Lately we have been hearing about the ‘game-changer’ in context of Syria. If President Bashar Al Assad, who has crossed many red lines, used chemical weapons — which he has done — it will be a “game-changer” warned US President Barack Obama, who has nevertheless stayed out of the Syrian mayhem.

Al Assad. along with his benefactor Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, a surrogate of Iran, also talked about a game-changer, in which Hezbollah receives game-changing weapons from Al Assad. While this talk of game changing is going back and forth, the whole Middle East is treading precariously towards a cliff.

It seems that the Middle East is suffering from a lack of US leadership. There are concerns and worries in many quarters — mainly by US allies — about the visible lack of will and absence of US leadership when it comes to dealing with the crises, challenges and mayhem in the region. The Obama administration is dithering on the peace process, Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons and Syria.

Syria is the most urgent issue. The Obama administration’s lack of resolve early in its second term cannot be overlooked. The Obama doctrine, his personal beliefs and convictions seem to lull him into a passivity that is becoming detrimental to the US and its regional allies. Al Assad crossed numerous red lines on Obama’s watch, but the US president and the leader of the free world wanted more hard evidence that such a thing had happened. Maybe George W. Bush’s Iraq debacle of invading the country under the pretext of ridding it of Saddam Hussain’s weapons of mass destruction still resonates in Obama’s psyche, but that is no reason to dither on Syria.

Letting the Middle East sink into an abyss because of inaction is not sound policy. The Syrian crisis is spiralling out of control and is threatening to turn into a region-wide sectarian strife. It is exhibiting itself in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. In Syria, it is pitting the thuggery of the minority Alawites against the majority Sunnis.

The latest signs of the deepening sectarian fighting and cleansing was evident in the gruesome massacres by the Syrian forces and their Alwaites thugs know as Shabiha in the coastal areas of Bayda and Baniyas in Tartus province.

Hundreds of innocent Sunni civilians — many of them women and children — were slaughtered like sheep, butchered, bludgeoned and burnt to death in what seems to be a clear attempt at cleansing the region from Sunnis to pave the way for the establishment of the Alawite enclave or state, if all else fails. But such actions are brewing a Sunni-Shiite conflict in the wider Middle East.

Hezbollah has upped the ante and has become a regional militia doing Iran’s bidding to shore up the beleaguered Al Assad regime. On the other hand Sunni and Salafist clerics have been issuing fatwas in support of fighting the Syrian regime.

Lebanon represents the faultline in this drama. Sunni Lebanese fighters are fighting with the Free Syrian Army and other rebels headed by the Jabhat Al Nusra, while Shiite Lebanese Hezbollah cadres are supporting the Al Assad regime. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has even admitted that he is fighting in Syria, Palestine and occupied Jerusalem.

In a defiant speech last week following Israel’s air strike inside Damascus to reportedly stop Al Assad’s shipment of Iranian missiles bound to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Nasrallah declared: “We are ready to receive any game-changing weapons and we’re competent to possess and protect such type of weapons and we will use them to defend our people ...”

The most peculiar part of his speech was his pledge to aid “the Syrian popular resistance” in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights! The question is what kind of a game-changing weapon is he talking about as a strategic calculus by Al Assad to retaliate against Israel? Clearly, what Nasrallah is saying is not rhetoric and is pushing the region — along with Israel’s bellicosity — into the abyss.

The Israeli strikes inside Damascus, the most intense and the third since January, resonated in the region and threatened to widen the Syrian conflict, ratchet up the tension which is threatening to evolve into a regional war with dangerous consequences. Furthermore, it put the Obama administration in a bind and forced the analogy that while Israel acts forcefully when its red line is being crossed, the US dithers and rethinks, when red lines set by Obama are being violated. Such behaviour worries allies and emboldens enemies and foes.

Conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin quoted by Simon Tisdale of the Guardian captured the mood, “When Israel draws a red line, it means it. Not only the Israeli action contrast with the US government’s fecklessness, but it also raises the issue of whether the US prefers Israel to police the Middle East. It is unbecoming for a superpower to let little Israel take on the Iranian surrogates. It will likely unnerve our allies elsewhere and embolden foes in other parts of the world.”

The Obama administration’s lack of resolve is something, which I highlighted in my last column titled ‘Syria President Bashar Al Assad has crossed enough red lines’ in which I argued, “The Obama administration and the international community’s lack of resolve is emboldening the Syrian regime to continue inflicting atrocities against its people.” I concluded that column by asking, “The question now is what kind of game-changer Al Assad, his backers, foes and more importantly, his people are to expect.”

Now we are on the brink of the abyss and stakes are high. It seems that the game changer will be imposed by Al Assad and Nasrallah before it is exacted by the Obama administration and the international community.

When will the US and the international community muster enough guts and courage to call a spade a spade. The British, French, the Qataris and lately the Turks have all accused Al Assad of deploying chemical weapons. Such a grim development should have added urgency to intervene to punish those who violated the redline which would lead to a game changing approach.

At times of adversity there is a need for leadership to lead and not to stay low. We are all at fault for not doing more. May I remind all of us and especially those who are capable, of what Dante Alighieri said, “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”

 

Professor Abdullah Al Shayji is the chairman of the political science department, Kuwait University. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/docshayji