If Syrian rebels need a pre-Ba’athist flag, it happens that there are several to choose from.
An unpopular dictatorship, an active pro-democracy uprising, and fluency in Arabic so that everybody knows more or less what’s happening throughout the Arab world right now.
Despite which, Assad starts out in a stronger position than Gaddafi did, as I said in the OP. The Libyan revolution depended on the army being not very competent, and with many troops and officers ready to defect to the rebels. The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions depended on the army supporting the revolution or at least tacitly agreeing to stay out of its way. Those conditions will not exist in Syria.
What regime? We have no idea who we’re supporting. It’s a civil war. It will probably be a civil war a year from now when all the feudal states fight it out for the oil.
This is part of that oft repeated belief that the Arabs haven’t discovered Nationalism or Democracy in their game of Civilization 4 isn’t it?
No, it’s part of a simple question, WHAT REGIME? Do capital letters help?
Well, since they are wrapping up the war, I would say the organization recognized by almost every government and every major governing body in the world: the National Transitional Council. They were in Benghazi and will be moving to Tripoli soon to continue running the country. NATO engaged in a bombing campaign for months to support them. I think you might have heard of them, but maybe not.
There’s been a fair amount of coverage recently about how Iran’s anti-protest and internet-censorship forces have been helping the Syrian regime out, as effective as they were at cracking down on the protests in Tehran and other cities that could be the difference that keeps Syria’s government from collapsing like other Arab nations did.
Syria don’t have any oil and the israelis prefer the current regime over any of the prospective alternatives, so there’ll be no US attempt at overthrowing the current regime. Maybe there’ll be a change of leader to put a different face on the regime but it’s hard to see it going further than that. Any real revolution there will come from the people, peace be upon them, but it’s hard to see how they can overthrow such an entrenched power structure. maybe the Assad family gets the boot but then all the current Syrian playas have to agree on a replacement.
Regime change in Syria would be to the U.S.’ strategic advantage; Assad is an ally of Iran. As for Israel, could any succeeding regime be more anti-Israeli? I doubt it.
The danger to watch for here is not a worse new regime, but no effective regime at all. Syria is not more-or-less homogeneous like Libya and Egypt and Tunisia, it is ethnically and religiously diverse enough to factionalize and fracture Iraq-style.
Elvis has left the building and they’re still fighting his supporters so we haven’t seen part II yet. At this point, the NTC consists of of a loose collection of people who wanted Gaddafi gone. If and when that happens there will be a large vacuum of power which will see different factions around the country compete for the oil field money and jobs. All that assumes Gaddafi didn’t take a wad of money with him to wage war from Algeria.
All we supported was a loose confederation of “not Gaddafi” rebels who have no authority themselves beyond the end of a gun for anyone who challenges their right to rule in the interim.
This isn’t Iraq in 2003 or the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. Militarily, the NTC has a specific command and control. They would not have driven Qaddafi out of Tripoli without it. They would still look like they did after NATO started bombing.
Financially, there is a NTC finance minister and all Qaddafi assets in countries that recognize the NTC are going to be in their hands.
Politically, there is a leadership and foreign ministry that is already governing the actions in the country.
Although doubts are fine, this situation is more like Egypt or Tunisia where the interim struggles are neither severe nor pushing the country away from its original political goals. At least this is what I predict from what I see.
Syria has little to compare with Libya, but that may change over time. It would be worth considering helping out the Syrian opposition if they develop into an organized rebellion. It was a good strategy that cost us little and the gains are big.
At the very end of this Aljazeera story:
Really!
That many security personnel.
That implies at least some of the protesters are already armed.
They’re an insurrectionary government, of course they’re not elected. Their right to rule is also backed up by broad popularity and a general consensus that somebody has to rule, chaos must be avoided. In the eastern half of the country, after the Gaddafi forces were chased out or defected, and the rebels had to keep things running, they simply put the local governments under town councils of volunteers nobody found too objectionable. The NTC is the same thing writ large; its numbers now will be supplemented by cooption, i.e., they’ll recruit some members representing the Tripoli area, etc. And that’s the nearest thing to a government representative of the nation that can be put together right away – isn’t it? Government-by-volunteers might not work in the long run, but it should work until elections can be organized.
The next Syrian regime, if it’s actually representative of the Syrian people, will be far more Arab nationalist than the current regime. Israel have historically been happy with the status quo in Syria – the Muslim Brotherhood and various Salafi groups being possible alternatives to the current regime – and like you point out, from America’s point of view a country with so many different ethnic groups, majority Sunni and ruled by an Alawite minority could easily fracture into a 2010s version of 1980s Lebanon. Syria currently is no real problem but change the regime and you could have an ongoing decades-long conflict stoked by Syria’s neighbours, Iran, Saudi etc. So the status quo looks quite good. Plus they’ve got no oil, so no real incentive to change the regime. Look at Egypt. Both the US and Israel would take another few decades of Mubarak Junior rule in a second if offered the opportunity. They don’t know what they’re going to get now. Why create another Egypt, or more probably another Lebanon?
Syrian security peole have died at the hands of groups that have been opposed to the Assad regime for decades. These groups are really strong in cities like Hama. In the eighties there was a mass Sunni revolt against the Assad regime. There was such strong resistance from Sunni radicals in Hama that Hafez Assad, Bashar’s dad, sent his air force in to bomb the shit out of the old town. Then he dropped chemical weapons on them. Then he surrounded the town with artillery and shelled them for a month. Then he sent the tanks in to flatten everything. Then he sent a fleet of bulldozers in to crush everything completely flat.
Do you really want to open up this can of worms? For decades the US and Israel have believed that the regime currently keeping a lid on all the potential mayhem there was a good thing, the least bad option we had. And events in the region and Syria over the last year have only confirmed that. I just can’t see anybody in Washington or Israel keen to see any actual popular revolution happening there.
Meaning what, exactly? “Arab nationalism” used to mean the same thing as “pan-Arabism,” i.e., the idea that all the Arabic-speaking states and people should be united (which is a core principle of Ba’athist ideology, I believe). An idea which in the past produced such things as a short-lived Syrian-Egyptian federation called the “United Arab Republic,” but nobody seems much interested in reviving it, AFAIK.
Meaning that they’d be far more of a problem for America and israel than they currently are, see Egypt for instance.
You don’t know what you are talking about.
The Ba’athists who’ve ruled Syria for generations were the inventors of Arab Nationalism.
On the other hand, their domestic opponents, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups are fervently anti-Nationalist.
What does “anti-Nationalist” mean in this context? And does it mean trouble for the U.S. or Israel?