THE pendulum of zealotry almost always ushers in intellectual subterfuge in its wake. The lightning, if not spontaneous, takeover of Damascus by mediaeval militias is being predictably applauded by Western journalists as an overthrow of a 50-year-old family dictatorship.
Some reports added ‘brutal’ to Bashar al-Assad’s long and precarious rule, a description that was carefully mothballed when it came to the horrific crimes still being committed by Benjamin Netanyahu.
If one is not alert, gleeful Western reports would suggest that barring Syria, from Morocco on the Atlantic coast to Oman abutting the Arabian Sea, knitting North African regimes with Tel Aviv, Amman, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Manama, Doha, Muscat and Sanaa, secular democracy and human rights have been showering their blessings on the region day and night. Since the surmise is ridiculous, how should we proceed to describe the events unfolding in the Levant, to assess them neither as overly chest-thumping nor as needlessly defeatist?
To answer the question posed by the Western media’s underhand description of the assault on Syria as liberating, not least since one of the (erstwhile?) throat-slitting zealots in the raiding group told CNN that “social diversity” had become their newly minted virtue, one needs to step back in time to link the brazen hypocrisy with its origins. And we should start not with the 1953 coup against the popularly elected government in Iran. The US has since acknowledged toppling the democratic Mosaddegh government, not so MI6, the author of the coup.
Iran in 1936 was instructive differently, when Reza Shah issued a decree known as kashf-i-hijab, banning Islamic veils, including hijab and chador. We are told the order was “swiftly and forcefully” implemented. The ban was lifted in 1941, but it had done the damage. The veil would become a symbol of resistance to the Shah even though women were free to dress as they wished until the Iranian Revolution of 1979. (It was sobering to see the CNN woman interviewing the chief of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) taking the precaution of covering her head with a scarf.)
Enforcement of hijab has been the stick to beat the Iranians with even though their democracy, rare in the region, is as good or bad as Israel’s insofar as both are theocratic states. For Syria, which had a reasonably cosmopolitan polity under Assad, the absence of democracy was cited as reason for Western hostility. Truth be told, Assad’s fall completes the toppling of the last of secular Arab entities that challenged bigoted Israel and US with Soviet support. Yemen, Libya, Iraq and PLO stand already destroyed.
Significantly, although the storm did rock the boat for Iran and Russia, their boats still remain tethered to the Syrian jetty.
So, what’s afoot in Syria? Three things come to mind. The march on Damascus targets China and Russia, to hobble their ambitions for BRICS. The presence of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Kazan summit of BRICS in Russia and the offer to induct Ankara into the club despite it being a Nato member, must have sent shivers down the spines of Western capitals. Erdogan’s thinly veiled role in whipping up the storm in Syria, curious though it seems, may not calm nerves in the West.
As things stood, Assad’s Syria had also applied for BRICS membership and Iran is already there, together with Egypt, Ethiopia and the UAE. Saudi Arabia is expected to formally be on board. Pervasive fear of BRICS is a bipartisan affliction in Washington, and Donald Trump has warned against any move to “de-dollarise” the global economy. By most accounts, there is no BRICS move to challenge the dollar anyway, only a plan to skirt its troublesome impositions on vulnerable countries.
Significantly, although the Syrian storm did rock the boat for Iran and Russia, their boats still remain tethered to the Syrian jetty. And that could be a worrying story for the West in the coming days. Russia has not vacated, nor seems to be planning to move out its military presence from the country, including its crucial naval base at Tartus.
And while the Iranian embassy was ransacked, portraits of slain Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and the Iranian Quds Force chief Qasim Suleimani vandalised, both being staunch adversaries of the militants now controlling Damascus, Iran too is keeping its embassy running. On Saturday, it said it was moving out diplomatic families, but denied a report by the New York Times that it was pulling out military personnel.
In fact, Iran’s ambassador to Syria Hossein Akbari spoke to state TV to say the embassy was still open with five to six diplomats and was carrying out high-level meetings to follow up with the overall situation. Iran’s state TV said HTS had guaranteed there would be no disturbance to the Syeda Zeinab shrine in Damascus. A meeting of the foreign ministers of Turkiye, Russia and Iran in Doha on Friday was crucial in this regard.
Though the trio formed the Astana group in 2017 to stabilise Syria, Erdogan’s difficult ties with Assad remained legendary. It’s worthwhile, then, to ask why Iran and Russia didn’t bail out Assad this time around. Were they surprised by the stealth and speed of the militias? Or have the Astana trio sacrificed the unpopular Assad with a purpose?
True, Iran has lost its handy land link to Hezbollah. By most accounts, that option was torpedoed not by Israeli interdiction of Hezbollah’s supply routes in Syria, but because China and Russia have got bigger fish to fry. And Iran is too precious for both to be allowed into a fruitless military enterprise that wouldn’t have stopped the Israeli genocide of Palestinians.
The Palestinians’ rehabilitation now looks more doable under an agreeable mechanism to be shouldered by Arab states and Turkiye. Russia gets back to dictating peace in Ukraine while China stops fretting over the flow of Iranian oil. The zealots in Damascus are enjoying good press, meanwhile, as the Afghan mujahideen once did.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2024
