Syria: a tangled web of deception

“ Oh what a tangled web we weave/ When first we practice to deceive.” Sir Walter Scott’s verse aphorism could have been tailor-made for today’s Middle East.

Deception, or more accurately artifice, lies at the heart of so much of the region’s spreading conflict. The deceit of autocrats who claim to act in the interests of their people. The deceit of insurgents who claim they have one mission but, when it comes to it, reveal a darker purpose. The deceit of outside forces — the puppet masters — whose agenda is invariably different to the one they publicly profess.

The blisteringly quick fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and with it the Assad dynasty that has ruled Syria for nigh on 55 years is an exemplar. Another domino has fallen in the tangled web that is the modern world’s longest running spectacle of war and revolution.

But it is far from the only one. Wars in the Middle East are almost invariably shadow plays where the real and often shifting interests of players and their sponsors are hidden behind a sheath of pretexts and lies.

Bashar, like his father Hafez, claimed to rule for the common good. In fact his main interest was holding on to power for his family and their Alawite sect who have ruled Syria with an iron fist.

Assad’s backers, Iran and Russia, with the exception of perfunctory air raids against the rebels, have stood off. Unsurprisingly they have little interest in Syria’s well-being. It’s a pawn in a bigger game. Tehran has used Syria as a staging post for smuggling weapons to its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah and Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza and the occupied West Bank in its shadow war with Israel.

Russia backed Assad mainly because its naval base at Tartous on the Mediterranean and its air base at Kheimim, both now possibly under threat, are pivotal to its troublesome Middle East strategy. Besides Vladimir Putin is preoccupied elsewhere.

The rebels are led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). It includes Turkish-backed factions as well as Kurdish separatists. These in turn are funded by Turkey’s strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Will HTS seek to unify the war-shattered country? Or will Syria become another Islamist nightmare? And Erdoğan: what is his game beyond weakening Kurdish separatists who threaten Turkey’s integrity and perhaps playing in the big league?

The rebels advanced with lightning speed, capturing city after city and finally, it seems, Damascus with astonishing ease. Syrian forces appear to have fled in the face of the offensive with alacrity. This suggests a regime ill-prepared for this eventuality and an army unwilling to fight for its leader.  

There is a question: did Russian intelligence know of the coming offensive and, if it did, did it warn Assad? Alarm bells were ringing in the Kremlin last week. Moscow warned its citizens to leave Syria some days ago. According to the New York Times Iranian military commanders were also being evacuated.

A profile in this weekend’s Financial Times portrays Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the rebel leader as a battle-hardened believer who has, nevertheless, moderated his views since he broke away from Al-Qaeda in 2016.  

Jerome Drevon, a jihad expert at the independent think tank Crisis Group, describes Jolani as well-educated, urbane and softly-spoken . His middle-class background helped shape his approach to Islam. According to Drevon, Jolani “often says that the real world has to guide your Islam, that you cannot force your Islam on to the real world.”

We shall see. True, Syria is not especially fertile ground for radical Islam. It has a large, often western-educated, mercantile middle-class whose support he will need. But religion is a powerful prescription for a people broken by 13 years of civil war.

What we do know is that one of his driving forces is the Assad clan’s repeated assault on Islamic fundamentalists. The ruling Ba’ath party is secular. Neither he nor his forces will have forgotten that Assad’s father and predecessor massacred thousands of people in the ancient city of Hama 1982.

The Muslim Brotherhood had established a bridgehead in the city.  Yet another Assad – Bashir’s uncle Rifaat, nicknamed the “Butcher of Hama” – led the assault. Rifaat was indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity earlier this year. Repression is a family speciality.

The Assads, like most mob families, ruled through a judicious mix of patronage, and brutality. Corruption in both the public and private sectors are endemic. Elections were a farce. I once interviewed Hafez when he was president. Like his son he was softly-spoken . Unlike his son he had charm and a certain presence. I doubt he would have lost so easily.

The Hama massacre is seared into Syrian and Arab minds. Its capture has profound symbolism for Syrians. In a video message Thursday,  al-Jolani proclaimed that Hama was captured “to clean the wound that has bled for 40 years”. His first move was to free prisoners from the city’s central prison.

The reignited civil war in Syria comes – almost certainly not by accident – while the eyes of the world have been fixed on Gaza and Lebanon, as Israel pursues its campaign against Hamas and Hezbollah. Jolani has played his hand well.

The West also has a dog in this fight. Syrian Kurdish fighters, who are backed by the US, are reported to have seized Deir el-Zor, the main city in eastern Syria and the main crossing into Iraq. The alliance known as the Syrian Democratic Forces now controls Syria’s vast eastern desert.

What a tangled web and what a mess. What happens next and what, if anything, should the West do about it?

Assad’s two main sponsors, Putin and the Islamic theocracy in Iran, will now need to decide what, if anything, to do about this sudden reversal of fortunes.

On the face of it Assad’s fall is a huge blow to Russia and to Putin who has spent blood and treasure defending him. His chief preoccupation remains the war in Ukraine. But Putin is a pragmatist. And so one has to assume is Jolani.  He will need aid to rebuild Syria and lots of it.

The West would be reluctant to back an Islamic regime. There would be room for negotiation between Moscow and a new leadership in Damascus. Politics is the art of the possible. The big loser would be the Shia regime in Iran not least because al-Jolani is a Sunni Muslim. Assad’s fall breaks a crucial link in Tehran’s chain of influence.

Syria’s long conflict, which has killed more than 250,000 people so far, may seem like a small war far removed from our daily preoccupations in Europe. It is not. For one, it is a root cause of the growing refugee crisis that bedevils Europe. It fuels jihadism and radicalisation. It sits on the edges of the world’s largest oil-bearing region.

The war in Gaza has shown us that everything in the Middle East is connected in a series of overlapping crises and interconnected interests from the Levant to the Gulf. Nobody is immune and nobody is without some degree of accountability or influence.

The Levant is much smaller than we imagine. You can drive from Damascus to Beirut and from there to the Israeli border in less than a day. War in Syria has a knock-on effect in Israel.

Will a Jolani regime in Damascus be more or less helpful in trying to find a way through this tangled web? We just don’t know. Will it help or hinder a return to normality in neighbouring Lebanon and hence Israel? We don’t know that either.

Will the former London ophthalmologist who ruled Syria with brutality ( though not much guile unlike his father) try and regroup and fight? That seems unlikely. Besides the Arab world , and in particular the Gulf nations led by Saudi Arabia, will wish to see a modicum of stability as opposed to more conflict in the region.

Donald Trump, the US President-elect, may believe he can conjure up peace in the Middle East by doing deals. He will find it harder than he thinks. France, Britain and the European Union each have vested interests – and some valuable experience – in this area. They should tread carefully. This is a minefield and the precedents for meddling by outside forces are not good.

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