Josh Landis should be credited for putting his... -
by Reinoud Leenders
▻https://www.facebook.com/reinoud.leenders/posts/924899757598688
en réponse à ►http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/regime-change-without-state-collapse-is-impossible-in-syria-landis-int (voir ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/426341#message427231)
Josh Landis should be credited for putting his finger on a host of important issues and dilemmas. But he’s wrong on several counts:
“The West falsely believes that it can separate the regime from the state. It argues that it can pursue regime-change while simultaneously preserving the state and its institutions. Washington believes it can avoid the chaos it sewed in Iraq. I don’t believe it can.”
But surely equating the Syrian state to a narrow and ruthless regime hasn’t generated ’statehood’ either by even a minimalistic definition of that term: It has failed to enforce a monopoly on violence (and that’s putting it politely), it outsourced violence to an array of shady and unaccountable militias and foreign mercenaries, it doesn’t control (any of?) its borders, its fails to provide security to even its staunchest supporters, and it helped to chase out one-fifth of the country’s 2011 population (and still counting). And that’s leaving aside the responsibilities that supposedly come with state sovereignty; none of which are upheld by this regime ostensibly embracing the Syrian state.
“Westerners believe that because their own state institutions are run by professional civil servants, Middle Eastern states are too. But they aren’t. Political appointees make up the entire edifice.”
That’s an incredibly dangerous (Chalabi-ist?) thing to say as it could be read as giving a green light for anyone opposing the Syrian regime to eradicate any single public servant along the “entire edifice” when given the chance. But more importantly, it is inaccurate as many rebel forces and opposition activists who worked with dedicated public servants to get garbage collected, to operate bakeries and facilitate food distribution in opposition-controlled areas will be able to confirm. Also, if all civil servants are supposedly part and parcel of the regime, why then did the regime itself try so hard to marginalise them, selling out state assets to well-placed crony businessmen, and starve them from resources to effectuate their perceived significance to the regime? Most state employees are there for their salary only; they don’t inherently owe allegiance to the regime but for the fact that the latter keeps paying their wages.
“... many top US generals, like the Syrian opposition, continue to insist that Assad is the magnet drawing ISIS into Syria and thus must be destroyed first. This argument makes little sense. After all, when did Al-Qaeda pour into Iraq? Only after Saddam was deposed and the Americans ruled the country.”
The analogy doesn’t fly. Al-Qaeda in Iraq fought US forces; ISIS hardly fights Syrian regime forces. The Syrian regime (and now with the Russians) make an effort to keep ISIS in place while fighting all the other insurgents. Furthermore, the Syrian regime from the start of the uprising has been begging the opposition to turn to ’takfiri’ extremism for it to remain the only game in town; whatever one may think of the Americans in Iraq but at least they weren’t hoping for a fully armed ’takfiri’ adversary. When a regime needs ISIS to retain a modicum of acceptability or to present itself as a less disastrous alternative, it follows that it sustains ISIS and it shows how far it has itself moved up to the wrong end of that scale of disastrousness.
“Those that argue that the US squandered its opportunity to train, arm and finance moderates to destroy both Assad and Jihadist militias delude themselves.”
Up to the Summer of 2012 there was a window of opportunity for arming and supporting ’moderates’ and, arguably, after having squandered that opportunity the Jihadist militias had free reign.
“The price of regime-change is chaos.”
That’s a prediction; fair enough. But we know for a fact today that the price of regime maintenance is ... chaos. Arguably, without it the regime wouldn’t have survived up to this day.
