Hesitation in Syria on ‘peace’

It is an abominable sectarian scenario, but it is now happening in Syria. A hesitant doctor would know that a patient needs a critical surgery, yet keeps trying a variety of treatments in the hope of avoiding the surgical procedure. Those with bad intentions might think that the doctor is prolonging the process to get more money from the patient or because he is not good enough to carry out the surgery, while those with good intentions would say that the doctor sympathizes with the patient and is trying to find a way out that does not put his life to risk.

The same applies to American President Barrack Obama and Syria. As for the other doctor, Russian President Vladimir Putin, his intentions are flagrantly obvious. However, there is no way we can avoid leaving the patient in the care of this “consortium.” Both of them presented a remedy that they know would not work. They agreed to assign their foreign ministers to meet and agree on a peaceful solution. They know that the Syrian regime rejects “peace” and cannot live with it. The opposition needs peace, but was dragged into war. As for the regime’s talk about negotiations, this is nothing more than a PR campaign.

The regime and Russia are talking about the necessity of stopping the armament of the opposition in order to create a suitable environment for peaceful negotiations between the two parties in the conflict. But there are no “two parties in the conflict” to start with, only a repressive regime that insists on remaining in power and a revolutionary angry people that demands freedom and the establishment of a new Syria. There is no specific party or faction in Syria that is leading the conflict, for everybody knows that the Free Syrian Army and the National Coalition are made up of all the echelons of the Syrian people and are diverse as far as their ideologies and tendencies are concerned. They are only united in their stance against the regime but after its fall will emerge as different groups and parties competing in democratic elections. Even Syrians in cities that are still under the regime’s control like Damascus, Aleppo, and Homs and who seem to be loyalists will all stage protests against this regime and demand change once its security grip is loosened.

One of the terms of any peaceful agreement between the regime and the opposition, if such a meeting takes place under the auspices of Johan Kerry and Sergey Lavrov, has to be that the regime stops violence exactly like the opposition would. Stopping violence means allowing peaceful protests without hunting down protesters. It is the return to square one which the Syrian people demanded in March 2011 and which was followed by initiatives by the Arab League, the United Nations, Kofi Anan, and Lakhdar Ibrahimi, all rejected and are to be rejected over and again by the regime. Peace and nonviolence do not serve the regime because it lives by force and will never win except by force. Why then are people wasting their time in futile initiatives?

It is a game called “international diplomacy” and it aims at evading responsibility. Of course, Obama, Jordanian King Abdullah II, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and every Arab and European official hope that something would happen in Damascus to end the conflict without their intervention, but looks like nothing of the sort is looming in the horizon. The Syrian crisis is starting to echo outside Syria. Last week, for example, witnessed the death of seven Iraqis accompanying Syrian soldiers who fled their border posts after they were seized by the Free Syrian Army. Those “brethren from the state army” were heading back to recapture the post and were ambushed inside the Iraqi territories. Nobody knows who did that. It could be the Free Syrian Army or their allies among Iraqi Sunnis, who do not make a secret of their support for the Syrian revolution whose flag they raised in their protests against the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Bottom line is that Iraqis who are already divided over their domestic affairs are now also divided over the Syrian revolution. Iraqi Shiites did not hide their support for the Syrian regime even if they claim that their armed brigade Abi Fadl al-Abbas is in Damascus to protect the Sayeda Zeinab shrine, also venerated by the Sunnis as is the case with Egyptians and al-Hussein shrine in Cairo. This is blatant sectarianism that summons up a 1,400 year old conflict and unravels its ugly face to lure the simple-minded and forebode a fierce battle in Damascus as the Free Syrian Army advances.

To the West, Hezbollah is being active in a no less sectarian manner. It is fighting inside Syria and in the northern parts of Lebanon, a region which Sykes Picot maps and the calculations of “a convenient Lebanon” rendered home to a variety of sects and in which geography left several predominantly Sunni villages inside Syria to isolate Lebanon from the Alawite mountains, where plan B, the Alawaite state in which Bashar al-Assad and his people would retreat, is to take place. Therefore, Hezbollah needs to guarantee a backup and that is why it is fighting around the Quseir region in what resembles Serbian offensives in Bosnia. This kind of war requires an ethnic cleansing process that extends from northern Lebanon across the Quseir region to the west of Homs so that Hezbollah can establish the defense line it needs. If Syria falls without partition at the hands of national powers, this means the end of Hezbollah, which will then be turned into a sheer political faction similar to others in Lebanon, a position it has never been accustomed to.

The crumbling regime which will resort to the “Alawite state” also needs to embark on an ethnic cleansing process in the predominantly Sunni Syrian coast so that its statelet is able to survive.

It is a pessimistic sectarian scenario, but it is happening and it is a mistake to deny it.

This article was first published in al-Hayat on March 9, 2013

(Jamal Khashoggi is a Saudi journalist, columnist, author, and general manager of the upcoming Al Arab News Channel. He previously served as a media aide to Prince Turki al Faisal while he was Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States. Khashoggi has written for various daily and weekly Arab newspapers, including Asharq al-Awsat, al-Majalla and al-Hayat, and was editor-in-chief of the Saudi-based al-Watan. He was a foreign correspondent in Afghanistan, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan, and other Middle Eastern countries. He is also a political commentator for Saudi-based and international news channels. Twitter: @JKhashoggi)