[Peace-discuss] Why the Syrian Regime Won't Fall

[C. G. Estabrook]

Why the Syrian regime won't fall
By Pepe Escobar

Suppose this was a Hollywood script conference and you have to pitch your story 
idea in 10 words or less. It's a movie about Syria. As much as the currently 
in-research Kathryn Hurt Locker Bigelow film about the Osama bin Laden raid was 
pitched as "good guys take out Osama in Pakistan", the Syrian epic could be 
branded "Sunnis and Shi'ites battle for Arab republic".

Yes, once again this is all about that fiction, the "Shi'ite crescent", about 
isolating Iran and about Sunni prejudice against Shi'ites.

The hardcore Sunni Wahhabi House of Saud - in yet another towering show of 
hypocrisy, and faithful to its hatred of secular Arab republics - has branded 
the Bashar al-Assad-controlled Ba'ath regime in Syria "a killing machine".

True, Assad's ferocious security apparatus does not help - having killed over 
2,400 people since unrest erupted in March. That is much more, incidentally, 
than Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's forces had killed in Libya when United Nations 
Resolution 1973 was rushed in to allow foreign interventions. The Diogenes the 
Cynic response to this "where's the UN" discrepancy would be that Syria, unlike 
Libya, is not sitting on immense oil and gas wealth.

The Assad regime issues from the Alawite Shi'ite sub-sect. Thus, for the House 
of Saud, this means Sunnis are being killed. And, to add insult to injury, by a 
regime aligned with Shi'ite Iran.

Thus, the Saudi condemnation, followed by minions of the Gulf Cooperation 
Council (GCC), also known as the Gulf Counter-Revolutionary Club, plus the 
toothless, Saudi-manipulated Arab League. To top it off, House of Saud and Gulf 
wealth is actively financing the more unsavory strand of Syrian protests - the 
radicalized Muslim Brotherhood/fundamentalist/Salafi nebula.

By contrast, the only thing pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain received from 
the House of Saud and the GCC was an invasion, and outright repression.

Now for the Turkey shoot
Turkey's position is far more nuanced. The ruling Justice and Development Party 
(AKP) is overwhelmingly Sunni. They are playing for the regional Sunni gallery. 
But the AKP should be aware that at least 20% of Turks are Shi'ites from the 
Alevi branch, and they have a lot of empathy with Syrian Allawis.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu - the academic father of the celebrated 
"zero problems with our neighbors" policy - this week spent no less than six 
hours talking to Assad face-to-face in Damascus. He was deeply enigmatic at his 
press conference, implying that the Assad regime ending the crackdown and 
meeting the protesters' demands was a "process". Assad could reply he had 
already started the "process" - but these things, such as free and fair 
elections, take time.

Davutoglu explicitly said; "As we always underlined, our main criteria is that 
the shape of the process must reflect only the will of the Syrian people." At 
the moment, the regime would reply, the majority of the Syrian people seem to be 
behind the government.

Davutoglu's words also seem to imply there's no reason for Turkey to interfere 
in Syria as long as Damascus is reasonable and stops killing people (Assad 
admitted "mistakes" were made) and introduces reforms. So the impression is left 
that Davutoglu was contradicting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 
who has vocally advocated for Turkey to "solve" the Syrian quagmire.

That would be Erdogan's way to prove to Saudi Arabia and Qatar that the Turkish 
model is the way to go for the Arab world - assuming the Saudis and the Qataris 
foot the bill for Erdogan to pose as the Great Liberator of Sunnis in Syria, 
financing a Turkish army advance over Assad's forces. That certainly sounds much 
more far-fetched now than it did a few days ago.

The Assad regime has done the math and realized it won't fall as long as the 
protests don't reach the capital Damascus and the major city of Aleppo - that 
is, convulse the urban middle class. The security/military apparatus is fully 
behind Assad. All Syrian religious minorities make up at least 25% of the 
population; they are extremely fearful of Sunni fundamentalists. Secular Sunnis 
for their part fear a regime change that would lead to either an Islamist 
takeover or chaos. So it's fair to argue the majority of Syrians are indeed 
behind their government - as inept and heavy-handed as it may be.

Moreover, the Assad regime knows the conditions are not ripe for a Libyan-style 
North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign in Syria. There won't even 
be a vote for a UN resolution - Russia and China have already made it clear.

Europe is melting - and it will hardly sign up for added ill-planned 
adventurism. Especially after the appalling spectacle of those dodgy types of 
the Libyan transitional council killing their military leader and fighting their 
tribal wars in the open - with the added ludicrous touch of Britain recognizing 
the "rebels" the same day they were killing and burning the body of their 
"commander".

There's no reason for a Western "humanitarian intervention" under R2P 
("responsibility to protect") because there's no humanitarian crisis; Somalia, 
in fact, is the top humanitarian crisis at the moment, leading to fears that 
Washington may in fact try to "invade" or at least try to control 
strategically-crucial Somalia.

So the idea of the Barack Obama administration in the United States telling 
Assad to pack up and go is dead on arrival as a game-changer. What if Assad 
stays? Will Washington drone him to death - under the pretext of R2P? Well, the 
Pentagon can always try to snuff him with an unmanned Falcon Hypersonic 
Technology Vehicle-2 - the new toy "to respond to threats around the globe", in 
Pentagon speak. But oops, there's a snag; the prototype hypersonic glider has 
gone missing over the Pacific.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is 
Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot 
of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan 
(Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia at yahoo.com.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MH13Ak01.html