The lesson of Aleppo, behind the weeping and laments

The fall of Aleppo was no surprise to those who follow the strategic situation of the conflict inside Syria. What was surprising was for it to take so long, thanks to the determination of the city’s steadfast defenders and the forbearance of a proud people who believed that their revolution was an existential war that they had no choice but to win.

The strategic logic according to which the Syrian revolution has proceeded so far demonstrates that major problems afflicted its course with regards to the vision, plan and structure behind it, and also afflicted the vision and plan of the regional powers which supported the people in their revolution. To this we can add the fact that the worldwide Muslim community — the Ummah — largely deserted the people of Syria in the uprising that soon turned into a regional conflict and then international war, of which Syria became merely the location and “the Syrian revolution” a simple description. It was inevitable for these accumulating problems to give forth their bitter fruit.

The domestic and external reasons that led to the regress of the revolution in Syria at enormous human cost included the fact that the regime in Damascus imposed a savage military response to peaceful demonstrations for more democracy. This meant that the revolution has been unable to produce a united military leadership capable of effective action with a refined focus and dedicated efforts based on a central strategy to distribute wealth, men and equipment according to professional military logic.

The political selfishness of the various faction leaders must take the blame for this, as must their ideological misguidance, especially those who are jihadi Salafis. However, the biggest mischief in this matter is attributed to the regional powers which support the Syrian revolution. Although they have backed the revolutionaries with money and weapons, and provided them with political and diplomatic clout, they have failed to pay appropriate attention to the need to unify the factions under a single command and strategy. They have not used their support as a lever to impose unity upon the revolutionaries and prevent unnecessary loss of life and waste of valuable resources.

Such laxity is in stark contrast to the example of similar revolutionary-supporter relationships in the twentieth century, whether these were political revolutions for freedom from despotism or national liberation revolutions against colonialism. Every single political revolution or a national liberation movement in the twentieth century had backers who never failed to provide the revolutionaries with organisational and planning expertise, imposing order and harmony on them in order to improve their chances of success and preventing military anarchy.

Furthermore, no revolution can do without a political wing, yet the Syrian revolutionary forces have not succeeded in building a cohesive political leadership that bestows political legitimacy on their cause and compels others to deal with them as a single body expressing the will of the nation. This is in part due to the lack of expertise on the part of a number of revolutionary forces who have been kept away from political engagement during decades of living under an absolutist authoritarian rule; they were never permitted to learn anything about practical politics, including the putting together of coalitions and finding common ground with those who agree on the principles but disagree on the means to achieve them.

Regional forces backing the Syrian revolution cannot be absolved of blame here either. These regional powers have been addicted to dealing with the fighting forces behind the back of political leaderships. This has led to the marginalisation of the latter and deepened the gap between the revolutionaries in the field and those who work on diplomacy and in the media. It has become clear during the past five years that some of the regional backers of the Syrian revolution were seeking to abort the revolution more than they sought to make it succeed. They were keener on infiltrating the political leadership of the revolution than seeing a successful end to the mission. Friendship with these people is exemplified by the following verse by Al-Mutanabbi: Some enmity brings you benefit, while some friendship brings you harm and pain.

It has to be said that groups of global jihadi Salafis have infiltrated the Syrian revolution, causing confusion and losing its national character and political message in the process; its original message, remember, was a call for a free, democratic Syria where justice and freedom are guaranteed for all citizens without discrimination. Jihadi Salafi groups replaced that clear political message with their own ambiguous vision, which resists despotism in practice while justifying it in theory. They declared war on the entire world and dreamed of an empire-like caliphate that has no borders and no national identity, although the world ditched the concept of empires more than a century ago.

The jihadists arriving in Syria did not try to help the Syrian people in their just war. Instead, they sought to control them and influence their choices. They brought with them innumerable hostilities and burdened the people with the cost of these hostilities although they were absolutely in no need of any of them. While they were in need of the world’s friendship, the Syrians ended up facing a Shia-Russia coalition of evil and global enmity. Had the jihadi Salafis had a minimum of strategic sense, they would have understood that their priority should have been to help the Syrian people by engaging their enemies far away, thus shifting the battle to their own lands instead of mobilising on Syrian territory and turning themselves into fuel that feeds the fire consuming the land. What are the jihadists of Chechnya and Daghistan doing in Syria when the head of the snake exists in Moscow, which is much closer to home?

Some of the Arab Gulf countries, which are threatened by Iranian expansionism, did not comprehend the strategic importance of the Syrian revolution and failed to see that it provided them with a historic opportunity – one that is unlikely to recur in the foreseeable future – to sever Iran’s hand in the Levant and contain its influence in the Arab world as a whole. This opportunity – had it been made good use of – would have saved these countries from having to engage in devastating wars with Iran in the future and would have protected them from imminent threats from Tehran.

It would seem that the Gulf States have not yet comprehended the phenomenon of the deep “vengeful memory” that motivates Iran and its sectarian grasp or the phenomenon of “replacement logic” that is adopted by Iran and its extensions in the region between the Gulf and the Mediterranean. This is a deep-rooted logic in Shia culture, according to which the strong Shia state grows at the expense of the rest of the Ummah. Today, Iran is pursuing that same logic and is walking in the footsteps of the Fatimid and Safavid dynasties before it.

Nor did these states comprehend the profound changes in US strategy following its bitter experience in Iraq and the alliance it forged with the Shia forces on the ground in lieu of direct intervention in the region. There is no doubt that the fall of Aleppo will tempt Iran to expand further, this time in the direction of the Gulf States themselves towards which it bears a permanent grudge. When the Iranian-sponsored militias start roaming the land within the Gulf, these states may then realise the extent of the strategic exposure that they have brought upon themselves by abandoning their responsibilities in Aleppo and the Syrian revolution in general.

The regional backers of the Syrian revolution – both Arabs and Turks – adhered to the ceiling set by the US. They denied themselves the freedom to manoeuvre and act in the face of the Iranian axis. The ceiling was determined right from the beginning to transfer this great revolution into a huge and long-term bloody affair in order to exhaust all of the parties involved and complete the crushing of this Arab state adjacent to Israel, following the crushing of Iraq. Ultimately, the Americans wanted to prevent the countries of the Levant from turning into a bridge between the Arab world and Turkey at some time in the future.

Edward Luttwak, the American Zionist strategist, spoke about this in his article “In Syria, America Loses if Either Side Wins” published on 25 August 2013 in the New York Times. “A victory by either side would be equally undesirable for the United States… Maintaining a stalemate should be America’s objective. And the only possible method for achieving this is to arm the rebels when it seems that Mr Assad’s forces are ascendant and to stop supplying the rebels if they actually seem to be winning.” What Luttwak proposed was no more than the reality which was and remains Washington’s policy in Syria.

Then came the Russian intervention, which provided the Americans with sufficient pretext to concede the fall of the revolution after they achieved their crushing objective. It is not surprising at all for the US to take such a position. What is truly strange is for the countries that back the Syrian revolution to commit themselves to adhering to the American ceiling that adopts this stance. In doing so, and in compliance with the hellish vision formulated by America’s Zionists for the destiny of the Syrian revolution, those countries denied the revolutionaries qualitative weapons that could have earned them victory.

Turkey has not yet read the Syrian scenario in a manner that leads it to comprehend its future regional consequences. Right from the start, Ankara dealt with the Syrian file from a humanitarian perspective, for which it is to be thanked and appreciated. However, it needed to look at it from a comprehensive strategic point of view to understand what is going on in the region as a whole. The logic of narrow national interest continues to dominate the Turkish approach to Syria, even though it is the only country in the region that is in a position to back the Syrian people militarily; it squandered many opportunities until the challenges piled up and it completely lost the initiative. Matters were simply taken out of its hands.

It is only fair to acknowledge that Turkey’s domestic and external situation is rather complex as a country whose geographic position provides it with great opportunities while at the same time imposing so many restraints. Unlike Iranian foreign policy, Turkey’s is characterised by the utmost caution; it avoids risk and military adventures. It is a policy that pays more attention to tackling restraints rather than investing in opportunities.

Turkey’s situation today resembles that of America at the start of the Second World War, when arguments were raging between those who advocated US intervention in order to rescue Europe from Nazism and fascism and those who stuck to the narrow national logic, which suggested that it should just stay away and not march into the European quagmire. However, the interventionists won eventually and America did indeed save Europe. The fruit of that daring intervention was US domination of the western hemisphere and the transformation of America into the world’s first superpower.

The government in Ankara will realise, as did the US before it, that its future and status depend on what it does today in the Levant, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula; that caution and hesitation will not save it from the fire, especially as Iran and its militias are getting closer to Turkey’s borders. The Kurdish threat on which Turkey has focused during the past five years is nothing compared to the Shia threat that is now knocking on its doors because of Ankara’s hesitation. Who said that Turkey’s Alawites are more immune to Iranian influence than those in Syria? Turkey has preferred to save itself rather than Aleppo and the Syrian people. However, dealing with the current regional conflict in instalments will not save anyone in the end.

The Syrian people have paid the price for the weakness, strategic exposure and lack of collective will through which the Sunni Muslim masses are living all over the world. Aleppo has fallen despite bordering Turkey, where weapons are in abundance and there is a huge army. It has fallen despite bordering the Arabian Peninsula where wealth is abundant. However, the heart of the Muslim world that is represented by Turkey and the Arab states suffers from division and serious strategic exposure.

In addition to all the above-mentioned negative practical and strategic factors, the greatest strategic fault is the fragmentation of the Sunni Muslims, especially the Arabs. It suffices for anyone looking beyond the daily political events to contemplate a simple but very expressive phenomenon: nowhere on the face of the earth today will you find Jews killing Jews or Shia killing Shia, but you will find Arabs killing Arabs and Sunnis killing Sunnis. The Sunnis have become a name without a community. Existentially speaking, this is a very dangerous state of affairs.

In conclusion, Aleppo has not fallen. It has fought bravely to the end. The last people to be blamed are the people of Aleppo who fought for four and a half years in order to save the Ummah from collapse. They paid with their souls and their possessions while fighting a war that is much bigger than them; a war that targets the heart of the Islamic world and the freedom and status of the Arab people in this world. Aleppo has not fallen. What has fallen is an Ummah that lost its direction and its collective will along with its courage, determination and manhood. This is a situation that requires a search into the roots of the malaise, not just the scratching of the surface; it requires serious reflection on the choices and strategies away from mourning gatherings and poetic laments. Are we — all of us — going to comprehend the lesson of Aleppo? Or will our historic urban centres continue to fall just like autumn leaves one after the other to the very end?

Translated from Aljazeera.net, 15 December 2016

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.