Syrian Scenarios In Eyes Of Assad Allies – OpEd

By Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid

An article recently published on the “Al-Manar” website, a key Hezbollah media organ, explored the situation in Syria and examined possible scenarios in a country hit by war. Like the rest of the supporters of the Assad regime, followers of Hezbollah have their own political terms. Here the regime is described as “the resistance” and the Syrian people’s uprising against the regime a “conspiracy project”.

Two possible scenarios arise. The first scenario dictates that the regime will try to defeat opponents through military action and then impose political dialogue on them. Such a scenario is highly unlikely to occur unless untenable regional conditions force the Syrian regime to impose a political status quo with concessions from its side to ensure definitive survival.

The second scenario, which seems to be more realistic, acknowledges the possibility of the regime’s defeat and hence draws two possible pictures following the fall of Bashar Assad, one of which is Syria’s dragging into a sectarian civil war. The author of the article on the Al-Manar website has depicted “positive” aspects of such a scenario with the belief that it will frustrate the geopolitical gains of the Gulf states, Turkey and the West. Certainly, we do not disagree that the sectarian war will serve the interests of the Assad regime and Iran while at the same time shattering the hope of Syrians to have a unified and stable state. The second possible picture lies in the seizure of power by the opposition that will serve the interests of the Gulf states and the West. Here, too, we agree with the author on his conclusions with the exception that the biggest beneficiaries would be the Syrian people who have been suffering for forty years under a fascist security system that previously counted its breaths. The regional countries, however, have coexisted with both the Hafez and the Bashar Assad regimes.

If neither scenarios materialize, we will be left with a neither-winner-nor-loser situation. This, like the first scenario, is difficult to imagine because the regime is essentially composed of a gang that lives on government benefits. How can a gang that has lost its footing in terms of popular support and benefits survive? With Syrian opposition representing more than 70 percent of the country, the gang cannot survive for long amid such a hostile atmosphere no matter how long they get external support.

Since based on false premises, all analytical conclusions provided by supporters of the Syrian regime, have been uncovered and no longer mean anything inside Syria or the Arab world. Nobody will believe in the “resistance” theory publicized by the Syrian regime or Hezbollah. It has been a lie swaying many people during the last four decades. The cooperation that has existed between both Hafez Assad’s regime and now Bashar’s regime in Syria, Iran and Hezbollah was part of a regional conflict which will do nothing for Palestine. A criminal regime that used to enslave its people cannot free another people. Hezbollah, too, has always remained Iran’s pawns which has territorial claims and used the Palestinian cause as a cover to achieve its goals.

The forgotten party in the analysis of the above scenarios is the Syrian people. Syrians are the owners of the revolution from its first hours to this day and their objective is to have a Syria free of fascism and for their oppressors to experience a fate similar to that of criminal regimes that fell earlier, such as Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Such a regime will, inevitably, fall sooner or later. It is the Syrian people who ignited the revolution, not Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, or the West. Any attempts to conceal the truth by using political terms cannot cancel out the main player, the Syrian people. It therefore goes without saying that the regime’s survival is impossible after it has slaughtered tens of thousands of people and induced the opposition and hostility of many other millions.

This situation may lead to a convergence (or divergence) of interests. For some regional powers, it is in their interest to see the Syrian people revolt against the regime. Iran and Hezbollah stood on the other side of the street which allowed the Syrian people to differentiate between friends and foes. Had Iran stood against Assad’s regime from the very beginning, it would have allowed Tehran the chance to help formulate the new Syrian regime. Of course, this is wishful thinking given that the Iranian regime is fundamentally similar to the Assad regime in its ideological and autocratic character.

Yet even after seventeen months of the regime’s war against its people, Hezbollah writers and followers are falsely depicting the situation as a regional conflict between the Syrian regime, on the one hand, and Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the other, deliberately omitting mention of the 20 million Syrian people who are the true owners of the cause. They forget that it is Bashar who is the occupier and that the citizens of Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, Deraa, Deer Al-Zur and other localities who are the ultimate determining factor to Syria’s future, not the opposition from foreign countries that hope for their downfall.