Protesters in Syria have cheered on the revolutionaries in Libya, and the fall of Tripoli to a popular uprising last Saturday and Sunday gave new heart to the Syrian reform movement. So far the Syrian demonstrators have been hampered by relative lack of support in the capital of Damascus itself. Damascus is controlled by the ruling Baath Party of Bashar al-Asad.
There were also significant demonstrations in the Damascus district of Douma and the main square of the suburb of Kafr Soussa. Regime troops attempted to disperse them. Altogether 8 were killed on Friday.
Since Syria’s regime is secular and the upper echelons of the government and the military are disproportionately drawn from the Allawite Shiite minority, the storming of the al-Rifa’i mosque and killing of its imam is likely to deeply anger Sunnis across the board. If they respond to the call to gather in the historical squares of Damascus, it could be a tipping point in the Syrian movement.
Ironically, the Abbasid Square is named for a dynasty that came to power in 750 AD/ CE as a result… of a popular revolution against the ruling Umayyad dynasty.
Q. What impact will the call by the United States and major European powers for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down–followed by heightened U.S. and EU sanctions–have on Syria-Iran relations?
Cole: They will push Syria even more into the arms of Iran. Syria is being gradually cut off from Western finances and relationships. So if the regime is going to survive, it will want to look east to Iran and perhaps China. Syria seems to also be improving its relationship with Iraq.
Q. Why has Iraq opted to align with Syria and Iran in backing Assad?
Cole: It is not entirely clear. Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki does not state motivations. But it appears that two things are going on. There is a domestic reason; Maliki is worried about Bashar al Assad being overthrown. Assad belongs to the minority Shiite sect of Alawites. Many of Assad’s opponents are Sunnis- some of whom are Sunni fundamentalists. And some of those are the sort of people who were supporting the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Maliki does not want them to come to power in Damascus and become his neighbors.
Another consideration that has been suggested is that Maliki owes his position as prime minister in this round [of elections held in 2010] to the support of Iran for coalition building of the Iraq Shiites. So he may be paying back a debt.
Q. Is this a new de facto alliance?
Cole: There seems to be a growing Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus axis for certain purposes. Iraq is a very complex place and it still is, in odd ways, an American ally. Though in this particular instance, Baghdad is siding with Iran and Syria against the stated U.S. position. The alliance appears to be over sectarianism and regional politics. There is nothing that Syria can do for Iraq, economically. Syria is potentially a trading partner but there is no economic carrot that Syria can offer Iraq. It is actually the other way around. According to one report-that Maliki has denied-the Iranians had pressured the Iraqi government to donate $ 10 billion to Syria to help Damascus get through its current crisis. The alliance is very much about who you will like to have in the capital of your neighbor.
Q. What are the factors behind the support of Iran and Iraq for Syria?
Cole: Iran is isolated and has very few allies in the Middle East-Lebanon and Syria being the primary ones. So it has every reason to act as patron to Syria. Syria forms a bridge between Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. So it is a way of protecting Iranian power and influence in the Levant. Iraq is not similarly isolated but it is in some ways being pushed into a Shiite set of alliances, both by the sectarian undertones to the uprising in Syria and by events in Bahrain, where the Shiite majority demanded the Sunni monarchy become a constitutional monarchy. [But the Shiites] were crushed with the help of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who were essentially acting as Sunni powers in the Gulf. This crushing of Bahrain’s democracy movement by Sunni powers provoked large demonstrations in Iraq and angered a lot of Iraqi Shiites. Of course, Maliki is both the prime minister of Iraq and the main political leader of the Iraqi Shiites. So he is being pushed toward a kind of sectarian politics and a closer alliance with Iran and Damascus by the sectarian character of the Arab Spring in the Gulf region.
Q. How have Iran and Iraq reacted to unrest in Syria?
Cole: The Iranians have jumped up and down and been very vocal about the repression in Bahrain [and] they have [even] supported the Libyan uprising. In fact, they have supported all of the uprisings. They claimed that the uprisings are Islamic in character and inspired by Iran’s revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini. But the Iranians do not say anything about what is going on in Syria. It is just like a blank slate and a point of clear hypocrisy on their part.
Tehran does not admit that there are protestors in Syria. They do not say anything about the movement in Syria. They do not deplore the violence used against peaceful non-combatants in a way that they have in other countries. They just do not talk about it. The Persian press is silent– a big contrast to their vocal position on the other Arab Spring revolts. With regard to Iraq, Nouri al Maliki gave a speech [in late August] in which he warned that too much pressure on the Assad regime could get to a point where Israel would be able to take advantage of the situation. [link here] This is a remarkable statement on Maliki’s part. He has not typically talked much about Israel, although he did take a stand for Hezbollah in 2006 and was angry about the Gaza war in 2008-9.
The discourse Maliki used [on Israel] may have well been coming out of Tehran. And it seems to be a sign again that Maliki is being pushed [away] from the kind of American-sponsored states of the eastern Arab world and their discourse-[namely] Jordan and Egypt [which] have peace treaties with Israel. He is starting to sound much more like Iran or Lebanon, even Damascus, when it comes to Israel. It is a new and different discourse for[mainstream] Iraqi politics in the post-Saddam era.
Juan Cole is professor of history at the University of Michigan and runs the Informed Comment weblog. He has authored many books on the Middle East. His latest is “Engaging the Muslim World” (2010).
President Obama, along with the European Union, called on Thursday for Syrian President Bashar al-Asad to step down. At the same time, the US announced severe economic and financial sanctions against Syria, essentially cutting the Syrian banking system off from access to US banks, and forbidding American citizens and firms from doing business with the Syrian government. Plans are clearly being made to closely identify exactly which state-owned firms control Syria’s small petroleum industry, and to put those under sanctions.
In short, the North Atlantic world took a big step toward making Syria a pariah state, rather like North Korea. What stands in the way of Syria becoming quite that isolated is continued support for Damascus from some Lebanese factions and from Iran, China and Russia.
The strategy is to starve the regime of funds it needs to crack down on protesters, and to to help the reformists. The Baath regime in Syria has deployed snipers and tanks and other heavy weaponry against non-combatant protesters in many towns and cities. Human rights groups suggest that he has had over 2000 people killed for peaceably assembling. Unfortunately, sanctions are not a strategy that has been known to work very often, if at all. Baath Party officials will insulate themselves from the effects of the sanctions, and pass the pain on to the common people.
One reason the administration gave for the time it took to come to this point was that Washington felt a joint declaration of the US and European allies was necessary if further sanctions were to bite deeply for the regime. It has taken this long to hammer out a US-EU consensus on the need to sanction Syria for its brutal repression of protesters.
Presidential aspirant Michele Bachmann criticized Obama for not having imposed these sanctions weeks ago She says Obama is ‘leading from behind.’. But Bachmann is on record as opposing US participation in the NATO intervention in Libya. So who is leading from behind? And how would she know how long it takes to get the 28-member European Union on board with a new sanctions policy?
Aljazeera English reports on the ongoing protests and the attempt of the US to help them by weakening the Syrian state through sanctions.:
Obama’s plans to call for al-Asad to step down, if those reports are true, seem to me a bad idea. It is unwise to call for something to happen if you can’t make it happen and don’t know whether it will. If Obama calls for al-Asad to be gone, and he is still there years from now, it will just make the US look weak and ineffectual. Denouncing the Syrian strong man’s crackdowns as illegal, and imposing stronger sanctions, would be wiser.
Saudi Arabia has now been deeply critical of al-Asad, with King Abdullah calling the Baath regime “a killing machine.” Riyadh came under pressure to speak out from Sunnis, who see the Alawite-dominated Syrian state as tinged with Shiite Islam, and so view the crackdowns as a Shiite persecution of Sunnis. Likewise, Sunni revivalists are among the key constituents of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, helping to account for the increasingly strong language Turkey has used toward al-Asad. In contrast, the some 20% of Turks who are Alevi Shiites (a heterodox sect) are said to have some sympathy for Syrian Allawis (the two forms of folk Shiism are not similar in doctrine or ritual practice, however).
That leading countries in the Arab League are now denouncing al-Asad is a blow to his prestige.
But, the regime does not seem that fragile, despite the obvious determination of the protesters. There haven’t been really big demonstrations in the capital of Damascus so far. The religious minorities make up about 25 percent of the population of 22 mn., and are afraid that the opposition is heavily tinged with Sunni fundamentalism. If you add Sunni secularists, you may have a majority of the population who fear governmental change. The security and military forces have not split and continue to back the regime. Mere verbal strong-arming from Washington is unlikely to materially change the situation.
AJE also reports on government’s rationale that Hama has been taken over by hooligans and terrorists. The language is identical to that used by the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt, and Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Paint dissenters as violent sabotaging thugs, they seem to think, and then you can do whatever you like to them and no one will care. What they don’t know is that revolutionary movements are watered with the blood of the martyrs…
The United Nations Security Council on Wednesday issued a “presidential statement,” one step below a resolution, chiding the Syrian government for its violent repression of protests (but also condemning violence by the protesters, which is a little like complaining that Jack the Ripper’s victims tried to scratch him with their fingernails). The statement was hailed as a turning point by French foreign minister Alain Juppe, and defended as an important step forward by US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice.
Diplomacy is the art of the possible, and one understands Juppe’s and Rice’s emphasis on the achievement here. But the statement contained no sanctions. So it was toothless. Russia and China are running interference for the Baath regime of Bashar al-Asad, and there is no prospect of them allowing UNSC sanctions on Damascus. So not only does the statement not contain any practical steps, it is unlikely to be followed by any resolution more decisive or robust.
The USG Open Source Center translates remarks of Russian UN ambassador Vitaliy Churkin on the Syrian crisis:
‘UN envoy explains Russia’s viewpoint on Syria
Rossiya 1
Wednesday, August 3, 2011 …
Document Type: OSC Summary…
Different approaches to the events in Syria have prevented the UN Security Council from adopting the revised resolution on Syria, Russia’s permanent representative at the UN Vitaliy Churkin told journalists after the latest consultations, as carried by official Russian state channel Rossiya 1 on 3 August.
“It is no secret that our Western colleagues believe that Damascus and the Syrian government are to blame for everything and the best the Security Council can do is to put maximum pressure on Syrian authorities or even intimidate them with further actions on the part of the Security Council. There are a number of other members of the Security Council, Russia among them, who see the situation as more complicated. This analysis of the situation makes us believe that that task of the Security Council is to maximally encourage all sides in Syria to hold a dialogue that would allow the country to find a way out of the current crisis,” he said.
(Description of Source: Moscow Rossiya 1 in Russian — Large state-owned network broadcasting to almost all of Russia (formerly Rossiya TV)) ‘
In other words, Churkin does not admit the right of Syrians to peaceably assemble for protests, perceives them as violent attackers of the Baath Party status quo, and urges that they negotiate with the government that has mown down some 2000 of them and rolled tanks against them. The old Soviet Union was a major patron of Syria, and the present Russian Federation appears to be interested in picking Syria back up as a client.
Still, the various positions on Syria in the Russian government are diverse, and some, at least, are taking a genuinely post-Soviet line, condemning the Syrian government’s violence in no uncertain terms.
The Open Source Center translated remarks of Mikhail Margelov, the special envoy for Africa of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, which show a high level of ethical commitment and clear, analytical thinking about Syria:
‘ Russian envoy for Africa slams Syrian regime
Ekho Moskvy Radio
Wednesday, August 3, 2011…
Document Type: OSC Translated Text
Text of report by Gazprom-owned, editorially independent Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy on 3 August
(Presenter) The Russian president’s special envoy for Africa, Mikhail Margelov, is confident that the Syrian leadership has displayed utmost cruelty in its suppression of the opposition. Thus the incumbent Syrian regime has condemned itself to certain death.
(Margelov) Tank attacks against one’s compatriots and coreligionists, unacceptable at any time, look especially defiant during the Holy Month of Muslim fasting, Ramadan. In fact, the Syrian government preferred a war with its civil population to reforms long overdue. This is an obvious manifestation of the weakness of the regime.
With his massacres Syrian President Bashar al-Asad extremely complicated a transition to a political settlement of the situation as he caused justified bitterness against the regime and himself both within the country and beyond its borders.
The activities of the Syrian government are only exacerbating the situation and the hopes for a political dialogue are disappearing with every attack of government tanks and infantry. Thus the incumbent regime is putting itself in a position when a blood stamp appears on it, and in this day and age such regimes are doomed, if not tomorrow then over the foreseeable historical term.
(Description of Source: Moscow Ekho Moskvy Radio in Russian — influential station known for its news coverage and interviews of politicians; now owned by Gazprom but largely retains its independence) ‘
World action on the Syrian regime’s crimes depends very much on whether it is Churkin or Margelov who wins the argument inside Moscow.
Syria’s concerted military intervention against peacefully protesting crowds at the beginning of the fasting month of Ramadan has resulted in dozens of deaths, especially in the city of Hama, with about 100 dead in the past two days.
During Ramadan, devout Muslims refrain from drinking or eating anything from dawn until sunset. They break the fast after the sunset prayers, and then when the black of night has completely fallen, they pray the evening prayer. After that they might perform supererogatory prayers, tarawih. Those men who pray daily prayers in groups at the mosque are thus available in the evening for mobilization as protesters at after-tarawih rallies. Because it is very hot in August, many Muslims stay up late during Ramadan, and the place becomes a region of night owls. During a time of widespread popular uprising, the Baathist regime of President Bashar al-Asad deeply fears that evening worship will turn into night-time protests of some size and durability. (During the July Tahrir Square movement in Cairo, aside from Friday afternoon the really big crowds sometimes gathered at midnight).
On the other hand, during Ramadan people often feel weak and have headaches, and in the evenings often visit family members, so that Egypt’s protesters called off their rallies during the fasting month. The Syrian government’s fears of Ramadan uprisings may have been overblown, and it may have erred in responding so violently to peaceful protests.
3. Thousands of mostly Shiite protesters marched on the Budaiya highway outside Manama on Friday, denouncing the fixed “dialogue” process and tepid reforms offered by King Hamad Al Khalifa. The dialogue council had been heavily stacked with Sunnis and regime supporters. The Wifaq Party was marginalized. It represents the majority of Bahrain Shiites, who are roughly 60% of the population (down from 65% because of a crash program of giving citizenship to foreign Sunnis in recent years on the part of the regime). Shiite Bahrainis are disproportionately rural and poor and face employment, social and political discrimination. Wifaq seeks a constitutional monarchy, though the minority view that a republic would be even better may be gaining adherents as the monarchy uses hard line tactics to repress the majority demands. Manama is the site of the HQ of the US Fifth Fleet, and while the Obama administration has urged King Hamad to negotiate and compromise with his citizens, it has done no more than that, in the face of severe repression and violations of basic human rights. There is no evidence for the regime charge that Bahrain Shiites are cat’s paw of nearby Shiite Iran. Most Bahrain Shiites belong to a different legal school than Iranians, and, being Arabs, are skittish about the idea of Persian domination. (A minority of Bahrain Shiites, mostly in Manama, has Iranian ancestry). The demonstrations on Friday were a remarkable resurgence of the democracy movement, given how severe the crackdown against it was.
4. The Egyptian Left has been on a roll since July 8, starting back up the Tahrir protests and forcing the government to move more aggressively in trying former regime figures and out-of-control police, and in switching out about half the cabinet, replacing Establishment figures with persons more sympathetic too or even deriving from the ranks of the protesters. The Muslim fundamentalists were upset by this growing leftist influence, backed by labor activists and youth groups sympathetic to them, and so threatened to stage a big rally on July 29 in favor of implementing Islamic law. They were afraid in part that the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, the real power behind the civilian cabinet of PM Essam Sharaf, will issue “guiding principles” for the drafting of the constitution, scheduled to begin this winter after elections. These “guiding principles” could forestall any Islamization of the constitution. The Wasat Party mediated a deal to avoid a clash at Tahrir Square, and it was decided that some 30 parties and organizations would hold a joint demonstration for mutually agreed-upon goals. The Freedom and Justice Party of the Muslim Brotherhood, which represents itself as the modern face of Muslim politics, largely abided by the agreement. But Salafis, who are a recognizable subculture in Egypt, did not. Salafi men tend to wear white, Saudi-style robes, checkered kaffiyas or head scarves, and large beards, often with no moustaches. The Salafis want an Islamic state and a hard line interpretation of shariah, and on Friday they said so loudly. The Salafis are a tiny group in Egypt, and they are widely seen to have behaved badly, even by other Muslim parties like the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, the Salafis put a scare into women, middle class people, Coptic Christians, and youth on Friday that almost certainly hurt the chances of the Muslim Brotherhood in the upcoming elections, at least in urban areas. That is, the true significance of Friday’s events is the opposite of that you see in a lot of today’s headlines in the Western press, about Muslim politics coming to the fore. More like Muslim politics behaves like a boor.
5. Some 3,000 Muslim fundamentalists protested in downtown Amman, Jordan, demanding “genuine reform.” On July 15, pro-regime crowds (or paid hands, who knows?) attacked protesters and journalists there. The fundamentalists took a joint oath to remain peaceful. Polling does not show that Muslim fundamentalism is very popular in Jordan, and as long as the protests are spearheaded by that part of the political spectrum, they are unlikely to amount to much.
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