The end is nigh for this bloodsoaked tyrant. What may follow should terrify us all
THE 40lb bomb was devastating in its impact, perhaps the most dramatic attack of the Syrian conflict. Hidden in a flower pot inside President Bashir Assad’s National Security headquarters in Damascus, it killed his closest aides and left world powers reeling as they searched desperately for a diplomatic solution to a conflict that now risks bringing conflagration to the Middle East.
The deaths of Assad’s brother-in-law Assef Shawkat, his former defence minister Dawoud Rajha and his head of crisis operations Hassan Turkmani mean the key team directing Assad’s campaign against armed rebels have been wiped out at a stroke.
In the short term, Assad will fight back ruthlessly in an attempt to weed out the perpetrators and their supporters from his capital city, wreaking bloody vengeance street by street, suburb by suburb.
But many believe that whatever retribution comes now, this bomb attack will come to be seen as a tipping point, not only in terms of Assad’s own survival but that of Syria itself.
None will mourn the downfall of his blood-soaked regime. But there is increasing concern that the country — which, like the former Yugoslavia, is an essentially artificial creation, spatchcocked together in 1936 by colonial powers — could break into two or three parts and become embroiled in a civil war against which the current fighting would look a tea party.
The ramifications would be felt immediately all around the region: in Lebanon and Jordan, Israel, Iran and Turkey. The shockwaves would spread throughout the world.
Assad’s demise would almost certainly result in the Islamicisation of much of the country, with hardliners pressing for Sharia law and anti-Western policies.
It could lead to direct confrontation between Iran, which backs Assad, and Saudi Arabia, which funds his opponents, sucking in the U.S., Russia, and China, which are remote parties to a conflict that has already cost 26,000 lives since March 2011.
This is the culmination of an uprising which began with the wider ‘Arab Spring’, as Syrians took to the streets of provincial cities to protest against the corruption and brutality of the regime which Assad took over from his much-feared father in 2000.
Although he had been courted as a moderate by Tony Blair, Assad quickly revealed his true colours by responding to the mounting opposition with as much violence as he could muster.
Assad unleashed the extremely powerful Syrian army, a huge secret police force and countless militia on villages and suburbs where opposition democracy protesters had joined with armed rebels.
UNTIL now the glue holding Syria together has always been the national socialist creed of Ba’athism and a virulent hatred of Israel. But, in reality, the country is deeply split along ethnic and religious lines. Around 75 per cent of Syrians are Sunni Muslims, with the rest made up of either religious (ten per cent are Christians) or ethnic minorities, such as two million Kurds.
Then there is the sect that Assad and the ruling class come from, the Alawites, who constitute roughly 10 per cent of the nation’s 21 millionstrong population.
So while the opposition to Assad’s brutal regime is now all but unanimous, there is deep fear about what will come afterwards.
The minorities dread being ruled by Sunni Arabs, particularly if they adhere to the Muslim Brotherhood Islamist trend sweeping the region.
Already, the opposition is split between moderates and hardline Islamists who are being joined by Arab jihadists from as far away as Tunisia as well as Iraq.
And although these different opposition entities have plenty of smooth spokesmen who talk about the importance of ‘human rights’, in reality the West doesn’t really know who the Syrian rebels and their backers actually are. That is why CIA officers are carefully monitoring where the money flowing into the country — to be spent on arms filched from government arsenals — is coming from. For the truth is that Syria is a cockpit for proxy wars being waged by much bigger antagonists.
Assad is supported by Iran, which has long used Syria as a conduit to supply the terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon. By contrast, the Islamist Syrian opposition is backed by hardline Saudis. In other words, Syria has become the battleground in which Iran is fighting for regional hegemony against Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, Russia and China are also protecting Assad. The Russians in particular have sought to frustrate UN efforts to broker a ceasefire or to rein in Assad with sanctions. Yesterday they vetoed British-led attempts to impose sanctions on Assad in the UN Security Council.
Both countries feel they were conned by the West when a duty to protect Libyan civilians from Gaddafi mysteriously mutated into armed NATO support for the rebels and the murder of the Libyan dictator.
Syria provides Russia with its only Mediterranean naval base, at Tartous, and a key eavesdropping station at Latakia to rival the West’s use of Cyprus.
The Russians also fear that if Islamists ensconce themselves in Syria, then they will encourage their Muslim brethren in the Russian-ruled Caucasus, where the regime has had to fight bloody wars against hardliners.
The reason America is not taking on Russia and China over Syria is that in an election season, President Barack Obama needs another Middle Eastern war like a hole in the head.
There are no easy solutions to this terrifyingly volatile situation, although it is certain that we are now approaching some sort of denouement. If, as seems probable, President Assad goes, the country will, in all likelihood, disintegrate into two or more states along ethnic and sectarian lines.
Neither the minority Alawites nor Christians are going to be secure in a Syria run as a Sunni state by the Muslim Brotherhood. It is not inconceivable that the Alawites might try to form their own state on Syria’s north-east coast, where they come from.
In an ominous reprise of events in the former Yugoslavia, they already appear to be ethnically cleansing Sunnis from the area: militia groups have murdered entire villages there because of their religion. An Islamist Syria would have grave ramifications in the wider Middle East. It would embolden the Sunnis of Lebanon to mutiny against the over-mighty Hezbollah presence in their country, plunging Lebanon back into the chaos it has only recently escaped after 30 years of fighting.
Syrian Islamists might also encourage their brethren to rebel in Jordan, where the Muslim Brotherhood is strong among the large Palestinian minority. Jordan is one of the few stable countries left in the region, and is a long-term and reliable ally of the West.
Israel would also suffer, even though its Iranian foe would have lost a major strategic asset in Assad.
The minority Syrian Kurds might seek safety outside Syria by joining the quasi-autonomous Kurdish state that already exists in northern Iraq. An enlarged Kurdistan might decide to break free from Iraq, and this would inflame Turkey, which is no friend of the Kurds.
ALREADY in Egypt, we have seen how a Muslim Brotherhooddominated regime tolerates jihadist activity along Israel’s borders. Syria under a similar regime would likewise foster hatred of the Israelis, who might be tempted to retaliate.
And there is one further and deeply ominous factor: the Syrian army has vast stores of chemical munitions which U.S. satellites have spotted on the move.
While Assad is probably not stupid enough to use them himself — for he would overnight become a worldwide pariah whom even Russia’s President Putin could not support — there is a real risk of these weapons migrating to Hezbollah (with its 80,000 Iranian rockets trained on Israel) or the Sunni jihadists, who are flocking into Syria like carrion around a corpse.
That, in turn, raises the possibility of a Jordanian or Israeli incursion to secure them, and with it the risk of a much wider war.
No wonder that when it comes to Syria, the wisest heads are extremely cautious — and extremely worried. For any wrong move could see the country, if not the whole of the Middle East, engulfed in flames.
MICHAEL BURLEIGH is the author of Blood & Rage: A Cultural History Of Terrorism.