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NY Times Op-Ed, Jan. 11 2017
Assad Has Won in Syria. But Syria Hardly Exists.
By DAVID W. LESCH and JAMES GELVINJ
Now that forces supporting the Syrian government have completed the
takeover of Aleppo, and Russia, Turkey and Iran have negotiated a
tenuous cease-fire, it is more than likely that President Bashar
al-Assad and the regime he oversees will continue to govern Syria, in
one form or another. In an interview with French media published last
week, Mr. Assad stated that Aleppo signaled a “tipping point in the
course of the war” and that the government is “on the way to victory.”
But if that is the case, what will Mr. Assad actually win?
Let’s take a look at the numbers. (While the following statistics are
estimates, they will, if anything, get worse with the continuing matrix
of wars in Syria.) More than 80 percent of Syrians live below the
poverty line. Nearly 70 percent of Syrians live in extreme poverty,
meaning they cannot secure basic needs, according to a 2016 report. That
number has most likely grown since then. The unemployment rate is close
to 58 percent, with a significant number of those employed working as
smugglers, fighters or elsewhere in the war economy. Life expectancy has
dropped by 20 years since the beginning of the uprising in 2011. About
half of children no longer attend school — a lost generation. The
country has become a public health disaster. Diseases formerly under
control, like typhoid, tuberculosis, Hepatitis A and cholera, are once
again endemic. And polio — previously eradicated in Syria — has been
reintroduced, probably by fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Upward of 500,000 are dead from the war, and an untold number of Syrians
have died indirectly from the conflict (the price for destroying
hospitals, targeting health care professionals and using starvation as a
weapon). With more than two million injured, about 11.5 percent of the
prewar population have become casualties. And close to half the
population of Syria is either internally or externally displaced. A 2015
survey conducted by the United Nations refugee agency looking at Syrian
refugees in Greece found that a large number of adults — 86 percent —
had secondary or university education. Most of them were under 35. If
true, this indicates that Syria is losing the very people it will most
need if there is to be any hope of rebuilding in the future.
The cost of reconstruction will be astronomical. A March 2016 study
estimated that the total economic loss as a result of the conflict was
$275 billion; industries across the country are decimated. Added to this
will be the cost of needed repairs to infrastructure, which the
International Monetary Fund estimates to be between $180 billion and
$200 billion. Paying for rebuilding would require uncharacteristic
generosity from the international community, but there is no reason to
believe other countries would want to reward Mr. Assad for
out-brutalizing the other side. His allies Russia and Iran have their
own economic woes and are unlikely to be of much help.
In order to survive, the Syrian regime has had to rely to an
extraordinary degree on Russian and Iranian forces, and their proxies,
like Hezbollah. It really wasn’t the Syrian Arab Army that retook
Aleppo. Indeed, the Syrian military is stretched so thin by geography
and attrition that last month it lost most of the city of Palmyra
(again) to the Islamic State while pro-government forces were shifted to
the north. And although Mr. Assad still maintains some independence,
Moscow and Tehran, and even Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, will
have much to say in Damascus moving forward. Not only will Mr. Assad
have to listen, he will probably have to withstand the pressure of his
patrons’ urging him to step down at the end of his presidential term in
2021.
Finally, the battle is, in reality, far from over. Neither Mr. Assad’s
government nor the rebels he is fighting have achieved their goals. The
opposition can no longer overthrow the regime, but an active insurgency
by armed opposition elements is all but assured, backed by regional
patrons, such as Saudi Arabia, which in no way wants to see its rival,
Iran, sail toward complete victory. And by their very nature,
insurgencies require much less state support than opposition forces
trying to hold and govern territory. Mr. Assad would then see what the
former United Nations Syria envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has called the
“Somalization” of Syria. Mr. Assad would oversee a government that, like
Somalia’s, will reign, but not rule, over the entire country. Instead, a
number of forces — the government, opposition militias, Kurdish
militias, pockets of the Islamic State — will control sections of territory.
And how would Mr. Assad rule the rump state? Pre-existing patronage
networks have been shattered and replaced by semi-independent warlords,
militias or local governing bodies. This is even the case in
government-controlled areas, where pro-regime militias and gangs who
remained loyal would expect rewards. Indeed, the Syrian leadership
grossly underestimates how far the Syrian population as a whole has
moved away from it. Syrians by and large have for years now been
empowered by living, surviving and governing on their own. It is an
utter delusion if the regime thinks it can return to anything close to
the status quo ante.
The Syrian government may have a representative to the United Nations,
have embassies in some countries, stamp passports and print currency,
but it is hardly a state. Mr. Assad’s control, power and legitimacy have
been severely circumscribed, whether he and his supporters know it or
not. He will have to depend on continuing large-scale assistance from
outside if he wants to restore even a portion of what Syria was. But it
is a new Syria. He is the one who will have to reshape his political
system to fit this new reality, rather than the other way around.
David W. Lesch is a professor of Middle East history at Trinity
University in San Antonio and the author of “Syria: The Fall of the
House of Assad.” James Gelvin is a professor of Middle East history at
U.C.L.A. and the author of “The New Middle East: What Everyone Needs to
Know.”
--
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