بواسطة Bassam Haddad | سبتمبر 12, 2017 | غير مصنف
روايتان متصارعتان تهيمنان على النقاشات، وكلتاهما لا تقدمان حلا
يشعر كل المتتبعين لأخبار سوريا المؤلمة الآن بحالة من التشبع بالمعلومات والأرقام والتحليلات والمعلومات المضللة التي ظهرت منذ عام 2011 وحتى وقتنا الحالي. الكثير منا تبنى روايته الخاصة للأحداث وهذا هو الحال سواء كنا من المتابعين لسوريا خلال العقدين الماضيين أو بدأنا فجأة بمتابعتها منذ 2011. وللأسف، ففي ضوء الطبيعة المثيرة للجدل للمعلومات التي تصلنا عن هذا البلد، وخصوصا في الظروف الراهنة، فإن بلورة هذه الروايات قابلة بالتأكيد للشكوك أو لرأي منطقي مضاد.
أما الأسوأ من هذا فهو هذا الانجذاب المتزايد نحو روايتين محددتين : أ) تلك التي تتحدث عن “ثورة متماسكة ونقية”، و ب) والتي تتحدث عن “المؤامرة الخارجية”. كلا التفسيرين يحمل شيئا من الحقيقة، ولكن كليهما مثقل بمزاعم لا حد لها تجاه الآخر، وفيهما إغفال جوهري لجوانب من القضية مما يعرقل اللقاء بينهما على أرضية مشتركة ضرورية للتوصل إلى وقف لإطلاق النار، أو لانتقال محتمل للسلطة وكذلك يعرقل مصالحة ما بعد الحرب.
هذه الخلافات تبلورت في مؤسسات ومراكز بحثية، ودوائر سياسية، وانتشرت في أوساط الفنانين والصحفيين، ووسائل الإعلام والفضائيات في الشرق الأوسط والتي تعرض عادة صورا هزلية لوجهة النظر التي تفضلها. هذه المناظرة تحدث في كل مكان، وحتى على مائدة الطعام في المطبخ حيث تجتمع العائلة وكذلك بين الأصدقاء ولكن بنبرات صوت، وحدة في الكلام، وبعجالة تختلف من موقف لآخر.المفارقة هي أن الاستثناء الغريب والذي يدعو للأمل هنا يكمن في السوريين المقيمين في سوريا الذين أنهكتهم كل تلك المقاربات، والذين يملكون وجهة نظر أكثر متانة تأسست من المعاناة القاسية والقرب من أحداث أقل ما توصف به أنها تمثل مستوى متطرفاً من القسوة.
الرواية الأولى تصر على نقاء وتماسك الثورة التي بدأت عام 2011. وهدف هذا المقال سيكون التركيز بشكل أكبر على الحيز الخطابي الواسع الذي تقع فيه تلك النقاشات وبالذات في الانترنت عوضا عن التركيز على الخيارات التي تتحدث عن تدخل أمريكي أكبر في القضية السورية.
غالبا ما ترتبط الرواية التي تحكم رؤيتنا للأحداث مع السياسة، حتى لو جاء هذا بشكل انتهازي ومتأخر وهو السبب الأهم الذي يدفعنا لأخذ وجهات النظر تلك بشكل جدي وخصوصا السائد منها. وبما أن هدفي هنا هو أن أتجنب الجدل الشخصي العقيم فإنني لن أحدد أسماء شخصيات أو مؤسسات بعينها ترتبط بأي من الروايتين السابق ذكرهما. بل إن هدفي هنا هو أن أسهم في استعادة شيء من المسؤولية والتمييز.
ويجب هنا أن نؤكد أن هناك اختلافات حول نقاط معينة ضمن كل رواية للأحداث الأمر الذي يفسر بعض التقلبات وخصوصا بعد تجذر العنصر الجهادي في الانتفاضة. ولكن التركيز هنا هو على الافتراضات الأساسية التي صيغت حول كل رواية للأحداث.
تؤكد الرواية الأولى للأحداث على نقاء وتماسك الثورة التي بدأت عام 2011، وتؤكد على أن الثورة تسعى لإزالة ديكتاتورية بشعة لإقامة حكم أكثر عدلا وقبولا للمساءلة. الكثير من أنصار هذه الرواية يدركون المشاكل التي تكتنف هذه النظرة بدءاً بعسكرة وأصولية الانتفاضة وانتهاء بالتدخلات الخارجية. ولكن هذه الديناميكيات يجب ألا تؤثر على جوهر الثورة. ووفق هذه النظرة فإنه لا توجد درجة من العسكرة، أو الأصولية، أو الطائفية في هذه الانتفاضة كفيلة بإحداث تغيير جوهري في إمكانية أن تقوم هذه الانتفاضة بتغيير الحكم إلى حكم أكثر شفافية وقبولا للمساءلة في سوريا. وهكذا فإن هذه الرواية للأحداث تعترف أن الجهاديين هم رأس الحربة في المعركة ضد نظام الأسد. ومع ذلك فإن هذه الرواية تقوم، وبشكل متزامن، إما بإدانة النظرة الأصولية للعالم أو بإلغائهم باعتبارهم نتاجاً للقمع، و هي في كلتا الحالتين تضع مسافة بين الأصوليين و”الثورة”. هذه الرواية قد تشجب أيضاً خضوع الممثلين الرسميين للثورة لدول الخليج، وتركيا، وللولايات المتحدة أيضا بما في ذلك دورهم في تمويل وتسهيل دخول الجهاديين إلى سوريا. ولكنها مع ذلك لا تعي ما يترتب على هذا الشجب من عواقب. يقال دوما إن الثورة قادرة على أن تخرج نقية بلا أذى في نهاية المطاف، ورفض هكذا رؤية قد يرقى إلى ما يشبه الخيانة.
تقر الرواية الثانية للأحداث بقمعية النظام ولكنها لا ترى إلا المؤامرة الخارجية والجهاديين المحليين. تعترف هذه الرواية بالاضطهاد الذي يمارسه النظام والحاجة إلى التغيير. والمعتنقون لهذه الرؤية غالبا ما يعترفون بشرعية الاحتجاجات، على الأقل بشكل نظري. ولكن عندما نصل إلى الانتفاضة الحقيقية، فإنهم لا يرون إلا المؤامرة الخارجية والجهاديين المحليين. ووفق هذه الرواية فإن بقية المتظاهرين إما يختفون في أفق بعيد لا علاقة له بالأحداث، أو يتم استحضارهم كعملاء لقوى خارجية تسعى لإثارة المشاكل. وبحسب هذه الرواية للأمور فليس هناك وجود لناشطين علمانيين، ومعادين للإمبريالية لا زالوا يسعون للإطاحة بالنظام. هؤلاء الناشطون إما غير موجودين أساساً، أو أنهم أقل من أن يتم ذكرهم. وفي نفس الوقت فإن هذا الرواية تجعل تدمير النظام لسوريا أقل حضورا في سردها للأحداث عن طريق التركيز على القوى الإمبريالية التي تستفيد من هذا التدمير. يذهب البعض إلى أبعد من هذا ويضع الدمار الذي يقوم به النظام على قدم المساواة مع قوى المعارضة الأضعف كثيراً منه. وفق هذه الرؤية فإن سوريا ليست مسرحا لنزاع إقليمي وعالمي فقط، بل هي الحلبة التي يجب أن تتم فيها هزيمة المخطط الغربي أيا تكن التكلفة التي يدفعها السوريون. وهكذا فإن المشاركة في المعارضة تصبح نوعا من الخيانة ضد القوى المعادية للإمبريالية ( وضد البلد نفسه).
كلا الروايتين تفشلان في رؤية الحجج المشروعة للرواية المقابلة. فالمعتنقون لكلا الروايتين يرفضون السماح للحقائق والتطورات أن تغير من رؤاهم. الطرفان يتبنيان مواقف ناقدة بشدة للتدخلات. ووفق الرواية الأولى، فالتدخل الأمريكي يصبح جيداً إذا كان موجها ضد النظام فقط. وبالنسبة للرواية الثانية، فالتدخل الأجنبي جيد إذا كان يهدف لمساعدة النظام، فروسيا ليست قوة إمبريالية مثل الولايات المتحدة وفق هذه النظرة. وفق الرواية الأولى فإن المخاطر المحتملة لسقوط الدولة هي نقطة محل نقاش. أما وفق الرواية الثانية فإن سقوط الدولة أمر غير مقبول مهما ساءت الأمور. وفي نقطة سقوط الدولة ( التي تختلف عن سقوط النظام) فإنه لا يوجد موقف مبني على تحليل رصين أو اعتبار واضح للنتائج في كلا الروايتين. وعوضا عن هذا فإن الطرفين يبدآن بفرضية حول أي طرف يجب هزيمته أولا، ثم يقوم كل طرف بعكس حجته بما يلائم النهاية التي يبتغيها. وعادة ما ترتبط الرواية الأولى بالغرب والرواية الثانية بالنظام مع استعمال كل التلميحات التي تدين الطرف الآخر. وفي النهاية لا يبدو أي طرف راغبا في التوصل إلى تفاهم، فلا شيء يمكن قبوله أقل من الهزيمة الكاملة إما للنظام أو للمعارضة، مما يسد الطريق على عدة مخارج محتملة قد تمنع الفوضى.
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إن الانتصار الكامل لأي طرف لن يعيد العافية للوضع السوري. لن تنعم سوريا بالاستقرار ما لم تؤخذ في الحسبان آمال الأغلبية من المواطنين، أيا تكن انتماءاتهم أو ميولهم. ولهذا، فإنه وبالرغم من القناعة التي يحملها معتنقو هاتين الروايتين للأحداث فإنه لا يمكن لأي منهما ، ونتحدث هنا عن الحد الأقصى لكل منهما، أن تكون كافية لانتشال سوريا من حافة الهاوية. إن المصالحة الوطنية، وبناء على تجارب تاريخية سابقة، هي عملية معقدة وغير مرضية. فكلا الطرفين يذهبان بعيداً في الحديث عن أي صيغة مستقبلية مما يفسر التصلب الذي نراه اليوم. أولئك الذين يأخذون أيا من هذا للجدل حول التعادل الأخلاقي بين الظالم والمظلوم يركزون على أنماط مثالية لا سياسية.
هناك مقاربات أكثر دقة في الاختلاف ولكن أنصارها عادة يوصفون بأنهم إما خونة للثورة، أو ساذجون سياسياً، أو مؤيدون للنظام، أو من أنصار النظام أو حتى من مؤيدي الجهاديين. أحيانا تكون عبارة ” مؤيدي المعارضة” مصدر لعنة على معتنقي الرواية الثانية بسبب هوية من يدعمون المعارضة. وبالمثل، ووفق الرواية الأولى، فإن عدم اتباع المعارضة الحالية يرقى إلى تأييد بشار الأسد.
وفي ظل هذا الجو المسموم فإن المراقبين يجدون أنفسهم مضطرين للاصطفاف مع جانب معين وإلا اعتبرهم أنصار الروايتين مشوشين وليس لهم موقف معتبر. حيث يبدو أنه من غير المقبول انتقاد المعارضة من قبل من يحملون وجهة نظر معادية للنظام بشدة. وبالتساوي مع هذا فإنه لا يمكن أن نكون مع المعارضة بدون أن يتم وضعنا في الخانة العريضة التي تحوي “مؤيدي الغرب الامبرياليين” أو “مؤيدي الصهيونية” أو في معسكر “مؤيدي الجهاديين” أو ربما الثلاث خانات سوية وفي الوقت ذاته رغم التناقضات الواضحة بينها. ولكن المفارقة الرئيسة هنا أننا جميعاً نتظاهر بأننا نتكلم بالنيابة عن كل السوريين تقريبا، بينما في الواقع نرى السوريين، الذين يناضلون كل يوم من أجل إبقاء مجتمعاتهم حية، أكثر دقة وتفصيلا من كلا المعسكرين.
بعض الذين يدعون إلى أرضية مشتركة قد لا يكون لهم صوت مسموع الآن إذا لا توجد في الوقت الحالي أية مؤسسات أو قنوات سياسية أو اجتماعية لتوضيح موقفهم. ولكن يجب علينا هنا ألا نسعى وراء أرضية مشتركة مجردة ولا سياسية، بل السعي نحو تصور لمخرج يحفظ الجميع في سوريا بغض النظر عما يفضلونه هو الطريقة الوحيدة للخروج من هذه العقدة. وهذا يتطلب كرما في التفهم ومرونة في الرؤية يبدو أنه لا أحد من معتنقي الروايتين يتحلى بهما الآن.
هذا المقال سوف يناقش الاتجاهين الأكثر شيوعا كطريقة لاستكشاف احتمالات لحلول تنهي الأزمة الحالية. هذه الحلول يجب أن تكون بالضرورة بعيدة عن تحقيق الحد الأعلى من المطالب حيث أنه من الواقعي القول إن التوصل إلى مصالحة حقيقية يعد وهما في الوقت الحالي.
وجهات النظر ولعبة إلقاء اللوم
وسط أصوات القنابل والقتل اليومي يستمر الكثيرون في الجدل حول الطرف المسؤول عن الكارثة الحالية، ويقع هذا في أكثر الأحيان على المستوى الشخصي. فقد أصاب التحزب والسياسات الجامدة عقولنا بالخدر، حيث يحاول الكثيرون تبرئة أو لوم هذا الطرف أو ذاك أو الحديث عن الأمور بشكل مطلق.
إن القتل الذي نشهده هذه الأيام يقوم به كل الأطراف، ولكن بشكل أوسع كثيرا على أيدي النظام السوري. إنه من الصعب أن نقسم اللوم بشكل دقيق ولكن الأمر ليس لغزاً لا حل له متى ما استعنّا بالتاريخ واستعملنا المنطق. من ناحية أخرى وبشكل أساسي، كيف يمكن لنا أن نبرئ النظام من المسؤولية؟ فجبهة النصرة أو قطر ليسا هما من حكم سوريا بقبضة من حديد في العقود الأربعة الماضية. إن الحديث عن اللاعبين الأساسيين الذين لعبوا دوراً أساسياً في إضعاف المعارضة عن طريق اختطاف الثورة وتشجيع المجموعات المسلحة لتحاول إسقاط النظام شيء، والتمسك بهذا المنطق لتغطية عقود من قمع النظام لشعبه، وسياساته الاقتصادية النيوليبرالية الضارة وعيوبه الأخرى شيء آخر. إن ما نشهده من قتل ودمار اليوم في حلب ومناطق أخرى يقوم به كل الأطراف ولكن يتحمل مسؤوليته بشكل أكبر النظام السوري. هذا الدمار ليس قطيعة مع عقيدة النظام بل بالأحرى تجسيد لها ولكن في ظروف مختلفة.
إن النظام في سوريا سوف يستجيب بنفس الأسلوب لأي تهديد لحكمه. فلا يمكن أن نتصور أن الأسد قد يتحمل معارضة نشأت محليا وبشكل مستقل، وذات توجهات علمانية ومعادية للامبريالية ومؤيدة لفلسطين ويسارية الانتماء سواء كانت مسلحة أو لا. الفرق الوحيد اليوم هو هوية وشخصية القوى التي تقف وراء المعارضة. وهذا هو الفرق الذي يعطي الأزمة بعدا جيوبوليتيكيا يستفيد منه النظام عن طريق تحديد ذكي وتلاعب بالمتناقضات التي تعاني منها المعارضة.
الخلاصة هنا أن أقل المزاعم تعقيداً بخصوص الوضع السوري، والذي يمكن معارضته بشكل مقنع هو مدى إجرام النظام. فالحجج المقابلة لهذا لا تنجح في اجتياز معايير التحليل الواقعي ناهيك عن المعايير الأخلاقية. إن أولئك الذين يتحدثون عن قتل المعارضة لعشرات الألوف من جنود الجيش السوري والعشرات من المدنيين الموالين للنظام أو الساكنين في مناطق تحت سلطته ليسوا بعيدين عن الحقيقة. ولكنهم أيضا لا يقتربون من مسؤولية النظام عن الكارثة في السابق والآن. وحين يتم الحديث عن وحشية النظام فإن المدافعين عن نظرية “المؤامرة” غالبا ما يعترفون بهذا ولكنهم سرعان ما يطرحونه بعيداً لصالح إلقاء اللوم على مجرمين أكبر منه وكأن هناك جريمة تلغي الأخرى أو كأن هذا الأمر يخفف معاناة الضحايا.
لقد قامت الحكومة منذ عام 2011، وبدعم من حلفائها الإقليميين والدوليين، بالتعامل بوحشية مع مواطنيها السوريين. ولكن الحقائق لا تعفي خصومها الإقليميين والدوليين من مسؤوليتهم في الإسهام البارز في هذه الفوضى. فقد علقت حركة احتجاج شرعية قام بها أغلب السوريين في شباك أغراض إمبريالية خارجية خبيثة لا علاقة لها بتعزيز معارضة مستقلة، ديمقراطية وذات أرضية واسعة، ولا يمكن لأي تفكير منطقي أن يتقدم بدون الاعتراف بهذه الحقيقة. العديد من المراقبين يعترفون بهذا بالفعل ولكنهم سيمتنعون عن تحديد تبعاته، بما في ذلك أنه يلطخ مفهومي ” المعارضة” و”الثورة”. هناك أيضا من هم غير راغبين في الاعتراف باستحالة فصل من يفترض أنهم الثوار الجيدون عن السيئين، وعلاقة هذين الطرفين بالقوى الخارجية التي أشعلت العنف الذي ذبح السوريين. جبهة النصرة، التي تسمى الآن فتح الشام، أصبحت عاملا يشبه الحنفية يمكن فتحه وقفله حسب السياق، وبموجب رواية “الثورة” فكل هذا الكلام هو وقود للنظام لكي يبرر القتل الذي يقوم به. ورغم أن هذا صحيح في أغلب الأحيان، إلا أن هذا المنطق ينظف صورة “المعارضة” أو “الثوار” ويبرئ بكل سذاجة القوى الخارجية التي تدعمهم، والتي تمتلك تاريخا بشعا في السياسات الداخلية والخارجية في المنطقة.
إن الاستهانة بالمزاعم المبالغ بها حول المؤامرة الخارجية لا يعني أنه لم يكن هناك توافق ضمن اللاعبين الاقليميين والدوليين (مثل السعودية، وقطر، وتركيا والولايات المتحدة). هذا التوافق كان حول الحاجة إلى تقليص حجم سوريا وحلفائها لأنهم يعرقلون سيطرة هذه القوى وحلفائها، وخصوصا إسرائيل، على المنطقة. العراق وسوريا هما القوتان الوحيدتان الباقيتان اللتان قد تمثلان أي تهديد للاحتلال الاسرائيلي لفلسطين والتطهير العرقي لها، حتى لو كان بشكل غير مباشر كما نرى في حزب الله بالنسبة لسوريا. هذه القوى ذاتها ربما أوقعت نفسها في عثرات حين اندفعت لتمويل واختطاف الانتفاضة السورية لخدمة أغراضها الخاصة. وسرعان ما اكتشفت هذه القوى وجود موانع حقيقية، وخصوصا إيران وروسيا وحتى الصين. كيف يمكن لنا إذا أن نبرئ القوى الإقليمية والدولية من توريط أنفسهم في الشؤون السورية بشكل أساسي؟
إضافة لهذا فإن هناك تاريخا من التطفل الذي يولد شعورا بالسخرية من أي دعم خارجي لرواية ” الثورة النقية المتسقة”. بماذا تخبرنا عقود من الدعم الذي قدمته نفس الدول البترولية الغنية للنظام السوري والتي هي نفسها من موّل عسكرة الانتفاضة السورية؟ وكيف ننظر إلى الاتفاقيات الموسعة للتعاون الاقتصادي بين الرئيس التركي أردوغان وسوريا الأسد قبل الانتفاضة وهل هذا شيء حدث في عالم مثالي؟ وكيف يمكن لنا أن نفسر الاهتمام الأمريكي بتأييد المعارضة السورية في الوقت الذي كانت فيه واشنطن تؤيد سحق الثورة البحرينية قبل أشهر قليلة من ذلك، وفي الوقت نفسه تقوم بالإشراف على الفوضى التي أطلقت من عقالها في الجارة العراق بعد الغزو الوحشي ذي الأسباب المزيفة عام 2003؟
إن أي مراقب مطلع يعلم أن سنوات من الفوضى، والحدود المفتوحة في العراق مع سوريا كان لها أثر في تنمية وبناء أغلب العناصر المسلحة في الانتفاضة السورية، مع ملاحظة الدعم الذي كان يقدمه النظام السوري نفسه في تسهيل بناء الشبكات وعبور العناصر الجهادية إلى داخل العراق في فترة ما بعد 2003. نفس هذا التاريخ البغيض يتكرر في اليمن اليوم. فنفس أولئك الذين يدعون إلى وقف القصف الروسي والسوري على حلب وتقديم الدعم الانساني للمدينة، ونعني هنا الولايات المتحدة والسعودية، هم ذاتهم من يقودون عمليات قصف المناطق التي يسيطر عليها الثوار في اليمن مما يسبب جرائم حرب مريعة.
لا شيء من هذا يبرر المذابح التي ترتكب في حلب اليوم، ولكنه يلقي بظلال من الشك على الدعم الذي يلقاه الجهاديون الذين يقودون المعارضة المسلحة في السنوات الخمس الأخيرة. فالنظام الآن في وضع عسكري أفضل بكثير بفضل تزايد الدعم الروسي والايراني، ومن طرف حزب الله، والميليشيات العراقية. ولكن حين لم يكن هذا الوضع العسكري الجيد موجودا في الأعوام 2012-2014 استمرت رواية ” الثورة النقية” في الاصرار على وجودها رغم أن الجهاديين استولوا عليها بدعم من “أصدقاء” الثورة.
نحتاج جميعاً إلى إعادة التفكير فيما حصل بالفعل. هل كانت الحجة هي كل شيء من أجل الثورة، أو كل شيء من أجل اسقاط النظام، وبهذا فنحن نحتاج إلى إعادة تعريف مفهوم الثورة أو اسقاط النظام بالنسبة للشعب السوري، وبضمنهم أولئك الذين يعتبرون النظام أقل اللاعبين شراً. ولأنه لا يوجد من يستطيع الاجابة عن هذا السؤال فنحن نجد الكثير من المعارضين النزيهين للنظام ممن لديهم تشخيص مختلف للأزمة.
إن النقاشات البناءة التي تحدث داخل وخارج سوريا ليست بين المؤيدين المطلقين للنظام القمعي وأولئك المؤيدين للمعارضة المفككة. ولكن النقاشات الجادة تحدث بين أولئك الذين يعارضون النظام بلا تحفظ وبشكل مبدئي ولكن من منطلق يتمحور حول التآمر أو الخضوع الذي تتعامل به فصائل هامة من المعارضة مع اللاعبين الخارجيين. في هذه النقاشات تظهر حقيقة أن مفهوم “الثورة” ودلالته الجيوسياسية في الأزمة السورية هو بأهمية حقيقة أن الانتفاضة بدأت كانتفاضة أصيلة ضد الديكتاتورية، ولا يوجد ببساطة أي مهرب خطابي أو عملي من هذا المأزق.
مأساة إقليمية
الأخبار القادمة من سوريا، وروسيا، وبريطانيا، والسعودية، وتركيا والعراق لا تنبئ بأي حل قريب للأزمة. إن الرغبة الانسانية التي تدفع باتجاه وقف لحمام الدم غالبا ما تقود إلى دعوات، ظهر إلحاحها أكثر خلال حصار حلب، لاتباع سياسات قد تضمن التصعيد من قبل القوى الغربية. وحتى نفهم هذا المأزق لا بد أن ننظر إلى الأزمة المترابطة إقليميا بشكل شامل. وفي تكرار للمأزق المزدوج لهذا المنطق، فإن كلا من الولايات المتحدة وروسيا عالقتان في الأزمة. فواشنطن لن تجلس متفرجة لوقت طويل لتشاهد موسكو تتفرد بإدارة الأزمة. ولكن أكثر الاقتراحات رواجاً في الولايات المتحدة، ألا وهو فرض منطقة حظر طيران أو قصف، لا بد أن يكون مصحوبا باستعداد واضح لمواجهة مباشرة مع روسيا كنتيجة حتمية لأي فرض جدي لمنطقة حظر طيران.
من ناحية أخرى نرى روسيا غارقة حتى أذنيها في الأزمة بذريعة التخلص من الجماعات “الإرهابية” ( كما تصف كل جماعات المعارضة المسلحة). هذه مهمة غير محددة وهي غطاء مخادع يخفي أهدافاً أكبر تتمثل في إعادة تأكيد الدور الروسي وهو أمر لن يتراجع عنه الرئيس بوتين بسهولة. إن المقترحات غير الناضجة التي نراها الآن تشبه ضمادات خفيفة للأزمة، وفي أسوأ الأحوال فقد تكون وصفة لحرب عالمية واسعة. فقد توسع الولايات المتحدة من تدخلها، ولكنه من غير المتوقع أن تتجه لتصعيد هذا التدخل بوجه الخطوات الروسية الثابته بالرغم من دعوات هيلاري كلينتون لفرض منطقة حظر طيران.
إن سوريا بحد ذاتها ليست لاعبا مهما أو جائزة عالية القيمة في مجال العلاقات الدولية. إن النظام السوري يقوم هو وروسيا بتسريع حملاتهما لتعزيز الوضع العسكري للنظام، إضافة لوضعه الاقتصادي قبل أن تأتي إدارة جديدة للبيت الأبيض في يناير المقبل. ولكن هناك بعداً آخر لهذا الأمر. وحتى نفهم السبب وراء هذا المأزق لا بد لنا أن نلقي على الموضوع نظرة شاملة تلم بكل الأزمات الاقليمية المترابطة. فالأزمة السورية تزداد ارتباطا يوماً بعد آخر بالتطورات الاقليمية من العراق إلى اليمن، إضافة إلى موضوع داعش. وفي الوقت الذي تقصف فيه روسيا حلب فإن السعودية تقصف اليمن بطائرات أمريكية الصنع تقوم واشنطن بإعادة تزويدها بالوقود، في الوقت الذي تتقدم فيه قطع البحرية الايرانية إلى السواحل اليمنية لتدافع عن الحوثيين. يقوم كل من روسيا، وسوريا، والثوار السوريون، والولايات المتحدة، وتركيا، والعديد من الفصائل الكردية، والعراق والحشد الشعبي فيه بقتال داعش، أو يزعم بعض منهم أنه يفعل ذلك. وقد بدأ آخر خمسة أطراف ممن ذكرناهم سابقاً بهجوم لاستعادة الموصل من داعش رغم أن الحكومة العراقية وتركيا منخرطتان في حرب كلامية حول من سيشترك في القتال من عدمه. وهناك الكثير من التعقيدات الاضافية قد تبرز، حتى إذا أهملنا النظر إلى المستقبل.
إن أي شخص يعتقد أنه يمكن التعامل مع الأزمة السورية بمعزل عن هذه المعارك فإنه لا يرى الصورة الكاملة. إن الجدول الزمني لكل طرف يختلف عن الآخر، وهكذا فإن سحق المعارضة في حلب قد يكون قريبا جدا بالنسبة للروس والنظام السوري. وسيكون هذا مرحلة ضمن جهد استراتيجي أوسع ستكون له آثار ارتدادية على المنطقة. مع كل هذه المتغيرات، فإن هناك تطورات غير متوقعة قد تعقد الموقف في سوريا أكثر، وكل هذا سيكون على حساب الشعب السوري.
مخارج غير مرضية
منذ فترة من الزمن لم تعد هناك مبادئ في هذه الأزمة، وأصبح مفهوم النصر والمنتصر غير ذي معنى. حتى الآن لا يوجد سوى ضحايا. إنه من الصعب أن نكتب ونفكر بهدوء في الوقت الذي يتدمر فيه البلد ويتمزق فيه المجتمع السوري، ولكن هذا يجب أن يكون دافعا لنا لنلج أماكن لم نفكر فيها من قبل.
يجب ألا يكون هناك من يزعم النصر المطلق وبضمن هؤلاء العناصر المسلحة المتصارعة. ولكن الكثيرين يرون منتصراً محتملا يمكن لهم أن يؤيدوه. البعض يريدون للنظام أن يختفي أولا بغض النظر عمن يقود الجهد لتحقيق هذا الهدف، فحجتهم هي أنه ” حينها فقط يمكننا التحاور، والبناء، والمصالحة”. وكأن النظام عبارة عن جسم منفصل بذاته عن الناس ويمكن فصله بعملية جراحية. أما التصور الآخر الذي لا يقل خيالية عن سابقه فهو الطلب بأن يتم سحق المعارضة أولا، وبعد هذا يمكن للنظام أن يعيد بشكل ما سيطرته على كامل سوريا ويضم ما تبقى من البلد ويعيد إنتاج ماضيه القمعي. وبعيداً عن المعايير الأخلاقية فإن كلا المطلبين خياليان.
إن الأساسيات ليست لغزاً. فلا يمكن العودة إلى أسلوب الحكم الذي كان قائما قبل 2011، ولا يهم هنا إن كان الروس يرغبون في هذا أو حتى الإرادة السماوية. وبشكل مشابه فإن المعارضة لن تطيح بالنظام وتبني سوريا علمانية، وديمقراطية تتمتع بعدالة اجتماعية لأنه لا أحد من الداعمين الخارجيين أو من الميليشيات القوية في الداخل يريد هذا. إن من يريدون سوريا علمانية وديمقراطية وعادلة مع مواطنيها موجودون على طرفي الانقسام الحاصل ولكن أصواتهم يتم اسكاتها.
رغم أن الظروف الحالية تبدو قاتمة، فإنه يمكننا على الأقل أن نجمع الأصوات اليائسة سوية تحت شعار النضال من أجل سوريا أفضل. ولكن هذا لا يمكن أن يتحقق إلا إذا وافقت جميع الأطراف على أنهم لا يمكن لهم الحصول على كل ما يريدون. أو على الأقل أن يتقبلوا الحاجة لإعادة تعريف الانتصار وفق حدود لا تقصي الآخرين وتشمل كل المجموعات السورية، وتحفظ مصالح السوريين جميعا وتفي بوعد تحقيق العدالة لكل من عانوا.
يجب على كل معارضي النظام، أيا كان منطلق معارضتهم، أن يجندوا طاقاتهم نحو بناء حركة أكثر استقلالية، وديمقراطية، وشمولية على أسس الأهداف الوطنية المشتركة، والمصالح المتداخلة حتى يمكن على الأقل إيقاف هذا العنف. هذه المهمة ستكون طويلة وشاقة، وفي خلالها يجب علينا أن ننظر بجدية في بعض الطروحات والمخاوف التي تتبناها كلا الروايتين اللتين ناقشهما المقال. الأهم من هذا أننا يجب ألا نقوم بهذا وفي مقصدنا نهاية محددة لهذه الأزمة. من المهم أن نبقي في حسباننا أن هناك حياة يمكن أن تبنى بعد الأزمة مما يتطلب بناء نقوم به بروح المسؤولية. يجب أن نبدأ الآن، وإلا فإن لاعبين آخرين أكثر قوة وأفضل تمويلا يمكنهم أن يسرقوا هذه اللحظة من الزمن مرة أخرى ويفرضوا نموذجا مخففا لسوريا قمعية واستغلالية.
الأخبار الجيدة هنا هي أن العديد من الجماعات والمنظمات داخل وحول سوريا قد بدأت بالفعل في بذل هذا الجهد، وهي واعية تماماً أن المنظمات الدولية، والمانحين، والدول ستتكالب على المشهد السوري حين يحين وقت إعادة البناء. هؤلاء اللاعبون الخارجيون الأغنياء، سواء كان البنك الدولي، أو مجلس التعاون الخليجي، أو الممولين أو غيرهم وبضمنهم الصين، قد بدأوا عملهم بالفعل في ترقب لنهاية للأزمة وهم يتمتعون بأفضلية تنظيمية فيما يخص رأس المال وشبكات العلاقات. يجب ألا يترك هؤلاء ليتحكموا منفردين في “فترة ما بعد الأزمة”. إن الجهود البديلة تستحق مساندتنا في الدفع باتجاه رواية مستقلة للأزمة، وباتجاه سوريا مستقلة واثقة الخطى.
قد يكون هذا الأمر بعيد المنال، ولكنها رؤية يمكن لنا أن نخلق منها أفكاراً منتجة لا تلغي إحداها الأخرى من أجل وجهات النظر الموجودة بالفعل والتي تعتبر أكثر صعوبة في التحقيق وأكثر دموية.
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بواسطة Joseph Daher | سبتمبر 6, 2017 | غير مصنف
“[This article is the outcome of an ongoing partnership between SyriaUntold and openDemocracy’s NAWA].
For the first time since 2011, the Damascus International Trade Fair was organized and held for ten days in mid-August 2017 in a bid to bring back foreign investors and promote an image of normalcy in the country. Many companies from Russia, Iran, China, Iraq, India, South Africa, and Lebanon participated among representatives of more than 40 countries. Despite the small economic impact of the Fair and a mortar attack which resulted in several deaths and confirmed the fragility of the security situation, the regime’s message through the organization of Trade Fair to local, regional and international actors was clear: Asad is here to stay and this is the beginning of the Syria’s reconstruction period.
This is the culmination of the focus of the major international and regional state actors on the “war on terror”, and consensus around Bashar Al-Asad remaining in power, both of which have strengthened the confidence of the dictator and the ruling class in Damascus.
However, there remain several challenges for the regime in reaching political and economic stability and securing funds for reconstruction. Some of these challenges are rooted in the internal contradictions and the nature of the regime as a patrimonial state and its need to satisfy divergent interests of actors who played an important role in supporting it, especially militias and crony capitalists.
Lack of National and Foreign Investments
Reconstruction is a main project of the regime and crony capitalists, linked with a plan to consolidate their political and economic power, while rewarding foreign allies for their assistance with a share of the market. Reconstruction will also reinforce the neo-liberal policies of the deeply indebted regime as it lacks the capacity to fund the reconstruction.
In early January 2017, following its victory in Eastern Aleppo, Damascus was planning to impose throughout the country Decree 66[i], a law enacted in 2012 which had already dispossessed many Damascus residents of their properties. The decree expropriated the residents of two large informal regions on the southern edge of Damascus — the first in the Mezzeh district and the other in a large area going from Qadam to Daraya – and compensated them by distributing shares in the developments that were programed to be built instead. According to Syria Report editor Jihad Yazigi, “whenever there have been these expropriation projects in Syria, compensation has been extremely low. It’s a very clear dispossession of these people. […] This is a transfer of public assets, tax-free, to private companies — and it will be a big boost to regime cronies[ii].”
This plan will provide 12,000 housing units for an estimated 60,000 residents. There will be schools and restaurants, places of worship, even a multi-story car park and a shopping mall[iii]. Officials in Damascus justified this decree by claiming that the objective was to enhance the quality of the housing and that other areas would follow to improve informal housing conditions throughout the country[iv].
Another case was in the city of Homs, when the municipality in September 2015 approved the plan for the reconstruction of the Baba Amro neighborhood. In March 2017, the municipality established its own holding company to handle real estate project[v]. The plan for reconstruction included 465 plots, mainly for residential housing, in addition to public spaces and services, such as schools and hospitals. Similarly, accusations were leveled at the possible demographic consequences.
By allowing the destruction and expropriation of large areas, Decree 66 can be used as an efficient instrument for rapid and large development projects that will benefit regime cronies, while at the same time operating as a punitive force against populations opposed to the regime. The development of the residential projects would be carried by holding companies owned by governorates or municipalities, but the construction and management of the projects would be contracted to private sector companies owned by well-connected investors. The implementation of this law in Syria would serve a number of objectives, including a means to pressure populations living outside regime control by threatening to expropriate their properties in their absence; as a source of enrichment for crony capitalists linked to the regime; and as a carrot to attract capital from various countries that wish to profit from Syria’s reconstruction drive[vi].
Aman Group, owned by rising business figure Samer Foz with close relations to the regime, announced in August 2017 its contribution to the reconstruction of Basateen Al-Razi area, in the Mazzeh district of Damascus, in partnership with Damascus Governorate and its Damascus Cham Private Joint Stock Company. Aman Damascus, established by Aman group for this project, announced a capital of USD 18.9 million, but there were no details on the respective shares of the partners. Before the deal with the Aman Group, Damascus Cham had established a similar joint-venture with Zubaidi and Qalei LLC owned by Khaled Al-Zubaidi and Nader Qalei, two powerful Damascene businessmen with connections to the regime and whose company Castle Investment was awarded in 2017 a long-term contract to manage the Ebla Hotel, in the outskirts of Damascus, a five-star resort with a conference center[vii].
The fact that Samer Foz and Nader Qalei are Sunnis has not prevented them from having very close links to the regime, showing once again the multiple strategies and tools of the regime to constitute a diverse popular basis through clientelism, tribalism and sectarianism.
Similarly to Homs and various suburbs of Damascus, Aleppo and other areas could see the imposition of similar projects. In Aleppo, more than 50 percent of the buildings and infrastructure have been partially or totally destroyed, according to a preliminary assessment of the municipality in January 2017[viii]. Meanwhile large sections of Aleppo’s eastern neighborhoods have been forcefully displaced to other areas or left as a result of the war.
Some inhabitants of Eastern Aleppo have started to come back, but until now remain a minority. Indeed, it was estimated that more than 440,000 internally displaced people have returned to their homes in Syria during the first six months of 2017. In parallel, UNHCR has monitored over 31,000 Syrian refugees coming back from neighboring countries so far in 2017. This is a very small amount considering that more than 5 million refugees have fled Syria, and there are another 7.6 million internally displaced Syrians. The Syrian population has shrunk by an estimated 20 percent[ix].
The investments of private actors are however insufficient to rebuild the country. In April 2017, the cost of reconstruction was estimated at $350 billion[x]. In addition, there are problems of funding, as Public–Private Partnership (PPP) schemes largely rely on financing from banks, which is clearly unavailable as the total assets of 14 private-sector commercial banks operating in the country reached SYP 1.7 trillion at the end of 2016, equivalent to only around USD 3.5 billion (based on the end of the year market exchange rate). In 2010 they reached USD 13.8 billion. In terms of assets, some of the six state-owned banks are actually larger than their private sector counterparts, in particular the Commercial Bank of Syria. However, these banks have large bad debt portfolios[xi].
The reconstruction needs therefore massive foreign funding, which would probably benefit the countries that most supported the Assad regime, particularly Iran and Russia. In February 2017, the Syrian Minister of Economy, Adib Mayaleh, declared that companies from Iran and other allied countries will be rewarded while European and American companies will first need to have their governments apologize before benefitting[xii]. Following the recapture of Eastern Aleppo, Aleppo Governor Hossein Diyab also stressed that Iran was going to “play an important role in reconstruction efforts in Syria, especially Aleppo”. The Iranian Reconstruction Authority publicized in March 2017 the renovation of 55 schools across the Aleppo province[xiii]. Iran also had the largest presence at the International Trade Fair in Damascus with more than 40 Iranian companies participating[xiv].
Meanwhile in in October 2015, a Russian delegation visited Damascus and announced that Russian companies would lead Syria’s postwar reconstruction. Deals worth at least €850m emerged from these negotiations. A Russian parliamentary visit to Syria in November 2016 resulted in Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem reportedly offering Russia firms priority in rebuilding Syria[xv].
The Chinese government, in early August of this year, hosted the “First Trade Fair on Syrian Reconstruction Projects,” during which a Chinese-Arab business group announced a $2 billion commitment from the government for the construction of industrial parks in Syria[xvi].
Nonetheless, the level of destruction raises questions if Iranian, Russian and even Chinese capital would be enough. The current absence of main actors such as Western states and Gulf monarchies as willing to invest in Syria poses a series of problems.
However, the issue of reconstruction is also connected to the capacities of the regime to provide stability in the regions under its control and a business environment favorable to investments. This is endangered by two main elements: militias and crony capitalists.
Militias, Spreading Chaos
Grievances against militias have increasingly become public and outspoken in regime-held areas throughout the country for a while now. Militiamen have been involved in various criminal activities such as robbery, looting, murder, infighting, and especially checkpoint extortion, resulting in higher prices and further humanitarian suffering.
Criticisms have become increasingly vocal in different areas, especially in the Syrian coast, where residents have repeatedly expressed anger at the silence of local police and security forces toward the rise in crimes, kidnapping and looting by pro-regime militias[xvii].
This anger has spread to other areas as well. In September 2016, the local population in regime-controlled areas of western Aleppo city expressed frustrations against government officials due to an increase in the looting of homes by loyalist shabiha groups after residents evacuated the area. Militiamen also looted hundreds of factories and workshops in Ramouseh industrial neighborhood in Aleppo. Fares Al-Shehabi, a member of parliament and head of Aleppo’s Chamber of Industrialists, even complained about the incident on his Facebook page.
The pro-regime Imam of Aleppo’s Al-Abara Mosque mentioned the matter during a Friday sermon, explaining that trading stolen products was banned under Islamic law. In reaction, Ibrahim Ismael, a shabiha commander, stated that he considered the stolen items as “war prizes” for people who defended Aleppo[xviii].
In May 2017, the Syrian government was trying to cancel levies extorted by regime checkpoints following growing protests from merchants and transporters alike reflecting the exasperation of the population in various areas. Businessmen in Aleppo were increasingly critical of these levies, and lorry drivers outside the city of Sweida closed the motorway linked to Damascus for two hours in protest at the “fees” imposed by the various checkpoints along the road. In mid-May, Zeid Ali Saleh, the head of the Military and Security Committee in Aleppo which groups all regime security branches and militias in the city, finally issued an order forbidding the levying of “fees” by regime checkpoints on lorries transporting goods within and outside the city[xix]. Several days later, the Damascus Chamber of Industry also demanded a similar ban in the capital[xx].
At the same time, in response to this growing unrest, Prime Minister Imad Khamis declared that he would ban these practices, but there was ongoing resistance from militias. This situation reflects the fact that as the war is ending in large sections of the country, the justification for these checkpoints is increasingly less valid.
In mid-June 2017 in Aleppo, following a number of militia crimes which were even reported in pro-regime media[xxi], a major crackdown was launched. The presidential palace sent Lieutenant General Mohammed Dib Zeitoun, head of State Security and one of Asad’s most powerful intelligence chiefs, in order to put an end to the militias’ lawless behavior. State Security and Air Force Intelligence troops started rounding up popular committee members in the Adhamiya, Akramiya, and Seif Al-Dawla neighborhoods, which resulted in some small skirmishes. In addition to this, the local head of the Baath Party, Fadel al-Najjar, also issued a decree tightening regulations on the Baath Battalions[xxii].
However, there were significant challenges to curb the power of militias on a national scale. According to businessman Fares Al-Shehabi, the intervention of Bashar Al-Asad was necessary twice to issue orders to high security officials[xxiii]. The main challenge is that militia leaders are generally linked to powerful security agencies and prominent military officials, thus preventing municipal authorities from acting against them without the support of top-level decision makers.
On July 6, 2017, a large demonstration organized by industrialists and businessmen took place in the industrial zone Sheikh Najjar, denouncing the practices of militias in Aleppo. Demonstrators accused them of killing civilians and deliberately disrupting the return of water and electricity supplies by maintaining their control over services and prices. The protestors also condemned the extortion of money at military checkpoints by notably threatening workers with going to the military service if they did not pay[xxiv]. Meanwhile, on the road to Aleppo, truck drivers from the regime-controlled towns of Nubl and Zahra organized another demonstration against the checkpoint levies and the militiamen’s violent behavior. They demanded the authorities to remove the checkpoints.
Aleppo was a test for the rest of the country for the regime to prove its capacity to guarantee “stability” for its population, and for Damascus to prove to the international community its capacity to control the areas under its control, and therefore to move forward on the issue of foreign-funded reconstruction.
However, this is only the beginning of a long battle to discipline the paramilitary forces in the country, including local militias such as the National Defense Forces (NDF) and Iran-controlled ones. As argued by a Syrian official in 2013 foreseeing the problem, “after this crisis, there will be a 1,000 more crises — the militia leaders. Two years ago they went from nobody to somebody with guns and power. How can we tell these shabiha to go back to being a nobody again[xxv]?”
In summer 2017, lawless and violent pro-regime militias were still spreading chaos and creating insecurity in various regime-held territories[xxvi]. By the end of August, according to opposition activists, fighters from Nusur Homs, a paramilitary group, refused to be inspected on their way into the city of Homs, instead opening fire on the police patrol and brutally beating a police officer[xxvii]. Furthermore, the number of checkpoints managed by militiamen throughout the country generally did not decrease, with some new ones popping up, leading to an increase in costs for producers and consumers alike.
Finally, there exist many other security challenges the regime is hardly capable of dealing with. One of them is the probable change in strategy of retreating jihadist groups, such as Hay’at Tahrir Ash-Sham (HTS) and the Islamic State (IS). There will be a shift towards suicide bombings in civilian areas which will also create more instability.
Crony Capitalists, They Always Want More
The militias are certainly one of the biggest challenge for the regime to restore “stability”, but they are not the only one. The crony capitalists, empowered politically and economically throughout the war, are also to some extent impeding the return of certain bourgeoisie reinvestment in the country, and therefore the creation of a business environment favorable for reconstruction. The regime’s military victories and increasing re-control of large portions of the Syrian territory encouraged Damascus to try to win back investors and businessmen who had left the country because of the war. Damascus’ motivations are based on attracting investment and increasing business activity, while manufacturers decrease the need for imports, a crucial aspect as foreign currencies became very rare.
As a reminder, the closure of many workplaces since the beginning of the uprising in March 2011 led to massive job loss. The economy lost 2.1 million actual and potential jobs between 2010 and 2015. Unemployment in 2016 reached 60 percent, while youth unemployment increased from 69 percent in 2013 to 78 percent in 2015[xxviii]. Poverty is estimated to be 83 percent of the population, and 2.1 million homes have been destroyed[xxix]. The high level of unemployment and higher cost of living encouraged sections of the youth to get involved in the army or pro-regime militias, especially when the salary of a militiaman could be four times higher than a university teacher[xxx].
In February 2017, Finance Minister Maamoun Hamdan visited Egypt to meet with the Syrian Businessmen Group — Egypt (Tajammu‘ Rijal Al-A‘mal As-Suri Bi-Masr)[xxxi], many of whom are manufacturers. He offered them many incentives such as a reduction in customs duties on production inputs, an exemption on all duties on machinery as well as on the sales tax, in addition to a rescheduling of any debt owed to state banks — a law passed in 2015 enables investors to reschedule their debts at relatively attractive conditions[xxxii].
Mr Hamdan also announced that the government was providing funds to establish an 8 MW power generating set for the Sheikh Najjar Industrial City in Aleppo as well as completing works on the Aleppo Airport. The investors answered with a list of requests, including a grace period of two years for their debts. They also raised several questions with regards to customs duties and other business regulations. A week after, a delegation of Syrian investors based in Egypt visited Damascus to meet with various government officials[xxxiii].
Crony capitalists did not hesitate to criticize these government measures. A week after the minister’s visit to Cairo, the newspaper al-Watan, owned by Rami Makhlouf, published a commentary piece (“The Egyptian Industrialists”, February 26, 2017) strongly condemning the fact that the investors conditioned their return to Syria to the incentives provided by the government, and that they wished to return “only after the liberation of Aleppo[xxxiv].” According to economic news website The Syria Report, this piece aimed to pressure “those in the government that want them back. The mention that they should pay back all their dues, i.e. debt arrears and taxes, is a clear threat to the investors as to what they should expect were they to come back[xxxv].”
Syrian investors who left Syria during the war were from very diverse backgrounds and operated in a variety of business sectors, but mostly had less powerful connections to the regime. Those located in Egypt, for example, are mostly industrialists in the textile sector; many of them came from Aleppo, meaning from an urban Sunni background; and the origin of their wealth had little connection to their relation with state institutions but was rather based on their capital investment[xxxvi]. In a 2016 BIT report, the Syrian Center for Policy Research (SCPR) stated that up to 90 percent of industrial enterprises in the main conflict areas, such as Aleppo, have closed down, while the remaining ones operate at only 30 percent capacity[xxxvii]. Consequently, Syrian industrialists had little options to stay.
At the time of the writing, there were no signs of massive return from Syrian industrialists, while the Egyptian regime announced in March 2017 its intention to establish an integrated industrial zone and other facilities for Syrian industrialists in Egypt as a counter initiative against attempts by Damascus to re-attract Syrian industrialists based in Egypt[xxxviii]. Many elements certainly prevented the mass-scale return of Syrian businessmen in Summer 2017, but the behavior of crony-capitalists did not contribute to any willingness to come back.
As such, the recent call by Foreign Minister Walid Muallem for an “active economic diplomacy for preparing the right groundwork for the reconstruction phase in service of national interests” and “the importance of prioritizing expatriate contributions in the reconstruction process through enhancing communication and constructive interaction with the Syrian communities abroad” is rather difficult to materialize. This is in fact unachievable without collaboration with crony capitalists and other regime officials.
Conclusion
Economist Osama Qadi argued that “recovery might takes 20 years, assuming Syria post conflict starts in 2018 at 4.5% growth[xxxix].” In the current conditions, this seems rather optimist.
The possible end of the war in the near future does not mean the end of the problems for the regime, quite on the contrary. The regime will have to deal with a series of contradictions and challenges: on one side, satisfying the interests of crony capitalists and militias, on the other, accumulating capital through economic and political stability, while granting its foreign allies the major shares in the reconstruction business. Today, these objectives are rarely overlapping.
The resilience of the regime in its war against any kind of dissent has come at a very high cost, above all in terms of human lives and destruction, but also politically. In addition to the growing dependence on foreign states and actors, some features of the patrimonial regime have been strengthened, while its authority has diminished. Crony capitalists and militias have increased considerably their power, while the clientelist, sectarian, tribal features of the regime have been reinforced. Therefore, the absence of democracy and social justice, which were at the roots of the uprising, are still very much present and were even deepened.
However, the absence of an inclusive and structured Syrian political opposition appealing to all popular classes, and of social actors, such as independent trade unions or peasant associations, that could capitalize on the internal contractions of the regime renders the transformation of various struggles into connected and organized political battles on a national scale, very difficult.
[Main photo: A handout picture released by Syria’s opposition-run Shaam News Network shows Syrians looking for survivors amongst the rubble in the town of Qusayr, in the central Homs province – 21-5-2013 (AFP – HO/Fair use. All rights reserved to the author)].
[i] “Marsum 66…” (in Arabic), Cham Press, 2012. Accessed 26 August 2017, http://www.champress.net/index.php?q=ar/Article/view/7769.
[ii] Erika Solomon, “Syria: A Tale of Three Cities,” Financial Times, 2017. Accessed 30 July 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/6710ab2a-7716-11e7-90c0-90a9d1bc9691.
[iii] Tom Rollins, “Decree 66: The Blueprint for Al-Assad’s Reconstruction of Syria?”, IRIN News, 2017. Accessed 20 May 2017, https://www.irinnews.org/investigations/2017/04/20/decree-66-blueprint-al-assad’s-reconstruction-syria.
[iv] The estimates of what proportion of the population lived in informal housing before the uprising varies, usually fluctuating between 30 to 40 percent, but it might have been as high as 50 percent. Robert Goulden, “Housing, Inequality, and Economic Change in Syria,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Volume 38, Issue 2 (2011): 188.
[v] T. Rollins, “Decree 66: The Blueprint for Al-Assad’s Reconstruction of Syria?”
[vi] “Government Planning to Expand Use of Expropriation Law,” The Syria Report, 2017. Accessed 12 January 2017, http://www.syria-report.com/news/real-estate-construction/government-planning-expand-use-expropriation-law [subscription needed]; “Défigurée par la Guerre, Alep se Prépare à une Reconstruction Titanesque,” (in French), La Libre, 2016. Accessed 30 December 2016, http://www.lalibre.be/actu/international/defiguree-par-la-guerre-alep-se-prepare-a-une-reconstruction-titanesque-58637ad2cd70138bd425834a.
[vii] “Samer Al-Foz… Alm Naql Sabiqan: Tazkaru al-Ism Jaydan..?!”, Eqtisad, 2017. Accessed 20 August 2017, http://www.eqtsad.net/read/17672; “Private Investors to Benefit from Government Investment in Real Estate Project,” Syria Report, 2017. http://syria-report.com/news/real-estate-construction/private-investors-benefit-government-investment-real-estate-project [subscription needed].
[viii] “Government Planning to Expand Use of Expropriation Law,” The Syria Report, 2017. Accessed 12 January 2017, http://www.syria-report.com/news/real-estate-construction/government-planning-expand-use-expropriation-law [subscription needed].
[ix] Brian Young, “FACTBOX: Syria’s Conflict Economy,” Atlantic Council, 2017. Accessed 26 July 2016, http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/syriasource/factbox-syria-s-conflict-economy.
[x] Steven Heydemann, “Syria Reconstruction and the Illusion of Leverage,” Atlantic Council, 2017. Accessed 23 May 2017, http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/syriasource/syria-reconstruction-and-the-illusion-of-leverage.
[xi] “Syrian Banks Unable to Finance Reconstruction,” The Syria Report, 2017. Accessed 21 July 2017, http://www.syria-report.com/news/finance/syrian-banks-unable-finance-reconstruction [subscription needed].
[xii] “Europe, U.S. to Apologise to Syria Before Getting Reconstruction Contracts – Government Official,” The Syria Report, 2017. Accessed 15 February 2017, http://www.syria-report.com/news/economy/europe-us-apologise-syria-getting-reconstruction-contracts-–-government-official[subscription needed]; “Khamis: Investment Opportunities Will Be Given to Countries That Stood by Syria,” SANA, 2017. Accessed 25 August 2017, http://sana.sy/en/?p=111457.
[xiii] Tobias Schneider, “Aleppo’s Warlords and Post-War Reconstruction”, Middle East Institute, 2017. Accessed 17 June 2017. http://www.mei.edu/content/article/growing-warlordism-battle-scarred-aleppo.
[xiv] Steven Heydemann, “Rules for Reconstruction in Syria”, Brookings, 2017. Accessed 25 August 2017, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2017/08/24/rules-for-reconstruction-in-syria/.
[xv] Neil Hauer, “To the Victors, the Ruins: the Challenges of Russia’s Reconstruction in Syria,” Open Democracy, 2017. Accessed 20 August 2017, https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/neil-hauer/to-victors-ruins-challenges-of-russia-s-reconstruction-in-syria.
[xvi] Steven Heydemann, “Rules for Reconstruction in Syria.”
[xvii] “Authorities Silent While Lattakia’s Elderly a ‘Soft Target’ for Looters, Murderers,” The Syrian Observer (original Arabic source: Zaman Al-Wasl), 2016. Accessed 30 August 2016, http://syrianobserver.com/EN/News/31528/Authorities_Silent_While_Lattakia_Elderly_Soft_Target_for_Looters_Murderers; “Kidnapping of Women in Lattakia Sparks Anger of Loyalists”, The Syrian Observer (original Arabic source: Zaman Al-Wasl), 2016. Accessed 17 November 2016, http://syrianobserver.com/EN/News/31965/Kidnapping_Women_Lattakia_Sparks_Anger_Loyalists.
[xviii] “Loyalists Outraged by Shabeeha Looting in Regime Held Aleppo,” The Syrian Observer, (original Arabic source: Zaman Al-Wasl), 2016. Accessed 12 September 2016, http://www.syrianobserver.com/EN/News/31601/Loyalists_Outraged_Shabeeha_Looting_Regime_held_Aleppo.
[xix] “Sa’iqun Yuqati‘un Tariq Nubl wa Az-Zahra’ — Halab Ihtijajan ‘ala “al-Atawat,” (in Arabic), Enab Baladi, 2017. Accessed 30 August 2017, https://www.enabbaladi.net/archives/160118?so=related>,); “Al-Lajna al-Amniyyah fi Halab Tulghi “at-Tarfiq”… wa Ash-Shehabi: Al-Asad Tadakhkhala,” (in Arabic), Enab Baladi, 2017. Accessed 30 August 2017, https://www.enabbaladi.net/archives/150756?so=related; “As Anger Grows Government Tries to Rein in Extortion by Regime Militias,” The Syria Report, 2017. Accessed 24 May 2017, http://www.syria-report.com/news/economy/anger-grows-government-tries-rein-extortion-regime-militias [subscription needed].
[xx] “As Anger Grows Government Tries to Rein in Extortion by Regime Militias,” The Syria Report, 2017; “Sina‘iu Dimashq Yutalibuna bi-Ilgha’ “at-Tarfiîq” wa Iqaf at-Tahrib min Turkiya,” (in Arabic), Enab Baladi, 2017. Accessed 30 June 2017, https://www.enabbaladi.net/archives/150953.
[xxi] “Tafasil Qatl at-Tifl “Ahmad Jawish” fi Halab,” (in Arabic), Syria Scope, 2017. Accessed 30 July 2017, http://www.syria-scope.com/political-news/75289; “Ahali Halab Yutalibuna bi-Dabt al-Ta‘addiyat,” (in Arabic), Al-Watan, 2017. Accessed on 4 September 2017, http://alwatan.sy/archives/107730; “Haqiqah Ma Hadatha ma‘a al-I‘lami Badr Jad‘an bi-Hayy Al-Jamiliyyah,” (in Arabic), Akhbar Halab, 2017. Accessed 4 September 2017, https://www.nfac-sy.net/news/12493.
[xxii]Aron Lund, “Aleppo Militias Become Major Test for Assad,” IRIN, 2017. Accessed 23 June 2017, https://www.irinnews.org/analysis/2017/06/22/aleppo-militias-become-major-test-assad.
[xxiii] “As Anger Grows Government Tries to Rein in Extortion by Regime Militias,” The Syria Report, 2017.
[xxiv] “Halab: Tazahurat Tutalib bi-Khuruj Milishiyyat an-Nizam,” (in Arabic), Al-Modon, 2017. Accessed 8 July 2017, http://www.almodon.com/arabworld/2017/7/7/حلب-مظاهرات-تطالب-بخروج-مليشيات-النظام-وإزالة-الحواجز .
[xxv] Aryn Baker, “Syria’s Assad May Be Losing Control Over His Deadly Militias,” Time, 2013. Accessed 20 July 2014, http://world.time.com/2013/09/11/syrias-assad-may-be-losing-control-over-his-deadly-militias/.
[xxvi] “Regime Authorities Fail to Control Chaos Spread by Loyalist Militias,” The Syrian Observer (original Arabic source: Al-Souria-Net), 2017. Accessed 20 August 2017, http://syrianobserver.com/EN/News/33141/Regime_Authorities_Fail_Control_Chaos_Spread_Loyalist_Militias/.
[xxvii] “On Duty Police Officer Hospitalized by Loyalist Militants in Homs,” The Syrian Observer (original Arabic source: Zaman Al-Wasl), 2017. Accessed 24 August 2017, http://syrianobserver.com/EN/News/33167/On_Duty_Police_Officer_Hospitalized_Loyalist_Militants_Homs/.
[xxviii]“Syria at War, Five Years On,” ESCWA and University of St Andrews(2016): 28. Accessed 20 November 2016, https://www.unescwa.org/sites/www.unescwa.org/files/publications/files/syria-war-five-years.pdf.
[xxix] Brian Young, “FACTBOX: Syria’s Conflict Economy.”
[xxx] “Fi (Suriya Al-Asad)… Ustaz fi al-Jami‘a Yahsul ‘ala Ratib Yaqill ‘an Rub‘ Ma Yahsul ‘alayhi Muqatil fi Milishiyya Muwaliyyah,” (in Arabic), All4Syria, 2017. Accessed 27 April 2017,
http://www.all4syria.info/Archive/404489.
[xxxi] “Syrians’ Investments Abroad Would Not Prevent Industrialists from Return Home,” SANA, 2015. Accessed on 4 September 2017, http://sana.sy/en/?p=61368.
[xxxii] “Despite Launch of Local Car Assembly Plant, Syria Struggles to Attract Back Manufacturers,” The Syria Report, 2017. Accessed 21 February 2017, http://syria-report.com/news/manufacturing/despite-launch-local-car-assembly-plant-syria-struggles-attract-back-manufacturer [subscription needed].
[xxxiii] “Finance Minister Meets Delegation of Syrian Industrials Residing in Egypt,” SANA, 2017. Accessed 21 February 2017, http://sana.sy/en/?p=100509.
[xxxiv] Ali Hashem, “As-Sina‘iun al-Masriyyun,” (in Arabic), Al-Watan, 2017. >, Accessed 25 May 2017, http://alwatan.sy/archives/93130.
[xxxv] “Regime Cronies Resist Government Attempts to Lure Back Investors into Syria,” The Syria Report, 2017. Accessed 22 February 2017, http://syria-report.com/news/economy/regime-cronies-resist-government-attempts-lure-back-investors-syria [subscription needed].
[xxxvi] “Syria Country Report”, BTI Project (2016): 15. Accessed 31 November 2016, https://www.bti-project.org/fileadmin/files/BTI/Downloads/Reports/2016/pdf/BTI_2016_Syria.pdf.
[xxxvii] “Aleppo Lost 90 percent of its Manufacturing Capacity,” The Syria Report, 2016. Accessed 29 March 2016, http://www.syria-report.com/news/manufacturing/aleppo-lost-90-percent-its-manufacturing-capacity [subscription needed].
[xxxviii] “Ministry of trade studies launching Syrian industrial zone in Egypt,” Al-Bawaba Egypt, 2017. Accessed 4 September 2017, http://www.albawabaeg.com/91831.
[xxxix] “‘Reconstruction Cost of Syria Is Estimated at $300 Billion Five Times the 2010 GDP,’ FEMISE Conference Interview with Osama Kadi, President of Syrian Economic Task Force,” FEMISE, 2017. Accessed 26 August 2017, http://www.femise.org/en/articles-en/reconstruction-cost-of-syria-is-estimated-at-300-billion-five-times-the-2010-gdp-femise-conference-interview-with-osama-kadi-president-of-syrian-economic-task-force/.”
[This article was originally published by Syria Untold.”
بواسطة BBC | سبتمبر 4, 2017 | News, غير مصنف
“Syria earned a vital 3-1 win against Qatar to keep alive their hopes of qualifying for a first ever World Cup.
“Omar Kharbin scored in each half and Mahmoud Al-Mawas added a third in injury time as Syria moved above Uzbekistan into third in their group.
The top two teams qualify automatically for the 2018 World Cup in Russia while the third-placed side face a play-off.
Defeat for Qatar means they cannot qualify and will make their World Cup debut as the host nation in 2022.
Syria play group winners Iran in Tehran in their final group match on Tuesday and will be guaranteed a two-legged play-off against the third-place team in Group B with victory.
But they could yet finish second and qualify directly for next year’s tournament depending on the result of the match between South Korea and Uzbekistan.
South Korea could only manage a goalless draw against 10-man Iran on Thursday and defeat in their final match could see them fail to qualify for the finals for the first time since 1982 should Syria beat Iran.
China could also still take third place and a play-off spot if they beat Qatar in Doha on Tuesday and other results go their way.
Meanwhile, in Group B, Japan beat Australia to qualify for their sixth successive World Cup.”
[This article was originally published by the BBC.]
بواسطة BBC | أغسطس 23, 2017 | Cost of War, News, غير مصنف
“US-led coalition air strikes have killed dozens of civilians in the Syrian city of Raqqa over the past 24 hours, activists and state media say.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 42 had died in attacks on areas held by so-called Islamic State.
Anti-IS group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently said 32 were killed in one district alone.
The coalition said it adhered to strict targeting processes and procedures aimed to minimise risks to civilians.
Its aircraft are supporting a ground assault on Raqqa by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance, which is believed to have captured more than than half of the de facto capital of the IS “caliphate” since early June.
The Syrian Observatory, a UK-based group that monitors the six-year-old civil war through a network of sources, said on Tuesday that 19 children and 12 women were among those killed in Monday’s air raids on the Sukhani and Badu districts.
The figures took to 167 the number of civilians killed in coalition strikes since 14 August, it said.
‘The tolls are high because the air strikes are hitting neighbourhoods in the city centre that are densely packed with civilians,’ Syrian Observatory director Rami Abdul Rahman told AFP news agency.
Hussam Essa of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently said: ‘Unfortunately, civilians have no way to protect themselves. All they can do is try to hide in whatever shelter they can and avoid going out into the street as much as possible.’
The coalition said it took all allegations of civilian casualties seriously and assessed those deemed credible, but that those made by the Syrian Observatory in recent days lacked ‘specificity and detail making it very difficult to properly assess.’
‘The coalition respects human life and our goal is always for zero civilian casualties,’ it added. ‘Coalition forces take all reasonable precautions during the planning and execution of airstrikes to reduce the risk of harm to civilians.’
Earlier, it said coalition warplanes had conducted 20 air strikes in the Raqqa area on Monday, engaging 13 IS tactical units and destroying 24 fighting positions, a vehicle, a logistics node and communications infrastructure.
At the start of June, the coalition said its 22,983 air strikes in Syria and Iraq since 2014 had unintentionally killed at least 624 civilians. However, human rights groups believe the true figure is far higher.
Airwars, an organisation that tracks allegations of civilian deaths, said that as of 8 August, coalition air strikes were likely to have killed at least 4,487 civilians.
On Monday, UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told reporters that it was deeply concerned for the safety of up to 25,000 civilians trapped inside Raqqa, many of them women and children.
Tens of thousands of people had fled the city, but those remaining faced severe restrictions of movement in and out of the city, which had dwindling food and water supplies, he said.
‘The UN stresses again that all parties to the fighting are obligated to protect civilians under international humanitarian law as well as the need for sustained and unhindered access to those who need help,’ Mr Dujarric added.”
[This article was originally published by the BBC.]
بواسطة Hassan Hassan | أغسطس 16, 2017 | News, Reports, غير مصنف
“Last week, some in the Syrian opposition were fired up by reports that Saudi Arabia asked the Syrian opposition to accept Bashar Al Assad’s survival as a fact. The alleged request took place during a meeting between the Saudi foreign minister, Adel Al Jubeir, and the opposition’s High Negotiations Committee.
The Saudi foreign ministry disputed the accuracy of the reports. According to an opposition figure present at the meeting, Mr Al Jubeir merely conveyed to the opposition that the focus of the international community has shifted away from any attempts to bring down the regime and that various opposition blocs should come together to form a broader negotiation front. Opposition members fear that a new Saudi stance would reverse an earlier opposition consensus in Riyadh in December 2015 that Mr Al Assad should leave at the start of a transitional period.
Saudi Arabia and regional allies recently moved to reshuffle the opposition’s structures, to expand the representation of the hawks-dominated and divided HNC and to stem the influence of extremists within the political and military bodies. There is also a plan to bring together the opposition blocs known as the “Cairo platform” and “the Moscow platform”.
Notwithstanding official rhetoric, though, even the most committed of the rebel backers have already moved well beyond the acceptance of Mr Al Assad as a reality. Some countries have taken steps with the assumptions that the regime is not going anywhere. The problem for the Syrian rebels is that they still fail to see the changes, especially in regional countries they consider to be their strongest backers.
When Donald Drumpf was elected the president of the United States, Gulf countries wishing to undercut the growing Iranian influence in Syria considered lifting pressure from the regime in Damascus as a way to reduce its need for Iran. The most damaging policy change to the Syrian opposition is that of Turkey, the rebels’ most critical backer. While many in the opposition continue to see Ankara as a patron of their cause, Turkey’s priorities today often run counter to their interests.
Ankara shifted its Syria policy last year, specifically after it launched an operation to fight ISIL in August. It moved from aggressively backing the rebel cause to focusing on disrupting Kurdish expansion near its borders. It has since worked closely with Russia and Iran – politically in Astana, the Kazakh capital, and militarily on the ground.
Turkey has arguably done the most to steer the conflict into the current political trajectory. Politically, Turkey enabled what can be called the “Astana-isation” of the Geneva process. The Astana Process is a Russia-led platform essentially designed to change the nature of the conversation about the future of Syria, even if the Geneva process remains in place. American officials continue to speak of the Geneva process as the main legitimate international platform. But that is largely meaningless given how the conversation has developed over time. Turkey has been a key factor in this change.
The change in Turkish policy contributed to the rebels’ loss of Aleppo in December last year. Turkey and Iran brokered a deal in four Syrian towns near the Lebanese and Turkish borders that involved relocation of demographics. Ankara also watched as Al Qaeda’s Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, formerly known as Jabhat Al Nusra, tightened its control in Idlib near its border.
Turkey also stood idly by as Hayat Tahrir Al Sham weakened and fragmented Ahrar Al Sham, a previously key Turkish proxy in Syria, and forced it to give up control of a Syria-Turkey border crossing. Turkey also pressured Syrian rebels to participate in the Russia-sponsored Astana talks.
Additionally, Turkey also opposed the participation of opposition fighters in the fight against ISIL under the umbrella of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, and continues to do in key areas like Deir Ezzor. This policy runs counter to the rebels’ interests since the United States insists on working solely with the SDF. Privately, some of these rebels understand that working under the US-backed umbrella will help them liberate and govern their own areas. Publicly, they feel under pressure to reject working with the “enemy” of their supposed Turkish ally.
Before its policy changes last year, Turkey, more than any other country and repeatedly over five years, had promised the opposition an “imminent” plan to establish no-fly zones and bring the full force of the international community to bear against Mr Al Assad. It had also focused its support to Islamist and jihadist elements within the opposition, although not exclusively. These policies raised the opposition’s expectations and strengthened extremists.
Despite such policies, most in the Syrian opposition see Turkey as an ally, mostly due to Turkey’s public support for the opposition’s cause and its commendable support for Syrian refugees. But it is time for the Syrian opposition to realise that Turkey is not in the same place today. It has been a critical enabler of the Russian strategy in Syria for at least a year.
The rebels have lost historic opportunities to expand their influence in territories previously occupied by ISIL. They are now set to lose what remains of their areas if they continue to be tools to their supposed backers in the region. Recognition of the recent policy changes in Turkey, and indeed other countries, could help the Syrian opposition think clearly about its future.”
Hassan Hassan is a senior fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.
[This article was originally published by The National.]
بواسطة Aron Lund | يوليو 26, 2017 | Cost of War, News, غير مصنف
The results are in: nerve gas has again been used in Syria. On June 29, international inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) officially concluded that the nerve agent known as sarin was used on April 4 in the city of Khan Sheikhoun in northwestern Syria. This was a war crime, a breach of international laws banning chemical weapons, and a direct challenge to the OPCW and the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Syria joined under American pressure in September 2013.
Though the United States has pointed its finger at President Bashar al-Assad’s government as responsible for the attack, the inspectors’ report did not identify the guilty party—nor was it intended to. However, a separate investigation known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism, or JIM, is now working to do exactly that. Yet it is far from certain that the investigators will succeed in identifying a perpetrator, and even if they do, effective follow-up of their conclusions is likely to be blocked in the UN Security Council.
Still, the Khan Sheikhoun investigation matters, because the use of chemical weapons resonates far outside of Syria. Challenges to the global norm against gas warfare tend to provoke international responses in ways that the daily churn of conventional war crimes in Syria do not, and the past four years of peacemaking and great-power diplomacy were strongly influenced by the disputes over Assad’s chemical weapons program. Very likely, Syrian politics will continue to be yanked in unpredictable directions by the chemical weapons crisis—and this autumn, all eyes are on the JIM investigation into the attack at Khan Sheikhoun.
The OPCW Fact-Finding Mission
A treaty-based organization of 192 member countries, the OPCW has been active in Syria since the creation in 2013 of a joint UN-OPCW mission that stripped President Bashar al-Assad’s government of some 1300 tons of chemical weapons. Western nations now claim the Syrian government secretly retained part of its stockpile, which Assad denies. The OPCW has not yet ruled on whether Damascus is trying to cheat the inspectors, but it has complained of troublesome gaps in the Syrian narrative and is currently investigating the issue.
Toward the end of the UN-OPCW joint disarmament mission in 2014, OPCW Director General Ahmet Üzümcü struck a deal with the Syrian Foreign Ministry to also send an OPCW Fact Finding Mission to the country to investigate allegations of continued chemical attacks with chlorine gas. It was a group of OPCW investigators working through that mechanism that was called upon to investigate the incident in Khan Sheikhoun when reports broke of a nerve gas attack there on April 4. It has been hard work—indeed, nearly impossible.
Although the Fact-Finding Mission operated both out of Damascus and on the Turkish border, its members were unable to gain access to the actual crime scene in Khan Sheikhoun. The city is located in a war-torn, rebel-held region of northwestern Syria that is controlled by hardline Islamist insurgents, including groups with strong links to al-Qaeda. It is extremely dangerous for non-Syrian aid workers or journalists to visit the region, and for a team of OPCW scientists to travel there seems almost out of the question—particularly since the guilty party, whoever that is, would have an evident interest in whipping up violence against them.
Though the OPCW did make preparations for a visit, it did not end up happening. Neither did the group go to the Shayrat air base from which the United States has said the attacks were launched. Such a trip would probably have been safe, but it would not be likely to provide much information pertinent to the Fact-Finding Mission’s mandate which (per the terms agreed with the Syrian Foreign Ministry) does not allow the OPCW to investigate who carried out an attack with chemical weapons—the investigators are only allowed to determine if it happened.
On the other hand, the limited mandate made for a much easier investigation. Piecing together exactly what happened by a remote investigation that depended on partisan accounts would be hard, but giving a yes or no answer to the question of whether a chemical weapon was used is a more straightforward endeavor. And, as it turned out, it was one of those rare issues where Syrian loyalists and opposition members could agree.
As documented in the Fact-Finding Mission’s report, the inspectors received evidence and testimony from a wide range of Syrian and non-Syrian sources, including opposition groups, Assad’s government, and foreign nations on both sides of the conflict. While they found striking and irreconcilable discrepancies in testimony provided by witnesses contacted through the Syrian opposition and those contacted through the Syrian government, both sides said they had found evidence of nerve gas use and offered environmental samples from Khan Sheikhoun that tested positive for sarin. “When all the evidence and information from all available sources is put together, there is no disagreement that Sarin was used as a chemical weapon in Khan Shaykhun,” OPCW Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü told the OPCW Executive Council when it convened to discuss the report on July 5.
Even Russia, which has been hostile to the OPCW investigations ever since they produced evidence that helped incriminate Assad’s government for chlorine attacks committed in 2014 and 2015, agreed with Üzümcü’s assessment. “After reading the [Fact-Finding Mission] report on Khan-Shaykhun, one thing is clear: sarin or a similar agent was used there,” said Russian OPCW representative Alexander Shulgin according to an official transcript of his remarks. “This is confirmed, among other things, by analysis of the samples obtained from the site of the incident by the Syrian authorities. However, the main question remains unanswered—who, under what circumstances, and in what manner used this toxic substance.”
The Joint Investigative Mechanism
The circumstances of the Khan Sheikhoun incident remain poorly understood. Although many have already drawn their conclusions about who was behind the release of toxic gas on April 4, it will be very difficult to clear up lingering question marks to the extent that a firm international judgment can be delivered. Doing so will be the responsibility of a separate group of international investigators known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism. A joint UN-OPCW project, it works independently of the OPCW’s Fact-Finding Mission, essentially picking up where the latter’s work ends.
From its creation in 2015 through 2016, the JIM was under the leadership of the Argentinian diplomat Virginia Gamba. In late April 2017, her place was taken by Guatemalan diplomat Edmond Mulet, who is assisted by the two other members of the JIM’s Leadership Panel: Malaysian diplomat Judy Cheng-Hopkins, who runs the political component of the JIM from offices in New York, and the Swiss chemical weapons expert Stefan Mogl, who will handle the JIM investigation’s technical side at the OPCW labs in the Netherlands. Mulet, Cheng-Hopkins, and Mogl are assisted by a team of twenty-three additional staff with relevant expertise, a JIM spokesperson tells me. Several members of the staff have previous experience of working in Syria. For example, Mulet has involved Åke Sellström, the Swedish chemical arms expert who ran the UN’s first chemical weapons investigation in Syria in 2013.
The investigators are well aware of the difficult task they face, and that their investigation needs to remain untainted by political arguments and pressures. “The notion that this was Assad lives in everybody’s mind and in the world of propaganda,” Sellström told a Swedish reporter earlier this year. “But to be able to convict someone in a judicial process you will need to produce evidence of who actually did it and secure it in such a way that it can stand up to legal scrutiny in, for example, the International Court of Justice in The Hague.”
How the JIM Came to Be
Unlike the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission, which exists because of an agreement between the OPCW and the Syrian government, the JIM owes its existence to the United Nations. The unanimously adopted UN Security Council resolution 2235 created the JIM in August 2015 in response to previous OPCW Fact-Finding Mission reports documenting the continued use of chlorine gas as a weapon.
The fact that Russia voted for the creation of the JIM surprised many observers at the time, even if it took long and hard negotiations to get Moscow to agree. The Russian government had been dismissive of the Fact-Finding Mission reports, which (although they were not allowed to draw conclusions from that material) had included evidence that seemed to point in the direction of Assad’s government. For example, some witness testimony and video footage indicated that chlorine-filled munitions had been dropped by helicopter. Many had therefore assumed that Moscow would veto any attempt to clarify who was behind the attacks, and were surprised when the Russian government voted in favor of the JIM at the Security Council in August 2015, thereby allowing the resolution to be unanimously adopted.
The chemical weapons expert, arms control consultant, and former senior OPCW official Ralf Trapp was not among those surprised. “There was an interest certainly on the Russian side to get attribution into the picture,” Trapp told me in an interview in May. “If you recall, the final Sellström report from December 2013 contained some reports of sarin having been used against government troops. Also, Russia did its own investigation in 2013 and attributed sarin use to terrorists,” he said, referring to an incident in Khan al-Asal where the Syrian government had demanded a UN investigation.
“It needed investigation, and you couldn’t quite tell what the outcome would be,” Trapp told me, noting the murky nature of the conflict and the fact that, as opposed to sarin, attacks that involve chlorine gas are not technically difficult to arrange. “I think the Russians went along, thinking they could influence the outcome in such a way that there would be a finding of terrorist use of chemical arms, or that they could at least throw enough question marks at the conclusion,” Trapp said. “In many of these investigations it is very difficult in advance to know what the result will be.”
Others see Russia’s approval of the JIM as a cynical bid to gain time. “I think it was a way of postponing the inevitable,” argued a person associated with the Syrian chemical arms inspections who spoke to me earlier this year. “You keep playing the game until a time comes when you feel that now we can perhaps get away by changing the goalposts, but you can’t disrupt the game. Blocking the JIM would immediately have raised the question of why—why can’t you allow an independent investigation? Maybe they also thought that the UN, given its habit of always playing safe, would come up with something safe and wishy-washy. It could very easily have ended up that way.”
Blocking the JIM would immediately have raised the question of why—why can’t you allow an independent investigation?
In fact, it took less than a year for the JIM to find itself on a collision course with Moscow. In summer 2016, the JIM determined that Assad’s forces was guilty of using chlorine on at least two occasions, later adding a third. Russia refused to accept the results, and since then Russian diplomats and state media outlets have showered the UN and OPCW investigations with complaints—some quite reasonable, but some clearly in bad faith.
The affair led to a showdown in the Security Council in February 2017, in which Russia and China vetoed a draft resolution backed by a majority of the council membership. The draft would have drawn on the JIM reports, previous UN resolutions, and a 2013 Russian-American agreement to impose Chapter VII sanctions on the Syrian government. This was where Moscow drew the line, apparently preferring to veto any resolutions that would run counter to Assad’s interests rather than negotiate for milder sanctions or engage substantively with the JIM’s conclusions. The veto tore up a series of Russian-American deals and international arrangements over how to regulate the Syrian chemical weapons issue, which had been gradually and consensually put in place from 2013 to 2015. It also made the United States and the EU move unilaterally to impose sanctions outside the UN framework, in addition to those already in place. Indeed, by stripping away Security Council enforcement, the Russian-Chinese veto paradoxically seems to have contributed to the U.S. decision to strike Assad’s forces in response to the Khan Sheikhoun attack a few weeks later without even attempting to engage Russia or awaiting a JIM investigation (though U.S. President Donald Drumpf likely had other motives, too, for wanting to flaunt his military strength).
There is no reason to believe Russia has altered its position since then. In other words, though the JIM’s investigations into alleged chemical weapons use in Syria will continue, it is unlikely that its conclusions will be acted upon—at least not if they indicate that the nerve gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun was carried out by Bashar al-Assad’s forces. And it is far from certain that the investigation will get even that far. Although the JIM’s final report on Khan Sheikhoun is scheduled for release in October, there are a lot of bumps on the road from here to there.
“A Highly Politicized Environment”
At a press conference after his presentation to the UN Security Council, JIM head Edmond Mulet warned about the threats facing his investigation.
“We find ourselves in a highly politicised environment,” Mulet said, complaining that that governments were taking sides based on political arguments and were constantly interfering to tell his investigators how to work. “I appeal to all, as I did right now in the Council, to let us perform our work in an impartial, independent and professional manner.”
While Mulet’s criticism of international pressures seemed to be aimed at both sides of the dispute, he also subtly noted that his mission was running into resistance from the Syrian government in the Khan Sheikhoun case. Commenting on the persistent demands of the Syrian and Russian governments that inspectors must visit Khan Sheikhoun and the Shayrat air base, he said that the JIM team would certainly try, though it ultimately depended on “security concerns and security issues.” However, Mulet then took the opportunity to highlight the Syrian government’s reluctance to provide information about events on April 4. Before the JIM could consider a visit to either site, he said, Damascus would have to respond to the JIM’s pre-inspection questions, which it had thus far failed to do. “I need information about the flight logs in al-Shayrat, the movements around al-Shayrat,” the JIM leader said. “I need the names of the people we will be interviewing—military commanders and government officials—and also some information that the Syrian government could provide to us in order to conduct our work.”
According to a diplomatic source, Mulet was even more blunt in his presentation to the Security Council, where he reportedly accused Damascus of not cooperating in a satisfactory manner. According to Foreign Policy, Mulet told the Security Council that the Syrian Foreign Ministry had refused to issue a visa for the JIM’s liaison officer in Damascus, thereby preventing the inspectors from deploying to work in Syria. This seems to be correct: a JIM spokesperson confirmed in an e-mail that there was still no liaison in place in Damascus at that point, and Foreign Policy’s account is corroborated by other sources.
The delay caused by the lack of a visa is no small matter. Time is of the essence, not merely because it gets harder to investigate the Khan Sheikhoun massacre as memories fade and evidence is corrupted, but also because the JIM’s mandate runs out in November—just weeks after the scheduled release of the JIM’s final Khan Sheikhoun report. At that point, the JIM’s continued operations will be at the mercy of a Russian veto.
The investigators now have less than four months left to study the vast material collected by the Fact-Finding Mission, conduct additional investigations inside Syria or abroad, compile and analyze the results, test their conclusions, and write their report. To those who believe Syrian authorities ordered the Khan Sheikhoun attack, deliberate delays like these are an indication that the Russian and Syrian governments are trying to stall the investigation in order to get closer to the mandate deadline. Of course, Russian diplomats reject this. The Syrian government has not responded to requests for comment.
Fears of an October Surprise
There’s certainly a risk that the inspectors will stumble on the finish line, and there are also those who fear that the guilty party will try trip them up. The JIM is a relatively small mission and it arrives late in the game. In interviews, several diplomatic sources and chemical inspection experts have told me that the JIM will be forced to lean heavily on evidence already collected by the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission.
Given the Fact-Finding Mission’s near-exclusive reliance on remotely provided samples, witnesses brought to their attention by parties to the war, and open-source evidence, there’s clearly a potential for manipulation. Much of the evidence collected by the OPCW came from opposition-connected organizations, including the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), the Syrian Civil Defense (SCD, also known as the White Helmets), and the Chemical Violations Documentation Center in Syria (CVDCS), but the Syrian government also contributed witnesses and samples at later stages. The OPCW was wary of relying on any one side, but the convergence of evidence from both sides played an important role for the Fact-Finding Mission’s decision to wrap up its investigation and file the report on June 29.
If an actor who fears being exposed by the JIM were to suddenly reveal new information that spectacularly discredits evidence planted at previous stages of the investigation, or throws out a major new lead that the JIM members will lack time to pursue under their current mandate, it could disrupt the JIM’s work, damage the credibility of its report, or at the very least undercut public faith in the Khan Sheikhoun investigation. Such machinations might sound outlandish, but they have occurred before in international investigations that implicated Syria. And while a scandal of this kind wouldn’t stop the JIM from ruling on the issue, it could certainly force the investigators to rework their conclusions in the last minute, weakening their argument and causing a crisis of confidence in the results, which would in turn be exploitable by whomever ends up being fingered as the guilty party.
A New Showdown in the Security Council?
What would happen if the JIM report concludes that Bashar al-Assad’s government was behind the attack? It wouldn’t lead to another U.S. air strike. As described above, the United States has already attacked Assad’s forces in response to the Khan Sheikhoun incident, without waiting for the JIM investigation to point out the perpetrator. “Independently, the US has obviously made its own determination, and our immediate reaction was the strike on the Shayrat air field,” a U.S. State Department official told me last month. If Assad is identified by the JIM, too, “the UN Security Council would be a possibility and additional sanctions are an available venue.”
However, the Security Council isn’t likely to be a functioning instrument for those states who want to punish the Syrian government for chemical weapons use. While Western governments are likely to pursue a Security Council resolution anyway, simply to force Russia (and possibly China) to suffer the discomfort of using its veto powers in defense of nerve gas, UN action clearly couldn’t lead anywhere without Moscow’s acquiescence.
The Security Council isn’t likely to be a functioning instrument for those states who want to punish the Syrian government for chemical weapons use.
More likely, therefore, Western states would end up responding to a JIM identification of the Assad government by unilaterally imposing their own sanctions on Syria and/or Russia. Coming under American or EU economic sanctions is not a pleasant experience, but such a move would likely have a little direct impact given that both countries have already been subject to Western sanctions for many years. Indeed, Damascus did not bat an eye when Washington and Brussels rolled out new sanctions orders in connection with the Russian-Chinese veto this spring, and again after Khan Sheikhoun.
Another possible venue would be to use a JIM identification to encourage or strengthen a war crimes prosecution. The UN General Assembly, where Russia does not hold veto powers, recently created a special mechanism to gather evidence against both the Syrian government and its enemies, which is intended to facilitate future war crimes trials. Of course, the Syrian government is unlikely to cooperate with any foreign or international war crimes process, so this, too, would be mostly a symbolic measure.
In the seemingly less likely event that the JIM were to conclude that Syrian rebels or some other actor were behind the Khan Sheikhoun incident, it would be an even bigger upset, since it would for the first time mean that Russian-Syrian-Iranian claims about rebel false-flag operations had gained the support of independent investigators. It seems safe to assume that Assad’s allies would then quickly forget their criticism of the investigators’ methodology and move to the Security Council, in the hopes of forcing the United States or its allies to cast a veto similar to the Russian-Chinese one in February 2017.
In short, any firm identification of the perpetrator of the Khan Sheikhoun killings could trigger another battle in the UN Security Council. But there may never be such an identification. The June 29 Fact-Finding Mission report gave very little reason to think that the perpetrator of the Khan Sheikhoun massacre can be pinpointed with any certainty.
The JIM will of course conduct additional investigations. Importantly, the JIM inspectors have more freedom to shape their mission and pursue leads than the Fact-Finding Mission, which was constrained by its narrow yes-or-no mandate. If its liaison visa is ever approved, it is also possible that the JIM will be able to conduct in-country inspections in ways that the Fact-Finding Mission was never able to do. But realistically speaking, the most important element of an investigation—a visit to the crime scene in Khan Sheikhoun—may simply be too dangerous to try, not least because the only thing we know with certainty is that at least one party to the conflict has an interest in turning such an expedition into a violent tragedy.
Quite possibly, therefore, the JIM could announce in October that while the investigators have found strong leads that point hither or thither, their conclusion is that too many doubts remain to say anything certain about the identity of the perpetrator.
And, to be honest, a murderer getting off the hook—wouldn’t that be the most Syrian ending of all?
Notes
For a background to the creation of the Fact-Finding Mission, see Aron Lund, “Red Line Redux: How Putin Tore Up Obama’s 2013 Syria Deal,” The Century Foundation, February 2017, https://tcf.org/content/report/red-line-redux-putin-tore-obamas-2013-syria-deal. To see all Fact-Finding Mission reports, see the OPCW website, https://www.opcw.org/special-sections/syria/fact-finding-mission-reports.
[This article was originally published by The Century Foundation.]
