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| The Assads entertaining the Kerrys at dinner in a Damascus restaurant (File photo from syrianhistory.com) |
Abdelwahhab Badrakhan, who
holds a Master’s degree in Information Science from the Sorbonne, writes
regularly for four regional newspapers and has a daily political analysis
program on Radio Monte Carlo Doualiya (International). He wrote this think
piece in Arabic for
today’s al-Hayat
Russia’s position on Syria became hopeless months ago. Instead of
evolving, its position became increasingly intransigent.
All the talk about Moscow being “unconcerned” about
Bashar al-Assad’s fate was a smokescreen.
It was meant to conceal the reality that Moscow joins
Iran in considering Assad a “red line.” Russia and Iran work hand in glove in
arming the regime and mapping out its survival, pending a solution tailored to
fit it.
To see the United States join the Russian-Iranian
duet is no longer far-fetched.
Why? Because the Syria crisis now has a byname in
Washington: “Jabhat al-Nusra” or the “War on Terror,” instead of “The people
want an end to oppression and aspire to freedom.”
The massacre of hostages and hostage-takers in
Algeria, the mixture of Afghanization and Somalization with a tint of al-Qaeda in
northern Mali, and al-Qaeda’s role in the killing of the U.S. ambassador and
two other American diplomats in Benghazi will certainly spur America’s belief
that “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”
When John Kerry, the new U.S. secretary of state and old
“friend” of the Syrian regime, meets his Russian opposite number Sergei
Lavrov next month, the new Obama Administration’s foreign policy wouldn’t have
jelled yet. But the new policy will be drawing nearer – not further from –
Russia’s objectives. It will want to activate the Syria “understandings.”
You can forget Washington’s earlier blabber about “a
transitional government with full powers” and the need for Assad to step down.
The two big powers will support whoever can stifle
terror. They will stand shoulder to shoulder against any side impeding this
priority.
Obviously, they will want to rely on the regime,
which is far from being gullible. The regime will request U.S. guarantees for
its survival.
The regime is aware, but has yet to acknowledge, that
the Americans have already dried up the sources of financial and military
assistance to the opposition, including the non-extremist side. But the regime
would also request the resumption of ties with Washington and a visit by old
friend “Kerry,” who would have by then forgotten his earlier counsel to Assad
to step down.
Meantime, the regime is trying hard to prove its
mettle by committing at least a daily massacre, and by targeting children, young
men and a whole generation…
That’s what you call the “Game of Nations”
and the amorality of power politics in its ugliest form.
Once American and Russian pragmatism converge and play
ball with the brutal Assad regime, Syria can expect a muddier and more
tempestuous chapter.
The “game of nations’ leaves no room for peoples’ rights
and “aspirations.” The Palestinian people can attest to such historic
injustice.
At best, the Syrian opposition will be cornered and
told the balance of power leaves it no more than what the two great powers
determined.
The Syrian people demanded the protection of
civilians. They demanded a no-fly zone. They demanded qualitative weapons to
redress the balance of forces. They demanded relief aid. They demanded that
children not be left to die from cold or disease.
They got nothing from the international community.
Whoever spoke of a “conspiracy” with the regime against the people was not far
from the truth.
Of course, America’s turnaround was not, and will
not, be by electric shock. Nor will it be an easy matter, free of hurdles.
Despite differences in their assessments, neither
Washington nor Moscow are certain the regime can still be rehabilitated –
albeit for the specific, camouflaged and seemingly-worthy task of “precluding
the collapse of the state and the army.”
But the “game of nations” hardly ever yields
peaceable balances…
As the Americans and Russians play up today the
symptoms of Somalization in Syria, they are fully aware the regime created
them. In addition, Barack Obama’s
“non-intervention doctrine” effectively produced the same fallouts in Syria as those
of the “intervention doctrine” of George W. Bush in Iraq.
Russia, which justifies its intervention in Syria
with a lesson in international law, gives a bad example of what the international
community’s role should be. Indeed, the two powers would say anything to
absolve them of any responsibility for creating the situation they now bemoan.
They make it sound as though the Syrian people revolted, sacrificed and
suffered simply to stack up al-Qaeda and other terrorists on their soil.
By encapsulating the crisis as a proliferation of
extremism, and by mulling a plausible excuse for its about-face, the United
States is prioritizing the side effects of the illness instead of treating its
causes. It even seems prepared to overlook the violence, the bloodshed and the
destruction meted out by the regime -- to the point of pondering reliance on
the regime “to restore order.”
Why and how Washington’s U-turn?
The factors are threefold:
1. From the onset, Washington’s priority in addressing
the Syria crisis was to protect Israel’s interests, which meant “reforming the
regime” rather than “regime change.”
2. The obduracy of Russia, which exploited Syria’s
plight to recover its “Great Power” status, thereby forcing the Obama
administration to reluctantly choose between outright confrontation and a
trade-off.
3. The Syrian opposition’s struggle to set up one or more
viable alternatives to the regime, chiefly because of the [two Assads’] 42-year
bulldozing of politics altogether…
The Americans have long been heard inviting the
Russians to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. Here is
America becoming part of the problem too.
Should the anticipated policy change come true, America,
like Russia, would become responsible for the Syrians’ killing and the butchery
of their revolution.
