By Ravi JoshiThe sudden and unexpected twist to the Syrian chemical weapons (CW)
controversy that ended “not with a bang but a whimper” could really
hurt the rebels who had pinned such high hopes on American missiles
hurtling down on Assad’s palace in Damascus. It should come as no
surprise that they promptly rejected the Kerry-Lavrov deal on Syria.
Certainly, the rebels stand to gain nothing by either Syria joining
the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) or by President Assad agreeing
to destroy his stockpile of CWs.Their anger was matched only by the frustration of the American media
commentators and several Republican senators, who having been cheated
of a ‘bloody good war’, turned their bile away from their ‘waffling’
President to the former ‘KGB boss’, Russian President Putin now
occupying the high moral ground. The fact that Putin was telling the
Americans through the NY Times that he was acting ‘not in the interest
of President Assad but in the interest of protecting the international
law’ and worse still, he challenged ‘American exceptionalism’ riled
them no end.
With the Kerry-Lavrov deal now holding Assad accountable to destroying
his CWs in a swift and verifiable manner, the regime is almost ensured
that its tenure will not end abruptly. The focus now shifts on to
expecting responsible behavior from Assad to fulfill his assured
commitments. Firstly, he is no longer a war criminal nor would he be
punished for use of CWs. America was certainly getting no support for
action on this count. Secondly, he will be held accountable to his new
promise, not to his old actions. That is a minor victory of sorts for
Assad.
From day one, Assad has been saying that he would never use CWs on his
own people, but would do so only when attacked by a foreign country,
clearly hinting at Turkey. He would probably have attacked either
Israel or Turkey, even if the missiles had come from an American
warship and let loose the dogs of war for an all round destruction.
Now by agreeing to hand over all his stocks of CWs to international
supervision and destruction, Assad is clearly conveying that he does
not need the CWs to take on the rebels and that he can take them on
with all the conventional weapons at his disposal. And that includes
his Air force, which has still not been subjected to a ‘no-fly zone’.
There lies the rub for the rebels. They are not back to square one,
but to minus one. They have been outsmarted by the regime, just as the
Russians outsmarted the Americans.
The rebel forces, particularly the Al-Qaeda affiliate the Jubhat
ul-Nusra, which does all the heavy lifting in the battle has not only
failed to create a ‘Benghazi’ in Syria, but also has suffered being
labeled a Foreign Terrorist Organisation. Now, the Americans, the
British and the French instead of doing a Gaddafi on Assad are sitting
down with him to count all the chemical canisters and missiles that
the regime has. And this may go on till the middle of 2014.
Kerry-Lavrov deal talks of no cease-fire and Assad may continue to
wage his war against the rebels. It may be physically impossible for
the OPCW inspectors to visit the missile silos that carry the CWs in
the middle of the raging war. That’s just too bad for the rebels.
What about their sponsors? How mad must they be? Does America really
expect Saudi Arabia and Qatar to go on funding a war that has no end
in sight? President Obama has already let down the Saudi King once,
when he told President Mubarak of Egypt to bow down to street protests
and quit. Now he is doing at again, by not raining down missiles on
Assad’s palace as he did to Gaddafi in Libya. How can Saudi monarchy
still count him as a friend?
Why does America take up such thankless jobs in a world where it does
not know its friends from its foes? It supports Saudi Arabia that
supports salafi jehadists who support Al-Qaeda that attacks America.
Sounds too complicated for the simple minded Americans. They are
killing Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, but are funding and supplying
non-lethal weapons to ‘moderate forces’ in Syria who are selling them
to Jubhat ul-Nusra.
Pray who are the ‘moderate forces’ in Syria? Those that are sitting in
5-star hotels in Turkey and are pretending to be guiding the rebel
forces on ground, or those that are being slaughtered for not praying
five times a day and for not being good Muslims. Don’t the Americans
know that the choice in Syria today is between President Assad and
Jabhat ul-Nusra and not even the Muslim Brotherhood, which they had so
warmly embraced in Egypt, as ‘Political Islam’ for being distinct from
‘radical Islam’.
Having seen the Muslim Brotherhood in practice for a year, the
Americans quickly revised their views and came back to accepting the
much- despised Egyptian Army as a better guarantor of stability. But
once Assad is overthrown, the Americans may not have the luxury of
bringing back any such force of stability in Syria. The country will
simply slide into chaos and anarchy as in the case of Libya. And here
the ethnic divide and the fault lines are far too many, with its
neighboring Iraq already facing a simmering war with the Shias v/s the
Sunnis, the Iraqis v/s the Kurds and the Kurds v/s the rest.
Perhaps, there is some wisdom in Sarah Palin’s words when she said
“Let Allah sort it out”, which meant ‘America, please stay out, there
is a mightier force than thou at work’.
(Ravi Joshi is a Visiting Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research
Foundation, Delhi)
