Morning After

Morning, Glory!

As Suriya al- Kubra gets crunk and disorderly and nose dives straight  into hello, the insurgency has done like exploded into civil war. 

Free Syrian Army's voltiguers - the first all volunteer Army in Arab World History- have panzerliciously amped up the asymmetrical action (thanks Libya!!) from Che style guerrilla chiz into something more like set piece battles - sweetly swaying back and forth like a mini version of Seelow Heights - vowing ain't no stopping til their taking a leak on Palace grounds and scoring Bashar Bay Bee's pron collection 

And that is significant

The Assad regime faces a dilemma: the harder it fights, the stronger the opposition -- both armed and unarmed -- becomes. This contributes to the perception that it is slowly losing control of territory and the situation as a whole. 

 Sooo if the illegit Allawicious regime led by Dr General President For Life al Assad were to totally collapse or cling to power it's gon be bloody L

The worry here is that, as the country's majority Sunni population takes power, the minority groups that did well under the Assad dynasty will be targeted. The troubling slogan, "Christians to Beirut, Alawis to the coffin" that has been heard from time to time at opposition rallies is not particularly reassuring. Nor can either group take comfort in the fate of Iraq's formerly dominant Sunni minority and previously tolerated Christian community when imagining what things might look like for them in a post-Assad order.

The stage could thus be set for a cycle of violence that would be difficult to break. The Sunni insurgency in Iraq is one example of the form such violence could take. Another possibility is that Syria would fracture. If the core of Syria is "lost" to a Sunni-based Arab movement after the fall of Assad, then the logic of large-scale ethnic cleansing to create compact regions, seen in the Balkan wars in the 1990s, could surface here. As in Iraq, there are different geographic regions where Syria’s minority groups form the local majority. For the Alawites, the coastal areas around the city of Lattakia -- where, incidentally, the last remaining Russian military base outside the former Soviet Union, the port of Tartus, happens to be located -- are their strongholds.

And unlike in Libya, where any negative consequences from the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi could be minimized in terms of the impact on the larger region, there is no such cushion for Syria. A Sunni government, particularly one strongly influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, would change the whole balance of power in the neighborhood, to begin with by breaking the Assad government’s ties with Iran, which permit Tehran to expand its influence throughout the region. 

Neither Iran nor Hezbollah in Lebanon would welcome those developments. Already there are reports that Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah fighters have supported the pro-Assad forces, and both would have strong incentives to back an Alawite insurgency against a Sunni-dominated regime. Sectarian strife in Syria would risk destabilizing both Iraq and Lebanon, which is why Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has been urging his fellow Lebanese politicians to work to “isolate Lebanon from the Syria problem.” And the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan, already coping with the strains of coping with Iraqi refugees as well as the perennial issue of the kingdom’s Palestinians, could be overwhelmed by new refugee flows from the north.

In such a worst-case scenario, would the West be willing to intervene to stop sectarian battles by deploying peace-enforcement troops on the ground?


Pic - "Sure! Guys have feelings too - but like - who cares?"