Eight Years Later: Lessons and Implications of the Syrian Civil War, Part two – DID ASSAD WIN?

Did Assad Win?

By Josef Olmert

As I pointed out on part one of this series on Syria, fundamental misunderstandings about Syria, its society, demographic composition, and cultural and political history, led so many real and presumed experts in this country to grant Bashar Assad the certificate of reformer, nation-builder and stable ruler. A huge mistake, as was described and analyzed in part one. Same mistaken assumptions lead basically the same experts to another erroneous conclusion-the civil war is over. Bashar Assad won. Wrong. Too early to come to that conclusion, and surely it is a vital question to analyze – what is a win in a civil war as Syria’s is, and how can it be measured? As it is the case in any other issue of international relations and political science, there is more than one modality by which we can refer to the questions of civil wars, their origins, possible solutions, and regional and global implications. Here I will deal with the question of results of civil war and how to define them.

James D. Fearon, a distinguished scholar and fellow of the American Academy, argues that, ‘’the spread of civil war and state collapse to the Middle East and North Africa region in the last fifteen years has posed one set of problems that the current policy repertoire cannot address well’’ [James D.Fearon, Civil war & the Current International System, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2017, p.18]. This may be so, due to the particular character of some of these conflicts, including Syria, where, due to many reasons, the conflict can be in line with what Azzar and Haddad referred to, as ‘’extremely a case of protracted political and social conflict’’. They wrote about Lebanon, but it is as relevant also with regard to Syria. [E.E.Azzar & R.F. Haddad, Lebanon; An Anomalous Conflict?’’, Third World Quarterly, 8, no.4, October 1986, pp.1337-1350. Henceforth, relating to the question of the results of the Syrian civil war requires an emphasis on the concrete conditions in Syria as they are now on the ground. First and foremost, we have to describe the situation in different regions of Syria, as we are in the midst of the eighth year of the conflict.
As things are in the time of writing this piece [Late May 2019], Bashar Assad is still the nominal President of Syria. He is hardly seen in public, and when he does, the events are well-orchestrated by the government, intended to show popular support to him personally and to his regime. Damascus, the Capital is firmly under his control, and pockets of rebels’ resistance, while there, are not capable of large-scale organized fighting, but definitely are capable of mounting terror attacks. South of Damascus, the regime is in tenuous control of the border area with Jordan and Israel. This is mostly Sunni area, where the rebellion started in 2011. The Assad regime re-erected a sculpture of Hafiz Assad in Der’a, where it all started, but this is just an indication of how it all is so fragile. One sculpture was demolished, another can be. Sculptures are a symbol, but symbols are temporary. The regime is only nominally in control of the Druze Mountains [Jabal Druze], where there is opposition to the regime, resistance to send youngsters to the Syrian army and altogether undeclared local self-rule.

The Druze were an integral part of the original minority coalition which constituted the Neo -Ba’th as of 1963[with the exception of the short-lived Salim Hatum rebellion of October 1966], but the circumstances of the civil war as of 2011, created major cracks in the relationships with the Alawites, something which will have major effects on any attempt to re-establish a stable regime in Syria, and will be analyzed in another piece in this series. In the Center of Syria, the Homs-Hammah area is largely, but not fully under Assad control, and in particular, the rural and desert regions North and East of Homs are out of the control of the regime. Clearly, the vast area of the Syrian Desert, which traditionally was not easily governed, is these days actually completely out of control. In Hammah, the traditional center of Islamic opposition to the Alawite regime, there are lots of incidents concerning terror activities. Then we come to the Alawite heartland in the North West, with Kardaha, the Assad family home village, and Tartus and Latakiyya on the Mediterranean coast as the focal points of the region. This is the one region, where the hold of the regime is firm, and that is no surprise-the Alawite community is the backbone of the regime, but even there we are receiving reports about rocket attacks by rebels from outside of the region. That leads us to the Aleppo and Idlib regions, where one third of the entire Sunni population of Syria reside, and where they form a vast majority of the overall population [with the exception of dwindling, but still significant Christian communities, Armenians mostly, in the Aleppo city and province, and a small Druze enclave in the mountains surrounding Aleppo]. Aleppo was taken over by the regime after long and atrocious fighting, but here again, the hold of Assad is precarious at best, and it faces a major challenge in the adjacent Idlib province, which is still under rebel control with about 4 million Sunnis living there.

The North East of Syria, west, and east of the Euphrates is mostly Kurdish, and while the majority of the Kurds are not cooperating with the Sunni rebels, their support of and loyalty to the Assad regime is questionable at best. The history of Kurdish-Arab relations in Syria, while less publicized than that in Iraq, is not really different in terms of the overall legacy of ethnic tensions. Again, a point of importance in terms of discussion about the future.
It is not so easy, therefore, as we see the situation in Syria according to regions and sectarian affiliations, to give a specific figure in answering questions like how much land is totally under Assad control as well as how much of the population, as opposed to partial control. It is a reasonable estimate, that the regime controls no more than half of the land, and surely less than half of the overall population of Syria as it was prior to 2011. Here is the key question relating to the discussion over victory of Assad in Syria. What Syria?

Syria before 2011 had a population of 22 million, whereas the current population may be only 15-16 million, with 5-7 million Syrians out of the country, in neighboring Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan as well as far away European countries such as Germany. 600,000 have been killed in Syria, many hundreds of thousands injured, maimed and crippled, and tens of thousands, perhaps in excess of 100,000 are supposedly held in regime jails, most likely people who will never see sunlight anymore. Add up to that, the economic damage estimated in hundreds of billions of dollars, the infrastructure devastation, and we can safely say, that Syria of 2019 remotely resembles Syria of 2011, and make no mistake-Syria of 2011 was also a poor, semi-developed country. It is not an exaggeration, therefore, to refer to Syria today as a disaster zone of major proportions, and with that in mind, the question of who won in the conflict, or has won until now, is not a question of definitions or modalities of political science, it is a question of realities on the ground. Syria may retain the formal attributes of a state, but in actual terms, it is a model of a failing state. Bashar Assad was in 2000 until 2011 the unchallenged ruler of a unitary, functioning state. He is anything but that these days, and what makes it such a clear-cut case, is also the fact, that Syria has become and still is, the regional, up to a point, also the global playground of quite a few external actors. So, until Hafiz Assad became the undisputed leader, Syria was the sick man of the Middle East, which it is exactly again. Bashar Assad, therefore, is not the winner, not as yet, probably not anymore. In the next piece, I will dwell on the significance of the demographic, economic, political disaster described above and the connection between the internal forces at play and the external actors involved.

Dr. Josef Olmert is a Senior Fellow at the Palm Beach Center for Democracy and Policy Research and an adjunct professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina

Photo by aladdin hammami on Unsplash