'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

The UN and Syria

So the US has not so far been successful in persuading the UN Security Council to slap sanctions onto Syria in connection with Detlev Mehlis's interim report. That's good news for most of Syria's people... and it gives all of them, whatever their political affiliations, a small window of time to figure out amongst themselves how they want to relate to each other in the future, and there is just a glimmer of hope these days (see below) that they will take the opportunity to use it.  

(Sanctions, by contrast, tend often to strengthen the regime in power-- think Fidel Castro or Saddam Hussein-- even while they pauperize and disempower the citizenry.)

According to this AP report from the UN today, the three arch-hawks on the anti-Syria issue, the US, the UK, and France,

agreed to drop a direct threat of sanctions against Syria in order to get support from Russia and China, which opposed sanctions while the investigation is still under way. Nonetheless, the resolution was adopted under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, which is militarily enforceable.

The resolution requires Syria to detain anyone the U.N. investigators consider a suspect and let investigators determine the location and conditions under which the individual would be questioned. It also would freeze assets and impose a travel ban on anyone identified as a suspect by the commission.

The prime suspects named in the "uncensored" version of the Mehlis report were President Bashar al-Asad's brother Maher al-Asad, and the powerful brother-in-law, Asef Shawkat, who's also head of Syria's military intel.

The Security Council session sounded pretty stormy, with Syrian FM Farouk Sharaa launching a bitter counter-attack and saying that,

accusing Syrian security forces of advance knowledge of Hariri's assassination was tantamount to suggesting U.S. officials had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or that Britain knew about the July transit bombings.

A visibly angry [Jack] Straw called al-Sharaa's comments "the most grotesque and insensitive comparison." Rice told reporters afterward it was an "unbelievable tirade" that showed the Syrians were intent on trying to discredit the investigation.

At the end of his speech, al-Sharaa insisted Damascus wants the truth and said "Syria's decision was and is to fully cooperate with the international commission until conclusive evidence is found of the perpetrators of this heinous crime."

... Assad on Saturday ordered that a judicial committee be formed to investigate Hariri's assassination. A presidential decree said the committee will cooperate with the U.N. probe and Lebanese judicial authorities.

I see that Juan Cole's wrote a little last week about Syria and the Mehlis report.  At one level, I think he's write to judge that if the Asad regime is toppled, "The likely successor in Syria... is the Muslim Brotherhood."  However I think he's wrong to leave the impression there that any such "succession" could be accomplished easily or quickly.  Far from it.  As Anthony Shadid noted in a long article about Syria in today's WaPo, the Asads and their kin head up a system of minority rule in Syria that privileges members of their own Alawite Muslim community (and to a lesser extent, members of the country's other minority communities) at the expense of that majority of Syrians who are Sunni Muslims.  

The Muslim Brotherhood is, of course, a militantly Sunni Muslim organization; and it has a lengthy history of opposition towards the nominally secular, actually Alawite-dominated Baath Party regime there.  (Think Iraq, but in reverse: in Iraq, it was members of the Sunni minority that adopted Baathism as a "secular" ruling ideology and visited gross repression in its name on the Shiite majority; in Syria, it's the reverse, sect-wise, since the Alawites are a long-ago branch from the Shiites.)

Anyway, it seems to me extremely unlikely that any non-negotiated handover of power in Syria from the Asad regime to a Brotherhood-dominated regime would be quick and tidy, at all.  Any  toppling or very serious weakening of the Asad regime is likely to lead to a period of instability, political uncertainty, and widespread civil strife within the country in which the battle-lines would likely be not only between the country's two most powerful religious groups, but within each of those groups and also amongst all of the country's various different regions and social classes...

Yes, the Muslim Brotherhood is probably likely to emerge as the strongest indigenous player in large parts of whatever is left of "Syria".  Then again, it may well not.  And meantime, the instability roiling Syria would almost certainly draw in many of the various still contending parties and social/religious groups inside Lebanon-- a far weaker polity, altogether-- and would provide a tempting target for all kinds of mischievous interventions in both countries from neighboring Israel.  (Also, quite possibly, from the US forces poised right on the eastern border there, with Iraq.)

Those in Lebanon who think that instability inside Syria might serve their own country's interests misunderstand the balance of power between the two countries in a very childish and short-sighted way.

Meantime, I disagree fairly strongly with Juan's evaluation that, after the publication of Mehlis's interim report, "The only question left is whether al-Asad himself is implicated, or whether the Baathist Old Guard (which checked his reformist tendencies) has been operating behind his back."

From everything I learned when I was in Syria last fall, and since then, it seems fairly clear that it was not the "Baathist Old Guard" that was implicated in the highly risky policies in Lebanon that have led the regime to such a dangerous spot-- but rather, precisely the far less experienced "New Guard" represented by Shawkat and his cronies.  Since bashar's much more powerful and politically savvy father Hafez al-Asad died in June 2000, Bashar had maneuvered slowly to give members of this younger generation more strength within the regime, in order to give himself a base of power independent from the circle of old-guard  "uncles" that his dad had built up over the years.

Paradoxically-- or perhaps not-- some of the "New Guard" leadersin the regime have portrayed themselves as more open to internal political reform than Hafez al-Asad's old band of Uncles, who remained resolutely opposed to any such idea.  The old guys had all, after all, lived through the painful days of the late 1970s and early 1980s when the Muslim Brotherhood-- acting in the name of the demographic majority-- used lethal campaigns of sabotage, assassination, and just plain terrorism to pursue their cause...  (Those challenges led to the regime's terrible over-reaction of February 1982, in which it wiped out virtually the whole of downtown Hama in its-- successful-- attempt to wipe out the networks the Brotherhood commanded back in those days... )

This post on Josh Landis's blog contains a few observations of Josh's on the difference between the Old Guard and the New Guard...  But his better observations on the subject came on earlier posts, some weeks ago.

Regarding the prospects for political change in Syriamore broadly speaking, there are some in the international community who are now urging Bashar to "do a Qadhafi" and start dancing to George W. Bush's tune.  For my part, I don't think think that's a hel[pful suggestion at all.  If Bashar were to do to much to bend to Washington's unilateral demands at this point he would certainly come under a lot more internal pressure from his own people.  Anyway, what incentive would he have to do that?  What has Washington ever done for him, at all?

Much more to the point, Bashar's friends both inside and outside Syria should surely be urging him to "do a Frederik De Klerk" -- that is, to find ways to repair the broken fabric within his own country by opening up serious political negotiations with his political opponents from the country's majority population.

Two weeks ago, five small opposition groups and nine individual Syrian dissidents signed a text called the "Damascus Declaration".  According to this report on Naharnet, it called for:

"establish[ing]  a national democratic regime (for) ... change and peaceful political reform based on dialogue."

The five opposition parties are the Arab nationalist National Democratic Gathering, the Kurdish Democratic Alliance, the Committees of Civil Society, the Kurdish Democratic Front and the Future Party.

The signatories of the declaration said Sunday they are committed to rejecting "totalitarian ideology and violence" in the political practice.

They also said that "Islam is the religion of the majority" but they stressed respect of other's beliefs and cultures whatever their religion or ideology were.

...  The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, based in London, announced in a separate statement its "total support for the Damascus Declaration" in anticipation of the organization of "a national congress on the path of democratic and peaceful change."

I find the emergence of this new coalition-- and this listing of the principles and goals it espouses-- very encouraging.  Of course one should always be wary of the true motives of people who issue such declarations.  But if Bashar al-Asad is sincere about wanting to open up the space for truly democratic participation in the governance of the country, then surely he should find a way to respond positively to this invitation for internal political negotiations?

(For more on the Damascus Declaration, see this post by Josh Landis, too.)