Lorenzo Trombetta, a senior analyst for Italian news agency ANSA with 25 years of experience in the Middle East, spoke to Vlast about the current situation in Syria, two weeks since the insurrection that led to the fall of the Assad Regime.
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Let’s start from the beginning. How did we get here?
Since it was created as a colonial state by France, Syria has been exposed for a century to attempts to split the country along either community or religious lines. During the turbulent period since independence, there were more attempts, both internal and external, to militarize Syrian politics, pushing forward “strong men” to ensure sovereignty, stability, and safety. All these were façade objectives, because in reality, the aim was always to keep this country under external influence.
When Assad [Hafez al-Assad, the father of Bashar Al-Assad] came to power in 1970, he became the representative of this ongoing trend, especially by making a choice between the two blocs that were facing each other during the cold war. Hafez al-Assad chose the Eastern bloc, which had repercussions from a political, economic, social, and financial standpoint. When the Berlin Wall was torn down, Hafez al-Assad quickly repositioned himself, by seeking an alliance with the US against Iraq [during the First Gulf War of 1991], which earned him a form of authority over Lebanon alongside Israel. This was a period of open doors from an economic and financial standpoint, something that his son Bashar Al-Assad continued.
Bashar Al-Assad said “we are inspired by the Chinese model” thereby transitioning from a socialist state-driven model towards a liberal state-driven one. This, at least, is what he said during the early 2000s. Yet, the combination of a weak economy and the demographic pressure, alongside technological progress, links the people in Syria to the rest of the world. Bashar Al-Assad’s first decade in power was an incubator of dissent and a litmus test of Damascus’ weak governance, during which the peripheries of power were essentially lost.
Droughts and internal rural-to-urban migration turns the suburbs into boiling pots filled with dissatisfied people. In 2011, Syria is at the center of the widespread context of sociopolitical protests [the so-called Arab Spring]. More protests led to more repression, which in turn provoked an armed insurrection, which became a full-scale war.
The war had an extensive scale, both in terms of time, 14 years, and considering the external actors involved. How do you see the effect of the war on the latest developments?
Until today, there were Russians, Americans, Turks, and Israelis, until recently Iranians. This should be considered a global war. They all have local allies and recruits from everywhere, including Central Asia.
Israel has essentially annihilated all Iranian-backed forces in the entire Middle East. Russia, surprisingly to me, demobilized their troops quickly from Syria. Everyone, including experts on Russia, is asking why they did so. Some argue that there might be an agreement with Turkey behind this, but it’s speculation.
"Bashar Al-Assad’s first decade in power was an incubator of dissent."In the last two weeks, the “triumphant march” of the rebel forces was possible not necessarily because of their prowess, but because external actors allowed it to happen. The political logic behind leaving power to these forces is that a continued reign by Bashar Al-Assad had become unsustainable.
Who is benefiting from the current situation?
Israel has benefited a lot from this situation. Both Israel and Turkey are establishing their own “security zones”. De facto, however, this is a military occupation of Syrian territory, often aided by puppet local representatives. In the north, the Kurdish-majority areas have been abandoned to their fate, even by the US.
Syria will continue to be fragmented. There will be a marked division between the east and the west side of the Euphrates River, and the country will undergo de facto cantonization. Certain groups will have influence over certain areas. For example, Suwayda, the Druze-majority region bordering Jordan, could fall under Israeli influence. The Druze religious authorities are linked with communities both in the Mount Lebanon region and with the Golan Heights. The forces controlling the southern city of Daraa could become closer to Jordan. The Russian military bases could be preserved, in particular, the one at the port of Tartus, because Russia seems to be negotiating to keep a military presence. These are all examples of an ever more marked cantonization, on the basis of both religion and geography.
What myths around Syria and the region have you encountered most often in the media?
One of the myths that are still circulating is that Bashar Al-Assad held power in a secular way. The opposite myth is that the only alternative to Assad’s rule are the Jihadists. What the Assad family reign really focused on was to build a seemingly secular rule based on Pan-Arabism (something that already excluded the non-Arabic components of the population), in an effort to actually play a strategy of divide and rule over the various areas of the country, playing each over their identity. This was far from a secular policy.
The “protection” of the Christian community has always been instrumental to please Syria’s Western partners. This was a sort of an inverse colonial effect, by which the West would only be bothered about what happened in Syria if the Christian community was affected. Yet, this alleged protection was only a façade, only to appease the West and its alleged ties to “Christian values”.
Another myth is that all Jihadists, even the ones claiming power now, are per se enemies of Israel. This idea that radical political Islam is naturally anti-Israel is plain wrong. There are different kinds of Jihadism. There is a form of Khomeinism that uses the propaganda against the Jewish state as a pillar of its identity; but there is also a Jihadism that is closer to the policies of Osama Bin Laden, which focuses its forces against a certain kind of imperialism and Western values, but doesn’t touch the Israel question. It would be rushed to say that the new government in Damascus would be directly opposed and a threat to Israel, just because it represents radical Islam.
Bashar Al-Assad fled to Moscow. Why?
This is really unclear. The Kremlin just issued a statement saying it was a personal decision. But to understand really why he chose Russia, we would need to know more.
Over the past decade, people from Central Asia have reportedly joined the Islamic State forces in the Middle East. Could there be a renewed recruiting campaign given the current instability? Could ISIS return from its current battered state?
In the Syrian context, ISIS is confined to a local insurrection of small groups of people, organized via a clan-based system. These groups are still trying to figure out their place in this new context.
To understand what’s at stake, we need to compare it with another possible solution. Should the new Syrian government establish a civic democracy, by which everyone is represented and every basic service is guaranteed, any ISIS-related group would have no legs to stand on. By joining ISIS, people subscribe to a non-state project and obtain sustenance, something they were unable to have under the Assad government.
The current ISIS insurrection is extremely localized anyways. There seem to be no Central Asians involved at this point. Only if and when the ISIS headquarters (wherever and however strong they might be) decide that there is a new enemy and this needs a new wave of recruiting, the disenfranchised masses of Central Asia could be involved and other people could be called to join.
In its “golden times”, ISIS was just a mirage that people sought to join in an effort to escape the pain they were living through, expecting a better life for themselves. Many of the issues people were trying to resolve by joining ISIS were strictly personal, when you look at their personal histories, it all becomes clear.
Note: the interview was conducted on December 10.
