“Three Syrias” to go with “three Iraqs”

Premier Erdogan and Turkey's top brass (top) and a march by Syrian Kurds

Syria is coming apart at the seams.

Having lost Syria, President Bashar al-Assad and his Shiite allies from Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah are waging a campaign of sectarian cleansing in order to carve out a rump state along the Mediterranean coast.

With its capital in Latakia, it would reflect the geographical contours of the traditional Alawite heartland.

At the same time, Syria’s Kurds are now fighting for an autonomous Syrian Kurdistan in their portion of the country bordering Turkey, with its putative capital in Qamishli.

The breakup of Syria into three enclaves for Kurds, Shiite Alawites and Sunnis mirrors the gradual dismemberment of Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion.

The northern province of Iraqi Kurdistan is today an independent country in all but name, while Sunni and Shiite Iraqis are more likely to splinter into distinct entities than remain part of a cohesive nation-state.

Image by Daniel Sitts

An autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Syria is the second piece in a four-part puzzle of a “Kurdistan country.” A 1983 map by the Financial Times shows a big Kurdish country separated into four pieces -- one in northern Iraq (which is in place), one in northeastern Syria (which is in the making), one in Iran and the last in Turkey’s southeast.

Turkish authorities -- already apprehensive about Syrian Kurdish militants' recent strengthening along Turkey's borders -- are further alarmed over reports that the Democratic Union Party (PYD), an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), is preparing to declare autonomy in northeastern Syria.

There is now talk of DYP leader Salih Muslim Muhammad announcing shortly a nine-member government to run the would-be enclave.  

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç said the move would undermine Syria’s territorial integrity and pose a security threat to Turkey.

Speaking at a press conference after a cabinet meeting in Ankara on Monday, Arınç called efforts by the PYD to declare autonomy in northeastern Syria “irksome.”

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu reiterated yesterday Ankara would not accept de facto autonomous regions in Syria before the country elects a legitimate national parliament.

He told reporters in Warsaw, "This does not mean Turkey is against the rights of any group in Syria, chiefly Kurds... So, this is not a position against our Kurdish brothers [in Syria]… We are concerned any de facto move could further deepen the crisis in Syria."

"With regards our security and the security of our border districts, villages and towns as well as Syria's future, we want everyone to avoid conflict pending a new democratic regime in Syria," Davutoglu said.

Turkey’s Yeni Şafak daily said last week Assad endorsed plans for an autonomous Syrian Kurdistan in a recent meeting with PYD representatives.

He reportedly agreed to recognize the autonomy of Kurds in an area covering al-Hasakah, Ras al-Ayn, Afreen, Ayn al-Arab and Qamishli.

If so, the move might force Turkey’s hand, according to Dr. Ghassan Shabaneh, a Mellon Fellow in Human Security at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Relations at the CUNY Graduate Center, and an Associate Professor of Middle East and International Studies at Marymount Manhattan College in NYC.

Shabaneh told Aljazeera TV earlier this week Turkey would most probably have no choice then other than to set up safe havens or a security zone in Syria’s Kurdish areas.

Israel held a 4-to-12-kilometer-deep South Lebanon Security Zone from 1985 to 1999.

Turkish political analyst, columnist and commentator on A9 TV Aylin Kokaman says Turkey is now facing the PKK threat it braved 30 years ago.

An autonomous Syrian Kurdish enclave is tantamount to “a declaration of war on Turkey,” she writes today for the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat.

Ms Kokaman says Ankara will have no option but to use its armed forces to protect Turkey’s national unity and territorial integrity, with or without American and European backing.

The extermination of the Sunnis of Banias

Women and children purposely massacred in Banias

Heard the latest blah, blah, blah by the State Department's Jen Psaki on the massacre in the Bayda suburb of Banias?

Here goes, in case you did not (the highlighting is mine):

The United States is appalled by horrific reports that more than 100 people were killed May 2 in gruesome attacks on the coastal town of al-Bayda, Syria. Regime and Shabiha forces reportedly destroyed the area with mortar fire then stormed the town and executed entire families, including women and children. We extend our deepest condolences to the families of the victims of this tragedy.

We strongly condemn atrocities against the civilian population and reinforce our solidarity with the Syrian people. As the Assad regime’s violence against innocent civilians escalates, we will not lose sight of the men, women, and children whose lives are being so brutally cut short.

We call on all responsible actors in Syria to speak out against the perpetration of unlawful killings against any group, regardless of faith or ethnicity. Those responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law and serious violations and abuses of human rights law must be held accountable.

Internationally acclaimed Saudi journalist Abdulrahman al-Rashed, who heads Alarabiya TV news channel, says although they are pained by the West’s indifference to regime crimes in Syria, “the Arabs stand watching in anger and sadness without doing much.”

Here is my paraphrasing of his column today for the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat, titled “The extermination of the Sunnis of Banias”:

The small Syrian coastal town of Banias has a population of some 50,000.

They are a sectarian mix of Sunnis, Alawites and Christians and an ethnic Arab and Turcoman blend.

We repeatedly heard of Banias on two occasions.

The first was when there was ceaseless talk of sanctions on Iraqi oil exports in the early Nineties, when Iraqi oil was being pumped through the Kirkuk-Banias pipeline that was built in the early Fifties.

The pipeline fed crude to both the Banias oil refinery and sea terminal.

The second instance was when Banias made the headlines in May 2011, barely eight weeks into the Syrian uprising.

Following is what I excerped from a May 2011 Reuters dispatch, explaining what happened then:

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian tanks stormed the mostly Sunni Muslim city of Banias on Saturday (May 8, 2011), a rights campaigner said, raising sectarian tension in a country swept by protests against the rule of authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad.

The attack came hours after the United States, reacting to the death of 27 protesters on Friday, threatened to take new steps against Syria's rulers, from the Alawite sect, unless they stopped killing and harassing their people.

The army entered Banias, a Mediterranean coastal city of 50,000 people, from three directions, advancing into Sunni districts but not Alawite neighborhoods, the campaigner said.

Most communication with Banias has been cut but the campaigner said he was able to contact several residents.

"Residents are reporting the sound of heavy gunfire and seeing Syrian navy boats off the Banias coast. Sunni and mixed neighborhoods are totally besieged now," said the campaigner, who did not want to be identified for security reasons.

Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights based in London, told Reuters that regular army units were present in the center of Banias but the authorities had now sent special units into the northern side of the city.

"They are conducting search operation in several areas. The army has lists and looking for people based on it," he said.

"They have raided Bayda, Basateen and the Baseya suburbs."

Rights group Sawasiah said in statement that the number of civilians killed since pro-democracy demonstrations broke out seven weeks ago has reached 800. It added that there were cuts in landline, Internet and cellphone lines with Banias as army units backed by tanks swept into its districts...

…State authorities said Banias was a "center of Salafist terrorism" and that armed groups had killed soldiers near the city. Salafism is an ultra-conservative brand of Sunni Islam.

Most Banias residents have been besieged and virtually confined to their homes since – a total of two years.

It’s not surprising, given the tension, for the coastal city to be a sectarian fault line -- especially that it is an extension of areas where the majority is from Assad’s Alawite sect.

Assad’s endgame plan is to create an Alawite state in the an-Nusayriyah Mountains down to the Mediterranean coast region. This means he intends ethnically cleansing Sunni areas within or bordering the planned enclave.

It looks like he already started the ethnic cleansing campaign with this week’s twin massacres in Banias town and the Bayda suburb.

The result was the flight en masse of their Sunni inhabitants to safer spots, especially after it emerged women and children were specifically knifed to death and men executed with a bullet to the head.

What can be done to save peoples’ lives against a killer regime that does not give a hoot about world public opinion, having realized that killing thousands of unarmed civilians does not fall within the red lines set for it?

What pains in all this are the West’s indifference and Russia and Iran siding with Assad.

While the West, Russia and Iran are far and away, the Arabs stand watching in anger and sadness without doing much.

The Arabs filled the world with protests against offensive cartoons, but we see hardly any reactions and demands as concerns Syria.

Greater support could be accorded the Free Syrian Army.

Arab governments could be made accountable for a political demand to bring down the Syrian regime.

The Arab street is at boiling point. Its explosion one day could prove bigger than we imagined.

Don’t let the massacres go unchallenged – not without counter-measures commensurate with the crime.

Syria: Doctors’ hesitation risks losing the patient

Artwork by Syrian artst Wissam Al Jazairy

By Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia’s analyst, author and kingpin of the impending Al Arab TV news channel writing today for pan-Arab al-Hayat

An ugly sectarian scenario is now in motion in Syria.

Some doctors are indecisive by nature.

If lab results confirm their diagnosis that a patient requires difficult surgery, they first prescribe medication, hoping this would help spare the patient a complex surgical procedure.

Skeptics would say the doctor sought to profit from prolonging the treatment or lacked confidence in his ability to perform the surgery. Optimists would argue the doctor simply tried not to put the patient’s life at risk.

U.S. President Barack Obama faces a similar problem with the Syrian patient. The intentions of the other treating physician – Russian President Vladimir Putin – are flagrant. But there is no escape from leaving the Syrian patient under the consortium’s care.

Obama and Putin know the medication they prescribed is not working. They asked their foreign ministers to get together and hammer out a political solution.

The two presidents are aware the regime totally rejects “peace” as a self-defeating proposition and that the opposition craves for peace after having been forced to take up arms.

The two presidents also realize the regime’s talk of “negotiations” is a PR gimmick.

To pave the way for peace negotiations between the two warring sides, the regime and the Russian Federation want arming of the opposition to cease.

But there are no “two warring sides.” There is simply a repressive regime bent on retaining power on one side and an enraged and revolting population seeking freedom and a new Syria on the other.

The regime is not facing one Syrian party or sect. The Free Syrian Army and the Syrian National Coalition embrace and enfold all the Syrians’ sects, which despite their different stripes and trends are now united “against the regime.”

They will break up into opposing groups and political parties once they contest democratic elections after the regime’s fall.

The majority of quasi-loyalist Syrians now living in Damascus and in parts of Aleppo and Homs that remain under regime control will take to the streets to demand change as soon as the regime security services begin to falter.

Obviously, one precondition for any peace agreement between the regime and the opposition – if Sergei Lavrov and John Kerry sponsor one – would be a cessation of violence by the two sides.

By definition, the cessation of violence would ensure freedom of association and the right to demonstrate peacefully without risking prosecution.

This would take us back to the starting point demanded by the Syrian people in March 2011 and then by the Arab League, the United Nations, Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi.

That starting point has been rejected by the regime all along. It will be rejected again and again for evermore.

Peace and nonviolence don’t work in the regime’s favor. The regime lives by the sword and won’t win except by the sword.

So why waste time on fruitless initiatives?

The answer lies in the game of so-called “international diplomacy.”

Obama, Jordan’s King Abdullah, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and all Arab and European leaders wish for something to happen in Damascus that would bring the conflict to a close without their intervention.

But there are no signs of such a thing happening.

Instead, the Syria crisis has started spilling over.

Seven Iraqis were killed last week as they escorted Syrian soldiers who had sought refuge in Iraq after being evicted from a border crossing. The Syrian “regular army brethren” were in a convoy heading to recapture the border crossing from the Free Syrian Army. Unidentified gunmen ambushed the convoy inside Iraqi territory. It is unclear whether they belonged to the FSA or to its Iraqi Sunnite allies. The latter are avowed supporters of the Syrian revolution, raising its flag in their uprising against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government.

Iraqis who are already divided over their internal affairs have thus added an extra discordant issue.

In turn, Iraq’s Shiites are not hiding their backing of the Syrian regime’s war despite claiming deployment in Damascus of their armed brigade, named after Abul Fadhl al-Abbas, is simply meant to protect the shrine of Sayyeda Zeinab.

Incidentally, the shrine is revered by Syria’s Sunnites, much as the Egyptians venerate the Tomb of Imam Hussein in Cairo.

It’s all pure and utter sectarianism.

An absurd exploitation of a 1,400-year-old conflict is rearing its head to entice the simple-minded into a fierce battle once the FSA breaches the walls of Damascus.

Further away to the West, the no-less sectarian Hezbollah is already fighting inside Syrian close to Lebanon’s northern borders.

Those borders were demarcated by the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, which tailored Lebanon’s froniers to the correct size of its sects. The borders were meant to geographically apportion predominantly Sunnite villages to Syria, ultimately serving as a buffer between Lebanon and the Alawite mountains.

Therein lies Plan B – an Alawite state that Bashar al-Assad would set up for his Alawite community.

Hezbollah is accordingly out to secure a supply line to the would-be statelet. Hence its offensive in the Qusayr region, such as the Serbs did in Bosnia.

Hezbollah’s drive to create a supply route to the rump Alawite state entails ethnic cleansing in an area stretching from northern Lebanon to Qusayr and all the way to the west of Homs.

However, should Syria remain whole in the hands of nationalist forces, the noose would tighten around Hezbollah’s neck. It would be cut down to size and turned into a political force on par with others in Lebanon.

Ensuring the viability of an Alawite state envisaged by the faltering regime also calls for a parallel ethnic cleansing campaign along Syria’s chiefly Sunnite coastline.

A gloomy sectarian scenario is unfolding. Denying it is wrong. Not so speaking about it.