The New Middle East (65 page)

Syria was one of the rogue nations Obama had tried to engage with. In 2011 he sent in the first US ambassador to Damascus for six years. The post had been withdrawn after the assassination of Rafik Hariri in neighbouring Lebanon, which Washington blamed on Syria. Obama had sought to engage with Syria before the Arab Spring because it was strategically important. It could destabilise Jordan and Lebanon. It could threaten Israel. It was a player in the Middle East peace process, and the US hoped to woo it away from Iran.

All of those issues have been overtaken by events. If the war goes on much longer the country may break down into fiefdoms. That will guarantee chaos for years to come. And while the fighting goes on, the only policy the US needs, now that the strategic value of Syria has disintegrated, is to stop the mess spreading. It is one also signed up to by Syria’s neighbours.

The one way that Syria might, after all, end up being a bit like Libya is if Assad should also choose not to make his last stand in the capital but in his community’s heartland. In Gaddafi’s case it was the desert city of Sirte. Assad’s instincts are likely to take him to the coastal mountain area that forms the Alawite homeland. Hence his men fighting so hard to keep hold of the main motorway heading out of Damascus through Homs and up towards the coastal mountain area. To retreat down this road would be to return to the statelet first granted to the Alawites by the French in 1922 around the port city of Latakia.
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If he does that, how long he can last out there would depend on how organised and cohesive the Sunni militia are. If by then the country has descended into warlordism and the FSA brigades are busy wrangling over the spoils with the Nusra Front, his group might be able to hold on and recreate an Alawite state. Opposition activists in Lebanon told me they were resigned to the fact that the jihadists, like the Nusra Front, were likely to keep control of the north. FSA fighters were likely to hold the south. Before the war was over rebel fighters were carving out territory they intended to keep. The same could also happen with the Kurds in the north-east of the country.

A retreat to the Alawite homeland might actually prove the best-case scenario for the West too, because it would allow the war to wind down. If the Syrian leadership was all simply to be wiped out in a bomb attack, or all to get on a plane, the nature of the conflict now suggests there could be a widespread slaughter of the Alawites who remain, a fury of retribution. They would probably flee the country. But if the state falls apart they won’t be the only ones running for their lives. Anyone with a family, but without the protection of a militia, will contemplate doing the same.

Turkey, like Jordan, has the capacity to build a ‘safe haven’ for a surge of refugees on the Syrian side of its border, and if the regime collapsed that is what it would probably do. Few Syrians will go to Iraq. That leaves Lebanon. The most fragile, most complex society in the Middle East would have to take most of the impact from a collapse of the Syrian state. It is the least equipped to do so. Many Alawites would probably end up in northern Lebanon if they found nowhere safe in Syria.

The Israeli military leadership does not believe that Assad will flee the country. They think he takes his responsibilities to his Alawite sect seriously and so will, as a last resort, try to build a new Alawite stronghold. ‘The Alawites need a place to run to or be butchered by the rebels,’ is the Israeli assessment.

An Alawite state would also enjoy the full support of both the Russians and the Iranians. The Russians would get to keep their warm-water naval facility in Tartus. The Iranians could still send guns to Hezbollah if they help Assad hold the land all the way to the Lebanese border. Militarily, defending an Alawite state is a much more viable option than trying to rule the whole country. The Alawites could probably even get the international community on board by claiming that without their own state they would be annihilated. The only people who would not be happy would be the Syrian opposition – but they are likely to be exhausted – and of course the Gulf states.

The analogy for the sectarian mess in Syria is the sectarian mess in Yugoslavia. Both countries were created out of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The disintegration of Syria has followed the end of the Cold War dictatorships in the Middle East, and the end of the Cold War dictatorships in Europe led to Yugoslavia’s collapse too. And so complicated were events in Yugoslavia that it was impossible to label Clinton’s foreign policy strategy. There was no clear ‘Clinton doctrine’ like there is no clear Obama doctrine. But in February 1999 President Bill Clinton outlined what
he
thought foreign policy was for:

The true measure of our interests lies not in how small or distant these places are or in whether we have trouble pronouncing their names. The question we must ask is, what are the consequences to our security of letting conflicts fester and spread? We cannot, indeed, we should not, do everything or be everywhere. But where our values and our interests are at stake and where we can make a difference, we must be prepared to do so. And we must remember that the real challenge of foreign policy is to deal with problems before they harm our national interests.
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The Syrian conflict does not harm America’s national interests.

President Obama said in January 2013:

As I wrestle with those decisions, I am more mindful probably than most of not only our incredible strengths and capabilities, but also our limitations. In a situation like Syria, I have to ask, can we make a difference in that situation? Would a military intervention have an impact? What would be the aftermath of our involvement on the ground? Could it trigger even worse violence or the use of chemical weapons? What offers the best prospect of a stable post-Assad regime? And how do I weigh tens of thousands who’ve been killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo? Those are not simple questions. And you process them as best you can. You make the decisions you think balance all these equities, and you hope that, at the end of your presidency, you can look back and say, I made more right calls than not and that I saved lives where I could.
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In similar circumstances the last two Democrat presidents reached similar conclusions. Eventually Bill Clinton decided after four years of conflict that he
could
make a difference in the former Yugoslavia. Perhaps President Obama will reach the same conclusion, and by that time we may also be talking about the former Syria.

Before he even boarded the campaign bus to run for the White House, Barack Obama had thought long and hard about the use of American power overseas. His words in 2013 were an echo of those he wrote in 2006 in his book
The Audacity of Hope
, in which he criticised the framing of US foreign policy.

Instead of guiding principles, we have what appear to be a series of ad hoc decisions, with dubious results. Why invade Iraq and not North Korea or Burma. Why intervene in Bosnia and not Darfur . . . Are we committed to use force wherever there’s a despotic regime that’s terrorising its people – and if so, how long do we stay to ensure democracy takes root?
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President Obama is wrestling with those questions today. That guiding principle still seems to be eluding him. The younger version of himself suggested:

a revised foreign policy framework that matches the boldness and scope of Truman’s post-World War II policies – one that addresses both the challenges and the opportunities of a new millennium, one that guides our use of force and expresses our deepest ideals and commitments . . . To begin with, we should understand that any return to isolationism – or a foreign policy approach that denies the occasional need to deploy U.S. troops – will not work.
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For now today’s President Obama has made it clear he does not think the US can easily end the bloodshed in Syria. Iraq, in his own mind, taught him the folly of trying. It also showed him America’s limits and priorities. The Arab Spring has revealed to him that America cannot manage the region any more.

As he began his fifth year in office, academics and policy wonks still could not work out what label to hang on President Obama. They too had not discovered his guiding principle. Obama’s outgoing secretary of state was asked at a gathering of foreign affairs specialists: ‘Is there an Obama doctrine, is there a Clinton doctrine, that somehow ties together, gives a sense of priorities, helps explain what it is we should do and not do and how we should do it in the way that other doctrines historically have played that role?’
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They wanted to know: is Obama a realist, or an idealist, or a pragmatist? The answer to those questions is yes.

The world now knows much more about Syria than it did when
Vogue
sent its fashion photographers to take snaps of Assad playing with toy cars with his kids. The world knows exactly what is going on in his country. The nations of the world are outraged by the human suffering in Syria, but not enough to send any of their own people to suffer with them. Secretary of State Kerry had promised not to keep the opposition ‘dangling in the wind’, but with the conflict in its third year that is where many felt they still were.
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That fact may come back to haunt the West. ‘The sense of betrayal from the civilians, from the weak, from the victims of the violence in Syria is justifiably such that it could easily have a negative impact on the relationship between, not only the Syrians, but also the other young people in this part of the world, and the Western powers for generations to come,’ believes General Robert Mood. When Assad is driven from Damascus the Western world will hope to put in train all those contingency plans it never did have ready for the day after in Iraq. The post-Assad era may therefore be less bloody and chaotic than the post-Saddam era, once the initial lust for revenge has been sated. Equally likely though is the prospect that the bloodletting may not stop, plunging the country into a prolonged sectarian conflict.

If the Arab Spring and the years that followed have been a revelation to the world, then it has been an education for the Syrians too. The most important thing they have learnt is this. While the war rages there will be no foreign cavalry coming over the horizon. Until the fighting ends the Syrian people are on their own.

Afterword

The winter sun was low in the sky and snow still lay on the ground as the small group of men busied themselves changing the face of the Middle East. They were working on a hilltop that overlooked the town of Bethlehem. Every brick they laid, every clod of earth they dug out, would have consequences that presidents and prime ministers across the globe would eventually have to wrestle with. These men were building new homes for more Israelis to move into the settlement of Gush Etzion on occupied Palestinian land. Each action they took on this and other settlements they worked on across the West Bank made the peace process harder and the prospects of a Palestinian state more remote. The men before me were the vanguard of the growth of the settler population, and they hated themselves for it. These men were all Palestinians.

Settlement building is one of the few growth industries on the West Bank. Abdel-Rahman Alami said he’d tried everything else: odd jobs, grape harvesting, driving a tractor and living through long periods of unemployment. Then one day the needs of his family became greater than his pride. ‘The first time I walked onto one of these settlements I damned myself and I damned my luck, but I had no choice,’ he told me. ‘I would leave this settlement today if the PA would give me another job, but Abbas and his people do nothing for us.’ I asked him if he thought he’d ever get the chance to build new homes for a new Palestinian state. ‘No.’ he said.

The Arab Spring has swept through the Middle East but it hasn’t changed the life of Mr Alami. Nor is he expecting it to do so any time soon, because the rest of the Arab world has enough problems of its own to deal with. The struggle between Israelis and Palestinians defined much of the old Middle East. It will not define the new one.

At the moment there is great division between secular and religious Zionists, and ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel. It’s unclear how that will be resolved. Perhaps the next generation of the Haredim may learn to love the state and so fuel the growth of religious Zionism. That would enormously increase the number of settlers on the West Bank who believe their homes are a God-given right.

Israelis react badly to anything they think smacks of bullying from the outside world. They have not learned that lesson at home. Forcing change on the ultra-Orthodox faster than their complicated community can cope with it will push them further away from the state and society. For its own sake, Israel needs to be a better diplomat within its borders than it has been abroad.

In the past, conflicts in the region were primarily about land. In the future they will often be over the perceived will of God. Religious Zionism and political Islam are the forces shaping the New Middle East. No one can say for sure exactly how the region will evolve in the coming years. All that can be said is that people’s faith will increasingly play a bigger part in their political choices, whether they are Muslims, Jews or Christians. People will want their societies to reflect their values. But their politicians will be judged by their performance, not their preaching. If they don’t provide good jobs and functioning public services they will be booted out no matter how many times a day they pray. There will be no new Islamic Caliphate. The forces of political Islam may be the biggest winners of the revolutions but that process has also revealed the deep divisions within them, even at national level. The senior members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood put their differences aside to confront a common foe in the shape of the Army, but once power was within their grasp they began to bicker and fight. The deep distrust between branches of the Sunni establishment across the region will undermine any attempts at unity.