The stage set: a street somewhere in Syria, where mysterious armed gangs [.pdf] roam freely, attacking civilians, kidnapping Shi’ite pilgrims, and suicide-bombing both military and civilian targets. Syrian troops – nervous, ill-trained, and short of weaponry and replacement parts – attack entire towns, with high casualties on both sides.
The actors: Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad, the 47-year-old US-educated former ophthalmologist, who may not be so strong after all. Standing behind him: the Ba’athist party apparatus and the military hierarchy, both dominated by the minority Alawite sect, an idiosyncratic regional variant of Islam considered heretical by most Muslims. Assad is the villain of the piece – an odd fate for a man who many thought would turn out to be a reformer.
This is a drama without heroes, for the simple reason that a single leader has not emerged out of the opposition – which is fractured into competing factions with different programs and conflicting ideologies. There is the group which has gotten the most attention, the Syrian National Council (SNC), dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Most of their activists are in exile, and the SNC is said to have very little influence inside the country. On the other hand, there is the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, or NCC, made up of leftist and Arab nationalist parties, all illegal in Syria but which have still managed to maintain a clandestine existence.
The big issues dividing the opposition are 1) The prospect of dialogue with the Assad regime, and 2) the prospect of foreign intervention, either by NATO, or some other agency. The Islamists organized around the SNC refuse all negotiations short of arranging for Assad’s abdication, while the largely secular and minority-oriented NCC insists on talks. On the issue of foreign intervention, the SNC is for it, the NCC against it – although they invite Arab League mediation.
A third factor – the wild card – is the so-called “Free Syrian Army,” which supposedly consists of defectors from the ranks of the regular Army and security forces. There is some doubt, however, about just how many defectors are in its ranks: there may be more Islamists than anything else. They operate from a base in Turkey, which has been helpfully provided by the government in Ankara: however, who’s exactly in charge of the FSA isn’t exactly clear. The group was founded by Col. Riad Assad, but a recent defector, General Mostafa Ahmed al-Sheikh, has reportedly pulled rank on the colonel, and declared himself commander-in-chief. Col. Assad disputes this, but apparently the Turks agree with the General: they’ve ordered Assad’s bank account closed.
