• World
    • Africa
    • Asia Pacific
    • Central & South Asia
    • Europe
    • Latin America & Caribbean
    • Middle East & North Africa
    • North America
  • Coronavirus
  • Politics
    • US Election
    • US politics
    • Donald Trump
    • Brexit
    • European Union
    • India
    • Arab world
  • Economics
    • Finance
    • Eurozone
    • International Trade
  • Business
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Startups
    • Technology
  • Culture
    • Entertainment
    • Music
    • Film
    • Books
    • Travel
  • Environment
    • Climate change
    • Smart cities
    • Green Economy
  • Global Change
    • Education
    • Refugee Crisis
    • International Aid
    • Human Rights
  • International Security
    • ISIS
    • War on Terror
    • North Korea
    • Nuclear Weapons
  • Science
    • Health
  • 360 °
  • The Interview
  • In-Depth
  • Insight
  • Quick Read
  • Video
  • Podcasts
  • Interactive
  • My Voice
  • About
  • FO Store
Sections
  • World
  • Coronavirus
  • US Election
  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Culture
  • Sign Up
  • Login
  • Publish

Make Sense of the world

Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries

Close

Syria: All the King’s Horses…

By David Holdridge • Feb 14, 2013

David Holdridge, who was awarded permission by the Syrian Government in 2008 to set up a Relief and Development office in Damascus, warns of the untoward outcomes of US intervention in the Syrian Civil War.

There were those days, back in March of 2011, when Bashar Al Assad could have jumped the curve and pre-empted the catastrophe before him and the people of the Middle East. At least in theory. No-one is really sure about the extent to which his hands were tied by other influences within the regime or by his entanglements with external allies. Yes, those were the days when the Arab Awakening with all its pent up energy came rolling into and across Syria. It was a time of possibility for renaissance, as peaceful citizens demonstrated for an end to autocracy.

Syria was not Tunisia. Nor was it Egypt. It was a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups patched together by the French cartographers at the start of the 20th century and then supplemented by large flows of refugees from Turkey, Palestine, and most recently Iraq. It was also eminently secular, modern, and had achieved an accommodation of sorts with Israel. Esteemed dignitaries from the US congress came to visit in recent years, including multiple visits by Senator John Kerry. They and other visitors expressed some optimism about “turning Syria” toward the West.

Notwithstanding these flirtations, Syria’s regime was still one which ruled with the hand of fear and was intimate with Iran, the Hezbollah, and Russia. This was also a regime controlled by the minority Alawites in what was becoming, since 2003 and the Shi’a ascendency in Iraq, a much more pronounced Shi’a-Sunni divide across the region.

And then, as we all watched the daily dispatches in early 2011, precipitous change was ignited by the events in Dera’a in March, leading to a bloody unraveling of State control and then to an active foreign intervention which is currently helping to push the country toward an internal fragmentation; one which could completely dismantle the original State boundaries set by European powers (Sykes-Picot) almost a hundred years ago.

One Western-educated Syrian colleague of mine recently said: “it would be like Humpty Dumpty… ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Humpty back together again.'” Just for starters, he had continued, what do you do with an independent Kurdish entity inside Syria and with its common border with the KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government) in Iraq? What happens in Lebanon as Shi’a and Christians from Syria stream into the demographic mix there? And “where to” for the Islamists who have been nursing their wounds since the Hama massacre by Hafez Al Assad in 1982? And as if that were not enough to cause great consternation over eventual outcomes, what about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Palestinian refugees in Syria untethered to the only regime they have known?

For over a year now, the pundits along the Potomac have expatiated on those possible convolutions. These are especially grave when seen in the context of the recent war in Gaza and the eruptions ongoing in Egypt. To my mind, this is not a case of ”chicken little”. Once the end game blows Syria into pieces, partition is assumed and so is the bloodshed which accompanies massive displacement as people seek refuge in their ethnic and religious enclaves. The ensuing conflict over the boundaries of those enclaves will intensify, compounded as the ever ambitious neighbors — Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel — look on and seek advantage from the turmoil. No off-shore “shadow government” currently “under construction” by the so-called Friends Of Syria will re-establish a national center in the aftermath.

Nowadays, my friends and colleagues in the Syria vortex speak to me with one voice. They say: Yes, back in March 2011, maybe something could have effected transition without a bloodbath, but once you reach a half million exiles and over 50,000 killed, there will be an inevitable settling of scores. Such a settling, that it is unlikely its fire will not sweep from Istanbul to those great autocrats in Riyadh and Doha for whom America has such fondness.

Frankly, even a skeptic of US performance in the Middle East over the last three decades, such as myself, might have expected that the US policy makers would have been more circumspect about their current partisan engagement with diverse elements of the opposition within Syria. Particularly, coming so soon as it has on the heels of a similar experience less than a decade ago with their construction of the ”offshore” Iraqi National Congress, which, as we have all witnessed, led to such untoward results following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Share Story
Categories360° Analysis, International Security, Middle East & North Africa, Politics
Join our network of more than 2,000 contributors to publish your perspective, share your story and shape the global conversation. Become a Fair Observer and help us make sense of the world.

READ MORE IN THIS 360° SERIES

The Geopolitics of the Syrian Civil War (Part 2/2)
By Joseph Hughes • Jul 31, 2014
Syria’s Salafi Awakening: Existential Psychological Primers (Part 2/2)
By Zach Goldberg • Jul 31, 2014
The Geopolitics of the Syrian Civil War (Part 1/2)
By Joseph Hughes • Jul 20, 2014
Syria’s Salafi Awakening: Existential Psychological Primers (Part 1/2)
By Zach Goldberg • Jul 15, 2014
The Hezbollah Cavalcade: Iran’s Important Weapon in the Middle East
By Nicholas Heras & Phillip Smyth • Jun 07, 2014
100 Years Later: Lessons for the US in Syria
By Max Reibman • May 21, 2014
France's Gung-Ho Policy in Syria
By Clotilde de Swarte • Mar 28, 2014
The Fallout From Syria: Hate Speech in Indonesia
By Navhat Nuraniyah • Mar 25, 2014
Policy From Inside the Perimeter: No Finger in the Wind
By David Holdridge • Mar 12, 2014
Returning From Syria: Terrorism in the West
By Paul Ashley • Mar 01, 2014
The End of a Unified Syria
By Carl Anthony Wege • Sep 04, 2013
Chemical Attacks and Military Interventions
By Omar S. Dahi • Aug 28, 2013
The Alawite Question
By Dina Yazdani • Aug 22, 2013
International Jihad and the Syrian Conflict
By Nicholas Heras & Aaron Zelin • Aug 07, 2013
Syria and the Crumbling Region: A Look at Lebanon
By Helios Global • Jul 17, 2013
The Prevalence of Sectarianism: Hezbollah and the Syrian Civil War
By Josef Olmert • May 27, 2013
Who Will Be Syria's Knight Sans Armor? (Part 1/2)
By Jennifer Helgeson • May 18, 2013
Stop Syria From Becoming an Afghan-Style Disaster
By Dmitri Trenin • Mar 21, 2013
Syria: Political Dialogue and the Rise of Salafists
By Rajai Masri • Feb 02, 2013
The Middle East in 2013
By Juan Cole • Jan 01, 2013
Will Brahimi Reach a Breakthrough in Syria?
By Vijay Prashad • Dec 30, 2012
Is Chaos in Syria the Way Out?
By Maksymilian Czuperski • Nov 18, 2012
Syria: At the Epicenter of Regional Fault Lines
By Adrian Shahbaz • Jul 23, 2012
Libya to Syria: R2P and the ‘Double Standards’ Issue
By Jean-Baptiste Jeangene Vilmer • Jul 23, 2012
Russia Supports Syria For Old Times’ Sake
By Anna Pivovarchuk • Jul 10, 2012
Assad at the Tipping Point
By Jeffrey Laurenti • Jun 10, 2012
Don't Despair on Annan’s Syria Plan, Yet
By Jeffrey Laurenti • Apr 24, 2012
Annan Plan Up Against the Syrian Wall
By Jeffrey Laurenti • Apr 10, 2012
The Revolution Will Be Uploaded: Citizen Journalism in Homs
By Nicholas Heras • Mar 04, 2012
Adding Fuel to Syria's Fire
By Foreign Policy in Focus • Feb 16, 2012
Russia’s Hard-Nosed Realism in Syria: The Roots and Reasoning
By Gordon Hahn • Feb 16, 2012
The UN's Return on Syria
By Jeffrey Laurenti • Feb 15, 2012
Is Assad’s Syria ‘Too Important to Fail’ for the Resistance Axis?
By Kevjn Lim • Feb 13, 2012
A Test of Wills: The Arab League Asserts Itself in Syria
By Nicholas Heras • Feb 13, 2012
Chaos in Syria
By Ari Katz • Feb 05, 2012
Damascus: Assad's Fortress
By Ayya Harraz • Jan 27, 2012
"Cold War" in West Asia: Asia Pacific Nations Look On
By Zorawar Daulet Singh • Jan 26, 2012
The Need for Intervention in Syria
By Hina Mahmood • Jan 12, 2012

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Post navigation

Previous PostPrevious Images of the Colonial Past and Identity Politics on the Korean Peninsula
Next PostNext India in 2012: Strategic and Security Challenges Beckon
Subscribe
Register for $9.99 per month and become a member today.
Publish
Join our community of more than 2,500 contributors to publish your perspective, share your narrative and shape the global discourse.
Donate
We bring you perspectives from around the world. Help us to inform and educate. Your donation is tax-deductible.

Explore

  • About
  • Authors
  • FO Store
  • FAQs
  • Republish
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Contact

Regions

  • Africa
  • Asia Pacific
  • Central & South Asia
  • Europe
  • Latin America & Caribbean
  • Middle East & North Africa
  • North America

Topics

  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Culture
  • Environment
  • Global Change
  • International Security
  • Science

Sections

  • 360°
  • The Interview
  • In-Depth
  • Insight
  • Quick Read
  • Video
  • Podcasts
  • Interactive
  • My Voice

Daily Dispatch


© Fair Observer All rights reserved
We Need Your Consent
We use cookies to give you the best possible experience. Learn more about how we use cookies or edit your cookie preferences. Privacy Policy. My Options I Accept
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Edit Cookie Preferences

The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.

As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media.

 
Necessary
Always Enabled

These cookies essential for the website to function.

Analytics

These cookies track our website’s performance and also help us to continuously improve the experience we provide to you.

Performance
Uncategorized

This cookie consists of the word “yes” to enable us to remember your acceptance of the site cookie notification, and prevents it from displaying to you in future.

Preferences
Save & Accept