Time for a Geneva II reality check: There are more than two sides to the new chessboard

Special to WorldTribune.com

By Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, Global Information System / Defense & Foreign Affairs

In the so-called “Geneva II” round of talks underway (in Montreux, Switzerland, not Geneva) during late January 2014, on the conflict in Syria, Syrian opposition chief Ahmed Jarba has kept demanding, in the name of the international community, the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “The world is now sure that Assad cannot stay and will not stay,” he said.

It’s time for a reality check.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Montreux, Jan. 22.  /Reuters
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Montreux, Jan. 22. /Reuters

There is a multi-faceted war going on in the territories of Syria, as well as Iraq and Lebanon. Since the dawn of history, wars ended with winners and losers. In this war in Syria, the Assad Administration has already won and the opposition was defeated. Hence, what U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is telling Bashar Assad in Montreux is essentially something like: “Since our protégés have failed to defeat you and overthrow your government, you should now surrender at the negotiating table.”

Meanwhile, on the ground, the Bashar Assad administration won the war because it enjoys the support of 70 to 75 percent of the Syrian population. About half of all Syrians — virtually all of them Sunni Arabs — now prefer the Assad Administration to prevail because they are exhausted of war and suffering, they dread the jihadists, and they hate and mistrust the exiled opposition (the one Jabra leads and Obama supports). No verbal magic in Montreux will change this reality.

Fighting, however, continue to spread. The now fully integrated wars in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon would have ended long ago with significantly less casualties and suffering had it not been for the “leading from behind” by the U.S. Barack Obama administration. The Obama White House profoundly misunderstood the unfolding conflict and mishandled the local and regional reaction. Alas, the high price has been, and still is being, paid by the innocent civilians.

Like in all the other “Arab Spring” eruptions, the Obama White House rushed to embrace, endorse, and encourage the Ikhwan-affiliated forces. In Syria, then-U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford actively encouraged the Islamist opposition to “do something”; that is, escalate the then non-violent confrontation with the Assad Administration. When violence erupted, the U.S. encouraged Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and other states to start funneling funds and weapons to Islamist forces. With the U.S.-led NATO intervention in Libya escalating, U.S. officials impressed upon their Syrian protégés that a similar U.S.-led intervention in Syria was soon to commence, and that consequently they would be empowered in Damascus. Hence, why should the Islamist opposition have interpreted their rejection by the Syrian grassroots as a reason to quit the fight when the U.S. was about to deliver victory and put the Islamists in power?

The long-term consequences are beginning to show.

As in all the other “Arab Spring” eruptions, the Obama White House did not bother to ask the local people what they really want and aspire for. Alas, one of the prime lessons of human history is that when people are pushed to immense suffering and violence, they capitalize on the chaos and ordeal in order to realize their own aspirations. The peoples of the Middle East are not different. They are now adamant on drastically changing the socio-political environment they live in so that another catastrophe will not erupt in the foreseeable future. And the peoples of the Middle East have given up on the modern Arab state as the viable framework that might protect them in the future.

And so, there gathered in Montreux is an international conference to discuss the future of the modern state of Syria when one no longer exists. Nor do the modern states of Iraq and Lebanon exist, and Jordan may be about to follow.

The peoples of the region are withdrawing to seek confidence, security, and solace in their traditional habitats. These will form the future states in the Middle East.

The new Syria that the Assad’s Damascus really controls is comprised of two main sectors: 1) the minorities’ belt along the Mediterranean that is comprised of the ‘Alawites, Druze, and Maronites, with Iran delivering the Shi’ites of the Hizbullah as the price for retaining onland access to the Mediterranean; and 2) the economic powerhouse which runs from Aleppo to Damascus and into the few towns of Syria’s western desert (particularly Tadmur). The message of the new Syria is rapidly spreading among the ‘Alawites/Alavis of Turkey (especially these of Hatay province which was ceded by the French colonial powers to Turkey in 1939) and the Druze and Sunni Arab tribes of northern Jordan.

A unified Kurdish state has emerged on the borders with Turkey and Iran with the effective unification of the Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish populated zones. Having endured persecution and discrimination by both Arab, Turkish, and Iranian governments, the Kurds will not permit any international fora to take away their state and the security it provides. Kurdish lands are rich with oil, and Erbil is trading oil for security and political recognition. The Kurds of Turkey and Iran are watching with great interest and yearning to join.

To the south of the Kurdish state, there emerged the jihadist Emirate of Iraq and al-Sham (Greater Syria) which stretches along the Euphrates valley from southeast of Aleppo to east of Fallujah and the western gates of Baghdad. The Emirate also spreads influence into the Sunni Arab populated desert of what used to be eastern Syria and western Iraq.

Increasingly challenged militarily by Syrian and Kurdish forces in the northern outreaches of the Emirate, and by Iraqi Shiite forces in the Emirate’s southern edges, the jihadists reach out to, and make deals with, the Sunni Arab tribes inhabiting the area against their common foes. The longterm outcome of these deals is that the Emirate is gradually becoming less Islamist and more a Sunni Arab tribal state. The only way the jihadists can prevent the Sunni Arab tribes from reaching out to Assad’s Damascus with quests for more weapons and help against both the jihadists in their midst and the encroaching Iraqi Shi’ite forces is to give the tribes the autonomy and security they desire.

The evolving marriage of convenience between the Sunni Arab tribes and the jihadists already ensures that the Emirate or State of Iraq and al-Sham is here to stay.

To the southeast, squeezed between the Ahwazi Arabs of southwestern Iran, the Kurds to the north and Sunni Arab tribes to the west and south, there emerged the Shi’ite Arab state of the new Iraq. Not to be swallowed by the ascending power of Shi’ite Iran, Shi’ite Arab Iraq will have to keep reinforcing the traditional Shi’ite militancy of the holy cities of Najaf and Qarbala which still seeks violent revenge for the murder of Imam Hussein in Autumn 680.

Significantly, the Shi’ite militant school of Najaf and Qarbala is also followed by the theological leaders of the Hizbullah in Lebanon, thus creating an Arab Shi’ite brotherhood Iran has to support and sponsor as part of the bridge to the Mediterranean.

There remains the empty southern desert: a sparsely populated no man’s land currently exploited by the Iranians to sustain their onland corridor to the Mediterranean irrespective of Damascus or Baghdad.

The overall ascent of Iran as a regional power with strategic nuclear capabilities casts a huge shadow over all of these dynamics.

Presently, however, Tehran is focused on establishing hegemony over the Arabian Peninsula while conducting a charm offensive vis-à-vis the U.S. and the rest of the West in order to ensure Iran’s economic revival.

Nevertheless, Tehran would not permit anybody, including the U.S., to deprive it of the onland access to the Mediterranean, an historic achievement which the mullahs consider second only to their sustenance of their own administration, in power since 1979.

Tehran is essentially content with the emerging status quo. Hence, Tehran will not permit anybody to reverse Iran’s strategic posture, but would also not invest too many resources to vastly improve Iran’s dominance.

Such a surge is awaiting the completion of the consolidation of a recognized nuclear Iran as the preeminent regional power and the defeat of Saudi Arabia, the leader of Sunni Islam and custodian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

Moreover, given the dominant religious aspect of Iran’s ascent, any surge in the northern Middle East will entail confronting Israel over the control of Jerusalem and the very existence of a Jewish State. The mullahs are cognizant that this is not a simple challenge.

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