No stable solution

Submitted by Michael S (United States), Dec 10, 2015 at 20:22

Daniel,

You mentioned the "splintering" of Syria into three parts. There are some problems here:

1. The Sykes-Picot boundaries between Syria and Iraq, with Turkey are essentially linguistic boundaries (which ignore the existence of the Kurds).

2. The de facto boundaries we now see are (again, if the Kurds are ignored) religious boundaries in Iraq and a Sectarian vs. Secular boundary in Syria.

3. In Iraq, there can be, and already is, a fairly sustainable division between the Secular Kurdish region, the Shi'ite Arab region and the Sunni (Arab) Caliphate. "Arab" is in parentheses, because the leaders of Da'esh are not Arab nationalists like Bashar al-Assad, but purely religious: adhering to an esoteric subset of Wahabbi Sunni Islam, but in fact claiming to be the only true school of Islam. They are seemingly intentionally mixed in their nationality and language, with non-Arabs in prominent positions.

4. There are clear geographic divides in Syria, between Kurds and Arabs, and between Sunnis and Alawites, Druze and other sects. There is no clear divide between "One and only true Muslijms" and "everyone else". As long as Da'esh controls territory, the fluid divide between those two is the line of control between Assad's and Baghdadi's forces.

5. Once Da'esh is overpowered and expelled, Assad's natural frontier is between his Arab brethren, of whatever religion, and the Kurds, Turks and Jews. If Iraq is splintered between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, there is no natural boundary between Assad's Syrian holdings and the Arab Sunni Iraqi area (presumably also cleared of Da'esh). Those Iraqi Sunni Arabs do not have a brotherly history with Assad and his Alewites; so it is quite possible they will contend with him in order to, essentially, re-found a state that geographically corresponds with the old Da'esh plus Idlib and Damascus; and Assad, if defeated, would be forced to fall back to a coastal, Alawite enclave.

6. That enclave, in turn, would have to be propped up by the Russians; while the Syrian Kurds, cut off from their protector in Assad, would probably be swallowed up by the Turks.

7. Turkey itself has changed, under AKP rule, from a secular "Turkish" state based on linguistic grounds (and of course, denying the existence of the Kurds) to a state with a Sunni religious identity -- much like Da'esh, but with a Sultan instead of a Calif. Being a multi-ethnic Sunni state, then, there would be nothing to curb the Sultan's ambition of dominating Arab Sunni areas of Iraq and Syria.

This, I believe, is the ultimate fate of the Levant: Turkish-controlled Syria (with Assad perhaps holding out in a Russian-protected enclave) and Turkish-controlled Iraq (including Arab, Turkmen and Kurdish areas); with Shi'ite southeastern Iraq possibly falling under the protection of their fellow Shi'ites in Iran.

With that scenario, there is another boundary that becomes irrelevant: That between the Ottoman Sultanate of Erdogan and the Saudis and Jordanians. Even this, then, would not be a stable, permanent solution.

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