DANIEL LEVY: Based in Beirut, Carnegie poached Lina from Stanford University to take up this new position. Carnegie does a lot of fabulous work on the region and certainly has done that on the Syria question, and I'm fascinated on your take of things.
LINA KHATIB: Well, first of all, thanks to the three organizers for inviting me to be here today. What I’d like to talk about is the issue of power transition or political transition in Syria, starting with what would happen if nothing changes as things stand and then talking about potential opportunities.
If nothing changes – meaning if the conflict is just left to continue as is right now with no political or military tipping of balance one way or another – the dominant narrative is “the regime will prevail, because it is winning militarily as things stand, and Assad will just be re-elected, and he will be in power indefinitely.” I think this is very simplistic and I think – and this is something I’ve written about elsewhere – Assad has made a number of key strategic mistakes in the way he’s handled the conflict in his bid for staying in power, and these have long-term negative implications for him. So even if nothing changes, he, in a way, has planted the seed for his own demise.
Three key things fall under this umbrella.
The first is the creation of – and this is something that Nir hinted at earlier, and I hope he can talk about it a bit more later in this panel – the creation of non-jihadist groups that are militant and that are loyal to the regime. These groups have recently come under the umbrella of something called the National Defense Forces. Assad has, in a way, sold these groups as being groups of Syrian citizens who are defending themselves through taking up arms. The reality is these groups, of basically shabiha, are the new warlords in Syria who are becoming more and more financially independent and powerful to the extent that even though they are regime loyalists now, they are not 100 percent under the command of Assad and are becoming increasingly likely to fall out of his scope of control. So, this means that in the future, when it comes to power-sharing, or political transition, Assad has no choice but to compromise with these groups, because they will grow to be a force that will challenge him politically.
The second point here is something that was alluded to in the earlier panel, which is the creation of new Iranian clients in Syria. We heard about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard establishing a Syrian Hezbollah. This is not just hearsay. This is something that is actually taking place within Syria today, and it is significant, and there is a process of Shiite-ization taking place in Syria led by Iran. Is this something that Iran is doing to support Assad? Definitely not. This is something that Iran is doing to guarantee its own strategic interests long-term no matter who rules Syria at the top. So, in a way, even though it’s true what was said in the earlier panel, that Iran does not have the same historical ties to an indigenous Shiite population in Syria like it does with Lebanon, despite all this, there are enough seeds to plant this tree long-term. And just think about the Hezbollah project – and I am someone who has written about Hezbollah extensively – the Hezbollah project has lasted for over a generation now, and it’s not finished yet. So when Iran thinks strategically, it thinks long-term. And this is something that is taking place within Syria, which means that these particular creations of Iran within Syria will not necessarily bode well for Assad long-term, because, again, if he stays in the picture, he will have to, again, share power with these groups – whether he likes it or not -- further down the line. So it’s very simplistic when we think about Iranian support for Assad, to think about it in black and white absolute terms.
The third challenge that Assad has kind of brought on himself is ISIS. And I am very glad that my colleague earlier spoke about ISIS as not being the same as Al-Qaeda. This is a very important distinction to be made and cannot be emphasized enough. Perhaps the confusion comes – not just because the media are often lazy and they often lump the two together – but also because what is happening in Syria today with ISIS is that it has actually appropriated Al-Qaeda ideology. So those who cover Raqqa say “oh there’s a Bin Laden school and a Bin Laden street in Raqqa”. But this is not because Al-Qaeda is ISIS and ISIS is Al-Qaeda, but because ISIS is cleverer than Al-Qaeda, and it has appropriated Al-Qaeda ideology to appeal to potential jihadists and to tribes and to foreign jihadists, as well, in order to say “we are the true implementers of this ideology.” And where the two differ is that Al-Qaeda has never had a state structure; it’s engaged in fighting, in a way, half-haphazardly – whereas ISIS is already acting as a state – they’ve established a court, a police force, they impose sharia law, they are crucially becoming self-sufficient financially, and this, again, now leads them to not be interested in compromise. Whereas, you will see in the battle between Al-Qaeda and ISIS on the ground in Syria, it is Al-Nusra and Al-Qaeda affiliated groups that are trying to negotiate with ISIS, but ISIS is not interested in compromise. So what this means is that, again, this group of jihadists that Assad has directly or indirectly helped to create will become and is becoming a significant force that is also going to challenge Assad even if nothing else happens. So ISIS will be a very key political challenger for Assad, and he will be forced to compromise further down the line. So his strategy is basically backfiring.
Where I see opportunities starts with ISIS, actually, because if you think about it, ISIS, at the end of the day, is a Sunni jihadist group. Neither Saudi Arabia nor Israel – and also not even Iran – wants to see a Sunni jihadist group become powerful and viable right next door. So what Assad has done, inadvertently, is he has given these three traditionally staunch rivals in the region a common concern – a common enemy so to speak– further down the line. Yes, now ISIS may be convenient for the regime and its battle, but further down the line it’s in no one’s interest to see Syria become a state controlled by a group like ISIS. And we’re already seeing kind of behind-channel security cooperation between different groups in Syria that are traditionally seen as fighting each other, such as what happened recently in the battle of Yabroud on the border with Lebanon. Because the battle of Yabroud was a battle geared towards securing the Lebanese border, which Lebanese political actors all wanted, because none of them wanted to see jihadists crossing over into Lebanon. So, sometimes, pragmatism trumps in this kind of conflict. Assad’s strategy regarding ISIS is not quite working, and here is where, again, I will emphasize, that when we think about Saudi Arabia and Iran – we should not think about them as being staunch rivals in a black and white manner. In fact, as I said, ISIS is just one example of how Saudi Arabia and Iran can have a shared interest that would get them to cooperate. And actually, the two countries have been engaged in back-channel negotiations for some time. Things are changing, even if the public image remains kind of the same. The two countries are heading towards further convergence in their take on Syria, even though we may not see the results of this convergence for, perhaps, a couple of years to come, but things are heading in that direction. So this is one opening when it comes to political transition – to think about the role of regional powers, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, and how they can influence their clients within Syria to talk.
The final point I will make, because I’m running out of time, in addition to this, there are elements within the Syrian regime – particularly the Syrian army – who are not happy with the way things are going in Syria right now, but they have no safety net in case they wanted to do something different about it. And it’s only the international community that can provide this safety net. So unless the international community comes up with a strategy that would encourage these people, who are now labeled as regime people, to be able to act, they are not going to act, and it’s another very big missed opportunity. So I would emphasize these two things. Think about who’s inside Syria today who, needs a safety net provided by the international community and think about Assad; at some point he will become less valuable to Iran, than, say, for example, the nuclear deal. And don’t think about Saudi-Iranian relations in black and white terms. Thank you.
DANIEL LEVY: Thank you very much, Lina.
