The man in charge of America’s intelligence gathering said that
Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad will inevitably collapse in the face
of mounting protests, and it’s simply a
matter of time before his regime falls.
Of course, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper had to admit that “matter of time” remains anyone’s guess.
However, opposition remains “resilient,” ready and willing to heap
increasing amounts of pressure on embattled president Bashar
al-Assad.
“Protraction of these demonstrations, the opposition
continues to be fragmented, but I do not see how [Assad] can
sustain his rule of Syria.”
Fair enough. However, commentary on the Syrian crisis is
regularly, and casually imprecise when it comes to pitting the
government and its devotees against a spectral opposition. This has
been the case across the breadth of Arab Spring, whether in
Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia or elsewhere. The one thing Syrian
opposition groups have in common is a shared revulsion to the
illiberal and illegitimate Ba’ath party dictatorship, and its
Alawite brass (To clarify, “Alawite” refers to the minority Shi’a
sect of the Assad family that dominates Syria’s political and
security infrastructure). Beyond that, long-run political and
ideological commitments vary broadly. More importantly, these
differences far outstrip superficial disagreements between
securalists and Islamists we gloss over in the western
media.
For those who are interested in an excellent breakdown of
varying opposition forces in Syria, have a look at Andrew Spath’s
breakdown,
over at the Foreign Policy Research Institute — an institution
near and dear to yours truly, where I once helped out as research
assistant to legendary president, Dr. Harvey Sicherman.
Regardless of the “opposition” forces that form the
resulting government, it’s a safe bet that the fall of the Assad
regime would prove a major blow to Iran, which relies on Syria as a
conduit to its Hizbullah proxies in Lebanon.
Since the rise of the secular Ba’ath party in Syrian and
Shi’a theocracy in Iran, analysts and academics have questioned
whether these two regimes were bound by a sense of shared faith…or
fate. A significant portion of the Sunni majority opposition
believes that the rule of an Alawi Shi’a is the rule of this
disbeliever — the same conviction that has fired insurrection
since the February ‘82
massacre at Hama, and remains at the heart of this
crisis. My best guess is that decades of Iranian clientelism and
the scorched earth elimination of peaceful protest (as assisted
by Tehran) has not softened objection to Shi’a dominance in this
predominantly Sunni state, whether Twelver (as practiced in Iran)
or Allawite.
Oddly enough, if patchwork opposition succeeds in
dislodging Assad in Syria, the U.S. might finally welcome a more
friendly Arab regime from the ashes of Arab Spring. For the moment,
there’s little to do but wait and see…
