The hardening of the Middle-East’s battle lines
In the wholesale shift from ‘legacy media’, most of what is known about is going on in Syria comes from social media – most ‘legacy’ news concentrates on the ‘human interest’ of suffering and much less on the ‘bigger picture’. But, as has been widely noted, the shift to online sources of information has meant that many people cherry pick information that suits their prior interests or confirms existing prejudices or preferences.
Such was the case, recently, went one online commentator noted that the final stages of the evacuation of eastern Aleppo was positive as those poor, beleaguered survivors could at least have a happy Christmas. This spirit of the season was undermined, however, by Aleppo being recognized by the Islamic Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) as the capital of Islamic culture.
Once Aleppo was regarded as a city of tolerance and persecuted Christians from the region often came here for shelter. Of Aleppo’s pre-war population, about 12 per cent were varieties of Christian, mostly in western Aleppo.
Few are now left. Merry Christmas indeed.
The Assad regime’s victory in Aleppo has been countered, to a small extent, by rebel forces consolidating their position in Idlib, about 50 or so kilometres to the southwest. This is likely to be the site of the next major battle, also subject to intensive Russian air attacks and ground forces made up of Syrian regulars, Hezbollah militias and Iranian ‘volunteers’.
Having been diplomatically and then strategically outwitted by Russia and since drawing down on its limited support for anti-regime forces, the US is effectively abandoning Syria to Russian proxy control. By contrast, the US, its somewhat still feeble government allies and increasingly powerful Kurdish forces in neighboring Iraq are slowly shutting down Islamic State forces.
The earlier spectre of an all-conquering Islamic state is now receding, with even the Kurds controlling more territory across Iraq and Syria than does IS. The inevitable victories in Syria and Iraq does not imply, however, a beginning to an end of the conflict in the Middle East.
Turkey’s assertive President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has declared war on Kurdish separatists and has little tolerance for an independent Kurdish state spanning norther Syria and northern Iraq on Turkey’s southern border. Iran, similarly, explicitly intends to be a major player in the region’s future.
Spokesman for Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards, General Hossein Salami, told the official Iranian news agency that: ‘The victory in Aleppo will pave the way for liberating Bahrain’. Bahrain has a majority Shia populated but is ruled by a Sunni royal family, against which there was a failed uprising in 2011.
Salami added that, following the fall of Aleppo, Iran intends to expand its intervention to also include Yemen on Saudi Arabia’s southern flank and Mosul in northern Iraq. Salami’s comments were in response to by UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s stated opposition to Iranian influence in Gulf states.
Countering this assertion, the United States has gone soft on arms restrictions to Saudi Arabia for its allegedly indiscriminate attacks on Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. It is the US intention of maintaining an allied regional counter-balance to Iran.
As with these other flash points, the war in Syria has almost since its inception been one by proxy, broadly along lines of religious affiliation or alliance. Syria’s Asad family are Alawis, a Shi’ite sect, with Sunni Islam being the common denominator among its otherwise fractured opposition.
It has been the fracturing of the opposition, between jihadi forces aligned with the Saudis and other Gulf states, northern ethnic groups linked to Turkey, ‘moderates’ with the US and, independently, Islamic State, that has been its greatest weakness.
Yemen and Bahrain are similarly fractured along Sunni-Shia lines. Mosul is not a Shit’ite city, but is in the process of being recaptured from IS by, among others, pro-Iranian Shia militias.
In Syria, countered by a strategic and organizational unity between the Syrian regime, Iran, Russia and Hezbollah, the anti-Assad groups and their strongholds will, as the war continues, be picked off one by one. However, with around 70 per cent or more of Syria’s population being aligned against the regime, a united future for the country can only be assured by reintroducing the type of repression which gave rise to the current civil war.
Similarly, the Salafist Sunni rhetoric originating in Saudi Arabia has become the battle-cry for other Sunni Salafis, be they IS or Al Nusra/Al Sham. This has ensured that the regional divisions will continue to be played out along clear sectarian lines.
The lines on the map of the Middle East which demarcate countries are, as a colonial construct, entirely artificial. But the region’s more recent identification along distinct sectarian lines is very much more real.