The Solution to the Syrian Conflict

The Syrian rebellion, which has claimed more than 100,000 fatalities and displaced 6 million people (one-fourth of the population) from their homes, 2 million of whom have fled to neighboring countries (Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan), started at the beginning of 2011 in the context of the Arab Spring. This connection already makes the diversity of foreign interests which accompany it clear, although nothing is comprehensible without taking into account the long family dictatorship and the brutal reaction of Bashar al-Assad, who, following in his father’s footsteps, tried to smash the protests with repressive measures.

At the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Syria, like the entire region, lacked the national framework to make a sustainable government possible. Due to the ethnic and religious fragmentation of these societies, the secularization, which in Europe replaced religious identity with national identity, did not occur. Even in Israel, the most consolidated state in the region, identity is deeply rooted in religion and ethnicity, without a secular notion of citizenship, a necessary condition for any democratic state.

At the end of World War II, the United States and Russia, the new superpowers, pushed the process of decolonization, forcing France and the United Kingdom to withdraw from the Middle East and North Africa. In some countries (Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq) they left puppet monarchies that were soon toppled, remaining only in Jordan and Morocco as relics to extinguish. Algeria was the exception. Due to the great number of French colonists, it won independence following a cruel war which forged a state capable of holding Islamism in check thanks to a continued military dictatorship.

But the Syrian conflict depends on external factors much more than internal ones — those originating in the region by the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and the confrontation of the Shiites (Iran) with the Sunnis (Saudi Arabia), as much as the interests of the two superpowers, the United States and Russia. The conflict also directly concerns Turkey with 1.7 million Kurds in northwestern Syria, which the rebellion has made practically autonomous, and China, with a Muslim population on its western border which is trying to become independent.

One event has pushed the Western powers to look for a negotiated solution: Western support of rebel groups has favored the influence of al-Qaida, bringing back the ghost of the political suicide carried out in Afghanistan, when the Taliban was supported in fighting the Soviet invasion. The growing influence of al-Qaida would give a good deal of credence to the Syrian government’s regarding the rebel groups as terrorists. Between Bashar al-Assad and al-Qaida, the choice seems clear, but it means Iran and Russia will triumph in the end.

The progression of the Syrian conflict imposes a compromise with Iran. Without the success of the Geneva conference between the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and Germany with Iran, an agreement between the Syrian government and the rebel groups would not be possible, which can only consist of Assad’s resignation within the timeline and conditions agreed upon. Also, the negotiated solution to the Syrian conflict implies a redefinition of the power relationships in the region of enormous transcendence.

The central question in the shadows is Israel’s position on a conflict in a neighboring country with which it is formally at war. It suits [Israel] for the enemy to tear itself apart in a civil struggle, but it would be unacceptable that a confrontation, up until now so useful to its interests, would end with the strengthening of its greatest enemy, Iran. It is understood that Benjamin Netanyahu regards it as “a bad agreement that gives Iran what it wanted: the partial lifting of sanctions while maintaining an essential part of its nuclear program.” Herein lies the compromise, to which Iran and the United States become aware of its growing weakness. If the peace is maintained, it becomes more difficult for Israel to deny recognition of a Palestinian state with borders that make it viable.

The agreement with Iran also is unacceptable for Saudi Arabia regionally. For Iran to recover its freedom of movement, including someday exporting petroleum, leads a gerontocratic regime that denies any renewal to turn the secular confrontation of Sunnis with Shiites into a new religious war.

The enemies of the agreement, Iran and Saudi Arabia, have very strong support in the United States, and not only in the Republican Party. If not for the obvious weakness of the United States, without another alternative to contribute to the peace, the new agreement would be losing steam to the point of evaporating.