WASHINGTON – The Obama administration has expressed interest in freeing the Syrian people from President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, but experts say encouraging a coup isn’t the smartest thing to do.
U.S. intelligence findings regarding the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons led to President Barack Obama’s decision to provide “non-lethal assistance to the civilian opposition” and to expand U.S. support of the Supreme Military Council in Syria, said Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes in a June 13 White House statement.
“Post-Assad Syria is not anything to look forward to,” though, said New America Foundation research fellow Barack Barfi.
If Assad’s government falls, “we’re going to see a Somalification of the country, broken up into regional warlords that control small areas of territory” in which any type of political opposition will be unable to spread its rule beyond its immediate territory, said Barfi, who’s worked on the Middle East for over a decade and covered the Syrian conflict for publications including The Atlantic and the International Herald Tribune.
Barfi also said there could be a proliferation of Jihadist organizations and prolonged fighting if an overthrow is successful.
Paul Sullivan, professor of economics at National Defense University, agreed with the warlord theory, calling Syria “a shattered state, shattered economy and shattered society.”
“This has been allowed to go on so long it will likely be close to impossible to get Syria back to a stable and prosperous society within even decades,” Sullivan wrote in an email.
However, Sullivan said that if Assad was succeeding by a dictator from his own party, “then the war will continue as it is.”
Either way, though, Sullivan called a post-al-Assad Syria “a VUCA situation: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.”
Risks of insurgency
When asked to identify the biggest insurgency threats in the case of a government overthrow, Barfi cited al-Qaida offshoot organization Jabhat al-Nusra and pro-Islamist-state organization Ahrar al-Sham.
Eliot Higgins, a British blogger who has written extensively on the Syrian conflict under the pseudonym “Brown Moses,” added one addition to the list: the Islamic State of Iraq, which the National Counterterrorism Center’s website says is another name for Al-Qa’ida in Iraq.
Higgins says the threat stems from these groups stems from their possession of “heavy weapons, including tanks and artillery.” He said that a takeover by the (anti-Assad and pro-democracy umbrella organization) Syrian National Council– was possible, but relatively unlikely, due to a lack of support from anti-Western rebel groups. Still, though, he said that if such a takeover succeeded, smaller groups outside of the Free Syrian Army were also likely to rebel due to the government’s “largely unrepresentative” nature.
Sullivan, who said an insurgency following an overthrow of Assad is 100% likely, took a different approach to pinpointing potential insurgents.
Rather than looking at current power players, Sullivan emphasized the risk posed by “whatever groups that will feel left out in the initial ‘new Syria,’” such as “the Alawite, some Kurdish groups” and extremist groups looking to bring a more fundamentalist brand of Islam to Syria.
Both Barfi and Sullivan also pointed out the potential for Hezbollah to try to capitalize off of the instability in the country in the wake of al-Assad’s potential departure in the case of a warlord system. According to Sullivan, though, attempts by the group and/or Iran “to try to build influence in the country” are unlikely to succeed.
The outlook
When asked about the merits of the U.S. potentially backing an overthrow of the al-Assad regime, Barfi took a stern stance against it.
“The United States needs to actively work to deny al-Qaida a new safe haven in Syria which is strategically located in the crossroads of the Arab world,” Barfi said.
But Higgins disagreed, saying that “the international community has left it too late” for “a net positive outcome” to be achieved by any interventions in Syria.
Further, he wrote, waiting any longer threatens to make the conflict longer and more severe in nearby countries.
Sullivan agreed, saying that “any intervention” on the part of the United States “will likely be too little, and badly done,” and that any U.S.-supported individuals or groups working towards interventionist aims in Syria “will likely have to face the wrath of anti-American sentiment.”
Higgins concluded by saying that, in the Syria-U.S. dialogue, there are no easy answers.
“It comes down to making the least bad choice in an extremely complex situation,” Higgins wrote. “It’s up to America and it’s [sic] allies to decide what that is.”
