One of the most positive aspects of the ‘Bush II wars’ — “to bring democracy” to West and Central Asia — is that popular uprisings for greater political representation are actually underway from Egypt to Tunisia, to Morocco and Jordan to lesser extents, in Turkey now, and of course Syria where the prolonged fighting has led to over 90,000 casualties.
This is not to give George Bush junior credit for the popular Arab uprisings against nepotistic monarchies that exploited their people for decades. Democracy in the “Greater Middle East” was simply a shroud for Bush and his cronies to exploit the natural resources of Arab lands and to reap the benefits of war: The profiteering of Cheney’s Halliburton is but one example.
However, after the smoke-screen rose and the bad guys had been deposed in Iraq and Afghanistan — supposedly for harbouring Al Qaida terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, and the dust settled a little after the destruction, only to be kicked up again and again subsequently — the realisation emerged that if they can do it we can.
The immediate difficulty for US and European foreign policy was that this realisation became most poignant not amongst their more secular allies, but rather from their old enemies and new opposition forces that were largely grass roots organisations that enjoyed growing popular support and that more often than not are religiously-oriented, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Over a decade after the Bush II wars began, the fall-out is the double-edged sword of democracy: The most basic conundrum for western democracy promotion is that they want to endorse popular representation of the people, but they do not want the people to elect western enemies. That is why Europe reversed its decision to approve Palestinian elections when Hamas won in 2006.
However, elementary social psychology teaches that once freedoms (and victories) have been granted (and acquired) they will not be relinquished without a fight. That is why Hamas fought so fiercely against their fellow Palestinians to maintain its new political power. That is also the reason why the Syrian opposition forces continue to fight on to maintain the gain they have made against Bashar Al Assad’s regime.
The other aspect of popular representation is territorial integrity: Why should you be governed by a minority when you are the majority (as occurs with the minority Allawite/Shiite sect over majority Sunnis in Syria)? Why should you be governed by either Sunnis or Shiites if you are Kurdish (as occurs in north-eastern Syria)?
In the immediate aftermath of the ‘Bush II wars’, there was a map that circulated widely, showing the complete fragmentation of the Middle East into exclusive ethnic enclaves — as if this were the dream of total democracy: For each ethnicity, confession or religious tendency to self-rule in territorial safe-havens rather than coexist in some compatible form within the same system.
Apart from the punctured territory of Palestine, Kurdistan was the other great loser as the European colonial enterprise after the First World War “carved up” the Middle East and so the Kurdish territories in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria would obviously go back to the Kurds. That was the most obvious red blob on the map, but national interests in foreign relations still do not permit Kurdistan to be.
Conversely, greater power politics will not allow for the fragmentation of Syria, as US pundits claim. Despite the reluctance to become involved (just as Bush II had preached US isolationism upon taking office), Obama has finally agreed to send small arms and ammunitions to the rebels in Syria to bring Al Assad to a negotiating table in Geneva, not to topple his regime.
With Iran and Hezbollah clearly behind Al Assad’s dictatorship (plus China and Russia in the UN Security Council), Obama the realist is adding a little fuel to the fire to say that Washington prefers a negotiated solution. The power struggle in Syria is perhaps the greatest confluence of foreign powers with vested interests across the region since the Cold War.
Obama’s caution signals that this is not a cavalier quest to bring democracy to Syria — a rather complex matter with a very dubious outcome, as demonstrated by the bloodbath in neighbouring Iraq. Obama’s acquiescence can be seen as a move to support the potential for democracy, but irrevocably it will be seen as escalation towards greater military involvement.
Abdul Rahman Al Haj, member of the Foreign Bureau of the Syrian National Council, claims: “This is absolutely not a civil war [...] the lines of the war are clearly between the regime and the people.” Seen as such, US involvement will clearly be in favour of greater popular representation without pushing for outright regime change with full military support as occurred in Libya.
Al Haj asserts that “ethnic enclaves will not slit Syria now”. And ultimately, the fragmentation of Syria is not in the interest of regional and global powers — the state structure with its imposed territorial demarcations (with or without a coherent nation inside those borders) still dictates the rules of the game for now, until a confederation of regions eventually emerges.
Stuart Reigeluth is founding editor of Revolve magazine.
