Turkey announced today that Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu held his first official meeting with the Syrian opposition. Turkish and Arab League efforts to engineer a peaceful resolution to the uprising have so far failed, while Russian and Chinese resistance at the UN has constrained Western efforts to coordinate an international response. The struggle between the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and an increasingly bold opposition movement will largely be decided by domestic factors. The government is committed to a military solution, but the opposition remains entrenched. With neither side gaining the upper hand, the risk of civil war is mounting.
Impact
- The regime will survive for the time being, depending on key security units and support from Iran.
- Yet the uprising will become increasingly militarised as the crackdown continues.
- A sectarian conflict would have a serious impact on regional stability, particularly in neighbouring Iraq and Lebanon.
- If the economic situation deteriorates significantly, the largely quiescent populations of Damascus and Aleppo may rise up.
What next
With the opposition lacking unity and organisation on the ground, the development of Syria's crisis will most likely be determined by the strategies adopted by the regime. If it pursues its military solution and sectarian rhetoric, the current stalemate is likely to deteriorate into civil war. The conflict would first be confined to the coastal and central regions, but later spread to the urban centres of Damascus and Aleppo. Were this to happen, the regime's warnings of a sectarian uprising will create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Analysis
An escalation of violence between the regime and opposition is now probable, but the Assad regime is still far from the brink of collapse. The conflict's outcome will be decided by developments in a number of key areas.
Sectarianism
Despite its strong national identity, Syria remains vulnerable to conflict among its religious and ethnic groups. The Alawi minority has for decades dominated the state security, military and economic elites, leaving the Sunni majority feeling marginalised and excluded from the benefits of recent economic liberalisation. As Friday prayers provide the only opportunity for public assembly, protests have inevitably acquired a Sunni religious colour.
Protesters are mostly Sunni and the regime has consequently portrayed the uprising as driven by religious extremism. State propaganda fuels minority fears of an Islamic revolution. As a result, sectarian tensions have become higher than ever before in the mixed coastal and central regions.
An Islamic takeover is improbable. The Muslim Brotherhood has no support or organisation on the ground. However, the violence is inflaming sectarian tendencies and inter-communal conflict is now looking possible in some areas.
Militarisation
Defections of soldiers ordered to fire on civilian populations increased in the summer. Some opposition activists encouraged these defections to be made collectively rather than individually, so that whole units would switch sides along with their weapons. As a result, the army has been engaged in protracted confrontations against armed elements in central towns such as Homs, Talbiseh and Rastan.
The opposition is divided on the wisdom of armed revolution. The traditional intellectual leadership, along with most passive supporters of the revolt, argue that the uprising would risk losing international support and plunge the country into chaos. Younger grassroots activists argue that an armed uprising is justifiable in response to the estimated 3,000 deaths, the extensive use of torture by the security forces, and tens of thousands of arrests.
The continuing deployment of the army against protestors will lead to more defections, contributing to the conflict's militarisation.
Economic strains
The collapse of foreign tourism, the severing of international banking connections, and EU sanctions on oil exports are contributing to a sense of imminent economic crisis.
The government has declared it has sufficient foreign currency reserves to weather the storm, but erratic policy announcements suggest that this confidence is misplaced: not only has the planned expenditure for 2012 been suddenly increased by 59%, but a hastily considered ban on imported luxury goods was imposed in late September and abruptly reversed several days later.
Business confidence has also been damaged by EU sanctions on several leading entrepreneurs. These well-targeted sanctions are intended to divide the business elite from the political regime -- and reports from Damascus suggest they are working. If the regime loses the support of the business community, this could be the spark for economic crisis as the elite withdraws investments from local business, or even halts activity altogether.
Political reform
Assad has announced political reforms intended to win back support. The government has abolished Article 8 of the constitution that effectively guarantees the Ba'ath Party's monopoly over state institutions. It is also studying a new law on forming new political parties -- possibly in time for elections in March 2012. A series of national dialogue meetings have been held across the country to discuss how to move forward.
Even if these measures are implemented, they will be insufficient to convince protesters that the regime is serious about reform. Critics point out that a new parties law has been mooted since the last Ba'ath Party conference in 2005. The decades-old State of Emergency that granted sweeping legal powers to the security agencies was cancelled in April, but failed to improve those agencies' conduct. Even individuals previously sympathetic to the government's agenda for change are no longer persuaded that these reforms are substantial.
Damascus and Aleppo
Syria's two largest cities have so far been spared major unrest. In Damascus, protests are mostly confined to the Midan quarter on Fridays. Other quarters of the city see occasional, fast-moving 'flash mob' protests that rapidly disperse. Although the poorer suburbs and satellite towns have been periodically occupied by protesters, central Damascus remains largely insulated from the uprising. Despite occasional demonstrations, Aleppo, too, remains mostly quiescent.
The Local Coordination Committees -- the grassroots opposition -- have been keen for Damascenes to rise up, but waves of mass arrests in July and August seem to have decimated the capital's activist community. The regime has arguably lost the support of many Damascenes, but this silent majority is unlikely to come out in opposition unless their neighbourhoods undergo the same kind of military occupation and repression that occurred in the suburbs. If Damascus were to change sides, this would seriously -- but not fatally -- undermine the stability of the Assad regime.
Regime stability
Despite periodic rumours of secret coups, there is no evidence of division or instability within the upper echelons of the regime. The president's brother, Maher al-Assad, commander of the Republican Guard and the notorious Fourth Armoured Division, is generally assumed to have been responsible for reasserting the authority of hardliners in the security apparatus over pro-reform elements in the government. Bashar al-Assad's inconsistent and indecisive public performances have given the impression that he has no political vision independent of that of vested interests in the regime.
