America Assassinates the Syrian Opposition

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

By the pan-Arab and Islamic convention committed to the moderation of Islam, a political curse falls upon any party or person who receives praise, commendation, or support of any kind from the United States and/or Israel and/or the Arab regimes. So what, then, when all these parties come together to praise and support a particular figure? Gamal Abdel Nasser once said he knew he was on the right path if America criticized him, and knew he was on the wrong path if America praised him. Just yesterday, Mr. Hassan Nasrallah said he felt reassured and at ease that the UN Secretary-General — who speaks according to America’s will — was worried about the presence of factional weapons in Lebanon.

This rule above does not apply absolutely, but it exists and lives on in the minds and hearts of Arab nationalists and Islamists, and broadly in the minds and hearts of ordinary people. People across the Arab homeland have learned through experience that America and Israel praise only those who serve their interests — interests that run contrary to those of the Arab nation. Israel and America praise the Arab regimes that carry out Western policies and take their orders from Western states, while working to strangle regimes that do not fall into line, even if those regimes are themselves despotic. In every case, both states have supported Arab despotism, whether by obedient regimes or defiant ones, and have supported the squandering of Arab wealth, because in that lies the nation’s weakness, its abasement, and its continued subjugation under others’ power. In the Palestinian experience, it turned out that every person and party classified as “moderate” by America and Israel works to carry out the Israeli and American visions for the region, or at the very least appeases them and stands ready to deal with them. This is why Israeli prime ministers have lately taken to warning their ministers and security chiefs against praising anyone on the Palestinian scene, for fear of tarnishing that person before the Palestinian public and the Arab nation’s masses.

Praise from despotic Arab regimes likewise brings disparagement and censure upon the party or person praised — it is enough for someone to become a minister or hold a senior post under any Arab regime for his image to be tarnished. On this score the Arab regimes have split into two camps: one allied with America and Israel, and another that has rebelled against America and Israel, if only rhetorically. But all the regimes have remained, for the Arab citizen, nothing but dens of evil, owing to repression, despotism, injustice, and the plunder of wealth. There is no difference between a regime allied with Israel and its friends and one that is not allied with it, except among a small, partisan clique that benefits from the regime. By my own estimate, this clique may amount to around 10%, based on the totality of polls conducted by various satellite channels on a number of issues. I have noticed that the proportion of people who stand with the regimes — whether of the pro-Israel camp or not — comes close to this same figure.

This outlook toward those on whom America, Israel, and the Arab regimes bestow their favor has not spared the Arab regimes still taking shape. The new Libyan regime, for instance, needs years before its image becomes clear, since a fair proportion of Arabs view it as an American-Atlanticist regime that will end up supporting Israel, seeing it as the creature of the American-led NATO alliance. As for the Islamists in Egypt, they are now subject to a great deal of controversy because of their responsiveness to American courtship, and because of statements about their acceptance of the Camp David agreement with Israel.

The Syrian Opposition

From the very start, the Syrian opposition, or the Syrian street movement, was exposed to a great deal of harm and disparagement because of how quickly America rushed to endorse it and mobilize Arab and international support behind it. America was very measured in its statements regarding Tunisia and Egypt, moving in step with the course of history, but it was not measured at all when it came to Syria — as if it were thirsting for some revolution in Syria that would bring a new regime capable of accommodating its policies toward Israel and reshuffling the cards across the Arab-Islamic region. America multiplied its statements against the Syrian regime, repeatedly called on it to dissolve itself, promised time and again that its fall was near, and directed a great deal of media attention to focus on the Syrian movement for change, and so on. Israel, however, kept to the standing directive in place since the attack on Iraq in 2003, which calls on it to officially distance itself from denouncing Arab regimes, so as not to improve the image of those regimes before the Arabs.

This in itself was a fundamental factor in shoring up the regime and weakening the resistance. The Western assault led by the United States, together with the Israeli media assault, formed a kind of reverse force against the Syrian opposition, in that a number of Syrians opposed to the regime came to prefer silence over a political change that would serve foreign aspirations. They are not with the regime, and they want the regime changed, but they hesitate, and it is possible they would turn against the change altogether if it were to serve the interests of the United States and Israel.

This is also true of the arena of Arab intellectuals and thinkers, who have real influence on the Syrian scene, as on any other Arab scene. The overwhelming majority of Arab intellectuals and thinkers favor change, favor the freedom of the Arab citizen, and favor Arab unity and progress across every field, yet many of them are not prepared to embrace a change from which the United States and Israel might benefit. For them there is a clear lesson in Iraq, which bled profusely because of American intervention and America’s attempts to control Iraq and turn it into a colony. As one man said to me: “If there is any benefit to America in changing the Syrian regime, then I don’t want that change. Everything that benefits America harms me, and everything that harms America benefits me.” Perhaps there is some exaggeration in this, but it expresses the views of many Arab intellectuals.

Western support — the French and American in particular — has reached the point of obsession and madness, and Turkey has not lagged behind in its own excess of media pressure, threats, and warnings. Washington was not in the least cautious when it called for taking up arms against the Syrian regime.

Certain figures within the Syrian opposition were swept along in the wake of the Americans and their allies, and some of them went so far as to publicly demand that Western states and the NATO alliance intervene militarily against the regime and topple it the same way Gaddafi was toppled. And the result, as we now see it, is that everyone has become entangled in the killing, destruction, and ruin that none of them desired.

The Regime’s Strength and the Opposition’s Aspirations

The Syrian regime enjoys a number of strengths that the opposition apparently failed to take into account, and they can be summarized as follows:

The regime possesses a massive military force, including lethal offensive weapons on the land-to-land, land-to-air, and land-to-sea levels. These weapons are enough to make states think twice, and many times over, before attacking Syria, and they know full well that the military force needed against the Syrian regime differs from what was mustered against Gaddafi.

The Syrian regime has achieved self-sufficiency in many food requirements, wheat foremost among them, and it can manage people’s daily living needs, one way or another, with the least possible harm resulting from a siege.

The regime enjoys a popular base better than that of comparable Arab regimes, for two reasons: there is a sectarian dimension and a national one.

The Syrian regime has many supporters on the international stage, Russia, China, and Iran chief among them — states that show no sign of wanting to appease the demands of Western states or bow to their pressure. And the regime appears unconcerned about the financial burdens that come with a prolonged crisis, since these states, or some of them, are extending it a helping hand.

For this reason, we have observed the following:

Turkey has softened the sharpness of its tone against Syria, and does not appear to have grown enthusiastic about establishing a military buffer zone.

NATO announced that it had no plan to attack Syria.

The United States has not rushed to brandish military strikes, contenting itself instead with inciting those bearing arms to use them; and despite the rising number of voices demanding military intervention, Senator McCain foremost among them, the American administration continues to hedge its language between a wish to intervene and a wish not to intervene.

Western states and Israel have contented themselves with funding certain armed Syrian factions and smuggling some weapons to them across the porous borders between Syria and Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq alike. And according to reports, certain Lebanese groups at odds with the Syrian regime are active in weapons smuggling.

The Military Dimension

It is difficult for any state to back the Syrian opposition militarily, for two reasons:

The Syrian army can inflict devastating losses on any military force that intervenes directly.

Iran will intervene, and perhaps Hezbollah too, if it senses that the Syrian regime is on the verge of falling.

The most that can be offered to the Syrian opposition on the military front amounts to training individuals, organizing them, and arming them, then leaving them to their own devices against the Syrian regime. Many states can smuggle weapons into Syria and set up training and organizational camps. Such a situation does not work in the opposition’s favor over the long term, given the regime’s military strength and the supplies it can obtain from Russia and Iran.

Beyond that, there is a real possibility of waging war on Israel, should it come to that as a last resort, and I do not see the United States and its allies wanting a war of that kind at this economically and financially difficult time. There are those who doubt Syria’s capacity to wage such a war, but my assessment is that several fronts would be opened, and Syria would not stand alone in such a war, leaving Israel in a difficult military position. Hezbollah would open the southern Lebanon front, Iran would launch its missiles, and Gaza might well join in if it saw the scales of war tipping in favor of its friends. This alone constitutes a deterrent factor for the United States and its allies against escalating Syria’s internal affairs. And even if Israel could not be defeated outright, its losses in lives, equipment, and installations would be enormous, and the war would leave its repercussions on global conditions, particularly the economic dimension.

The Arab League

The Arab League offers refuge to no one, for it is not a league of peoples but a league of regimes. The Arab League is a near-lifeless body, too impotent to resolve any Arab problem, however small. The regimes of the Arab League have divergent agendas that bear no relation to the interests, dignity, and freedom of the Arab citizen, except insofar as they relate to the interests of the regimes themselves. Had the West not pressured the Arab regimes, the League would never have managed to produce any program or protocol to address the crisis in Syria — one crafted, moreover, in line with American interests, which boil down to pulling Syria out of the axis of rejection of Israel and bringing it into what is termed the American-brokered “moderation,” which follows the American will. And despite all this, the Arab League will achieve nothing, and this will be proven true for the Syrians just as it was proven true for the Palestinians, the Lebanese, the Iraqis, the Sudanese, and so on. This is why the Syrian opposition is wasting its time dealing with this League.

The American Objective

America is not concerned with spreading democracy in the Arab homeland, as its long record of supporting regimes of despotism and ignorance makes clear. America supports every tribal Arab regime that knows nothing of the meaning of freedom and democracy, that plunders the wealth of its peoples and squanders it left and right without accountability or oversight — it supported the regimes of Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, regimes whose security agencies left no corner of the state uncorrupted, and no citizen unterrified. Yet America has pursued every Arab regime that stood hostile to Israel, or that did not embrace the American policy calling for recognition of Israel, the pursuit of the resistance, and the search for a unilateral negotiated settlement with Israel. It pursued the despotic Libyan regime and imposed sanctions and military and security measures on it, and it did the same with the regimes of Sudan, Iraq, Syria, and Nasserist Egypt. In other words, what governs American policy toward the Arab regimes is not principle but interest.

If interest is the compass of American foreign policy toward the Arabs, then where does its interest lie in the Syria now in turmoil? America does not want the current Syrian regime to survive unless it changes its policy toward Israel, and it knows that the alternative to the regime, should it fall and free elections be held, is the Muslim Brotherhood movement. It knows the Brotherhood movement is not confrontational and tends toward conciliation, but it will not go so far as to recognize Israel and normalize relations with it. For this reason, America does not favor the emergence of a democracy that brings in an Islamic alternative whose future foreign policy is in doubt. So if the current regime is unwanted, and its expected alternative is regarded the same way, then America has a third option before it: destroying Syria.

Syria can be destroyed by igniting a civil war that drains the regime, those resisting it, and the Syrian people alike. Civil war is well suited to removing Syria from the raging regional conflict, and to turning its facilities and its economy into rubble from which it would be hard to emerge for decades to come. America adopted this same destructive policy toward the Iran-Iraq war, working to pursue policies that would prolong the war so as to drain both Iraq and Iran at once, with neither emerging victorious. This is how things will stand in Syria unless those panting after America and the Western states catch themselves in time and take stock.

The Upshot

There are those within the Syrian opposition who imagine that America will throw them a lifeline, only to become entangled themselves. America is not the state one appeals to for the sake of an Arab people, and it may by now have become clear to Dr. Burhan Ghalioun that he must not sacrifice the Arab resistance in order to court American sympathy. The Syrian people have so far paid an enormous price because of foreign intervention and because of the misconduct of all the internal parties, and it would be worthwhile for all parties to reconsider their calculations and search for internal solutions instead of this bloody, combative wrangling. In the end, the loser is the homeland and the people.

And if it is not possible to speak directly with the Syrian regime, then turning to a committee of Arab thinkers and intellectuals to seek a solution acceptable to the various Syrian parties offers a way out. The Arab thinker is protective of his nation, unlike the American, to whom Arab skulls mean nothing.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “أمريكا تغتال المعارضة السورية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.