By Jamal Khashoggi
The author is a leading Saudi media figure who served as media
aide to Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud while he was ambassador to the United
Kingdom and to the United States. He was named by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al
Saud to head his upcoming AlArab TV news channel. Khashoggi wrote this think
piece in Arabic for
today’s edition of pan-Arab al-Hayat.
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| By Syrian artist Wissam Al Jazairy |
When international troubleshooter for Syria Lakhdar
Brahimi chooses to forsake his main peacemaking task to visit refugee camps in
Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, it means he has no idea what to do.
He wants to seem active until God wills the predestined.
Likewise, when Saudi Arabia stays away from the
foreign ministers’ meeting of the regional quartet (composed of Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, Turkey and Iran) that was proposed by Egypt to solve the Syria crisis,
it means the kingdom has lost hope.
If the quartet’s objective is to change Iran’s
stance, chances of this happening are nil.
Iran is in Bashar’s boat, even at the price of
sinking with him.
If the quartet’s purpose is to find a solution to the
Syria crisis, how can Iran deliver a humdinger that escaped the 100-nation
Friends of Syria, the Arab League and the United Nations?
The mere existence of this quartet is cause for pessimism.
The Egyptians and Turks now know the quartet is
doomed, not because Saudi Arabia opted out but because of Iran’s shenanigans.
For instance, the commander-in-chief of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said members of his elite force are in Syria
to provide non-military assistance. He also said Iran won’t intervene militarily
in Syria to help the regime.
An official Iranian spokesperson later denied the
remarks, saying Tehran would not allow the so-called “axis of resistance” – of
which Syria is an essential pillar – to fall.
Basically, you don’t know what the Iranians are denying
or confirming.
They insolently announced in Cairo a Syria ceasefire.
They made it conditional on cutting off assistance to the opposition and
launching a dialogue leading to “reform and consolidation of democracy” in
Syria.
So long as we are unto a long-lasting battle, it is
worthwhile to draw some parallels between the situation in Syria and the Afghan
jihad.
The situation in Syria and the Afghan jihad are
becoming ever more comparable by the day.
The Syrians hate such a comparison for obvious reasons.
They dread the “Afghanization” of their country and their
struggle.
Counting the 10 years of Afghan jihad against the
Soviet occupation, another two years of fighting against the Kabul government
left in place by the Soviets and the subsequent years of civil war until this
day, you arrive at a total of 33 years of hardships.
The Syrian revolution is only one-and-a-half years
old and there seems little hope of it ending soon.
Conflicts among militias can last years. We had a
precedent in Lebanon.
We see the Free Syrian Army gaining control of the
Salahuddin neighborhood in Aleppo, then losing it, then recapturing it.
That’s how militia wars go.
At the same time, the weight of militia numbers
alarms backers, making them deny the militias indispensable weapons.
For instance, the militias need man-portable
air-defense systems or MANPADS
to challenge the regime’s air power, which is killing far more civilians than rebels.
U.S. fears of weapons falling into the wrong hands,
for instance, hampered delivery to the rebels of some 100 MANPADS contributed
by Gulf countries.
The Americans want to see specific controls in place
before the weapons get forwarded to the insurgents.
But putting such controls in place is impossible in a
country where security has totally collapsed, which is the trademark of all
armed revolutions.
Strategists turn naïve or dreamers on occasion. They
overlook the merit of past experience. A look at their old files would show the
Afghan jihad tribulations that are now manifest in Syria:
### Every
attempt to unify the rebels will give rise to a new organization. Some members
of the old Free Syrian Army would refuse to integrate with the new Syrian National Army, consequently undermining both organizations and their
respective brigades. International backers would then be at a loss as to which
of the two is a safe bet.
### Unlike
the French, the Syrians can’t agree on a Charles de Gaulle.
They are more like the Afghans if not worse. They all think they are leaders.
### Information
from inside Syria is consistently contradictor and mostly exaggerated,
especially on matters of money and the apportionment of arms.
### A
media savvy group is not necessarily the more active on the ground. A group
with more video footage on You Tube does not mean it is the strongest.
### Middlemen
claiming to know the playing field well do know their contacts thoroughly. But
they are totally ignorant of the rest. As a result, they would channel
assistance to their contacts, bypassing those they don’t know. The donor
country using the middleman is immediately accused of bias and of dividing
rebel ranks, if not of conspiring against the revolution.
### The
revolution is for honorable men and women and freedom lovers. But it is also an
arena for opportunists, dealers, turncoats and even criminals.
### The
idea of unifying rebel ranks inside Syria, though overly utopian, should be
pursued, since opening a door halfway is better than keeping it shut. At a
minimum, coordination would suffice and is achievable thanks to the
(non-lethal) equipment (such as encrypted radios and satellite imagery)
provided by the Americans and the French. The difficulty in unifying the rebels
lies in their variegated provenance. Army defectors come from diverse units at
various times. Civilians come from all walks of life and include students,
laborers and farmers. Some are religious, others not. Some are politicized,
others are not interested in politics, their sole aim being to get rid of the
regime. It will always be difficult to group everyone under a single command and control
center.
### Don’t
believe whoever says the Muslim Brotherhood is the largest faction inside
Syria. Don’t believe either whoever says the opposite. The Brotherhood’s political
weight can only be known after free and transparent elections are held in
Syria. But no state should withhold assistance to the Syrian revolution pending
an answer to this $64,000 question.
### “One
Address” (with which to coordinate with the Syrian revolution) won’t attract cash
and assistance to all sides. Previous experience shows that creation of “One
Address” is impossible.
The Syrian revolution has succeeded so far in
shutting out al-Qaeda. Even the hard line Salafist groups funded by non-government
Gulfites refused to be lured into expressing empathy for al-Qaeda.
At the same time, prolongation of the crisis is
exasperating Syrians, as evidenced by their pelting of Brahimi’s motorcade with
stones during his visit to a Syrian refugee camp.
After mulling over the regime’s brutality and the
free world’s indifference, the Syrian people have come to equate diplomacy with
procrastination.
The Syrian people are increasingly convinced that the
world has let them down.
Their anger and the aforementioned Afghan ills could
open the door to the sort of extremism that outside intelligence and military
agencies are trying to forestall.
But their quest has made them reluctant to take
action and supply weapons that would settle the battle. In a way, they are shunning
something they created by their own hesitation and deferment.
