Who won, who lost in Syria?

Who cares about learning a lesson when a really big prize is in sight? So, from the point of view of the US whose dollars, arms and intel no doubt enabled the shocking opposition blitzkrieg that dislodged the Assads from Damascus after more than 50 years, so what if Syria turns into another Iraq where al Qaeda ran riot and ISIS was born? Or into another Libya where the militias American forces fought in Iraq were paid and armed to bring down the common enemy in Tripoli – Obama White House’s “leading from behind” novelty” – and blood hasn’t yet stopped spilling?

I covered part of the last Syrian civil war and understood very quickly the truth of the Independent’s late Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk’s famous observation that civil wars in the Levantine Arab world were all about patronage, about who gave how much arms and money to whom, about which party was backed by the power with superior intelligence, etc.

Everybody knew last time that Assad’s enemies, the so-called al-Nusra Front, born out of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), received their funding and weapons from the US-EU-GCC-Turkey combine. None of them had any qualms about bankrolling extremist head-chopping, heart-eating (literally) mercenaries so long as their immediate interest were met.

Assad’s Syria sat where the anti-Israeli axis of resistance and the anti-GCC Shi’a crescent crisscrossed, after all, so it became fair game in the merciless, zero-sum battle of thrones that has defined Middle East politics since long before Hafez al Assad, Bashar’s father, took over the Syrian Ba’ath Party and forced his own iron fist down the entire country’s, and in many ways the whole region’s, throat.

Last time Bashar survived because Iran, Hezbollah and especially Russia came to the rescue. And in the years since Syria was welcomed back into the Arab League, Bashar and the GCC buried the hatchet, and even Iran and Saudi Arabia ended their fierce rivalry (thanks to Chinese mediation).

So it’s not very likely that the latter’s petrodollars had much to do with HTS’s (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) lightening sweep across Syria last week. That means the weapons and vehicles used in the assault must have come from America and its pro-Israeli allies just when Iran was pushed onto the back foot and Hezbollah was still reeling from the wholescale elimination of its high command.

Now, just like that, Iran’s access to the Mediterranean is also gone. Every prize has a price, after all, and surely this one’s worth pushing Syria – for all its faults, one of the last truly secular Arab countries under the Assads – into the signature al-Qaeda sectarian nightmare that only recently visited Iraq, Libya and parts of Syria itself when the civil war first started. That’s why nobody’s wondering just how and why Abu Mohammed al Golani, HTS’s commander, is suddenly so acceptable to western capitals even though he spent five years in an American prison in Iraq and still, legally and officially, carries a $10 million price on his head for his adventures with AQI and ISIS.

Old man Hafez’s prophetic words, that if ever Syria fell it would not be to outside forces but would implode from within, have finally come true. Yet Iraqis and Libyans that also saw strong men fall and tore down statues and ransacked palaces would caution their celebrating Syrian neighbours about the horrors of the kind of freedom that outfits like al Qaeda and ISIS deliver.

Just like the Americans didn’t mind plunging Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya into sectarian hell to defeat the Soviets and get rid of Saddam and Gaddafi, they and their Israeli allies are celebrating the gut punch they’ve just delivered to Iran by sending Bashar al-Assad fleeing to exile in Moscow. Yet just like ordinary Afghans, Iraqis and Libyans, Syrians too will find out soon enough that their joy will be short-lived.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024