Two very significant and implicative events took place in the Arabic Spring’s last couple of weeks. One is related to the revolution in Syria; while the other is linked to the characterizing aftermath of the post-revolution’s political developments in Tunisia and Egypt. The first event is the assault, which the supporters of the Syrian opposition that is represented by the National Transitional Council exerted against the supporters of the Syrian opposition that is represented by the National Coordination Committee in Cairo. Such assault marks deep rifts and serious discrepancies between the various Syrian dissenters’ stances on the revolution’s nature, goals and process; the disconcerting gap, that is, that all of us must probe carefully. The second event, on the other hand, is the American Secretary of Foreign Affairs Hillary Clinton’s declaration, and for the first time in such an explicit manner, that USA does not mind constructing common-interest relationships with the Islamists who are expected to replace the dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, if not the Arab world in general.
I have already published four months ago an article in Al-Mustaqbal Newspaper’s cultural Appendix, ‘Nawafiz’, wherein I argued that contrary to its traditional stance, the West is today more reconciled with the possible existence of political Islamist alternatives in the Arab world, even in the Arab countries who are neighbours to Israel. The West would, furthermore, be the primary supporter and ultimate benefactor of aiding political Islam in its authoritarian ambitions in the region. The West, as I argued, would opt for this on the basis of its belief that such a support would tame and belittle the threats of the sociological, cultural and civil ambitions of political Islam in the western societies by shifting its primary track. The western powers hope that by supporting the fulfilment of political Islam’s ambitions in the Arab world they will be able to re-orient the spears of the latter towards its homeland and drive it ultimately to give up its recent focus on the western world. Today with the secretary Clinton’s direct expression of America’s readiness to allying with any Islamist alternative in the Arab world, the western powers declare that they stand behind such an option and they reflect their readiness not only to deal with its inevitable reality, but also to frankly bargain and cut strategic deals with it, conceding all the requirements such an alliance-deal demands: committing to the give-and-take requirement and the ‘embrace-winning-and-accept-losing’ rule.
From the perspective of ‘give-and-take’ deals-cutting, the alphabets of the expected alliance and mutual-interest friendship would be as follows: the west would wait from the Islamists to establish pluralist and deliberative political systems that follow the democratic rules of political activity. By committing themselves to this precondition, the Islamists would help the decision-making centres in the west in their attempt at re-polishing the image of political Islam and justifying their (the western powers) siding with it in front of the secularist, liberal and civil public-square and civil society organizations in the western countries. By the help of the political Islam’s commitment to the democratic ruling-game, the Western decision-making centres would promise to give a deaf ear to the critical appraisals of the national and international civil society institutions, human rights activists and the organizations that defend democracy, plurality and civil society values when these latter raise their voices against these growing Islamist regimes’ expected ambitions at sociologically, culturally and jursdictionally islamizing the Arab societies.
In return of the above mentioned western lenience towards the social, cultural and jurisdictional islamization of Arab societies, these newly-born Islamist regimes are expected to pledge their commitment to the western following threefold agenda: First, they must promise that they will not threaten the existence and the security of the state of Israel, and they will, rather, cooperate in finding a solution to the Israeli-Arab struggle by succumbing to the international endeavour of reducing it into mere Palestinian-Israeli disagreement and by pushing the Palestinians into the table of negotiation, persuading them to compromise their demands and pushing them into accepting a peace-agreement which the West concedes and Israel tailors. Second, these Islamist regimes should pledge to clearly and strictly ally with the western campaign in its clash with the Iranian strategic ambitions, under the name of the Sunnite Arab world’s abhorrence of the Iranians’ Shi’ism and its ideological and dogmatic attempt at shi’izing the Near East. Third, these newly born Islamist regimes must guarantee the continuous flooding of energy to the west and would maintain the Arab countries’ status as the first weapons’ buyer in the world; the thing that would help the west in its strife for financial and economic stabilization in the midst of the recent European and American drastic economic recession, massive national debts and unprecedentedly high rate of unemployment crisis. What we should expect to witness, in other words, is an attempt at cutting geo-strategic deals with the new Islamist regimes that are very much similar in nature and content to the deals the Americans already have with Turkey and the Gulf countries. The spiral-cord of these alliances is: practice sociological, cultural, and jurisdictional islamization in your countries as you like, but stay away from islamizing the internal political situation of the stately system and also elide from any islamist approach to the regional geo-political calculations.
Now with regard to the relation of this equation to the revolution in Syria and the deep rift between the opposition’s spectrums, we have to read the Syrian revolution within the framework of the above mentioned new development in the west’s geo-political calculations and options. I do believe that it is necessary to read the Syrian internal and external opposition-branches’ continuous strategic and tactical mistakes and contradictions – especially the ones that are related to the matters of timing, performance, planning and political interactivity – as strongly demonstrative that all the branches of the Syrian oppositions have lost their chance to play the role of the primary and most influential player in the Syrian scene, let the chance to impact the final destination of the revolution. The implosion of the Syrian regime, though inevitable and impending, is no more in the hands of the National Transitional Council or the National Coordination Committee, and it might even no more be in the hands of the people on the streets either.
I am not here suggesting that the regime would survive and that it will win. The opposite is actually the truth. During the past months, the Syrian regime proved to everybody its conspicuous collapse and its tangible lack of any further control over the daily life and process of the Syrian society, despite the unflinching existence and brutality of its artillery and security forces machine and its cordoning of the people’s affairs on the streets. The head of the regime has totally failed in convincing the world about its ability to deal with the recent crisis on the basis of any political prudency and discretion or the expected wisdom and stances of the statesman. The discourse of reformation, which the president introduced himself to the Syrian public and to the world as its godfather in Syria, has radically failed and proved its falsehood, as it has been immediately displaced by demagogy, violence and coercion. By this, the regime lost the control on its fate and survival, and is destiny has become now conditioned by the general strategic calculations of the presently detectable deal between the west and political Islam in the Arab world, including Syria. Throughout the past ten years, the west has witnessed and verified the Syrian regime’s inability to be the west’s partner in achieving its threefold strategic agenda in the region; the agenda, that is, which the regime would have granted a place for itself in the new equation had it succumbed to. To the contrary, the Islamist alternative seems to be willing to show readiness to commit itself to this preconditioning strategic tripod and to cut a deal with the west on them. Therefore, the Ba’thist regime has undoubtedly lost the reasons of its existence on the futural map of the region.
To come back to the Syrian opposition’s role, it can no more, in my view, aspire at occupying the role of the main player in the Syrian revolution’s scene. And, it will not be at all the main cause of the regime’s fall-down. The National Transitional Council has failed in presenting itself as the real, let alone the only, power that is capable of toppling the regime and its rulers by means of either sheer public force, political vision, or any futural strategic view, which the Syrian public can rely on in the post-Ba’thi era. On the other hand, the National Coordination Committee, and from the very beginning, did not gain broad and influential public support inside Syria, and it did not gain any serious or reliable attention from the Wets, although its members and followers are the most prominent nationalist, historical dissenting figures inside Syria during the past four decades. In addition to this, there is a deep intellectual and strategic difference between the discourses of these two opposing movements, which fragments their approaches and views and confuses the political performance inside the circles of each; the thing that we started to perpetually witness during the past months, which lately reached its drastic climax in the embarrassing and shameful assault of the National Council’s supporters against the members of the National Coordination Committee that took place in Cairo.
From a realist and pragmatist political point of view, it is easy to expect that the opposition, most probably the National Transitional Council, would be pushed to replace the inevitably and imminently falling regime. It is also foreseeable that the creators of this Council and its supporters (the Turks and Americans, in specific) would press towards introducing this Council as the expected, and maybe unfortunately the ‘only’, political alternative in the new Syria, whether this Council gained the support of the majority of the Syrian population or it drastically did not. Yet, this should not blindfold and prevent us from realizing that the regime’s implosion and the success of the public riot were not primarily in the hands of either the opposition or the Syrian public-square. If the Syrians found themselves before the inescapable requirement of dealing with the National Transitional Council as the conjectured alternative of the falling regime, there would be a noticeable suspicion among them that the new ruling system should be called the ‘winner’, for the complexities of the Syrian scene reveal that this winner can be any side except the Syrian official opposing bodies.
What I want to conclude from the previous argument is that we have to read the scandal of the deep rift (and its ensuing aggressiveness) between the opposition segments in Syria, and the implications of these serious differences, within a broader geo-political framework that is related to the latest western stance on the rising of political Islam in the region and the west’s readiness to cut a new mutual-interest deal with this alternative. If the regime demolished in Syrian, its fall would be the outcome of this new deal, not the result of the oppositions’ or the street’s role (though the heroic Syrian public-square is the main factor and cause behind the beginning of the end of the regime). On the other hand, if a miracle beyond the boundaries of the analytical logic and available data happened to take place, namely if the president remained in rule for a transitional period, this also would not be a sign of the regime’s victory over the rioting street and the opposition. Both the regime and its fate, on one side, and the oppositions and the fate of the street’s demonstration, on another, have become part and parcel of a bigger and more complicated game; just one milestone in a longer and more curvy map-track. The increase of the oppositions’ differences and clashes was not but an outcome of a stance-change in their sponsors’, western and local, regional and international, substantial and constructive approach to political Islam and the attempt of the influential powers in the region to re-order the pawns of the Middle Eastern chess-board.
