By Jason Kumar
The 22-month-old conflict in Syria is growing increasingly out of control. It is now threatening to engulf Turkey and turn the local uprising into a regional war. Since the conflict’s onset, refugees from northern Syria have been fleeing toward Turkey to escape the heavy fighting in Aleppo. Though Turkey has been providing aid to the more than 150,000 refugees and settling them in large camps, the refugees are not in a safe haven. In fact, with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) starting to establish sanctuaries and settle many of its people in villages on both sides of the Turkish border, Bashar al-Assad has turned his attention toward Turkey to root out the strongpoints of the rebellion. If Turkey does not take measures to counter the increased pressure from Assad, a military strike or public unrest would inevitably force intervention in Syria.
Border Under Fire
For months now, Assad has been targeting refugees on both sides of the border with artillery shells, bombs, and gunfire—killing dozens of civilians. Only Turkey’s cautious response is preventing the border from turning into a war zone. Turkey, in turn, has returned fire numerous times and is facing pressure from an angry population to either expel the Syrian refugees or respond more heavily to the Syrian attacks—conceivably by calling on its NATO allies to suppress Syria. Though Turkey has always had a rocky relationship with Syria along its large and porous border, it has never faced attacks like this before, and public pressure to escalate has never been so high.
While the Turkish government has so far been successful at not giving in to popular pressure to intervene, recent shifts in the uprising will soon make that more difficult. Assad is losing his grip on northern Syria, and can no longer allay the anxieties of his supporters by relegating the uprising to a mere security disturbance. The FSA has been successfully targeting Assad’s enforcers in Aleppo and disrupting the supply lines for his northern armies, denying Assad the ability to effectively use his conventional forces. Without the ability to conduct a relatively precise ground campaign, Assad has been forced to take much harsher measures to retake the north. In his recent speech, given shortly after the New Year, Assad’s rhetoric called on both the military to fully mobilize and crush the rebels and Turkey to stop providing aid to the rebellion. The sheer violence of the war will not abate anytime soon. We can expect Assad to increase his use of heavy weapons, death squads, and bombings in Aleppo and northern Syria in an effort to demoralize rebels and make it difficult for them to access safe havens on the Turkish border.
Turkey and some of its NATO allies, including the US, have taken pre-emptive measures by deploying Patriot anti-air missiles on the Turkish side of the border in an effort to defend against any missiles or planes that fly overhead. That this escalation comes so quickly on the heels of Assad’s speech shows that the nations of the world are taking Assad seriously in this matter. If the conflict escalates now, while tensions remain so high, regional war will surely follow.
Sectarian Conflict
“To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself”
– Sun Tzu, Art of War
Even if the rebellion endures the onslaught that is sure to come, the aftermath is no less chilling. The various militias comprising the FSA and its allies are beginning to show signs of fracturing along sectarian lines, particularly between the puritanical Salafi sect of Sunni Islam and the more moderate Sunnis of the FSA. Through the course of the war, Salafis have come to prominence among the rebellion, promoting discipline within their militias and portraying themselves as a holy order that embodies the highest virtues of Islam. This has garnered the small sect such popular support among rebel sympathizers that—to the US’ chagrin—even the classification of the Salafist militia Jabhat al-Nusra as a terrorist organization has increased the Salafists’ appeal.
If Salafis accrue enough popular support to challenge the FSA’s influence and, in effect, rebrand the rebellion as a religious movement, they will upset the balance of power and undermine support for the rebellion in both Syria and Turkey. In Syria, the members of the Alawite sect whose loyalty to Assad has been wavering of late will instead redouble their support for Assad as a Salafi-dominated rebellion becomes less appealing to them. Some even fear that the 10 million members of the Turkish Alevi sect may grow sympathetic to Assad and the plight of the Alawites if they perceive the Alawites as fellow Shias resisting oppression from a Sunni majority. It is indeed possible that Assad’s strategy includes allowing the Salafis to rise to prominence and waiting for them to destroy their own support base.
Surviving the storm
Any true solution via foreign intervention must respect Syria’s demographics, the motivations of the players on its field, and its relationships with major powers in the region (particularly Iran and Russia). Leaving aside no-fly zones, safe zones, and other forms of military engagement that would escalate the conflict, Turkey and its NATO allies should immediately encourage unity within the rebellion by legitimizing the Syrian National Council and its president, Mu’az al-Khatib. As a moderate Islamic preacher and the face of the rebellion, al-Khatib should be empowered to counter the more extreme views of the Salafis and bring them into line, thus hopefully preventing sectarian strife. Though this is likely to evoke political reprisal from Iran and Assad, it will buy time for Turkey, the nations within the Middle East, Iran, and Russia to work out a negotiated settlement to repair and rebuild Syria.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to contain the uprising in Syria and bring it to a clean conclusion. For Turkey and its allies, however, time is not on their side. Taking appropriate preventative or pre-emptive measures now will keep the difficult post-war reconstruction and reconciliation from turning into a Sisyphean ordeal.