Syria on the brink

Progress towards a political settlement of the Syrian crisis seems to be moving, albeit extremely slowly.

Often it is obscured by the horrific violence that continues to claim innocent lives. The killing machine — which all armed hands in the country are operating — continues to grind at full speed.

Yet, the components of the crisis have remained the same for the last four years at least.

What is happening in Syria is not just a civil war. It is not merely a war between Syrian factions, although Syrian factions are used as tools by outside powers.

It is true that Syrians are indeed fighting Syrians, but not out of their own will. Both sides’ participation in this vicious war is meant to serve foreign plans originally set to dismantle Syria as a state, to dismantle its history, its political structure and its Arab identity — much as was planned for Iraq at the beginning of this century.

The same forces that yearned for the dissolution of the state of Iraq, in the name of replacing a ruthless dictatorship with a thriving democracy, are now operating in Syria.

It would have made a great deal of sense if a successful project for introducing democracy in Iraq would have been emulated in Syria. The stunning irony, however, is that the advocates of democratisation through regime change have squandered untold billions of dollars, on top of the massive toll of death and destruction, to repeat a miserable experiment.

Iraq has suffered much. It has been trying to cope, since the US-led invasion of 2003, with the consequences of a war that was planned in reverse order: invade first and search for a casus belli after.

In Syria though, after nearly five years of aimless fighting, the devastation is unprecedented. Syria is now on the verge of total collapse. The outcome is clear and sobering; at least for now, it appears to be a stark choice between Assad and Daesh.

All those who continue to stubbornly feed the Syrian war have to decide whether they want to salvage the remnants of the state — though not necessarily the individuals who lead it — in the hope that time may heal the deep wounds and enable a shattered nation to eventually rebuild itself — or open Syria to perpetual violence and chaos that will not stop at its borders.

One reason for the lack of progress is that the debate has been stuck on a single point.

The destiny of Syria was reduced to one single factor: Assad or not Assad. The urgent question now, however, is Syria or no Syria.

There can be no denying this: over the years, all those involved in the war have committed outrageous and horrific acts.

Bashar Assad bears the inescapable responsibility for responding to peaceful protesters asking for their rights with brutal violence, offering foreign elements the opportunity to rush in with their agendas and ensuring that a popular uprising became a years-long war.

Foreign and regional powers rushed in to finance and arm any group, including terrorists and religious zealots, as long as they were prepared to fight against the Syrian regime.

The country has been flooded with tens of thousands of foreign fighters who have absolutely nothing to do with a legitimate Syrian uprising for democratic rights.

This served the regime’s own narrative — a self-fulfilling prophecy — that it was fighting for law and order against terror.

If the issue of whether Assad should remain president or not was relevant at the beginning, when it was within the Syrian domestic domain, it became beside the point when the country was opened to foreign forces bent on fighting the government.

The regime clearly retains enough support to maintain its army — though exhausted — intact and functional despite massive losses — a fact the regime’s staunchest opponents are loath to admit. The result is the current bloody stalemate.

The sequence of military operations in Syria continues to validate the conclusion that the war cannot be settled militarily in any side’s favour.

The only way is to work out a political compromise.

The rising power of Daesh, accompanied by the clear failure of the war against this murderous organisation in both Iraq and Syria, has become a decisive factor in convincing all belligerent forces to fight Daesh first even if Assad may benefit from the outcome.

That is what Moscow and Washington seem finally to agree upon: Leave Assad’s fate an open question for now, and turn all the guns against Daesh.

That will be unpalatable to many, but it looks like the only path towards stopping the destruction, loss of life and mass exodus. It may even eventually allow the millions of Syrians now in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey to begin to return home safely.

Syrians alone have the right to choose their future and their leaders, something they will not be able to do as long as the carnage continues unabated.