Parody as tragedy

Usually I wait until after an election to comment, as the shelf life of pre-election posts is so limited.  But I breached that practice for Egypt, since the outcome was not in doubt.  I’ll breach it also for Syria, as the result is again apparent.  The only thing uncertain about tomorrow’s election is what numbers Damascus will claim for turnout and for the votes of the two unknowns supposedly running against Bashar al Asad.  High turnout and some substantial number of votes for his opponents would help the regime claim that the election provides a measure of legitimacy, which is the purpose of the exercise.

More than three years of attacks on the civilian population, the displacement of perhaps one-third of the population and the flight of more than three million people to other countries tell a different story.  Syria is today a disaster, one that will almost surely have broader impacts in the years to come.  Thousands (maybe 10,000?) foreign jihadis are fighting each other, the more moderate factions of the opposition and sometimes the regime.  Still more radicalized Syrians are involved.  If you want to re-establish an Islamic caliphate, Syria and Iraq are attactive places in which to do it, since the Umayyad caliphs originally made their capital in Damascus and the Abbasids in Baghdad.

The West is denouncing Syria’s election as a parody of democracy.  But it is not a funny parody.  It is a tragic one with wide implications.  Those foreign jihadis will no doubt return home some day, not only to America but also to Europe and Russia.  The massive refugee camps in Jordan and Turkey cannot be emptied so long as Asad holds power in Syria.  Lebanon, which has not wanted camps, is now burdened with more than a million Syrians, causing serious strain on its education and health systems.  Overflow of the Syrian war into Iraq has contributed to sectarian strife in a country already suffering severe centrifugal strain.

President Obama at West Point last week indicated he would be increasing the supply of arms to more moderate rebels in Syria.  That may be necessary to rebalance the military situation and create conditions for a negotiated settlement.  But much more is needed.  Moderates won’t win out in Syria unless they can respond to the dramatic needs of the population and govern effectively on liberated territory.  The worst outcome in Syria would be a failed state.  The situation is already perilously close to that–the regime is losing its capacity to govern in the territory it controls and extremists are gaining the upper hand in the territory it has lost.

Preventing a failed state will require a much more substantial state-building effort than we have engaged in so far.  All American presidents want to avoid such enterprises.  They are difficult, expensive and unfulfilling.  But a Syrian state is necessary if we are to avoid a major rearrangement of borders in the Middle East.  Once that starts, it will spread to Lebanon and Iraq for sure, and possibly Jordan and Turkey.  You don’t have to like the Sykes-Picot borders to realize that rearranging them will be violent, killing even more than the 150,000 Syrians who are already dead and creating resentments that could embroil the region in war for a decade or more to come.

So when we hear tomorrow that Bashar al Asad has been re-elected with perhaps 70-80% of the vote, we need to remind ourselves that this parody is occurring under tragic conditions and will be prelude to more mayhem unless something more effective is done to create the conditions for a negotiated solution.  There are many in the opposition ready to talk.  They were well-represented at the
Geneva 2 conference by the Syrian Opposition Coalition.  The regime needs to be convinced that it cannot continue to gain militarily and needs instead to come to the negotiating table.