest in it because they have no way of resupplying and no way to hide. </p>
<p>As a final note, the destruction of life and property in Syria is not only horrendous but marks the end of yet another secular Arab regime. For all of the Assads’ faults, they kept Syria relatively secular, kept a lid on Sunni-Shia fighting, and generally kept the country open to outsiders. They had (have?) an extensive security apparatus that prevented free speech and for decades kept the Syrian economy under control but the shift from Hafez to Bashir saw greater economic and thus social liberty. The Syrian economy has actually done pretty well. Women have also done better in Syria than in other Arab countries, meaning more education (and beyond simple literacy), more in the workforce, etc. The Palestinians have also done better in Syria than in Lebanon. That’s complicated but in general Palestinians in Syria, while denied citizenship even if born there - for 2 or 3 generations - are allowed to own some land and to have businesses and aren’t required to live in specific areas or camps (though the extent of that is unclear). I believe they’re allowed to use national health. Lebanon has practiced true apartheid: no citizenship, a long list of prohibited occupations, can’t own land, must rely on the UN for education and health services, etc. It wasn’t until 2 years ago that Lebanon passed a law allowing Palestinians - meaning in essence people born in Lebanon of Palestinian ancestors - to apply for work permits as foreigners. (I don’t know how well that law is working.) The fiction is that Palestinians have no state and thus aren’t due the legal rights accorded even to a foreigner.</p>
<p>I will in some ways miss the Assads. Their fall is not a lesson for democracy but I think more a lesson that you can’t have a secular regime in the Arab world.</p>
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<p>Many Arab countries don’t have sizable religious minorities and fewer still have sectarian identities that are politically charged. </p>
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<p>It’s certainly a common view in the media to think that a Sunni/Shia conflict is inevitable, i.e. “they’ve been fighting for thousands of years” etc. I think it’s difficult to argue that the Sunni/Shia conflict is about doctrinal differences, in the same way that it’s difficult to argue that the Catholic/Protestant conflict in colonial Maryland was about sola scriptura. In poor, unstable countries with a brief or no history of civil society, and a flawed one at that, there tends to be no other way to form meaningful political identities except around ethnic groups, tribes, or sects.</p>
<p>There are many periods, both modern and contemporary, in which Sunni and Shi’a lived in relative harmony. Note that there is a sizable Shi’a community in Turkey, and Yemen is 55% Sunni and 45% Shi’a but both groups equally despise the regime.</p>
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<p>Do you by any chance work in the Assad press office? :)</p>
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<p>I don’t think B follows from A in the case of Syria. I’m not so sure that social liberty counts as social liberty if it has to conform to a dictator’s particular view of it, lest the secret police show up in the middle of the night.</p>
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<p>The problem is that secular regimes in the Arab World are associated with dictators and gross human rights violations. That’s not a sustainable system and it’s entirely reasonable for a people to want to steer clear of that direction when they get the chance to choose their own destiny. It’s easy for Westeners to go to a country and see women walking in the street without hijab and they say, “look how developed they are! They’re on the way to becoming like us!” Except we don’t know if that woman is barred from wearing hijab by official decree, as in Tunisia under Ben Ali, or if meanwhile her brother and husband are being tortured for criticizing the regime.</p>
<p>Like past posts, it is difficult to discuss the political strife in Syria without be political.</p>
<p>I have no intention of arguing with Ike. </p>
<p>Read my comment about Shia and Sunni, the part you quoted: “The rift between Sunni and Shia can lie dormant but when it gets violent it has all the worst aspects of religious wars over heresy.” That is what you said. </p>
<p>To clarify the comment about liberty you bolded, I meant literally that greater economic liberalization did in fact lead to greater social liberty. This has been written about extensively inside and outside of Syria. It isn’t my idea. Bashir Assad made a choice when he took power. My guess it was motivated by the near stagnation of Syria’s economy for decades but he loosened the reins on the economy, which started to grow, and with that came more freedom of press. It was limited, yes and of course. </p>
<p>I’m a realist about the Assads. Hafez Assad killed many thousands of Syrians in the early 1980’s putting down rebellions. (Look up Homs Massacre.) Hafez also turned down a peace treaty that would have returned the Golan. Reasons are unclear but may have revolved around it being better for him and his people to keep Israel over there. There were a few “issues”, notably a few hundred yard buffer zone, but I think he was happy to get back Kuneitra and then keep the status quo. The people of the Golan, after all, are mostly Druse and the Assads may have been happy to limit their power by dividing them with a border. That’s a guess but with that subject it’s all guesses.</p>
<p>One reason I’m a realist about the Assads is that putting down rebellions in a bloody manner is unfortunately common in the Arab world. The Saudis did it and have nearly managed to hide the evidence. We think of Saudi Arabia as purely Wahhabi but they have suppressed all other strains, sometimes with violence. That country is so closed off we mostly rely on a handful of reports. I know, for example, of only one book by a Westerner that touches the subject. He was accredited as a domestic Saudi journalist and thus was able to travel without restriction.</p>
<p>As for the comments about secular regimes and dictators, the religiously run ones are also dictatorships. I would say there’s no clear pattern. It’s not like Assad has been a friend of the West. Neither was Khaddafi. People point at Mubarak and say he was too close to the West but Assad is close to Iran. I have no idea how countries would develop. Malaysia, for example, is Muslim but is modern. It isn’t democratic but it’s modern. The fundamentalists in Aceh, however, are more of the anti-modern vein, so it’s not clear even by region what can or will happen.</p>
<p>You are correct about the extent of minorities. I meant to say “in Arab countries with religious divisions” or something like that and wasn’t thinking clearly. But nearly all Arab countries - have to exclude the tiny ones - have minorities and all of those have huge problems. We know about the struggles of the Copts now in Egypt. Even the minorities in Morocco, which is at the far edge away from the religious center, have growing issues with fundamentalism, this despite a history of much greater tolerance. Even the non-Arab Muslim states have issues: The Kite Runner is about the Hazeri in Afghanistan for good reason, again Shia in a Sunni country treated like dirt and now being driven out.</p>
<p>Likewise I have no intention of personally arguing. I found your post to be thought-provoking and I hope to respond to it respectfully.</p>
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<p>To be extra nitpicky I think there’s a difference between a conflict that “lies dormant” and between a conflict that simply doesn’t exist in some locations and time periods. I don’t believe that the conflict in Iraq between certain groups of Shi’i and Sunni extremists is the same conflict, to any meaningful degree, as that of the Battle of Karbala in 680 A.D, even though nominally it can be classified as “Sunni vs Shi’a.” But this is just a question of semantics I think.</p>
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<p>I don’t deny that the public sphere was more open under Bashar al-Assad than his father, but it wasn’t to any meaningful level. Actually, for a brief period after Bashar’s succession, there was an extensive opening of the political scene referred to as the “Damascus Spring” but the progress was quickly scaled back. </p>
<p><a href=“Look%20up%20Homs%20Massacre.”>quote</a>
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<p>The massacre was in Hama, or at least the massacre in 1982 that I believe you’re referring to.</p>
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<p>Your point about Saudi Arabia is true and not widely appreciated. However, I think it’s a bit of a red herring. Massacres of tens of thousands of people on the level of the Hama Massacre are not particularly common in the Arab World, certainly not within the last 30 years. Even if they were common, I wouldn’t propose that to be a justification for them. </p>
<p>You say you’re a “realist” about Asad and I understand your reasoning; in fact it’s quite common reasoning and it’s the same reasoning the United States has employed when it supported Sadat and Mubarak. It’s the argument that values stability over human rights. Better to have some human rights curtailed when the alternative is Lord-knows-what. I just don’t think that’s an argument that Americans are willing to use to judge their own leaders, and I think that’s an argument that requires a bit of selective memory loss to consider it okay for the modern Middle East and not, say, the Weimar Republic.</p>
<p>Thanks for the discussion. I’ve learned a lot already.</p>
<p>I did mistype Homs instead of Hama. There was a massacre, we think, in Homs not long ago. I don’t trust rebel reporting any more than I trust regime reporting.</p>
<p>I’m not in favor of the Assads. Not at all. I recognize they’ve done a few things well: kept a lid on sectarian violence when it’s blown up in areas near them, not so oppressive to the Kurds - who are the largest ethnic minority, I think - at least not as oppressive as Turkey but again it’s hard to know, relatively decent statistics about social welfare including education for women and health care. Their conduct in Lebanon is indefensible. Many thousands have died because of Syrian oppression in Lebanon and their support of Hizbollah has militarized the country in a very dangerous way that puts huge numbers of innocent people at risk. </p>
<p>I read comments like John McCain’s urging intervention and marvel. I assume he says things like that because he knows we won’t actually get involved so he can score political points without actual risk. Syria is a mess. We have no single group to support and it’s not clear that anyone is actually on our side and some, if not most, if not all, are actively against US interests in the long run. They might be worse than Assad, both for the US, for the region and for Syria. We have no guarantee anything resembling democracy will come out of this. Iran certainly doesn’t want a democracy in Syria and they clearly view Syria as part of their sphere of influence. </p>
<p>Getting involved in Syria against Assad means fighting a proxy war with Iran. Very bad idea. The Saudis might like it. They’d like it if we dropped bombs on Teheran. But it would be bad for the US and for the region. It would be a terrible mess. People who talk about intervention assume we’d go in to fight Syria’s now-outdated military. What if Iran ups the game? What if they start funneling in new weapons and more men? And remember: Russia backs Assad. Imagine the deterioration in US/Russia relations.</p>
<p>My bet today is that the country will settle into a split of sorts. We’re seeing signs of “ethnic cleansing” in Shia areas, with reported mass killings of Sunni. That’s enough to drive people out and force a sort of partition. Problem is of course the fertile, rich, settled part of the country is the real battleground so there is no obvious way to divide the country, like what happened with Cyprus. I have trouble understanding blunt massacres otherwise: they rile up resistance instead of quelling it. My bet would perhaps change if I could understand what Turkey is up to. Aleppo is near Turkey and it looks like Turkey has been backing the rebels there. My bet tomorrow may be different.</p>
<p>there is really no viable play for the U.S. here, IMO.</p>
<p>that said, if you think it is our responsibility to try to stop violence and tens of thousands of people being killed, then you should think that we should become involved here.</p>
<p>if you think tens of thousands of dead people don’t matter to the U.S. and we have no obligation to help, then you should think we should stay out.</p>
<p>It’s no longer a civil war. Israel has attacked in a naked war of aggression.</p>
<p>Until one side embraces political, ethnic, economic and religious freedom, the U.S. needs to stay the heck out of it. History has clearly taught us that there is no gain in favoring one tyrant over another.</p>
<p>I’m curious, mini, and not meaning to argue but if you were Israel and Iran was sending advanced missiles to Hizbollah what would you do? In this context, I note Hizbollah is not a state but rather a paramilitary group which places its weapons among civilians. The difference is that Syria, whatever the problems with its regime, has kept peace for about 40 years. I also am assuming you have feelings about this kind of thing whether Israel is involved or not, so therefore if the US blows up stuff in Pakistan or Yemen, that is equally a “naked war of aggression” - if not more so, since we’re not exactly near Yemen. I’m just asking, not meaning to argue. I’m trying to identify if you are consistent in these beliefs, which is one thing, or not.</p>