Another View On Syria

I am not stating that the conflict in Syria will necessarily be the beginning of a major war. But this is very reminiscent of the situation a century ago, prior to the beginning of the First World War. The Balkans were unstable. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire visited Serbia. A nineteen-year-old anarchist appeared and shot him. The empire was enraged. Russia was bound by treaty to Serbia, Germany was allied to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, France was allied to Russia. Before anyone realized what was happening, the world was engaged in the greatest conflict that it had yet seen.

Today, Russia, Iran and, Hezbollah are allied to the Government of Bashar Assad. Most of the other world powers and Sunni Moslem nations favor (favour) the rebels who are trying to overthrow him, although many in the west are not quite comfortable with actually giving weapons to the rebels.

My view is that neither the rebels or Bashar Assad is actually the problem. The real problem lies with Syria itself, or rather it's boundaries. The country, like so many others in the region was put together after the First World War from the territories of the former Ottoman Empire, which was in that war on the side of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany.

Boundaries can be drawn to create nations that are convenient, but have a way of being an invitation to future trouble. On this blog is a posting titled "A Few Words About Libya", I wrote it just after Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011.

If you review that posting, you will see what I mean here. Libya, like Syria, was an artificial country that was put together from the remnants of empires. Both countries are diverse, including people who would not ordinarily be a part of the same country. Libya is a vast country with two large cities, which are opposing power centers on opposite sides of the country. The old king whom Gaddafi overthrew in 1969 was from the Benghazi (eastern) side of Libya. Gaddafi was from the Tripoli (western) side of Libya. The Arab Spring movement which displaced Gaddafi began in Benghazi, and brought power back to that side of the country.

The trouble is that, while the world seems to want to be rid of dictators, a strong leader is needed to hold such a country together. Now that Gaddafi is gone, the various militias that worked together to overthrow him do not feel like giving up their armaments and the country has become a dangerous place. It is a long way from the democracy which was envisioned, with a deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi in 2012.

Such militias, both in Libya and among the rebels in Syria, are a reflection of the fact that it is the tribe that is traditionally the fundamental unit of society in this region, not the artificial nations that were created. This is why strong leaders are required to hold these nations together. We have a way of wanting to eliminate dictators without considering what will happen once we do. We hope for democracy, but are as least as likely to get dangerous chaos.

This phenomenon of nations which probably should never have existed, and the wars when they eventually come apart, can be seen across the world. Pakistan was partitioned from India into two sections on opposite sides of India, known as East and West Pakistan. But the two were far apart, with different people and completely different languages. The breaking point was the devastating 1970 typhoon in the Bay of Bengal, with East Pakistanis upset at the government response from the western side of the country and declaring independence as the nation of Bangladesh with the bloody war that followed.

Then there was Yugoslavia, put together from the remnants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the First World War and coming apart in a series of wars in the 1990s after the Communism that was holding it together disintegrated. Czechoslovakia was created in the same way and around the same time, but came apart without any violence (The Velvet Divorce).

Egypt, in contrast, has painfully made it's way to a new government after the overthrow of Mubarak in 2011, but the difference is that Egypt is a much more homogenous country, with the exception of it's Coptic Christian minority, and was not artificially created.

Africa is also a place where the tribe is the traditional unit of society but where artificial nations have been created, although there have been large nations in the past particularly in west Africa. Should it be a surprise that it is also a continent known for it's dictators, since strong leaders are a necessity for holding such artificial countries together?

Take the most populous nation on the continent, Nigeria, for example. The population is composed of three major groups; the Hausa, the Igbo and, the Yoruba. There was a civil was in the 1960s, known as the Biafran War, and a religious division between Christian and Moslem further divides the country. Nigeria is known for it's dictators simply because strong leaders are all that can hold the country together.

As I have long written, it is folly to think that all that is necessary is to take out a dictator and democracy will automatically bloom just as flowers can grow when the weeds are removed. A nation must undergo an extended period of what I refer to as "The Strong Leader Binding Phase" before it is ready to be a democracy. European countries spent a long time under the rule of powerful kings before they could be the democracies that they are today.

What about Iraq? The truth is that it is as artificial as any nation, a cobbling together of a majority of Shiite Moslems with Sunni Moslems and Kurds in the north, who long sought a country of their own. Saddam Hussein was reviled as a dictator, but what else could hold this country together? After Saddam was removed, the country came close to civil war in 2006-07 and is moving back in that direction now with lethal bombings on an almost daily basis. I recall one news article in which an Iraqi stated that "Iraq needs another Saddam".

The United States underwent it's strong leader binding phase under English kings prior to gaining independence. My theory is that the U.S. Civil War of 1861-65 came about primarily because the strong leader binding phase had been prematurely interrupted by the Revolutionary War, which brought independence.

So, you can see that we cannot just say that all we have to do is to remove Bashar Assad and then democracy will bloom, or at least it will be better than it was before. Aside from the attachment of Iran, Russia and Hezbollah to Assad, Syria is also a diverse country with it's leader being from the Alawite Shiite minority. It requires a strong leader to hold Syria together. His father, Hafez Assad , was a member of the relatively secular and socialist Baath Party and shed a lot of blood in the 1982 battle against the Moslem Brotherhood uprising.

If he were not leading Syria, with it's boundaries being as they are, another strong leader would be required to hold the country together. When there is a diverse majority and minority together within a country, it seems to be more stable if the leader is from the minority. This is true of both Assad and of Saddam Hussein, who was a Sunni in a country with a majority Shiite population.