The American “Stratfor” website stated that with the increasing number of Arab countries reviving relations with the Syrian government after a decade of civil war and failed attempts to overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and Syria slowly emerging from isolation, Assad’s success in dealing with the popular uprising in his country may be It turns out that force is a very viable option for suppressing popular threats to regime control in the Middle East.
The site’s analyst for the Middle East and North Africa Ryan Paul explained in article For him, it is only a matter of time before any other country in the region uses Syria’s example when confronting the inevitable public insurgency to come in a region beset by long-standing economic inequality, sectarian strife, authoritarianism, deep corruption, and ineffective governance.
The American role
The writer pointed out that all the countries that have normalized with the Syrian regime are close allies of the United States, and are usually wary of angering Washington and provoking sanctions, but it seems that they have calculated that Washington does not want to cause a conflict with its regional partners over Syria, a country in which Washington is not interested in improving overall governance, focusing instead primarily on security threats in its northeast.
The calculations of the normalizing countries have so far held, Paul says, as the United States has not yet indicated any intention to impose sanctions in response to this normalization. Indeed, even Washington appears to be finding exceptions in its strategy of isolation in Syria, as it is now seeking to restart the long-closed Arab Gas Pipeline, which runs from the Egyptian city of Arish to the Syrian city of Homs.
will become a model
He added that dissolving Syria’s isolation is not the first time that power is rewarded in the region, but rather adds to the direction in which rule in the Middle East and North Africa will remain by the sword.
For leaders in the region, he said, Assad’s success in retaining power over the past decade also sets a model for how to survive even the worst-case scenario of an all-out popular uprising.
It is likely that both state and non-state actors will see something in the Syrian example that may be useful to them in the future. In Lebanon, for example, Hezbollah has refrained from using its considerable power to reshape politics in its favour, wary of a return to civil war. But with the Syrian conflict emerging as a model, Hezbollah may consider the use of force more worthwhile to secure its domestic strength and legitimacy amid Lebanon’s ongoing economic and social crises.
In Iraq, Iranian-backed militias will be encouraged to maintain the violent tactics they have already used to break up protests directed against them, and perhaps return to the ethnic cleansing last seen in Iraq during the height of the sectarian conflict in 2006-2007, after seeing Assad’s success in using such These tactics to maintain control.
In Iran, the authorities will be willing to resort to more scorched-earth tactics, especially against its Arab population, to resolutely suppress the challenges to their rule. In addition, the civil war in Syria will validate Iran’s hard-line foreign policy, and herald more military interventions abroad in favor of Tehran’s ideological allies.