In the previous few years, a brand new phrase has been added to the political vocabulary – “Syrianization.” This new phrase means turning a rustic right into a land with no authorities, within the frequent sense of a burned, lawless land, each a part of which is beneath the management of an armed mafia-type group.
A few of the leaders of the Islamic Republic, who are actually shaken by the mass motion of the Iranian individuals, have been issuing warnings that Iran might also face an analogous state of affairs if instability spreads. In different phrases, our selection is restricted to residing or half-living beneath the rule of jurisprudential tyranny or falling into the second Syria.
However how did Syria itself turn into “Syrianized”? At first, practically 12 years in the past, a gaggle of Syrian youth got here to the road in Daraa metropolis to protest the continued ambiance of political suffocation, the unfold of unemployment and the darkness of their life horizons. This demonstration was utterly peaceable. The protesters didn’t set hearth to something and didn’t shout any incendiary slogans. If Syria had a authorities within the typical sense that day, the clever method to reply to these protests could be to ship a delegation from the central authorities in Damascus to take heed to the protesters and discover methods to satisfy not less than a part of their calls for.
However the authorities of Bashar al-Assad, the president, was not a standard authorities. This was a authorities monopolised by a military-security-commercial minority, which itself was a minority throughout the framework of the Alawite religious-sectarian minority, which can also be a minority in Shia heterodox sects, which itself can also be a minority within the Islamic faith. Thus, accepting the Daraa protesters as equal residents was not acceptable for the regime in query.
Within the political sphere of Assad and his Baath Arab Socialist Celebration, the federal government instructions and the individuals – who’re degraded to the extent of topics – obey. On this world, the reply to protest is bullets or jail.
Nevertheless, the massacre that occurred within the valley didn’t finish the protests. Inside a number of days, the Syrian individuals’s motion reached Hama, Aleppo, Sweida and Damascus. This time, some outstanding figures of the Baathist regime demanded a political response to the protests in secret conferences with the regime leaders. However a regime that is aware of nothing however repression couldn’t make the most of the instruments provided by politics to resolve society’s issues and get out of crises.
At a important stage in 2012, Bashar al-Assad thought to avoid wasting the complete Baathist regime by leaving the scene. The temper of these days was described by Brigadier Basic Hossein Hamdani, one of many officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran who was despatched to Syria, in a protracted dialog, a 12 months earlier than his dying in Syria.
In accordance with Hamadani, they packed their baggage to go away in Damascus as a result of at the moment part of the Syrian military had damaged away from the Assad regime and hoped to overcome the capital by establishing the “Free Syrian Army.”
Though it may be stated that Hamadani has exaggerated the significance of Tehran’s involvement, there is no such thing as a doubt that the message of the chief of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to Bashar al-Assad was not ineffective in altering the opinion of the dictator of Damascus to go away the scene. Khamenei’s message was easy: keep and resist! We give no matter you need!
Within the decade since that day, the Islamic Republic has spent greater than 20 billion {dollars} in Syria, in keeping with specialists’ estimates. Tehran has additionally created a number of navy models to struggle for the advantage of Bashar al-Assad: the Fatemiyoun Brigade, the Zainbiyoun Brigade, and the models of the Morteza Ali motion belong to this class. Together with them, models from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, one other department of Khamenei’s proxy forces, have additionally fought in Syria. Iranian “volunteers,” who’re known as “defenders of the shrine,” have additionally been and are current alongside Syrian, Afghan, Pakistani and Iraqi fighters.
So as to add to the chaos within the nation, Assad launched greater than 20,000 imprisoned Islamic “terrorists” to open a brand new entrance in opposition to the protesters. It was these freed terrorists who rapidly participated within the institution of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). On the identical time, Assad promised the greater than 1.5 million Kurds who had misplaced their Syrian citizenship that he would restore full citizenship to them. On this method, part of the Syrian Kurds beneath the affect of the Kurdistan Staff’ Celebration (PKK), whose essential base is in Turkey, entered the battle in opposition to the Syrian opposition teams.
However all these measures have been unsuccessful in suppressing the Syrian individuals’s motion. In 2014, Tehran made contacts with Russia to push Vladimir Putin into warfare in Syria. These calls got here to fruition and Putin assigned the Russian Air Drive to operations in Syria. The worth of this service to Bashar al-Assad was a 45-year contract in keeping with which Russia obtained an air-sea base on the Syrian coast of the Mediterranean and was in a position to increase its navy presence to that strategic sea for the primary time after the autumn of the Soviet Union.
Putin used the identical tactic in Syria that he utilized in Chechnya: bombing cities throughout the nation. Thus, Aleppo, the second most populated metropolis in Syria, like Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, grew to become a mountain of rubble.
Steadily, “Syrianization” was fashioned as a political-historical idea. Such destruction means widespread devastation in a rustic the place half of its inhabitants has both turn into displaced and refugees or has turn into homeless inside its personal land. “Syrianization” means sustaining management of part of the capital and preventing with dozens, or maybe lots of, of different armed teams throughout the nation to formally recognise a regime that not exists. “Syrianization” additionally has one other which means: the division of two info of a rustic into the sphere of affect of a number of international powers.
Proper now, a part of Syria is managed by Turkey, whereas the opposite half is managed by the US beneath the guise of its Kurdish allies. A 3rd half is managed by Russia and the Islamic Republic has the fourth half within the desert bordering Iraq. The fifth sector can also be dominated by Druze armed forces with the assistance of Jordan. Bashar al-Assad and what he calls himself the Syrian authorities are displaying their shadow legitimacy in a sixth part in Damascus.
However one other actor has performed a task on this ominous present: the management of the Syrian individuals’s protest motion. This management was by no means in a position to current a transparent technique to realize energy. This management lured the Western powers with mouth-watering guarantees and thought its job was carried out by taking photos with the French president and receiving a message from the US Secretary of State. Its limitless seminars in additional than 30 capitals, from Tokyo to Ottawa, took it distant from the place the true political work is finished: within the cities and villages of Syria. A gaggle of exiled figures who had been round Syria for years instantly got here beneath the worldwide highlight as the long run leaders. Their work was consecutive interviews with Western media, typically in suites of 5-star inns in Paris, London, New York, and so forth. It’s fascinating right here that lots of the leaders of the Ba’athist regime who have been lower off from Bashar al-Assad joined this management so as to compensate for his or her misplaced political virginity and to take a share if there’s a reconciliation.
Syrianization needs to be thought-about a brand new sort of tragicomedy of human societies through which lots of of 1000’s –if not hundreds of thousands – of idealistic, honest and selfless individuals come to the sector to overthrow an autocratic and corrupt system, hoping to construct a free and law-based society and justice. However, ultimately, they’re decreased to the extent of a device for the revenue of the alleged leaders on the one hand and the battle of international powers on the opposite.
This Syrianization couldn’t have turn into a actuality with out Bashar al-Assad, Ali Khamenei, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama and the ignorant or profit-seeking leaders of the favored motion. At the moment, Syria, this stateless land, is a breeding floor for the worst components that threaten a contemporary society: numerous terrorists, looters, business and non secular mafias and mercenaries. To rebuild this ruined nation, greater than three trillion {dollars} of capital is required, a capital that may by no means be collected with out the institution of a authorities in its regular sense. On this method, Syria is confronted with the query of the rooster or the egg: does the capital come first or the usually functioning authorities?
Let’s return to the propaganda of Khamenei and his accomplices concerning the “Syrianization” of Iran. At first look, the presence of some brokers of Syrianization, together with Khamenei himself and his mentor Putin, and part of the Revolutionary Guards and mercenaries of the Islamic Republic in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, makes the hazard of Syrianizing Iran seem critical.
However a number of essential components, I believe, shield Iran in opposition to the chance of turning into Syrianized. The primary issue is the deep roots of Iran as a nation. Earlier than 1948, Syria by no means existed as an unbiased nation-state and was at all times a group of ethnic, geographical and cultural entities throughout the framework of assorted empires from Chaldea and Assyria to Rome, Byzantium, the Ottoman empire and eventually, France. Alternatively, Iran has handed via the crucibles of the constitutional motion and has turn into acquainted with the idea of freedom throughout the framework of regulation throughout 150 years, though intermittently, earlier than Ayatollah Khomeini took workplace. The position of the establishment of the Kingdom of Iran in strengthening the nationwide solidarity of Iranians can’t be ignored both.
Most significantly, the present motion of the Iranian individuals, in contrast to the protest motion of the Syrian individuals, which had a non secular undertone – with the sturdy presence of the Muslim Brotherhood – doesn’t have a non secular or sectarian facet, and is a motion that goes past spiritual, skilled and ethnic identities. This motion, as a substitute, calls for a return to the trail of constitutionalism. It means making a society primarily based on the regulation and serving the residents.
In current months, the sector leaders of this motion have displayed an encouraging maturity and political tact and have proven that, in contrast to the Syrian protesters, they aren’t ready for a “inexperienced gentle” from Paris, London and Washington DC. Thus, those that wish to assist this motion should enter into the sport with the situations and rules of this motion, to not impose their very own situations and rules on it.
At the moment, Iran seeks to finish the rule of Syria-builders like Khamenei. Those that have performed a task in Syrianizing Syria can not scare us from turning into Syrian.
