Bashar al-Assad is
winning the war in Syria. The dictator who has turned his country into a
veritable hell is now so at ease that he mocks his opponents and flashes the
victory sign over ruins of his own making. There is always a price to be paid
for emancipation from authoritarian regimes, but the enormous price the Syrian
people have been paying since 2011 - the unspeakable horrors, the souls perished,
the lives shattered and the torment suffered - may have been paid in vain.
The trouble, however,
with the outcome of the Syrian conflict lies not only in its moral implications,
as excruciating as they are, but also in its future political repercussions. As
the dust settles in Syria, political leaders, army generals and diplomats in
the region will look to the strategies, tactics and rhetoric of the winning
side for lessons from the war. For them, it would be tempting to emulate the
man whose political dynasty - the House of Assad - has managed to stay at the apex
of power for nearly 50 years against the backdrop of war with Israel, regional
turmoil and internal revolt.
Although learning is an
integral aspect of the dynamics of international relations, especially among
dictatorships, its impact is usually understudied and underestimated. In their
search for effective methods of survival, authoritarian regimes seek out
examples of success in like-minded regimes and then mimic them in order to
eliminate opponents and keep their tenacious grip on power. There is a general
consensus among political researchers that the resilience of authoritarian
regimes is due to this process of “authoritarian learning.” For instance,
alarmed by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Chinese regime undertook
various pre-emptive actions in order to avoid a similar fate. Two decades
later, the Kremlin borrowed tactics used by the Belarusian regime to contain
the Snow Revolution--the protests that contested the 2011 Duma election results.
Also, Arab regimes, even prior to the eruption of the Arab Spring, have habitually
taken stock of each other’s successes and failures to upgrade their authoritarian
capacity vis-à-vis both popular protests and military coups.
Obviously, these processes
of learning and emulation do not take place at the level of elites and leaders
only, but also of social groups and actors. This explains why dramatic historical
events often take the shape of “waves” (e.g. waves of democratization, revolution,
violence, etc), where an earth-shattering event in one place spreads by the
politics of learning and contagion. The Arab Spring was the product of this
type of social learning.
This kind of domino
effect is particularly prevalent in regions sharing political and cultural
affinities. A case in point is the Arab world which has a distinct mental
geography. Its states were part of one political entity - the Ottoman Empire -
until around one hundred years ago. Its regimes are all autocratic, albeit in
varying degrees, and its people predominately share a common language,
religion, values and way of life. As a result, the diffusion of social and
political practices through processes of learning, ripple effect, and
snowballing of events from one country to another happens quite smoothly in
this region.
The Arab world,
moreover, is plagued with a volatile, even explosive, mishmash. It is loaded
with socioeconomic plights, scarce with democratic norms and awash with sectarian
forces, religious zealots, patrimonial armies, praetorian guards and nefarious
officials. At the helm are many mad or quasi-mad men, whose dominion is upheld
by armies of mukhabarat (intelligence or secret police) officers, nomenklatura
bureaucrats and diehard supporters. Assad’s victory sets an example for these
autocrats and their henchmen, whose appetite for killing is already too big and
fidelity to the law too little.
It is true that the
Arab Spring has been dormant for a while, thus seen as merely a parenthesis in
a long saga of repression. Yet, the resumption of turbulence is still likely
given the bottomless grievances and limitless aspirations of Arab people. In
the event of a popular uprising, the region’s political and military leaders
would impetuously gird for battle, not opt for dialogue or national
conciliation. With Assad’s playbook in mind, they would think: ‘So what if we
kill thousands of civilians, displace millions and use barrel bombs and chemical
weapons unsparingly? Everybody will turn a blind eye, and we will ultimately prevail.’
As it stands now, the
Syrian conflict is a very bad teacher. It shows that power, not morality or
rationality, is what matters in the realm of politics; that pro-democracy
movements represent a juncture, not a new home; that crude force, devoid of any
limits, mercy, sobriety or sanity, can take the wind out of the sails of
protestors; and that self-restraint is both fatal and foolish. But in the age
of digital and social media, how could other Arab regimes justify such ghastly
actions to their peoples? Again, by using Assad’s discourse: feigning innocence
and preaching the gospel of patriotism, writing off any critics as terrorists,
and posing as the only hope for preserving the unity of the state and
protecting minorities. “There will be no Syria after Assad,” Bashar’s
apologists keep saying. To be sure, amidst the carnage and anarchy of war, uttering
hollow falsehoods could bear fruit.
Bashar al-Assad and other
Syrian war criminals should not be allowed to slip away from justice. Even if
the Syrian regime prevails, or if a new ruling coalition emerges that includes
some elements of the current regime, the international community should exert
great efforts to prosecute those who scorched the land and precipitated
whirlwinds of blood and torment. There should be neither amnesty nor amnesia
for these criminals.
If the world really
wants to avoid another dark season of killing from descending upon another Arab
country, it should make of Assad an example of justice and accountability, not allow
him to be a model of victory and predominance.
Nael Shama
* This essay appeared in The New Arab
on October 18, 2018 under the title “Neither Amnesia nor Amnesty for
Criminal Assad”.
