Middle East

China's chance to stem Syrian blood

2012-03-01Asia Times

BEIJING - In Syria, China decided to experiment with some new policy on the Middle East. It has vetoed a United Nations intervention in the country, something that in Libya opened the road to the toppling of the Muammar Gaddafi regime, and now it is looking for some creative solution. It is clear that the forces around Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are entrenched and do not want to give up decades of privileges, while the new forces represent something still very unclear. In this new situation, China could consider that Syria is a turning point in Middle Eastern policies.

What if the current issue in Syria is not about the different shades of Islam - Alawites or Sunnis - nor even about the different shades of democracy in the political system, no matter what some Americans may want to believe? What if the real matter is about the return of empires in the Middle East, the Persian and the Turkish ones? Then, as many times in past centuries, the Arabs are really the pawns in and prize of the competition.

In fact, in Syria are all the remnants of the very long local history, and the violent confrontations between forces supporting and opposing the government seem to come from that past. The Alawite, Druze, and Christians, making up some 25% of Syrias population, have been ruling over a country in which most of the population is made up of Sunnis. The Alawite, a rather secular group, were and are supported by the Iranians, who are mostly Shi'ite Muslims. For decades Syrians and Iranians had a common enemy, Iraq, and also a common ally, the Shi'ite minority living in Lebanon. Then, through a loose appeal to a vague religious cause, Tehran actually managed to stretch its influence up to the Mediterranean.

If, as now seems likely, the Alawite lose their quasi-monopoly on power in Syria, Damascus could well fall under the influence of Turkey, whose population is Sunni, like the majority of Syrians, and Lebanese Shi'ites would become more isolated from their Persian religious brethren. Turkey has been supporting the jasmine revolutions sweeping the Middle East. Still Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya are quite distant countries from Ankara, but Syria is just next-door. If it switches from receiving support from Iran to Turkey, Iran will become more isolated whereas Turkey will gain greater clout in the region. It would be hard then for Jordan or even Egypt to ignore Ankara's wishes, which could make it the true champion of the new Middle East, greatly contributing to reining in an Iran that is already under pressure for its nuclear program and that could be bombed by Israel or America.

The economy will still be in great pain. These countries have very weak production bases and have little or no oil. Turkey's economy is faring well, but some economists have severe reservations about it (see Recall notice for the Turkish model (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NA10Ak01.html), Asia Times Online, Jan 10, 2012). And certainly revolutions can change politics but rarely bring food to the table.

Cynically, one can claim that poor economic performance does not improve the political situation, but doesn't worsen it either. These places were poverty-stricken before, and they will carry on being poor - played by Iran before and by Turkey now. And Turkey, despite all the reservations some Westerners may have about the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is certainly far better than the Iran of the Ayatollahs.

Still, perhaps religion, as Graham Fuller claimed in his A World Without Islam, is not the main force in this game. The real issue is the old competition between the Persian and Turkish empires over who should rule the Middle East. For over a century, Turkey was expelled from the region, and the country looked more to the West to find its new identity. The search for this new identity endured a few setbacks since the Europeans were lukewarm on admitting Turkey into their midst - and because Turkey failed to shed a few of its old abuses of human rights, stop violations against the Kurdish minority in the east, or even address the history of the Armenian genocide.

Yet, in comparison with Syria or Egypt, Turkey is a paragon of democracy and could be a lighthouse of civilization and development in the far weaker political environment to the east. This could be, after all, a new swing of the old pendulum, bringing Turkey back into the region.

There is a difference, however: in the previous centuries Israel, a huge economic dynamo that could help to reignite regional development, was not a part of the region. Will Turkey and its new Arab allies carry on with their old anti-Jewish policies, or will they think to heal old wounds and create a new Middle East with Israel as an integral part of it? Despite recent flare-ups, Turkey for many years had a very good relationship with Israel. With the new Turkish interest in the region, could Arabs find a real geopolitical ally in Israel, one that could bring to the table the dynamism necessary to revive the regional economy? This could totally change the rules of the game in the Middle East. Religions and ideologies are instruments of a power game.

In this new environment, China, without baggage in the region, could help the birth of a new balance of power, playing some new creative card and helping to mediate between the many local interests. But at the end of the day the first step should be to stop violence and bloodshed in Syria. Here China has to be active, seeking new solutions, it can not just sit in the back and accept or refuse other people's choice.  (2012-03-01 Asia Times)

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