The price of Obama’s leading from behind in Syria

The fall of the border town of Qusayr to the Syrian government, signs the military balance may be tipping in favor of President Bashar al-Assad, the entry of Lebanese Hezbollah fighters on his side, and the growing credence of reports of chemical weapons use by the regime have all triggered a re-evaluation of Washington's Syria policy.

The Group of Eight summit in Northern Ireland next Monday and Tuesday will give U.S. President Barack Obama a chance to discuss Syria with Russian President Vladimir Putin and could influence his decision to arm the rebels or do something else to support them.

The United States and Russia announced on May 7 they would try to bring the warring parties to a Geneva-2 conference to implement a peace plan they endorsed a year ago that left open the question of whether or not Assad must leave power.

With the fall of Qusayr brought about by Syrian government forces and fighters from Iran's Lebanese Hezbollah militia, Assad seems to be gaining the upper hand on the battlefield, raising a serious question of why he would agree to any peace deal entailing his departure.

In Washington on Wednesday, Secretary of States John Kerry told a joint press conference with British Foreign Secretary William Hague:

Together, our two countries also remain committed to a Syrian-led political solution to the crisis there. We are deeply concerned about the dire situation in Syria, including the involvement of Hezbollah, as well as Iran, across state lines in another country. So we are focusing our efforts now on doing all that we can to support the opposition as they work to change the balance on the ground. And together, we have provided tremendous humanitarian assistance in an effort to mitigate the human suffering that is taking place in Syria. We remain committed to the Geneva 2 conference. We both understand the complications with the situation on the ground and moving forward rapidly. But there will have to be a political solution, ultimately, to the situation on the ground, and that is the framework that will continue to be the outline, and we remain committed to it.

QUESTION (from Jill Dougherty of CNN): ... After this catastrophic defeat for the opposition in Qusayr, do you still believe they can win and do it without the weapons they are asking for?

KERRY: Look, I think that nobody wins in Syria the way things are going; the people lose, and Syria as a country loses. And what we have been pushing for, all of us involved in this effort, is a political solution that ends the violence, saves Syria, stops the killing and destruction of an entire nation. And that’s what we’re pushing for. So it’s not a question to me whether or not the opposition can, quote, “win.” It’s a question of whether or not we can get to this political solution.

And the political solution that the Russians have agreed to contemplates a transition government. The implementation of Geneva-1 is the goal of Geneva-2, and that is a transition government with full executive authority, which gives the Syrian people as a whole, everybody in Syria, the chance to have a new beginning where they choose their future leadership. Now, that’s the goal.

And we have said that we will do everything we can and we’re able to do to help the opposition be able to achieve that goal and to reach a point where that can be implemented. And that’s what we’re trying to do. And I think that there’s unanimity about the importance of trying to find a way to peace, not a way to war. Now, the Assad regime is making that very difficult.

We will be – as everybody knows and has written about, we’re meeting to talk about the various balances in this issue right now. And I have nothing to announce about that at this point, but clearly, the choice of weapons that he has engaged in across the board challenge anybody’s values and standards of human behavior. And we’re going to have to make judgments for ourselves about how we can help the opposition to be able to deal with that.

(...)

QUESTION (from Tom Whipple, The Times): We’ve heard you say similar things for 800 days about Syria.

KERRY: Well, not me. I haven’t been in office for 800 days.

QUESTION: Officials like yourself, sir. Can you say – can you give us a sense, any sense at all, what you’ve been talking about in terms of the kind of help you may be offering the Syrian rebels, and why you aren’t able to say anything more than you’re saying at the moment, which you’re staying pretty tight-lipped about what you’ve been discussing in terms of this help you can give the rebels? At some point, it’s going to be too late for that, isn’t it? Do you think we’ve reached that point?

KERRY: I’m not going to make judgments about the points, where we are or aren’t. I’ll just say to you that as I said to you, we are determined to do everything that we can in order to help the opposition to be able to reach – to save Syria. And that stands. That’s exactly what we’re going to do. I have nothing new to announce today. When and if I do, you’ll hear about it. But at this moment, we are in consideration, as everybody knows – it’s been written about this week. People are talking about what further options might be exercised here. And we certainly had some discussion about that, obviously. But we don’t have anything to announce at this moment.

In his think piece today for the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat, Lebanese political analyst Abdelwahhab Badrakhan says in part:

While both the regime and the opposition have allies, fact is regime partners have proved dependable and committed.

By contrast, the opposition’s “friends” have led it to a blind alley.

Qusayr’s defenders gave their all. The regime and its mercenaries were an invasion unit.

The battle was between Syrians and an outside force alien to both Syria and Lebanon. The regime sent for it to regain control of the town.

“Control” in regime parlance means the cities, towns and townships should be in ruin and their residents hushed and subdued, as they were 27 months earlier.

Qusayr fell because its position on the map allowed the invaders to isolate it from its supportive surroundings.

Overstating its strategic importance as a gateway linking Damascus with the Syrian coastline recalls the regime’s hot air about “terrorists and armed gangs.”

It also lets slip Damascus bosses are no more interested in connecting with Aleppo, Idlib, Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and Deraa. Their obsession is to secure a “safe escape route” to Syria’s Alawite heartland.

The most important aspect of the battle for Qusayr is that it allowed the Syrian and Iranian regimes and Hezbollah to set a model for external intervention and lay to wrest the “no winner or loser” equation between the sides.

The said equivalence was the raison d'être for Geneva-1 and the June 2012 Geneva Declaration.

The regime never accepted the Geneva Declaration, except slyly. The Russians and Iranians embraced it simply to promote the regime’s own interpretation of the document – namely, a political transition led by their ally Bashar al-Assad; otherwise no solution.

Occasional Russian statements feigning indifference to Assad’s fate were smokescreens. They have dissipated in the buildup for Geneva-2.

The worst and most dangerous fallout of the battle for Qusayr is the bitter feeling it leaves in the minds and hearts of Arab and Muslim public opinions – the feeling that the battle was: (1) the first sectarian conflict marking a Shiite victory against Sunnis (2) the foremost retaliation for the “poisoned chalice” Ayatollah Khomeini agreed to drink from in 1988 to end Iran’s eight-year war with “Saddam’s Iraq.”

Post-Qusayr, Syria and Iran’s regimes and Hezbollah are ecstatically toasting a “divine victory” against what they call a “conspiracy.”

The West and so-called “Friends of Syria,” for their part, proved ready to forfeit the Syrian people’s blood because their humble aspirations do not serve their interests.

The “victors” will not suffice with Qusayr ahead of Geneva-2, having known by now that the White House’s “red lines” are anything but red and Washington’s coaxing and flattery of Moscow will fall on deaf ears.

The “victors” are also conscious that Israel has numbed and shackled America’s Syria undertaking and is now flirting with the Kremlin, knowing that Moscow’s future role would serve her interests.

Israel is of the same mind as Russia, Iran and Hezbollah in preferring Assad and his regime to remain in place – much as it helped Iran poach Iraq and shares Tehran’s strategic designs to destabilize the Arab Gulf.

The Syrian people are not beaten, or down and out yet. But they could be if Washington kept playing second fiddle to Moscow on Syria.

Iran can’t just gobble up and Shi’ize Egypt

Political analyst Yasser el-Zaatreh, a native of Jericho, has been  freelancing for 27 years. He wrote this think piece in Arabic for Aljazeera.net

File pictures of Morsi and Ahmadinejad

Egyptian leaders are keeping nose to grindstone to mitigate internal disquiet.

They are less focused on recovering Cairo’s Arab and regional clout and role.

So before Egypt overcomes its internal travails, its leadership will find it hard to conjure up a clear Arab and regional vision.

Where events in Syria are concerned, Cairo remains as supportive of the Syrian people as it can be.

President Mohamed Morsi’s Syria statements and Cairo’s backing of the Arab League decision giving Syria’s seat to the Syrian Opposition Coalition corroborate this. The Arab League switch would not have been possible without Egypt’s full backing.

When discussing Egypt’s stance on Syria, we’re talking by implication about the position of Iran, which sees in Bashar al-Assad’s political survival the cornerstone of its strategy in the region.

After all, Iran effectively sacrificed its relations with the best part of the Ummah to preserve this immoral position. And the Islamic Republic’s loss on that matter is immeasurable by strategic standards.

Morsi would not have been supportive of the Syrian opposition had he been anxious to win Iran’s heart and mind.

He is aware that vexing Iran could tempt her to support and fund his opponents, if not tamper with Egypt’s internal security – chiefly in the soft areas of Sinai, where tribal groups and some Islamists are being led to believe they could challenge “Zionists” from that particular frontline.

On his February trip to Egypt for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not meet with Morsi except at Cairo airport, which is where Ahmadinejad offered him oil grants and financial support. Morsi simply ignored the offer.

Likewise, you can’t read much into the bilateral tourism promotion agreement between Egypt and Iran and the normalization of their commercial ties.

By comparison, tourism and commerce links between Turkey and Iran continue to prosper even though the two countries are exchanging blows in Syria and fighting a cold war across the region.

This is not to mention Tehran’s attempts to play the Kurdish card – a no-hoper since Recep Tayyip Erdogan made his historic peace deal with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

While Egypt has yet to resume diplomatic relations with Iran and bilateral tourism and commerce is just beginning, Arab Gulf states and the Islamic Republic share a wide range of diplomatic, tourism and trade links. For instance, hundreds of thousands of Iranians travel to Saudi Arabia annually to perform the Hajj and Umrah. Tens of thousands of Iranians also visit the UAE, Kuwait and Oman.

So can Morsi and his government overlook Egypt’s economic interests and shut out Iran? And is Egypt’s national security so porous as to be easily compromised by Tehran?

This takes us to the preoccupation of many people with Shi’ization (or the “missionary-style” spread of Shiism).

In truth, the obsession with Shi’ization is an insult to the Sunni branch of Islam, depicting it as vulnerable and easily pliable, which is far from being the case.

Inasmuch as Alawites are part of Shiite Islam, did 40-plus years of Alawite rule in Syria convert the country’s Sunni majority to Shiism?

More importantly, was Shiite Iran able to Shi’ize its own Sunni population (of about 10 percent) over the years?

Iran’s occasional dabbling in Shi’ization drives is provocative, featherbrained and futile. But the Arabs’ problem with Iran is far from being sectarian. The problem is political par excellence.

Egypt, it must be said, is a regional heavyweight with an impressive cultural and historical legacy. It is also home to the millennium-old Al-Azhar University, the foremost institution in the Islamic world for the study of Sunni theology and Islamic law, and to Al-Azhar Mosque.

The future will show that whoever thinks Iran can gobble up and Shi’ize Egypt is hallucinating.

Egypt will never fall in Iran’s lap, neither under Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood nor under anyone else. Politics, history and the balance of power won’t let this happen.

Let’s stop portraying Iran as an omnipotent sovereign when it is wobbling under the weight of its problems in Syria, in Iraq and at home.

Iran will revert to its original size once Assad is shown the door. The Arab world will then have no problem building good neighborly relations with Tehran as it now has with Ankara.

Regional turbulence ahead, fasten your seatbelts

Waddah Khanfar

Waddah Khanfar, 45, is the president of Al Sharq Forum, an independent network dedicated to developing long-term strategies for political development, social justice and economic prosperity of the people of the Middle East. He previously served as the Director General of the Aljazeera Network. In 2011, Foreign Policy Magazine ranked Khanfar first in “The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers.” In 2009, Forbes Magazine named him one of the most “Powerful People in the World.” He penned this think piece in Arabic for aljazeera.net:

The Syrian regime having turned to Scud missiles, and with Russia and Iran keeping up their arms supplies to the Damascus government, the British and French assume that providing some weapons to the rebels would somewhat level the sides’ firepower and prod the regime to negotiate with the opposition.

The idea by some in the West of working for a peace settlement by redressing the military balance won’t work. It won’t help stop the violence.

It would simply gain the regime more time and lay the first stone for greater and more vengeful violence. The move would inflame the situation and broaden the field of conflict to engulf the whole region.

Many reasons are at work to expand the Syria crisis and give it a regional dimension.

The Arab Mashreq is one of the world’s most diverse regions in terms of sects, ethnicities and religions.

The Syria crisis is getting deeper and thornier because of gory terrorism by Syria’s sectarian regime, Russia’s accolades and Iran’s giveaways to Assad, America and Europe’s hesitation and the Arab states’ muddled disposition towards the multiple Syrian revolution sides.

Regional amplification of the crisis has thus become a matter of time. This is to say the Syria crisis will become, in the course of its third year, an open-ended trans-boundary conflict posing the biggest challenge yet to the stability of the region since its current borders were mapped out a century ago in the aftermath of the First World War.

Mushrooming of the Syria crisis will first envelop Lebanon, which is closest to Syria.

The strategic axis extending from Tehran to Baghdad, to Damascus, and on to Hezbollah in Lebanon believes the Assad regime’s fall will reconfigure the region’s strategic balances.

That’s what drove Hezbollah to be the first Lebanese side to stick its nose in Syria and give political and logistical support to Assad’s regime. That’s what prompted other Lebanese sides to back the Syrian revolution.

Tension and polarization peaked in Lebanon after its internal two-year rope war. The country is now exposed to the fire and brimstone of the Syria crisis with all its bloody violence and sectarian overtones.

Despite the seriousness of an eruption of violence in Lebanon, a spread of hostilities in the direction of Iraq is the more ominous development in the making.

The preliminary signs are evident in the mounting political strains between the Maliki government, which is prone to sectarianism and backs Bashar al-Assad, and all the predominantly Sunni provinces on the one hand, and between Maliki and Iraq’s Kurdistan Region on the other.

It seems the three months of ceaseless protests in the Sunni areas have reached a dead-end.

The Maliki government did not meet the demonstrators’ demands for greater sectarian evenhandedness in Baghdad. Instead, the government escalated its repression of protesters and embraced violence.

This risks opening the Iraqi arena to a new cycle of grisly violence that will find its natural extension in the inflamed Syrian mainland.

Iraq, which is yet to recover from a civil war that tore to pieces its national unity between 2007 and 2009, is expected to take sectarian strife in the region to unparalleled levels.

Iraq’s neighbors – Iran, Turkey and the Arab Gulf countries – will find themselves drawn into the inferno.

The struggle over Iraq will not only be over its huge oil resources, but also over the heart and soul of the upcoming Middle East. The latter will determine the weights of the regional powers and chart the region’s new political map.

Is such a bleak scenario preventable?

The answer lies in what regional and international players do in the few months ahead, starting with the United States precluding its past mistakes and making removal of the Syrian regime its top priority.

Although direct military intervention is not welcome, the prerequisite is to provide the Syrian revolution with the necessary qualitative weapons without engaging prematurely in side issues over the local balance of power post-Assad Syria.

The U.S. administration was nonplussed and undecided on Syria in the past two years. It blocked the flow of qualitative weapons to the rebels in Syria under different pretexts. These included Washington’s apprehension of post-Assad scenarios and of Islamists ruling in Damascus at Israel’s doorstep.

America also did not want to see such weapons “fall into the wrong hands,” meaning Jihadists and groups close to al-Qaeda.

Such American hesitance proved disastrous. It failed to prioritize the removal of a terrorist regime bent on killing, destroying and raping for fear of a potential terrorism threat.

The U.S. made the mistake when the Syrian revolution was miles away from the influence of al-Qaeda and its offshoots.

This emboldened the regime, allowing it to raise the level of its violence against civilians to unprecedented heights.

Likewise, the international community’s dawdling and indecision on supporting the Free Syrian Army and the moderate rebel brigades allowed Jihadist groups to join the fray.

It is atypical not to see oppression victims turn to whoever can defend them. It took Jihadist groups, including Jabhat al-Nusra, which the U.S. designated as terrorist, more than a year to make their entry into the Syria scene.

The U.S. decision was also misguided in that it shifted the international community and regional forces’ priority from bringing down the regime to fighting Jihadists.

Moreover, U.S. blacklisting of al-Nusra empowered the group further after it proved to be more disciplined than the other armed groups and refrained from antagonizing Christian, Druze and Alawite minorities.

The lack of a clear strategy vis-à-vis the Syrian revolution sent conflicting signals to regional countries. Those fearful of the “Islamist threat” chose to arm groups of no consequence in Syria, which served the regime well and embittered the revolution’s mainstream.

The most important thing the countries of the region need to do is formulate a common position on the Syria priorities.

Downing the regime posthaste is the imperative step liable to stop the slide towards unbridled violence.

Focusing on the attendant post-Assad fears and trying to meddle in the rebel groups’ political and military balance of power will work for the regime and for the scenario of full-blown chaos and sectarian strife.