My personal perspective on the conflict in Syria is at least in part also a reflection of the views of my fiancée Kinda, who is a native of that country. Having said that, my opinions on the turmoil in the Levant, as well as the choices President Obama will soon have to make, are strictly my own.
My personal perspective on the conflict in Syria is at least in part also a reflection of the views of my fiancée Kinda, who is a native of that country. Having said that, my opinions on the turmoil in the Levant, as well as the choices President Obama will soon have to make, are strictly my own.
Syria is a country with numerous Christian and Muslim architectural relics that are also a reflection of its ancient history. But for the last 40 years it was also a nation where Christians, Muslims and members of other religious faiths lived and worked side by side in peace. Granted, after Hafez Assad took power in 1970 he ruthlessly stifled any discussion of alternatives to the authoritarian state that he created. So when his son Bashar took the reins of power in 2000, many Syrians still accepted the repression of political dissent as the price they had to pay in order to guarantee stability in a region that was anything but stable.
But soon after he took power, Bashar Assad began to relax many of the restrictions his father had placed on Syrian citizens’ freedom during his 30 years. He began to open up the state-directed economy by allowing imports of consumer goods and even permitting young entrepreneurs to open internet cafes. But this Syria has now disappeared.
Kinda grew up in Damascus, which is the oldest capital city in the world, and after she finished college she worked for a United Nations agency in Damascus. When she left Syria in December of 2010 to study in Ireland for a Master’s degree, Damascus was still a city where women could stay out past midnight without fearing for their safety. It was still a city where the calls to prayer from the Umayyad Mosque could be heard mixed with the ringing of church bells from the Mariamite Cathedral. But the Damascus she knew so well no longer exists, either.
Although Kinda’s immediate family is safe because they are currently living outside of Syria, they cannot risk going home to see their friends and other family members within its borders. They cannot return to Damascus to check on their homes or to retrieve possessions without risking their lives. Because of the ongoing violence in Syria, Kinda’s family have become exiles from the country they dearly love.
In hindsight, Bashar Assad’s use of tanks in response to the largely peaceful 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ demonstrations was a huge miscalculation by his regime. It precipitated what is now an all-out armed revolt by some of the more moderate members of Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority. Having said that, the prospects for a peaceful settlement between Assad and the rebels have been severely diminished, because the best armed and organised elements of the rebel forces are al-Qaeda-inspired jihadists who will never agree to a peaceful end to the conflict.
The growing power and influence of the jihadists, who now comprise over 20 per cent of the Syrian rebel forces, presents Israel and the United States with a disturbing dilemma. While they were never happy about Assad’s support for Iran and Hezbollah militias in Lebanon, the Assad regime also maintained peaceful relations with Israel and did not allow armed incursions across its southern border into the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. Furthermore, Bashar Assad maintained Syria’s uneasy peace with Israel and did not retaliate after the Israeli Air Force attacked and destroyed Syria’s Deir ez-Zor nuclear reactor in 2007. Although that raid may have thwarted Syria’s nuclear weapons ambitions, the Assad regime still maintains control over large stockpiles of chemical weapons such as sarin gas and VX nerve agents. While Assad has never launched chemical weapons attacks on Israel, both Israel and the United States are justifiably concerned about what will happen if these chemical weapons should ever fall into the hands of Syria’s jihadists or al-Qaeda terrorists.
Having already cost almost 100,000 lives and turned more than 3 million Syrians into internal or external refugees, the Syrian civil war has turned into a stalemate. But if it drags on much longer, both Israel and the United States fear that Syria will devolve into separate geographic regions controlled by different militias. That could lead to a renewal of Lebanon’s civil war, more Islamist fuelled instability in Jordan and jihadist attacks on the Israeli occupied Golan Heights.
Israel is now trying to pull America into the conflict by claiming that Assad has used chemical weapons against the rebels. While the US does not believe these claims, it will soon have to decide whether or not to remain on the sidelines, or intervene on the side of the rebels in order to counter the influence of Syria’s Islamic jihadists. Either way, this will not be an easy decision for President Obama to make.
Charles Laffiteau is a US Republican from Dallas, Texas who is pursuing a PhD in Public Policy and Political Economy. He previously lectured on Contemporary US Business & Society at DCU from 2009-2011.
