Arab Spring Derailed – OpEd

By Jamal Kanj

Last week’s defection of the Syrian prime minister was a public relations blow to the regime of Bashar Al Assad, but had no other significance.

In Syria, power is in the hand of a security apparatus controlled by the Assad clan.

Despite months of street protests and archetypal autocratic systems, the regime proved to be incapable of reforming. It is against the law of physics for a totalitarian system to transform itself into a democracy.

What started as a genuine extension of the Arab Spring had been derailed from civil uprising to full-blown military conflict. The ruthless killings from both sides are polarizing Syrians across ethnic-religious lines, pushing the country further into the abyss of destruction.

Militarizing civil protests also resulted in a shift of power from the streets of Syrian towns and cities to foreign capitals. Obviously, unlike home-grown local leaders, outside leadership is more disposed to the influence of external forces and foreign interest.

As a result, Syria became an open range for rival foreign powers challenging or supporting the regime, each vying for its interest with little concern for people’s aspiration and freedom. Assad, supported by Russia, China and Iran, is living a delusional state of popularity, while the outside leadership is competing to trade Western support for Syria’s future political position in the Middle East – both failing to realize that foreign backing cannot supplant national legitimacy.

Through the US, Israel is pursuing a two-pronged strategy: change regime to weaken Iran and the Lebanese resistance and destroy Syria by dismantling it along ethnic and religious divide.

Tel Aviv’s obsession with maintaining domineering and unchallenged regional power has long envisaged that breaking up neighboring states across religious lines is indispensable to its survival as a theocratic state.

The invasion of Iraq was ZionCons’ first successful Israeli proxy war using US forces to invade and occupy a country based on proven fabricated tales.

In 1982, almost 20 years prior to the invasion of Iraq, former Israeli foreign ministry official Oded Yinon wrote in Kivunim (Directions), the Journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization, that Israel’s future priority should be “the dissolution of Syria and Iraq into ethnically or religiously unique areas”.

On Iraq, he wrote: “Its dissolution is even more important than Syria. Iraq is stronger. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to breaking up Iraq into provinces along ethnic and religious lines.”
On Syria, the strategist called for dividing it into “an Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus and the Durzes in the Hauran and in northern Jordan”.

President Barack Obama’s recently revealed approval of intelligence “finding” authorizing CIA role in the Syrian conflict may signify a new liberal Israeli proxy war in Syria. Israel’s dominion obsession is a menace, endangering regional stability and global peace.

The unwinnable “inter-Arab confrontation” is fragmenting Syria and providing a pretext for the regime to ruthlessly crush the opposition.

Widespread civil disobedience exposing the brutal regime and shifting the center of power back to the home-based opposition is Syria’s last hope for genuine egalitarian system. Violence will only replace a thug with another minion dictator; it will not lead to fruitful democracy.

– Jamal Kanj writes frequently on Arab issues and is the author of Children of Catastrophe, Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America. His articles can be read at www.jamalkanj.com, He can be contacted at his e-mail address is [email protected]. (This article was first published by the Gulf Daily News newspaper.)