lrb | When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, it changed the overall balance of
power and destabilised every country in the region. The same thing is
happening again, except that the impact of the Syrian war is likely to
be less easily contained. Already the frontier dividing the western
deserts of Iraq from the eastern deserts of Syria is ceasing to have any
physical reality. In April, al-Qaida in Iraq embarrassed the rebels’
Western supporters by revealing that it had founded, reinforced with
experienced fighters and devoted half its budget to supporting al-Nusra,
militarily the most effective rebel group. When Syrian soldiers fled
into Iraq in March they were ambushed by al-Qaida and 48 of them were
killed before they could return to Syrian territory.
There is
virtually no state in the region that hasn’t got some stake in the
conflict. Jordan, though nervous of a jihadi victory in Syria, is
allowing arms shipments from Saudi Arabia to reach rebels in southern
Syria by road. Qatar has reportedly spent $3 billion on supporting the
rebels over the last two years and has offered $50,000 to every Syrian
army defector and his family. In co-ordination with the CIA it has sent
seventy military flights to Turkey with arms and equipment for the
insurgents. The Tunisian government says that eight hundred Tunisians
are fighting on the rebel side but security sources are quoted as saying
the real figure is closer to two thousand. Moaz al-Khatib, the outgoing
president of the Syrian National Coalition, which supposedly represents
the opposition, recently resigned, declaring as he did so that the
group was controlled by outside powers – i.e. Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
‘The people inside Syria,’ he said, ‘have lost the ability to decide
their own fate. I have become only a means to sign some papers while
hands from different parties want to decide on behalf of the Syrians.’
He claimed that on one occasion a rebel unit failed to go to the rescue
of villagers being massacred by government forces because they hadn’t
received instructions from their paymasters.
Fear of widespread
disorder and instability is pushing the US, Russia, Iran and others to
talk of a diplomatic solution to the conflict. Some sort of peace
conference may take place in Geneva over the next month, with the aim at
least of stopping things getting worse. But while there is an appetite
for diplomacy, nobody knows what a solution would look like. It’s hard
to imagine a real agreement being reached when there are so many players
with conflicting interests. Five distinct conflicts have become tangled
together in Syria: a popular uprising against a dictatorship which is
also a sectarian battle between Sunnis and the Alawite sect; a regional
struggle between Shia and Sunni which is also a decades-old conflict
between an Iranian-led grouping and Iran’s traditional enemies, notably
the US and Saudi Arabia. Finally, at another level, there is a reborn
Cold War confrontation: Russia and China v. the West. The conflict is
full of unexpected and absurd contradictions, such as a purportedly
democratic and secular Syrian opposition being funded by the absolute
monarchies of the Gulf who are also fundamentalist Sunnis.
By
savagely repressing demonstrations two years ago Bashar al-Assad helped
turn mass protests into an insurrection which has torn Syria apart. He
is probably correct in predicting that diplomacy will fail, that his
opponents inside and outside Syria are too divided to agree on a peace
deal. He may also be right in believing that greater foreign
intervention ‘is a clear probability’. The quagmire is turning out to be
even deeper and more dangerous than it was in Iraq.
