Forget the longer-term consequences of that, for now.

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Martin van Creveld

For Bashir Assad, the bells have been tolling. If one believes the media, he and the regime he represents are on their last legs. Whether or not that is true is not at issue here—similar predictions have been heard ever since civil war broke out in Syria four years ago. What I do want to do is take a look at the origins of the war, the way it has been going, and what the future may look like in case the predictions come true.

The decisive fact about the Assad—meaning, in Arabic, “Lion”—family is that they are Alawites. The Alawites are a section within the Sunni tradition. They do not, however, form part of the mainstream. Some Islamic scholars do not even regard them as Muslims; claiming that they are basically pagans who worship the moon and the stars. The community is scattered among Syria, Turkey and Lebanon. It is, however, only in Syria that they form a significant minority, counting perhaps one seventh of the population. That explains why Bashir’s paternal grandfather, Ali Suleiman al Assad (1875-1963), supported French colonial rule. He and his fellow Alawites knew well enough how majority Muslims deal with minority ones.

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To repeat, Assad is not a nice guy. He and his Alawite cronies have plenty of blood on their hands and are going to have lots more. Nevertheless, his ties to Hezbollah and Iran notwithstanding, on the whole he and his regime have been stabilizing factors in the Middle East. Should Assad fall, then the consequences may well be unimaginable. The first to suffer will be Syria’s Alawites or, at any rate, those of them who have not yet fled. Having sustained the regime for so long, they are going to face genocide on a scale that may make that committed by the Turks on the Armenians a century ago blanche. The same applies to other minorities such as the Druze and the Shiites. But Daesh does not want to rule just Syria. It wants Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Yemen as well. Whether or not it succeeds, in the short and medium run that means destabilization, terrorism, guerrilla, and civil war. In Iraq and Yemen, all this has already happened. Do we really want the same to happen in other countries too?

In the face of all this, it is high time for countries, leaders, and people to reconsider and stop ringing the bells for Assad’s funeral. Rather than trying to hasten his fall, they should finally agree to take for what he is: namely, the devil we know.

Or else.

http://www.martin-van-creveld.com/?p=318

How many times now have we read of this very same warning?

There is no doubt, Assad has committed war crimes, and yet that has not ever
been a good reason to leave the opening for much worse.

At least with Porter's account, if accurate, they're doing this with their eyes open.

Which is even more frightening than before, imho.

I am so grateful to Obama on Iran for his shift, even despite some of the critics
that said..well, it is for less than benevolent reasons. I don't care, it was a move
away from the standard approach..war.

When will we see that when it comes to the Saudis and can I add, Turkey has
been disgraceful here too.

Imam al-sadr from lebanon even formally made them a sect of Shia Islam.

It explains the assad family connection to Iran and Hezbollah.

You would think creveld would know this.

I like van Creveld, as a military thinker, but he has his issues. He seems to have a fairly stereotyped and negative view of Muslims too, for example, which is much in evidence.

However I think his view of the situation is correct. I am no fan of Assad, any more than Saddam, or the notion that one must put up with tyrants because they keep order, but it is also true that it is much easier to instigate chaos than it is to create order again (our repeated experiences with "nation building" show exactly what I mean), and IS is a much bigger threat to everybody in the region than Assad ever could be or wanted to be, particularly Bashir, Hafez did have big ideas from time to time.

And his assessment of COIN and what works and what does not agrees pretty much with my own conclusions. No amount of frightful behavior (to use the Magistrate's term) short of overt genocide ("the Hama rules&quot will win such wars for you absent the fact that you govern well and are disciplined in the face of the most frightful retaliation.

And what comes after Assad will be like what came after Saddam, for much the same reasons, and the people who think that will make Israel more secure are very confused.