What lies ahead for Afghanistan?

S P SETH

Those looking for a breakthrough in Afghanistan might find some encouragement in the reported statement recently in Paris by two senior Taliban representatives after attending a two-day conference of Afghan parliamentarians, opposition leaders and government officials, organized by a research institute. It said that the Taliban weren’t “seeking an exclusive right to power.” And added, “We want an all-Afghan, inclusive government.”

But for that transition to happen, they want direct talks with the US, refusing to negotiate with the Afghan government, which they regard as a “puppet administration”. The statement also reportedly said that, “Foreigners and the Kabul administration are not interested in peace.” In that case, what is the point of direct talks with the US when they wouldn’t be interested in peace?

Another problem is that the Taliban refuse to accept the current Afghan constitution because it was “written under the pressure of B-52 warplanes in 2004.” They want a constitution based on “the Islamic principles, national interests, and historical gains.” Which could mean anything and everything or nothing. In other words, whether in terms of the recent declaration of the Taliban representatives in Paris or other utterances here and there, there is nothing concrete to go by to bring about national reconciliation for a new political order, following the American withdrawal towards end-2014.

The Taliban seem sure of two things--- that they don’t want to deal with the Karzai government, and that they want the US-led foreign forces out of Afghanistan. By failing to win the confidence of the Afghan people, the Karzai government sometimes makes the Taliban look good by sheer default.  The government came to be seen increasingly as a US creation propped up with foreign troops. Even when elections were held to give it a measure of legitimacy, they lacked credibility and, sometimes, the electoral process was simply rigged. At the same time, the US military presence didn’t provide much security for the long-suffering Afghan people nor did it improve the country’s economic situation by way of development and employment. On top of it all, the Karzai government’s corruption became legendry. Even the Americans have found Karzai a difficult customer both on account of widespread corruption enveloping his inner circle and the lack of governance.

In a recent article in the New Yorker, Dexter Filkins is scathing about the Karzai government. He writes, “President Hamid Karzai’s government is largely a collection of criminal networks, which are allowed to thrive in exchange for their support.” He adds, “One bit of American military jargon that is actually useful: Vertically Integrated Criminal Enterprise or VICE. It’s a term that officers use to describe the Afghan government.” Not that the US has acquitted itself with much credit.  Their own contractors have been deep into shady deals and projects. “The fact is that,” as Filkins points out, “after twelve years and four hundred billion dollars, the Americans have built very little that is likely to stand on its own after they depart.” Which is a terrible indictment of the US policy in Afghanistan. As for Karzai, “… the local joke goes [he] will leave Kabul before the Americans do.”

The Americans are now at a stage where they want to get the hell out of Afghanistan, without making it look like a total disaster. Therefore, they are training an Afghan military and police force of about 250,000 to take over the combat role when the US leaves by end-2014. So far, with about two years left, the Afghan force is hardly ready to fill in the vacuum and, at times, is turning on its trainers. According to a Pentagon report, only one of the 23 brigades of Afghan army is battle ready. And, according to the report, “… the [Taliban] insurgency remains adaptable with a regenerative capacity. It retains the capability to emplace substantial numbers of improvised explosive devices and conduct high profile attacks.”

The Afghan government has reportedly been promised $4 billion annually to support the new force over several years, as well as an unspecified civilian aid program. But this is based on the assumption that Afghanistan will remain a going concern with a US-allied government.

 Which is a tall assumption, considering the fragility of the situation. It would seem more likely that the US and its allies will disengage after a period and Afghanistan will descend into chaos, fragmentation and civil war. The US will likely expand its program of drones’ bombing the tribal areas bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan to snuff out terrorism as they are doing in Yemen and Somalia.

Some believe that the Taliban will simply step into the vacuum, created by the US withdrawal, to re-establish their control over Afghanistan, possibly with Pakistan’s help. That might be the case but I wouldn’t bet on it. First, the Taliban are more feared than respected. And they will have quite a job on their hand to win the hearts and minds of people, especially after Afghan cities have been “corrupted” by exposure to western capitalist and cultural influences, like education, particularly of girls, and the daily diet of television. Second, the Taliban is not a monolithic entity. It has its divisions and tribal rivalries that have deepened since the US invasion of the country.

Third, however much Pakistan might like to mould Afghanistan in the post-US withdrawal period to serve its strategic interests, its capacity is limited. In the Afghan drama, Pakistan is as much a puppeteer as it is a puppet played by the Taliban. And at home, Pakistan’s army is pitted against Pakistani Taliban with its fraternal links to their Afghan brothers. Therefore, Afghanistan and Pakistan are intricately enmeshed.

Fourth, even though the Pashtuns constitute a majority of the Afghan population, the country has sizeable other ethnic entities who will fight out any Taliban control. Therefore, even if the Taliban were to eventually establish their domination of the Pashtun areas of the country, its Tajik, Uzbek and other groups will likely revert to autonomous rule plunging the country into civil war and chronic instability. And they will have the support of some external powers in this.

In other words, it doesn’t look like Afghanistan will have much peace after the US withdrawal. Which is rather sad because the Afghan people very badly need peace and unity.

Note: This article was first published in th Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au 

Egypt’s state of despair

S P SETH

One would expect that the referendum on the draft constitution would usher in a new democratic era in Egypt. But that is not going to happen. Ever since the Egyptians brought down Hosni Muabark, their dictator, who presided over Egypt’s destiny for three decades, the country is struggling to find a new path to democracy. The referendum on the constitution is making that transition even more difficult and painful.

In fact, President Mohammed Morsi’s gamble to assume sweeping powers to rush through a newly drafted constitution for popular referendum, brought the country to near chaos, with Tahrir Square once again the centre of popular demonstrations. Though Morsy later rescinded his decree under popular pressure, he refused to rescind the referendum on the constitution. Most of the opposition members of the constituent assembly had boycotted the drafting process, fearing that it was being rushed to produce a draft that negated the inclusive spirit of the Egyptian revolution to empower women, youth, minorities and the population at large around its new secular polity.  With the ruling Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party rallying its supporters for counter demonstrations, it looked like the country was in free fall.

The Morsi camp had calculated that the constitution, drafted by a predominantly Islamist assembly, would pass easily and that would give his party the stamp of popular approval for their policies. And that might not happen because there is significant opposition to it. The draft constitution is opposed as much as for its creeping Islamization as for its ambiguity on minority rights and human rights in general. The opposition, therefore, objects both to its substance as well the process by which Morsi has sought to push it through.

The process by which Morsi assumed sweeping powers, supposedly to promote democracy by putting the draft constitution to popular referendum is preposterous. Once the executive authority, in this case President Morsi, decides by decree to suspend or supersede established institutions, such short cuts can easily be replicated in future to circumvent normal constitutional channels. In other words, this was not an auspicious start for Egypt’s new democracy. No wonder, there was determined opposition to Morsi doing away with democratic processes to promote democracy.

Not only that the draft constitution had virtually no input from parties and groups other than the Islamists, the unseemly haste with which the referendum was pushed through, with very little time for any public debate, was against the norms of democratic functioning. Morsi needs to guard against becoming identified, like the fallen dictator Hosni Mubarak, as the symbol and personification of all that continues to be wrong with Egypt.

It is true that Morsi was voted President in the first ever-popular election in Egypt’s history. But he won by a very narrow margin, taking only 51.7 per cent of the vote against the Mubarak-era prime minister and a former air force commander, Ahmed Shafiq. In other words, the country is highly polarized. Another fact worth noting is that the voter turnout at the presidential election was quite low at 43.4 per cent. More than 50 per cent of the eligible voters didn’t care to vote either way, suggesting disillusionment or indifference with the political process being unfurled.

There are two reasons for this. First, the attempts by the army to manipulate the system by entrenching its over-riding power and interests seemed to suggest that the old system was likely to prevail minus Mubarak. Second, even as the army was trying to subvert the emerging democratic process, the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists were resurrecting religion (both as a matter of faith and political tool) to create an over-arching political presence. Which threatened the minorities, many women, liberals and secular elements that were in the forefront of Egypt’s revolutionary upsurge that brought down Hosni Mubarak. It appeared that the Islamists for their obscurantist ends were hijacking the revolution. Many people simply lost interest and seemed to be opting out by not voting at all. And many others decided to vote for the remnant of the Mubarak era, Ahmed Shafiq, than Morsi of the Brotherhood. They certainly didn’t like the Brotherhood usurping power in the name of democracy.

It was sad that the revolution had reached this point. And for this the Brotherhood must bear responsibility. They have never made a secret of taking the country into a faith-based (Islamic) direction, notwithstanding the fact that the revolution was actually pioneered by liberal elements, with women and the country’s Christians playing a prominent role. According to Human Rights Watch, Article 36 of the constitution promises to ensure equality between men and women as long as it does not conflict with “the rulings of Islamic Sharia”. There is this underlying message that the society will be reconfigured on Islamic principles. Considering that the Brotherhood and Salafists had dithered and only reluctantly, towards the end, decided to jump in on the revolutionary bandwagon, the usurpation by them of a broad-based revolutionary movement is not a good start.

It wouldn’t be easy, though. First, even if the constitution is adopted, it will face myriad challenges of vote rigging, the absence of international monitors, the stacking of the drafting panel and so on. Therefore, it will always suffer from a certain sense of legitimacy that comes from a country reconciled after a tumultuous popular upsurge.  And that is not going to happen with a large and diverse part of the population feeling that the Islamists had hijacked the revolution.  Such irreconcilability, in the midst of the country’s economy tottering, is likely to crystallize into Morsy replacing Hosni Mubarak as the hated symbol of all Egypt’s problems, past and present. If that were to happen, the regime will become increasingly dependent on the army like Mubarak was, taking things back to where it started. It would appear that Egypt is set to remain in a perpetual state of strife for the foreseeable future.  The Arab Spring in Egypt looks like turning into a long winter of discontent.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

For Israel, Palestine doesn’t exist

S P SETH

On the scale of human tragedies, Palestine will rank as one of the highest. Here is the case of a people who have foisted on them a new state of Israel for reasons unknown, except that this was once the home of the Jews in ancient times and that they are returning to claim their lost home. This ancient legend has nothing to do with the Palestinians who have known this region as their home as far back as they can envisage.  But that doesn’t matter because the powers that be of the time decreed through the United Nations that the Jews need a home of their own and that would be Palestine.

Understandably, Palestinians didn’t like it and sought to prevent it. But they lost, as was expected, because Israel was more powerful and had the support of some of the most powerful countries in the world. Since then things have only got worse for them. The new state of Israel sought to obliterate the Palestinian identity by denying its existence. And hoped that their expulsion from their homes in the new state and dispersal in other Arab states will remove any evidence on the ground.

They only partially succeeded by creating the phenomena of Palestinian refugee camps scattered in several Arab countries. The net result, over and above the perpetuation of Palestinian misery, was that their sense of identity even became stronger in refugee camps. And to this day, many of them want to return to their homeland, now Israel, and to their lands they were expelled from. Which is causing additional problems.

In 1967, when Israel launched a pre-emptive strike on Arab countries and went on to occupy more of the Palestinian territory, Palestine’s humiliation and devastation was further compounded. Since then, even though most of the world and the United Nations regard Israel’s occupation illegal, including its powerful friends like the US and European countries, Israel remains undaunted and continues its policy of new Jewish settlements over and above the half-a-million already settled in West Bank and Jerusalem. The remainder of the Palestine now resembles like “Bantustans” of the apartheid era in South Africa.

Indeed, soon after the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly upgraded Palestine’s status recently to a non-member observer state, Israel has granted permission for the building of another 3,000 settlement units in East Jerusalem and other parts of the West Bank. And it includes the area, called E1 that would “completely” cut off East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. Jodi Rudoren of the New York Times, in a report from Jerusalem, has explained it thus: “Construction in E1, in West Bank territory that Israel captured in the 1967 war, would connect the Jewish settlement of Ma’ale Adumim to Jerusalem, dividing the West Bank in two.” Which will mean that, “The Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem would be cut off from the capital, making the contiguous Palestinian state endorsed by the United Nations last week virtually impossible.” And that has raised some concern, even among Israel’s friends, who have criticized the move.

The point is that there is nothing new in Israel’s provocative policy of creeping annexation of what is left of the Palestine. The only thing new is that the US and some of the European countries have publicly criticized Israel for this new provocation, as if they have suddenly discovered that Israel has no interest in a two-state solution of the Palestinian issue. In any case, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as usual, doesn’t give a hoot about criticism of the new decision of his government. As he has reportedly said, “We are building and we will continue to build in Jerusalem and in all areas that are on the map of the strategic interests of the State of Israel.” In other words, Israel will continue to press ahead with Greater Israel of the legendry territory of Judea and Samaria that will remain conceptually flexible to include, if necessary, other Arab lands.

Understandably, the Palestinian celebrations over their virtual statehood, conferred by the UN vote, have been overtaken by the Israeli announcement of new settlements. The timing of the announcement, so soon after the UN vote, might seem overtly provocative. But the fact is that over the last twenty years of the Oslo Accord in 1993, that supposedly was to lead to the two-state solution, Israeli settlement activity has continued unabated. And now that there has been some sharp criticism from Israel’s traditional friends in Europe and even here in Australia, the government is making a virtue of it by linking their renewed settlements as a riposte to Palestine’s violation of the Oslo Accord by seeking a vote in the United Nations.

Israel certainly has a way of turning logic and law on its head. Palestine is supposed to wait for Israel until it has been annexed almost entirely with nothing left to negotiate. This is precisely what Israel has been doing and is continuing to do, and when the Palestinians make even some feeble protest to get things back to the starting point, as with the UN resolution, they are pilloried and punished by Israel for not following the Oslo Accord.

Israel maintains that they are willing to talk without any pre-conditions. But how can talks produce any results when Israel holds all the cards by way of occupying much of Palestine, refuses to stop settlement activities, threatens to withhold revenues it collects for Palestine, and do all this without inviting any international action and sanctions? Is it possible to imagine a more unequal relationship as between Israel and the Palestine? And still, Palestine is blamed for all the problems in the Israel-Palestine situation.

And this not likely to change unless Israel is made to realize by the international community that enough is enough and it is time to go back to the pre-1967 borders. Will it be possible? It doesn’t seem likely in the short and medium terms because there is a strong sense, morally and politically, in Israel to recreate the imagined territories of Judea and Samaria by annexing the West Bank and other Palestinian territories.

 According to Peter Beinart in the New York Review of Books, “In his 1993 book, A Place among the Nations, Netanyahu not only rejects the idea of a Palestinian state, he denies that there is such a thing as a Palestinian. In fact, he repeatedly equates the Palestinian bid for statehood with Nazism….” Netanyahu claims, as Beinhart writes, that Israel has already made “gut-wrenching concessions… It has abandoned its claim to Jordan, which by rights should be part of the Jewish state.”

Israel’s Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, is even more ambitious having reportedly said recently that, “We must blow Gaza back  to the Middle Ages, destroying all the infrastructure including roads and water.”

With such mind-set and ambitions, it is difficult to see any peaceful way forward on the Palestinian question.   

Note: This article first appeared in the Daily Times.

Syria: a road to nowhere

S P SETH

The Syrian crisis is going nowhere, with both sides mired in a brutal stalemate. On the other hand, it has the makings of a serious regional crisis. Turkey is deeply involved in it, providing cover and sanctuaries for the rebels. Its forces are on high alert on the Syrian border, and there have been exchange of artillery fire. Turkey is also worried about the linkages between the Kurd populations on both sides, fearing that Syria is stoking up trouble for Turkey’s Kurdish region. It has asked for Patriot missiles from the United States to deal with any threat from Syria, and the US has reportedly agreed.

Israel is not inactive either. It recently fired a warning shot across the ceasefire line between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights after a mortar round from the Syrian side accidentally hit an Israeli position.  

Lebanon is likely to become an alternative battleground, with supporters and opponents of the Assad regime going after each other.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and some of the other Gulf kingdoms are deeply involved, supplying arms and financial help for the rebels. Outside of the region, the US and Western countries are doing all they can, short of putting troops on the ground. In the same way, Russia is supportive of the regime, and would like to see a political solution of the crisis. China is with Russia on this.

Iran is a fervent and active supporter of the Syrian regime. The Syrian crisis is also shaping into a sectarian conflict between the Sunni and Shia kingdoms/regimes, with Saudi Arabia leading the charge to keep Iran out of the region.

When the Syrian uprising erupted early last year, it wasn’t expected to drag on like this. The popular upsurge against Bashar al-Assad’s oppressive regime was supposed to sweep it away in the spirit of the Arab Spring toppling dictators in Tunisia and Egypt. Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi took a little longer, needing considerable help from the US and its allies to overthrow him. But so far, the regime in Syria is still largely intact, even though its control of the country is shrinking.

There are a number of reasons for this, and some of them were spelled out at a recent TV forum of Syrian-Australians here. It was quite surprising to find such an animated group of people of Syrian descent with such strong opposing views on the crisis in their home country. And even more surprising that the Bashar al-Assad’s regime has some strong supporters in far-off Australia, reflecting some solid support back home.

The majority of the participants in the TV forum, reflecting the views back home, branded the regime as barbaric that should be got rid of to save the country and its people. They were frustrated with the lack of international help to speedily consign the Bashar regime into oblivion. The minority view, argued as passionately and with some conviction, condemned the rebellion that seeks to destroy a functioning stable and secular country and plunge it into sectarian warfare to finally install the Muslim Brotherhood in power with all the horrible consequences that might follow. And they also highlighted the danger from the al-Qaeda and other foreign Jihadi elements seeking to hijack the rebellion.

The surprising thing about the Syrian crisis is the tenacity with which the Bashar regime is still around. And this is not simply due to their superior firepower, though that certainly is a major factor. An important reason is that the regime has some solid support among the minorities, who are terrified of the alternative of extremist elements hijacking the revolution for their own internal and external agendas. The images of summary execution by the rebels of Bashar’s captured soldiers are not a pretty picture.

The counter argument that the regime is committing worst atrocities, even though true, is neither here nor there.  If the alternative is as bad or slightly less odious, it is not a choice with much recommendation. The proponents of the Assad regime, at the Australian TV forum, pointed out that, until the rebellion started, the country had a stable and secular government and people, by and large, (unless you were an anti-regime activist) went about their business without harassment and fear. And if the reported anger of many Aleppo residents is anything to go by, many blame the rebels for bringing destruction on their town from the Assad regime’s bombing raids by entering their town to make it their battleground. If the rebels were expecting that the streets and suburbs, with their civilian residents, might provide an effective cover to capture Aleppo, and other towns, they were obviously not counting on the regime’s brutality to hold on to power.

The rebels, and their external supporters, are frustrated by the staying power of the Assad regime. The regime was supposed to crumble under its own brutality by creating divisions and defections in its power base of the government and army. That has happened for sure, but not to the point of bringing down the regime. For this, the most important factor is the loyalty of much of the armed forces. And if that continues, it will require much more than the rebel action to get rid of the Assads.

Another important factor in the regime’s favour is the disunity of the rebel forces that lack a common program and command structure to fight against a much more disciplined and lethal professional army. There have been attempts recently to address this serious problem. A recent conference of most rebel groups in Doha, at Qatar’s initiative, has created a united front with its long-winded name of “National Council of Forces of the Syrian Revolution and Opposition.” This has been recognized by some countries “as the sole representative of the Syrian people and thus as the future provisional government of a democratic Syria”. It might later metamorphose into an interim government. But so far the US and Europe are not rushing into supplying weapons and air support to the new coalition. Doubts still remain that weapons, if supplied, might fall into extremist hands with their own agendas, because these groups are not keen on submitting themselves to unitary control.

The new coalition is certainly a step forward if it can be coalesced into a national resistance movement without distraction from competing and conflicting goals. It is early days yet but so far the brutal stalemate continues with civilians paying the highest price with an estimated cost in human lives of 40,000.    

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Massacre in Gaza

S P SETH

Whether or not the ceasefire to stop the Israeli bombing of Gaza, and the retaliatory rockets on Israel, will hold is anybody’s guess. If the past is any guide, the prospects of any durable truce are not too bright. At the same time, all the rhetoric about terrorist rockets falling and Israel simply defending by letting leash bombs and missiles on Gaza from air, sea and land, takes one’s breath away. Israel’s so-called defensive and “precision” bombing of Gaza in eight days killed about 160 people with more than 1,000 injured, while the “terrorist” rockets killed 6 Israelis.

And why did the Hamas and its allied groups persist with their rocket throwing until the ceasefire, knowing that it would cost them dearly? Simply because if they don’t react forcefully, they will simply be forgotten by the world, as they almost already are. This is their way of keeping their cause alive on the regional (Middle East) and global map. At the same time, despite Israel’s unbearable arrogance of invincibility, even the firing of admittedly not terribly effective rockets tend to unsettle Israel psychologically, with the rockets occasionally reaching deep into the country.

Gaza is essentially a large prison camp of nearly 1.7 million people (many of them refugees from, what is now, Israel), surrounded by Israeli forces that attack and kill at will to force them into submission. Their supplies of daily provisions and needs are rationed subject to Israeli blockade of their territory. The only wonder is that that they are still able to fight for their dignity and basic human rights. And it is this ‘stubbornness’ on their part that riles Israel. Even when there is the slightest gesture of some support from any international humanitarian group, as in the case of a flotilla of peace activists in 2009 that sought to bring relief supplies into Gaza for its besieged citizens, Israel goes berserk. Israeli soldiers, at the time, killed nine Turkish citizens on board the ship carrying relief supplies to Gaza.

Any decent human being, with no political agenda, will be appalled at the Israeli inhumanity towards Gaza’s citizens, as during the 8 days bombing of the territory. Jepke Goudsmit, a Jewish citizen of Australia who might invite the label of a self-hating Jew, was so appalled to write a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald. He wrote. “…Being of Jewish descent myself, I had hoped that a people who have suffered as much as the Jews would not become perpetrators of the same wrongs done to them in the past….” Well, he is in a hopeless minority in his community.

 The killings in Gaza this time, as in the earlier bombings like the 3-week Israeli invasion in 2008-2009 when 1400 Gazans were killed, seem like a normal military excursion for the Israeli armed forces. The obvious question is: How does Israel get away with all these murders? And the simple answer is the unqualified support it receives, politically, economically and militarily, from the United States and, for the most part, from European countries that follow the US lead. The statement of the US President Barack Obama supporting Israeli bombing raids on Gaza was almost identical to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s angry outbursts rationalizing Israeli attacks.

Netanyahu said that no country could tolerate its citizens being targeted by rockets. But he forgot to mention that it was his country that started the process by killing a Hamas commander, Ahmed Jabari, travelling in his car. Jabari had earlier been instrumental in having the captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, released from a Gaza prison. In a cruel twist, Jabari was reportedly working to bring about an effective and durable truce between Israel and Gaza.

Regarding Obama’s support for Israeli bombing, he said, “…there’s no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders”, virtually echoing Netanyahu. The Palestinians in Gaza are simply fighting for their freedom from a horrifying Israeli blockade of their territory from land, sea and air, and they are rained with bombs when they seek to exercise that right.

An important question is: why do Europeans so supinely follow the US? One simple answer is that they follow the US as part of their strategic alliance. But at a deeper level, their commitment to Israel is born of a collective guilt of treating Jewish Diaspora inhumanely through pogroms and Hitler’s Holocaust. And they want to expiate their crimes by creating a new bogeyman, the Palestinians who resist Israeli occupation. Even at the height of the killing of Jews by the Hitler regime, known in the US and Europe, the pleas from Jewish groups to bomb railway lines and trains transporting Jews to their death camps, were ignored. Not only that, those Jews seeking refuge in these countries, including the United States, were simply ignored or turned away. With this kind of record, to turn on the Palestinians by supporting Israel’s killing machine is unconscionable.

Another problem is internal to the Palestinian movement. It is divided and badly fractured giving Israel enough scope to play one group against the other. For instance, the Palestinian Authority based in West Bank and the Hamas controlling Gaza have been at each other’s throat ever since the Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006. Since the Hamas is branded a terrorist organization by Israel, the US and the western world, it was outlawed as a legitimate government, forcing it to withdraw to Gaza where it has a powerful base.  In the ensuing infighting between the Fatah organization and Hamas in 2007, the latter succeeded in ousting the Mahmoud Abbas’s organization from Gaza.

All attempts to bring the two warring factions together have failed, principally because Israel and its international backers would not accept a unity government with Hamas as its component. In other words, Israel has plenty of scope to play politics in the Palestinian movement. Hence, Palestine continues to be the orphan child of the international community, letting Israel play havoc with their lives.

And this will continue to happen unless the new political forces unleashed by the Arab Spring put up a joint front to help Palestinians. And to some extent, this has already happened with Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi playing an important role in bringing about the recent truce, winning plaudits from both President Obama and the Hamas leadership. Incidentally, Morsi has immediately used his enhanced status to assume unlimited powers in Egypt. He obviously hopes that his new found usefulness for the Americans will still their criticism of his “popular” dictatorship. But political developments in Egypt, following Morsi’s decree and plunging the country into political turmoil, might not be helpful for the Palestinian cause. In other words, they are likely to remain paws on international chessboard.

    

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Syria’s harsh reality

S P SETH

The great worry about the Syrian uprising early on was that it might develop into a brutal civil war. Which has already happened. The death toll is estimated around 30,000 and rising. The scenes of wanton destruction of entire suburbs and towns, principally by aerial attacks from an increasingly desperate Bashar al-Assad regime, are heart rending. On the battlefront between the rebels and the government, neither side has a decisive edge and the situation is stalemated.

The big danger is that the Syrian crisis might develop into a regional conflict, with even more disastrous consequences. In a way, it already has an external dimension. For instance, the rebels are getting their weapons from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. The United States and Britain are also actively helping. The Bashar regime, on the other hand, is receiving valuable military and non-military help from Iran, including elements of its special forces. Russia continues to ship weapons.

With both the government and the rebels having powerful backers, it is not difficult to work out where it is all leading. A human tragedy in Syria is slowly transforming into a regional geopolitical disaster, and that too at a time when the situation in the Middle East, in the wake of Arab Spring, is very fragile. The first major step in this direction is Turkey’s blunt warning of armed retaliation, if Syrian artillery and mortar shells were to hit its border territory. This was in response to a recent mortar shelling of a Turkish border town killing five civilians. The Turkish Government now has parliamentary authorization to take whatever military action to deal with the situation.

Ankara is now in a blustery mood, having mobilized its armed forces for, what looks like, a major operation some time soon. In one instance, Turkish armed retaliation has already reportedly killed 14 Syrian soldiers. There has also been a forced landing of a Syrian passenger plane flying from Moscow, suspected of carrying military equipment from Russia. Which has infuriated Moscow, as the plane doesn’t appear to have been carrying much in the way of weapons. The plane was carrying 30 passengers, half of them Russians.

When the Syrian rebels rose up against the Bashar regime, Turkey sought to prevail upon Damascus to resolve its crisis peacefully through democratic reforms. But as Damascus proved obdurate, it has increasingly supported the rebels’ cause, trying to mobilize international opinion against the regime. With the recent shelling of its border town resulting in the death of five of its citizens, it is now fired up against the Bashar regime.  

At the international level, Ankara immediately took up the matter with the United Nations Security Council that has since passed a resolution condemning the attack. But it didn’t sanction any specific course of action against any such repetition. This was obviously a sop to get Russia and China to support the resolution, as they wouldn’t have agreed to a military response.

At the international level, the Syrian insurrection has seen the revival of a cold war of sorts in the Middle East between the US and its western allies on one side, and Russia and China on the other. The creeping great powers’ political and, possibly, military involvement in an already embattled country can have unpredictable consequences for the region.

Turkey’s second response to the Syrian mortar attack was to take up the matter with its NATO allies. And predictably NATO countries have come in support of Turkey, indicating that any military attack on Turkey could involve NATO as well. Turkey is going about it in a calculated and systematic way, though still maintaining that it is not angling for war. Indeed, if its military preparations are anything to go by, it is all set to strike.

Turkey’s government is keen to play a major role in the Middle East region, much of which was once a part of the Ottoman Empire. And, in Syria, it has been politically active from the onset of insurgency. Following the influx of Syrian refugees across the border into Turkey, the rebels are using the border areas for attacks inside Syria. Turkey’s tough approach to Syria has the support not only of its NATO partners, but a number of Arab countries keen to see the end of the Bashar regime.

The US and western countries have been promoting Turkey as a model democratic Islamic country. Which is adding to its confidence to talk and act tough. And if Turkey succeeds in bringing down the Assad regime, it would have earned the gratitude of the US and some of the Arab countries working hard for the same objective. This would greatly enhance Turkey’s regional status, entitling it to play a determining role in the post-Bashar era.

But it might not quite work like this for several reasons. First, while all of the Syrian rebels want to bring down the Bashar regime, their common goal ends here. There is no discernible unity among the rebels about what would and should happen after the Bashar regime is overthrown. And attempts to forge that unity by Turkey, Arab states and the US haven’t made much progress, if any. Any interventionist role by Turkey and others to shape a new political order in Syria is likely to be resisted along the way by one or more groups fighting for their respective agendas.

Second, the rebel movement has been infiltrated by al-Qaeda and other extremist elements interested only in creating greater mayhem in and outside Syria. And Turkey might not be immune to it. There is a danger, along the way, of linkages developing between Syria’s Kurdish minority and the Turkish Kurds (and other rebels), where there is an insurgency, on and off, against Turkish domination.  The Bashar regime has already relaxed their control of the country’s Kurd region. In a period of political and strategic flux, events can take dramatic turn that Turkey might not be able to control. In other words, despite Turkey’s calculated and neat strategy, the results might be the opposite of what is intended.

The Alawites’ minority, now in power, is not going to simply go away. With Turkey now engaged in bringing down the Bashar regime, long memories of Ottoman (Turkish) rule are likely to find a fresh lease of life. In a recent article in the London Review of Books, Nir Rosen quotes historian Hanna Batatu who wrote, ‘Under the Ottomans they [the Alawites] were abused, reviled and ground down by exactions and, on occasion, their women and children led into captivity and disposed of by sale.’ According to Rosen, “They were practically serfs to the Sunni feudal lords put in place by the Ottomans.” And these painful memories will further firm up their determination to keep fighting for their survival.

The point is that even if the Bashar regime is overthrown, there will be a variation of it to keep up the struggle. Therefore, Syria will continue to be a battleground of all sorts of competing and contending forces and, at times, a proxy war of international and regional interests seeking dominant political, economic and strategic space in an already volatile Middle East.

Turkey, therefore, over time, might find itself subsumed into a seemingly endless game of international chess, but with blood and gore.

Note: This araticle first appeared in the Daily Times.