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Introduction:
The Syrian Civil War is a conflict that is complex and difficult to understand. However, to fully understand it, we must look back at how it began: After decades of authoritarian government, a Tunisian street vendor displayed his grievances of government corruption and poverty by setting himself on fire. This man’s desperate actions helped with commencing a revolutionary uprising called the Arab Spring. The Tunisian revolution was quick and successful, which quickly inspired many people across the region to begin their own revolutions, which includes Syria.
Syria is one of the countries that has seen the most bloodshed from the Arab Spring which is the result of many factors. The president of Syria is Bashar al-Assad, who went into power after the death of his father in 2000. Hafez al-Assad ruled for 30 years, he modernized the country but was a repressive leader. When Bashar al-Assad came into power, he signaled that he would be a different leader but that was not the case. For example: When the Syrian people began to dissent, Assad began to tightened the restrictions of free speech, isolated the economy and made it clear that democracy was not one of his goals. The Syrian army heightened the tensions between the Syrian people and the government because the army opened fire against demonstrators. The chances of a peaceful resolution dissipated and small groups of armed rebels began to take up arms against the Syrian army.
Many scholars speculate that the root cause of this conflict began after WWI, when the French and the British established the borders of the Middle Eastern countries. As a result, many different religions and ethnic groups were grouped in the same territories. The Alawites has had control of Syria for half a decade, but Alawites do not form the majority of the Syrian population. The Assad regimes heavily favored the Alawites in order to prevent extremist groups congesting the public space with opposing views.
President Asaad has been doing everything to stay in power; For example: Many western countries have accuse the president of Syria of using chemical weapons and indiscriminate bombing to subdue rebel groups. President Asaad claims that these rebel groups are terrorist groups like ISIS. ISIS has been one of the main actors in the conflict that tries to capitalize on the instability and increasing lawlessness in Syria (Alkaff 2015, 89). Fearon suggest in his article “Why Do Some Civil Wars Last so Much Longer than Others?” that states that are weak organizationally, financially, and political are more likely to experience insurgencies; Most of the criteria given by Fearon is true for the Syrian state because it allowed rise of groups like ISIS, who are taking advantage of the weakness of the Syrian government. Syria is weak organizationally and financially since it is fight multiple rebel groups that are trying to overthrow it and as a result it is using most of its resources.
Main Groups Involved
The main groups involved in the Syrian conflict are Asaad, ISIS, Free Syrian Army, Islamic Front, and Kurdish People’s Protection Units. There are other domestic factions in Syria but are not as significant or have had much impact in the conflict.
I will discuss who is President Bashar Al-Assad and what he stand for. Bashar was a medical student, who had no intentions of entering a political life. His father was actually grooming his brother Bassel as the future president. However, Bassel died in an automobile accident, which forced Bashar to fill in for his brother as the successor of Hafez. After his father died in 2000, he became elected president and led the Ba-ath party. Internationally Bashar faced the same issues that his father faced. Syria continue to have a conflict with Israel, tensions with Turkey and had minimal influence in the region. Syria’s only true ally in the Middle East was and continued to be Iran. By the fall of 2012, more than 5,000 civilians and 1,000 anti-regime forces had been killed by the Shabeeha, a Syrian militia group. Bashar successfully suppressed his opposition with the help of the Syrian military and intelligence agencies.
Technology was a big tool used by Bashar’s opposition but in order to regulate the public discourse. A as a counter-strategy, the Syrian government blocked some social media sites and passed a law making chat forums to be public to make it harder for his opposition to communicate without any repercussions. Any political opponent of the Asaad regime has been killed, tortured or imprisoned. President Bashar Al-Assad has always demonstrated his lack of empathy for human life in efforts to hold power. One of his most recent examples is the use of chemical weapons used indiscriminately against the Syrian people (Uludag 2015).
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is another main actor in the Syrian conflict. ISIS is a radical fundamentalist anti-Western Islamists, who believe that Muslims should follow Sharia law and condemn capitalistic greed and social liberty. To understand how ISIS became a prominent figure in the Syrian civil war, we must understand it origins. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which destabilized the Iraqi state and weakened it. The invasion caused Iraq to be a failed state. The insurgency of ISIS in Iraq and Syria is explained by Kalyvas’ article “The Ontology of 'Political Violence,'” which the main idea is states the breakdown of authority and subsequent anarchy occurs during a civil war causes a mix of motives between small and large groups. In Iraq particularly, the state anarchic conditions created the Insurgency of ISIS, which later proliferated into
Syria when the Arab springs began to destabilize the region. Suppression is one of the most notable reasons why ISIS originated, the Shia Iraqi government began suppressing the Sunni minority. This was seen as retaliation from the suppression of Shia’s during the Saddam Hussein regime, Hussein favored the Sunni’s. Another reason why ISIS became so prominent in Iraq is because of Iraq dilapidated infrastructure that makes it harder to access many regions that ISIS took control over. Now when focusing on the Syrian Civil war, scholars need to take into account as the war was prolonged, the more foreign actors began to take part in it. What was formerly known as the ISI became more domestic rather than international. Their goal still remained the same goal this rebel group had in Iraq, which was to have their own autonomous Islamic state. ISIS was a radical group that changed the dynamics of the Syrian conflict because their violence caused them to be at odds with every other faction fighting in the Syrian war.
We also have the Free Syrian army (FSA), an opposition force that has been operating since the beginning of the conflict. The FSA uses guerilla style tactics that defend civilian protesters and destabilize Damascus. The FSA conducts attacks to destroy any lines of communication or government assets. The FSA fighters seemed to comprised of local Syrian civilians, who want to take down the Assad regime. The FSA receives weapons from various sources, mainly from Turkey and Lebanon. FSA’s ideology is not quite clear to many but some scholar state that the FSA might be a Sunni rebels because of its large demographic in the group. The FSA has been criticized by allegedly having ties with al Qaeda. This results in Western powers being more careful in funding them or even supporting them at all. They have split into many smaller groups (Spyer 2012).
Islamic Front is a rebel group comprising of Islamic extremists because Assad freed many of these extremists, who were later recruited by the Islamic Front, to taint their image. They are similar to ISIS but are not affiliated with each other. The Islamic Front wants to put an end to Assad like many other rebel groups but also wants to replace his regime with Islamic rule. They are not reportedly aligned with ISIS due to doctrinal differences in their ideologies (Uludag 2015 & Abbas 2013).
The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) wants to establish autonomous Kurdish state but in Kurdish dominated areas. They want a system of democratic autonomy in the whole Middle East not only Syria. The US has recently allied with the YPG but it has done it with precaution. It also has the support of some FSA elements and Sunni Arabs in northern Syria (Uludag 2015).
Role of International Actors
I will continue talking about the foreign actors that have a presence in the Syrian conflict. This includes nation-states like Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and USA. These international powers has made the Syrian civil war multi-dimensional and most likely has prolonged the conflict in Syria. There is obvious reasons why this war has continued for such a long period in time. In In Le Billon’s “The Political Ecology of War,” the author tries to answer the question of how do resources increase the risk of armed conflict and weakening of political institutions. His argument takes a greed approach to the matter, the author believes that armed conflict is motivated by resource control, which is Oil and agriculture in the case of Syria. The author also argues that resources are integrated into financing of armed conflict. The author also states that the new political economy of war in resources increases the risk of armed conflict by weakening government. In addition to Le Billion’s argument some resources are coming from foreign backers, who aid either rebels or the Syrian government in the war.
When mapping the war in Syria, it is important to understand that it is located in different cultures; For example: Egyptian, Arab, Persian and Anatolia cultures. Throughout Syrian’s history it has been controlled or influenced by different powers. After WWI, Syria was divided by the French and British. Many ethnic and religious groups were integrated into the Syrian borders. This left 90% of the Syrian population being Arabs, 9% Kurds, and less than 1% being Armenian. Most of the citizens are muslim,70% are Sunni, 3% are Shia, and 13% are Alevis. The Alevis are dissented by the Sunni and Shia because they separated from the Shia. The President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad is an Alevis. The Syrian Alawite controlled government has caused relations with neighboring countries problematic, this can be demonstrated by the tense relationship between Syria and Turkey.
Turkey has shown strong support to the YPG, and has had a dispute over a dam in the Euphrates river. Turkey believes in the YPG obtaining autonomous rights for Kurdish people. The bigger conflict is the one between USA and Russia, this also includes western powers like France and the UK against eastern allies like China. Other International powers that take part in the Syrian civil war is the Saudi Arabian government and Iranian government, who never formally declared war against each other but have always supported opposing sides. They have had proxy warfare not only in Syria, but also in Iraq and Yemen. Like the USA and the Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia took part in civil wars to contain the other and gain influence in the region. Saudi Arabia has been an ally with the USA, while Iran has recently became allies with the Russians. Saudi Arabia’s Muslim population is mostly Sunni, while Iran’s population is mostly Shia. The Sunni-Shia split was not a reason for the rivalry, it was an important division. Iran operated covert actions in favor of Shia insurgencies, which alarmed the Saudi Arabian government. It appears Iran wants Assad to remain in power, while Saudi Arabia wants to topple the regime (Berman 2018).
The USA wants to topple the regime but wants the result to be a democratic regime, this is offered by the YPG. This goal was put on hold by the USA, after the rise of ISIS. This shifted the USA focus to directly fight ISIS and not indirectly topple the Assad regime. The USA has recently taken action against the Assad regime because it was found that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against civilians.
Russia is part of the conflict because it has a military bases in Syria. Russia is backing the Assad regime with the help of Iran to maintain this strategic base. Russia claims it is fighting against ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria. They have carried out airstrikes against these so called terrorist groups.
The international dimension of the Syrian civil war is complex and quite tedious to understand. Researchers must remain skeptical about the true actions and intentions of each state because there are underlying needs of international actors. I partly agree with Fearon and DeRouen, who posits that ethno-religious factors are irrelevant. However, the ethno-religious factors allows researchers to understand the dynamic of the war in Syria (Corstange 2018).
Dynamics of Civil War:
When speaking of the dynamics of the Syrian civil war, I will speak about what type of civil war it is, civil war tactics, the causes of this war, and how it is being funded. The Syrian conflict can be best summarized by Kalyvas, wars are complicated because they are the result of the convergence of local motives and supralocal imperatives. We clearly see that with this conflict, like I stated before, we see that the Syrians demanded change in the regime and the regime suppressed them. Now, it is more complicated because the war has been internationalized. We see a change into supralocal imperatives like nation-states forcing an ideology in Syria. We are no longer focusing on the grievances of the locals, now we are focusing on the fight for democratization that is funded by opposing sides.
There are many different groups, so stating that it fit the grievance or greed and state capacity models is insufficient to address the issue at hand. We must look at this conflict more at face value because it is filled with nuances that are unprecedented. In Collier and Hoeffler’s “Greed and Grievance in Civil Wars,” the authors main argument that the greed model is easily measured and explained through empirical evidence. However, the grievance model explains why conflict episodes start. This argument does not hold up to the Syrian conflict because there doesn’t seem to be any disputes over resources. I would not consider control over government a need for resources rather for political control and autonomy. The long term benefits could be these natural resources but I do not believe that this is the primary goal of many rebel groups, especially the ones who seek a democratic government. Syrians are oppressed and they are fatigued of authoritarian rule. The Syrian people clearly wanted to gain control of the Syrian government, but the Kurdish people seem to want a autonomy seeking war. The Kurdish population seems to feel entitled to the land because of their long history in the region. I am willing to consider the YPG a sons-of-the soil wars because it fits the general criteria, it has the ethnic component and the Kurdish want autonomy over a small part of Syria. Most readings indicate that the Kurdish do not intend to take over Syria rather divide up the land and make the region democratic.
The civil war tactics used by the rebels is clear, it is guerilla warfare. This is done to build solidarity against the regime, however, Assad has been clever at preventing his regime to be held accountable by allowing radicals to infiltrate these rebels groups. This facilitates the attacks against civilians because international powers like Russia and USA will indiscriminately bomb Syrians. This forges an anti-western ideology since the finger can be pointed at the US and other foreign powers. The guerilla warfare has proven successful in different conflicts but in this case it seems that it is failing because of the parties involved.
I argue that the Syrian civil war began because of political grievance but I agree with Kalyvas, especially that the Syrian civil wars is not black and white, there are not two opposite sides fighting against one another. It is complicated because they are the result of the convergence of local motives and supralocal imperatives. The actions on the ground are local and private issues, these local actors take advantage of the war to settle private disputes.
The answer of how everything is being funded is simple, we have the rebel groups that rely on foreign backers like the western powers to give it aid. We also have the Syrian government that has natural resources such as oil and foreign aid. The larger amount of resources has proven to be vital to the conflict since the government has more resources, they seemed to be winning. In Ross “What Do We Know About Natural Resources and Civil War?”, the author makes it clear that reliance on a resource causes instability in an economy. There are four examples given to the reader, for example: oil increases the likelihood of conflict, lootable commodities prolongs conflict but do not create them, agricultural economies rarely fund civil war, and primary commodities do not robustly associate with civil war. This is important to note because even if Ross is not talking about governments relying on natural resources, we see that Syrian government relying on these natural resources makes it stronger in keeping its power.
Predictions:
My predictions about the Syrian civil war are that it is going to be a military win for the government of Syria. I will like to discuss why I think that is the case, it is mainly because of the number of factions that are trying to topple the regime. If there was one clear opposition against Assad, it would be more helpful for foreign powers to fund it. However, there are many radical extremist groups trying to gain control in Syria, so this affects the unification and legitimacy of such group forming. I believe that it is a great effort for the US to back the YPG, who has many democratic principles that we have but considering the region that they are in, I believe that it would be difficult to survive (Koffman 2018). Assad will win because of his creative strategies for taking actions against his citizenry like allowing extremists to infiltrate rebel groups.
Another reason why it would be a military victory for Assad is because the USA domestic politics. I do not believe that the USA is capable of achieving peace in Syria because of our political culture. We have many political parties that are polarized that makes the US actions ineffective. The head of state in the United States also are to blame at the lack of a resolution because of their indecisiveness to be directly involved in the conflict. The heads of state are worried about their image rather than doing what is best for the country long-term. If the USA were to directly overthrow Assad, it would be dangerous to begin an international war with Russia but if we a solid plan to reestablish a democratic government in Syria, it would deter the Russians from attacking. I am assuming, however, I strongly believe that direct intervention is better than funding groups that we cannot predict their goals or even survival. I am also alluding to possibly having a carrots and sticks approach like in In Toft’s article “Ending Civil Wars”
Conclusion:
The Syrian civil war has been unprecedented, it is also very complex but we should not look to have a solid model that explain this civil war and others; Rather we should look at civil wars as abstract as possible and do not generalize each war to fit them in a model. The Syrian civil war has many actors, both domestics and international taking part in it and it makes it tedious to fully comprehend it. I suggest that we look at Kalyvas argument to help us understand the dynamics of this particular war because it allows us to understand where the motivation for the uprising came from. In addition, it allows us to understand why there is misconceptions about the war in Syria. Although, the uprising seems to have failed, it leaves room for another uprising to take place for similar reasons.
I will try to be optimistic about the result of such a disastrous conflict, but if I am being realistic I do not think that the Assad regime will come down any time soon. Evidence suggest that Assad will have a military victory because of the rebels lack of coherency. I do not see any signs of negotiations either because amount of harm each side has done to each other and clashing of ideologies. I possibly see the Kurds, the newest faction, gaining their own autonomous state because of western backers, but should be held accountable for every action they take to control their behavior. There should be direct US involvement in Syria to ensure that the outcome is to our best benefit.
Special guest writer:
Sergio Velasquez, Towson University
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sergio-velasquez-gonzalez-7b31b7173/
References:
Abbas, A. (2013). The National Islamic Front and the Politics of Education. Middle East Report, (172), 22-25.
Alkaff, Syed Huzaifah Bin Othman. "Syria." Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses 8, no. 1 (2015): 87-91.
Berman, Russell A. 2018. “Target Assad’s Enablers: The Syrian Civil War Teems with Outside Actors. American Strategy Must Reckon with Their Ambitions--and Check Them.” Hoover Digest: Research & Opinion on Public Policy, no. 3 (Summer): 96–100.
Corstange, Daniel, and Erin A. York. 2018. “Sectarian Framing in the Syrian Civil War.” American Journal of Political Science 62 (2): 441–55.
James D. Fearon. 2004. “Why Do Some Civil Wars Last so Much Longer than Others?” Journal of Peace Research, no. 3: 275
Kalyvas, Stathis N. "The Ontology of "Political Violence": Action and Identity in Civil Wars." Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 3 (2003): 475-94
Kofman, Michael, and Mathew Rojansky. 2018. “What Kind of Victory for Russia in Syria?” Military Review 98 (2): 6.
Spyer, Jonathan. "DEFYING A DICTATOR: Meet the Free Syrian Army." World Affairs 175, no. 1 (2012): 45-52.
Toft, Monica Duffy. 2010. “Ending Civil Wars: A Case for Rebel Victories?” International Security 34, 4: 7-36.
Uludag, Mekki. "Syrian Civil War: Important Players and Key Implications – A Factsheet." Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses 7, no. 7 (2015): 4-10.