Echos of the Cold War in the Middle East
First it was a burning of a fruit vendor. Then it became the Arab Spring which morphed into what some called the Arab Firestorm. While the reversal of regimes in Egypt and Tunisia proved almost too easy - like flicking a fat and lazy bee off the flower on which it's been sucking for too long - the overall transition process in the region has proven far from smooth.
In Libya, the "Western powers" had to intervene, at the insistence of the French who were so keen to hide Qaddafi's donations to the leading political party that they bombed some civilian targets. Unlike the LSE, the French found refunding donations to the political campaign of the former president back to the Libyans a little tricky. Today, news from Libya are a confusing hodgepot of reversal to sharia law, election of a relatively liberal party, all amidst random shootings and tribal politics.
In Bahrain, the Saudis used the widely known Jonny Walker bridge to provide military support to "calm" things down. They did so on Thursday so as to not interrupt the flow of Saudis going to get drunk in Bahrain on Friday. Everyone was made to understand that this time, the Arab Spring had gone too far into the heartland of oil monarchies. No one was particularly interested in supporting those Shias who might be oppressed in Bahrain, but who are still as Shia as those Ayatollahs and a certain Party of God that they support in Lebanon.
By the time the Syrian soup starting to boil over, all the cooks in the kitchen had their hands full elsewhere. Besides, all conceded that Syria represents a more difficult nut to crack. At first, many were reluctant to believe that what was going on in Syria was really going on. For one, visitors to Damascus were shielded from events elsewhere in the country. Pundits wondered if little Bashar could really be following the steps of the big Hafez? Could he really perpetrate another Hama?
On the surface of it, the well-spoken Bashar with his Luboutin-outfitted wife does not seem to fit the bill of a ruthless murder. And yet, regardless of whether it's him or his brother behind what has become the bloodiest repression in the Middle East, this reality is no longer disputed by anyone except for the "rais". The familiar statement: "it's not me, it's the foreign elements" no longer sticks. Virtually the only excuse the Syrian regime has not pulled out of the hat yet is Al Qaida.
Bashar can clearly bleed the longest, at least in the foreseeable future. He has proven that much. Kofi Annan has flown in and out with no result whatsoever. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton are probably next in line to propose a three-step solution to the conflict from the comfort of a five star hotel in the nearby Beirut. In the meantime, while the international community wines and pleads with Bashar, Russia and China are playing power games.
The Chinese see human rights as an unnecessary luxury and anyways, lacking respect for human dignity domestically, they do not feel in position to teach others any lessons. That's not very helpful but at least humble. An admission of their own problems of a sorts, backed up by the hope that they can offload some more cheap souvenirs made in China and decorated in Syria to sell as authentic to unsuspected tourists.
Russia's position on Syria is not driven by the same considerations. Of course, having just orchestrated an electoral victory for Putin in the most obvious fashion, it is not exactly keen on supporting democracy anywhere. Revenues from arms sales to Syria do not help convince its leadership otherwise, but let us not be naive, that is not the real reason for unconditional Russian support of Syria.
And unconditional it is. So much so that Russians would risk having their men shoot down a Turkish warplane, for which Assad Junior had promptly apologized along the lines of: "oops, we thought it was Israeli"! How comforting. 11 Russian warships are now heading in the direction of Syria, and the printing of Syrian currency is now also done by the Russians. At the same time, foreign Minister Lavrov stages a farce of receiving Syrian opposition in Moscow to discuss the unfolding situation in the hope of bringing it "to a more realistic and constructive positions". Constructive for Bashar, he seems to have forgotten to complete his sentence.
And yet, it's not that the Russians have such complicity with the Syrians. After all, the level of Russian respect for Muslims in general and for Arabs in particular has never been particularly high and can be illustrated by their treatment of their former Central Asian republics. Russia has re-entered the Middle East like a possessive lover wishes to re-claim his ex-girlfriend. It was a major superpower that played in the region through various proxy agents during the Cold War. Putin wants to show that those days are not over. The US might decide to bomb Iraq, invade Afghanistan, support Bahrain, but Russia can still pour the salt on the wound that hurts the most. Checkmate.
