Syria conflict could ‘re-draw political map of region’

Dubai: With no decisive end in sight to the conflict in Syria, and the exodus of nearly one million Syrians, the fight could spread to the rest of the region and take other forms of instability, Arab political analysts warned. This week the UN warned that the number of refugees could triple by the end of the year, which could cause irrevocable damage in the region for decades to come.

Neighbouring countries have already started to feel the heat of the conflict’s spillover, analysts explained.

“The conflict in Syria has transformed, from my perspective, to a regional conflict, and it will carry a severe impact on neighbouring countries pending its outcome and on the situations in the surrounding countries themselves”, said Mousa Shteiwi, head of the Strategic Studies Centre at Jordan University. It could “re-draw the political map of the region in the next two years towards weakening some parties, and boosting the power of some others,” Shteiwi told Gulf News.

“As long as the conflict continues, the exodus of Syrian refugees to neighbouring countries will continue,” said Mo’atez Salama, from the Cairo-based Al Ahram Strategic Studies Centre.

“Refugees will put pressure on neighbouring countries — more than they can handle,” Salama told Gulf News.

“Over the course of time their desperation will turn to violence, which will not bode well with the host countries,” he added.

Already, the number of Syrians who have fled the conflict, mainly to Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq, has crossed the one million mark recently — around half them are children.

And “if this escalation goes on …We might have at the end of the year a much larger number of refugees, two or three times the present level,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, told journalists in Ankara. The UNHCR also says more than two million Syrians have been internally displaced.

Countries in the region are preparing to absorb the ramifications of a military solution and the collapse of Bashar Al Assad’s regime, analysts noted. Turkey is getting ready for the worst by opening dialogue channels with the Kurds, who could be influenced by Syrian Kurds across the border, they added. Jordan, which has already received economic hits by the Syrian conflict, is expected to be among the least affected politically by the developments in their northern neighbour, analysts explained.

In Iraq, the Sunnis could rise against a government that is supported by both Syria and Iraq and oppresses them.

While the possibility of a civil war is not ruled out in Iraq, in the case of the regime being forced out in Syria, “Lebanon will be more fragmented,” said Mahjoub Zweiri, a political science professor at Doha University.

“Whether the Syrian regime collapses or reaches a political agreement [with opponents], the entity that is known as Syria will be open, in the next ten years, for massive tension, several internal fragmentations and interference from neighbouring countries,” said Salama.

“The scene is not going to be peaceful as the opposition or the regime portrays it,” he added. “It will be a conflicting scene.”