Syria, shifting back into the lion's paws

The great shift in narrative which has, so far, been the most remarkable quality - in recognition of the value-neutral bodice of the term - of the great (you see?) Syrian war, a war of brother against brother, infidel against dissenter from an allegedly secular order, minority against the frightful prospect of repression, permanent exile, extirpation at the hands of the particularly blissful and violent of the suppressing minority locked within an aggrieved majority. And with the narrative winds have also shifted the winds of war, as underscored to the twittering, canary-like passivity of two American presidents and the sound and thunder of substantial Russian bombardment. This bombardment has typically followed an existing Assad strategy of minimising the viability and credibility of what might ubiquitously be called "moderate" Syrian forces, commonly understood by the acronym FSA or the "Free Syrian Army", in order to present a simple but horrifying choice, one where Trump and his presumed (if announced, certain to be praised) contender Tulsi Gabbard, arguably also Obama, were in full vitriolic agreement: Assad is preferable to the new Jihad.

Al Kasr Al Jihad. The bubble, so quickly inflated, so predictably collapsed. It has served its purpose. Broken, it will serve it better still... perhaps for another generation.

The juxtaposition of regime change, a word few would have taken in mouth before the 2011 eruption of underground but omnipresent opposition into full-blown, uncivil carnage, with a rump state dominated by a (or several infighting) emirate of silence is one of considerable joy, which the jihadist have been happy to oblige whenever in the spotlight. Whereas the patriarch and protector of the Alawites is only too happy to play the press with considerable skill (superior certainly to the whims and platitude present, or should I say predominant, in the Swedish attempts to form a government, in one of the most consensus-driven political cultures in the world) the Jihadis present a mesmerising notion to the believing - and those only about to take the step across the threshold into if not bliss then the all but certain promise of it - if only you join the cataclysmic upheaval not for the salvation, or even the destruction, of Syria but of humankind and the ushering in of a metaphysical paradise where your dues right now will translate into blissful eternal currency of no limitation.

For those too immature - or too blind - to see this promise, the more contained rantings of the lion and his well-cropped and -suited looks, are mesmerising only by comparison and finely articulated with gesture and content as well as greeting. But behind this façade, mesmerising only as far as you don't know the facts of pre-2011 Syria, or the stunning reality which eventually came out of it, rests an oppression so hideous that its articulation cannot be reduced to individual cases of murder, even if they were audaciously broadcasted in the most graphic detail, to the gibberish and most obviously abandoned slogans of Ba'ath pan-Arabist dogma. Everybody knows, in this age where not only arrogance and vitriol but also journalistic investigation can make this unseen suppression all the more visible, what a Syrian "peace" on the lion's terms will cost, and who will pay the price of peace, dearly bought for an outcome platitude would accept as status quo (ante bellum). The only sweetener is that his reputation and political leverage is sallied forever. But as tyrants from the Kims to the Mugabes to the Duvaliers would know the opinions of voters, and non-voters, matters little as long as the fall can be pushed beyond death; theirs or the opponents. Survival has been Assad's goal to higher degree than the resistance and through use of a cure of strong side effects - or an infection justifying their use - he has succeeded, and for reasons embedded in the deeply human understanding one can feel for this desire, interlinked to so many others... "privileged" as they are, lest they be interred.

Endorsed by some... hated by so many. But the hand which can lever the support that is needed to obliterate the opposition of force can withstand the vox of wailing for an eternity.

Why, then, can a revolution, in the proper sense, to the antebellum state not be said to be the more desirable of conclusions? First, remember - and have held in mind since the first shootings of demonstrations in early 2011, the brave escalation which followed and the desertions both laudable and in some sense predictable, which escalated the war of a regime on its people to a two-way street - that the outcome and the inexorable sensation of revanchism of many brands among Syrian Sunnis; democrats, socialists, liberals, feminists, Islamic or non-Western feminists, non-Ba'athist nationalists, Ba'ath supporters left out by the governing ethnarchy and the many and inherently self-divided brand of (domestic) Islamic revolution or Jihad or both, is too much a product of as well as antithesis too the longstanding and inherently unstable system which has for nearly half a century embattled and now perhaps harnessed, if not quite choked it. Peace will never reign, and democracy will not in the remotest sense be plausible until the Syrian majority have a say in its affairs, which will likely preclude any peaceful multi-ethnic and multi-religious government and demand the return of the Alawite state - or a confederal structure similar in ways to Lebanon or antebellum Yugoslavia or (more desirable, from a state of supreme intoxication) Switzerland.

None of these are compatible with Ba'athist hegemony or even the existence of the party in a governmental state, and the hegemony of one relatively obscure, unfortunately ostracised tribe over all things governmental. Nevertheless, the only order compatible with continued existence of Alawites is either a Syria divided or this comparably desirable, conceived, cobbled-together confederal construct. It is possible to fathom, under a broad-based agreement of the kind attempted and (well...) comparably accomplished in Libya, the latter to materialise, the former - while unlikely for this reason - having the benefits of elevating the Kurdish struggle to UN representation as well, and opening the question of a Sunni state excluding the northwestern coast and Kurdistan, but incorporating the Anbar province and other (as for now) Sunni-dense western chunks of Iraq. The Sykes-Picot quagmire redrawn rather than reinforced, with all their well-known complications.

The great man has assumed the stage, his whim and gestures changing the map. Could this have been foreseen even by the greatest critic of the liberal hegemonic order. The Syrian stage, if reduced to merely a stage, has seen it crumble.

The laudable efforts of the likes of De Mistura - to preserve a basin of credibility for the international community rather than even a shred of dignity and human value in the war-torn parts of the country -nonwithstanding, this outcome was while not predicted in some sense determined from the onset and the mixture of tepid reaction to outright incompetence from the Pentagon-Langley military-security regimen and its own quagmire of tactics and split bureaucracy. The "victory" of June 2014 (so convenient after the result of Ba'athist-Alawite Syria's first multicandidate election and its suicidal PR aspirations) for Assad's hopes to be the brave warrior resisting this new Caliphate if not for the latter, the entry of Russia into the conflict and finally the crushed hopes - probably too lately announced to be taken seriously - of the Clinton campaign collectively constituted the last blow against an already blunted skull of no menacing capacities. While airstrikes in the springs of 2017 and 2018 (one other being geared up if the signs are right) as a symbolic chastisement by her contender, while among the most laudable decisions of his halfway administration, are mere tokens with the possible benefit of upholding, well, that previously spoken red-line which - once stupidly announced - ought not have been broken. That is, at least not by its proud, and still celebrated herald.

The joint architects of the "moral collapse" that is Syria, and - perhaps? - of Western-American hegemony. The century, not nearly thus, conceived by Wilson, consummated by Truman, of American interventionism, and imperialism, has experienced a close. If repealed, will it be replaced? If not, could it be rekindled?

What then can be the conceivable strategy onwards? A new Syria must arise - but cannot stand on soles in the ashes upholding the lion's throne now reclaimed, now reinforced by a bloodbath twenty, thirty times that of Hama, recited previously as a crime against humanity whose proportions will now be forgotten or recounted as an earthquake for which this was a mere foreshadowing. The apple, as it were, falls never far from the tree. A stupid saying, but in this case a foolhardy and limiting one too. Accommodations must by needs be made for the Syrian exodus, for the many who will not and cannot return to the kingdom they hoped never to return to in its current state, and whose hopes and aspirations - I solemnly think - would have been best honoured by its transformation, its metamorphosis if not into a working confederal republic of peace and plenty, the consociationalist government of many and nucleus of such an order. This we could have accomplished, not without danger or controversy, nor without what was before known callously as "body count" (preferable to the suicidal, objectifying euphemism of "collateral damage") but in relation to the current state; a hideous price so dearly bought, by the Kremlin, by the Mullahs of Qom, by every foe of the Western liberal-democratic order, on behest and on the already overdrawn account of the tortured Syrian people. What could have been, if not better, than solely necessary, than a new beginning, and preferably before the self-made prophecy of a war of extermination between Syrian national socialism and Sunni Takfiri Jihadism came to full and hideous fruition, and the slobbering lukewarm statements of Assad as not preferable-but-preferable-still had changed into full-blown stupefying (as well as stupid) cries that this enemy, after all, must be destroyed, whatever the costs, whatever the unlikely allies (already held by these people, including the likes of Assadophile Galloway) one - that is to say, people long and far away from the battlefield - will needs contend with.

Above all, the narrative must change. Jihadism is Assad's business, not only in the more strategic entity of Hizbullah and affiliated groups, but the trafficking in his mortal enemies since at least 15 years for the very purpose of strengthening an enemy whose very existence will remedy his own most terrifying powers. The climax of this stratagem, not the valiant or not-so-valiant resistance to it, was the climax of the appalling shift that was the feature of remembrance of the Syrian "conflict". If there is to be a genuine pressure to cobble the construct that is Syria after its complete and utter collapse, it must not only involve the three regional powers which will do battle over the fate of Kurdistan - arguably the best outcome of the joint efforts of anarchy and Jihadism in the lands of Sykes and Picot, at least until the 2017 offensive by the puppets in Baghdad - and have already succeeded plunging Yemen into a state of similar anarchy from which it is unlikely to recover, if ever. But more of that later. It must also be the recognition that power exists for its own sake, and power in terms of the Alawite-Ba'athist power hub will by needs maintain the institutions which carried it through this the most supreme of crises. Just so as Prussia could survive the great crisis of 1762 to be defeated and mauled by Napoleon, actually by his little-known deputy, the regime may survive only to be sloughed in the next act, when Turkish, Saudi and/or Iranian troops are directly deployed in full-scale confrontation of a kind that will rock the boat.

"The slobbering dauphin of the slobbering tyrant that came before him..." Now, with Hitchens' words in mind, one must ask: Who was the the worse of the two? The grand ruler, prone to war and carnage, or the meek successor, so prone to open the door to reform... or unspeakable bloodbath?

For now, the Assad dynasty has proven itself against certain expectations made in the wake of the fire started by - but not without being first kindled within - the great Bouazizi in the moral and, in time, I hope but fear otherwise, political heart of the Arab world. While its nuclear programme remains (fortunately) disbanded, the Ba'athist regime remains as fit to survive as that of Kim... in time perhaps even more dynamic. Tained surely, but in an age where it does not weigh so heavily on reality or even conscience, it is not hard to see a rekindling of the friendships and hands offered even as arms and assassins screaming their intent as much as hatred of their benefactors were sent across the border into Iraq - that cobbled country so cruelly reduced by American weaponry - and so long as they maintain the flag of la Jihad fi Mamlakati it is certain to be a strategy of near-universal appeal, until certain red lines not drawn in Syrian blood are crossed. If the beneficiaries of the Salafi-Jihadi - and its more well-behaved, more genteel-martyred cousins - are not recognised in the same light, with the same or I would say more cynically opportunistic (or at least more blatantly or materially selfish) motives, the phenomenon of anti-Jihad, or I would say Counter-Jihad (in its worst implications, with a model set for more Western, more highly privileged counterparts to the marble halls of Damascus) cannot be understood or grasped for the tendency it is, and just as destructively - indirectly if not in its naked, bloodied, deniable not even to the likes of Alex Jones-een glory. Whether this triumph, and the triumph of mendacity and cruel polarisation and massacre in the service of humanity, will serve its scions well, in this generation or whether they be destined to be pushed onto the next third - akin to certain other challenges that will intersect with this one - but no further will surely be known, and perhaps ever glimpsed by the butcher himself.