An Unstable Partition of Syria
Syria is experiencing a state of political and geographic division, reinforced by the international conflict in and over the country. This ranges from areas under the control of the Syrian regime to opposition-held areas, as well as areas controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces. Politically, the divide also runs between supporters of the regime and its opponents, and between supporters of the Syrian Democratic Forces and their opponents. The Syrian divide also carries some ethnic, sectarian, and national features, even if these have not been clearly consolidated at the level of Syrian society as a whole. All of this has given rise to fears that this fragmented reality may become permanent, and of its direct repercussions for Syrian society now and in the future. This is the subject we will discuss in some detail.
The Nature of Division in Syria:
The map of Syria has undergone many shifts over the past ten years, particularly after the rise of armed opposition groups, which initially formed as a spontaneous reaction to the regime’s violence and criminality, with the aim of protecting demonstrators and their social base. They later turned, under the influence of political funding and international intervention, into de facto forces imposing their control coercively.
From that moment on, the pattern of division in Syria began to shift, reflecting changes in the nature and identity of the forces controlling the ground. At first, these changes were between regime control and opposition control. Then the opposition itself fragmented into multiple opposition factions, and jihadist forces emerged, further splintering Syria territorially among them.
Syria then drew greater global and regional attention because of its strategic geography and its wealth of natural and archaeological resources. This was reflected in a major increase in the number of actors on the ground in Syria, such as Iran and its sectarian militias, Russia, the United States, Turkey, and others. This further deepened Syria’s political and geographic fragmentation among all of them, and accelerated the pace of changes on the Syrian map, until in some periods it was changing monthly, or even every two weeks. The pace of change then gradually slowed until, over the past two years, the Syrian map became relatively fixed, with roughly stable lines of control for the Syrian regime, opposition forces, the Syrian Democratic Forces, and Russian, Iranian, and Turkish forces. Some have therefore regarded it as a fixed and stable division.
An Unstable Division:
Two features of the division in Syria point to its unstable nature, despite the various signs of political stability:
- 1- The multiplicity of bilateral conflicts among the de facto powers, and their impact on overlapping areas of control, as seen in the conflict between the Syrian regime and the Syrian Democratic Forces, between Russian and Iranian forces, between Iranian forces and Syrian regime forces, between Turkish forces and Syrian regime forces, and between Turkish forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces. Most of these conflicts have been reflected, even if only slightly, in recent months on the Syrian map, as well as in the social and political conditions of the areas of conflict and confrontation.
- 2- A constant state of tension and anxiety. In Syria, we can observe multiple signs of anxiety and tension over the impact of any regional or international change on the Syrian map and on Syria’s fragile balance. A widespread belief prevails among Syrians that the conflict in and over Syria has not yet ended, which heightens the possibility of renewed major conflicts and upheavals. At the same time, Syrians find it difficult to determine when and why such direct conflicts might erupt, which leads them to worry about any local, regional, or international event, even if it is not directly related to Syria.
These two factors show that the quasi-stability that has prevailed over the past two years is deceptive and does not reflect the reality of Syria’s instability to this day.
On the Brink of War:
Based on the internal factors above, Syrian society recognizes that Syria’s current division is unstable. This can be explained through two factors: an economic one and a cultural one.
1- The Economic Factor:
- The economic factor concerns the interests of occupying powers and de facto authorities in Syria and the wider region, and it outlines the limits of their ambitions and future plans regardless of what may be possible today. Even a quick look at this factor reveals the overlap and entanglement of the interests of occupying powers on Syrian territory, which hinders their ability to bargain and reduces the likelihood of their agreeing among themselves on a partition of Syria, thereby increasing the chances of future confrontation. As Turkish, Russian, and Iranian policies suggest, all of them aspire to impose control over the widest possible geographic area in service of their own interests and ambitions, which would require far more space to fully explain than is available here.
2- The Cultural Factor:
- The cultural factor concerns the ability of occupying powers to build or cultivate a supportive social base in order to impose soft or cultural control before consolidating military and security control. Soft control requires building or creating a social base loyal to the controlling side, and this is absent in Syria for many reasons, the most important of which are:
A- Social Division:
- The Syrian social body, or at least the greater part of it, did not respond to political and media incitement aimed at dividing society by creating sectarian, ethnic, national, and regional Syrian identities here and there. This, to some extent, thwarted the process of culturally fragmenting Syrian society, despite the success in dividing Syria geographically and despite the political disagreement and division that followed the outbreak of the revolution. It is therefore wrong to attribute Syria’s unstable condition solely to competition among international players and the absence of international consensus, given the inability of all these players to create a social and political structure supportive of their presence. This forced the occupations to impose their control coercively by relying on military and security mercenaries, both local and foreign, as though they were trying to control dormant volcanoes that could erupt at any moment and for any reason. Accordingly, the state of anxiety and instability is mutual here: it also affects the occupying powers, which do not trust their ability to keep society under control.
B- The Similarity of the Occupying Powers:
- The practices and objectives of the various occupying powers are strikingly similar. They do not hide their direct and indirect aims in Syria, nor the reasons they support authoritarian and exclusionary de facto authorities beholden to them. These powers openly and brazenly declare their goals, and they carry out the most heinous criminal and repressive practices in service of their interests, with no regard for Syrian interests or aspirations and without making any effort to win Syrian support. Their interests range from direct economic gains, such as turning Syria into a guaranteed market for the occupying state’s goods, looting Syria’s collective and individual wealth, and turning Syria into a testing ground for military products in ways that help market them, such as Russian military products and Turkish drones; to strategic and logistical goals related to turning Syrian territory into a corridor for regional, and sometimes international, influence and hegemony. Occupying powers trade in Syrian land and the Syrian people with complete frankness in ways that serve their declared interests, as in the division of Syrian geography entrenched by the agreements of the Russian-Turkish-Iranian guarantor trio, and in the exploitation of the Syrian refugee issue, the reconstruction issue, and at times even the detainee issue.
C- The Masks Have Fallen:
- The occupying powers have failed to preserve the mask of caring about the interests of the Syrian people because of their crude and arrogant practices. As a result, only a very small number of Syrians remain deceived by their misleading rhetoric, such as the rhetoric of the Turkish president, who claims to support his Syrian brothers and to defend Islam, especially after repeated incidents in which Syrians were killed at the Turkish border by Turkish army fire, and after he, his government, and his regime exploited the issue of Syrian refugees inside Turkey and along its border with Syria. The same applies to Russian rhetoric calling for fighting terrorist forces and protecting Syria’s independence and unity, rhetoric exposed by numerous Russian crimes against civilians and children and by the deliberate targeting of schools and hospitals by Russian air forces, as well as by Russia’s silence over dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of Zionist (Israeli) airstrikes, by night and by day, on camps, centers, and areas under the control of the Syrian regime. This causes the occupations to lose all of their soft power, that is, the power of their propaganda and promotional discourse, even among circles compelled to deal with them, and perhaps even among those who benefit from them.
Conditions for a Stable Division:
Historically, we can identify two models of stable partition, each with its own conditions and circumstances:
1- The First Model:
- It requires occupying powers or controlling forces to succeed in exploiting ideological and doctrinal contradictions, as in the Korean case, thereby creating absolute ideological loyalty that blinds society to the criminal and predatory practices of occupying and de facto powers.
2- The Second Model:
- This model requires occupation to be imposed coercively through demographic change in the structure of society. Historically, it has been the more commonly used model. Occupying powers encourage migration—or more precisely, settlement—in the occupied country in order to create a new social reality tied to those powers and indebted to them, as happened in the United States, Canada, Australia, and South Africa, and as is also happening in Palestine. That said, there is a difference in the Palestinian case—and, relatively speaking, in the American case as well—in that settlers there have worked to ethnically cleanse the indigenous population, whereas in the other cases settlers worked to marginalize indigenous populations and later subordinate them to serve the economic interests of the occupation.
Based on this, it seems difficult to apply either of these two models of partition to the Syrian case. It is almost impossible to bring in foreign settler-mercenaries who are ideologically, doctrinally, and materially cohesive and implant them across Syrian territory in order to consolidate a new reality, though this should not lead us to underestimate Iran’s efforts in that direction despite its lack of the means to exploit and integrate these mercenaries into a profitable economic process tied to it. It is also difficult for any partitionist occupation project to redistribute and divide Syrian society in a way that creates social contradictions within each potential state or statelet, given the rejection by the Syrian social body, or at least its majority, of attempts to divide Syria according to sectarian, ethnic, regional, or national separatist visions. Accordingly, the partition of Syria today does not appear stable. Rather, the map of Syria at present seems governed by the capacities and circumstances of the occupying powers, whose improved position may drive them to try to expand the boundaries of their control inside Syria. But such expansion would remain conditional on the circumstances of the other occupying powers not improving in turn; otherwise, we may continue to witness an exchange of control among occupying powers for a long period of time, unless the Syrian people succeed in gathering their strength, healing their wounds, and unifying their struggle, and unless the occupying powers, or one of them, succeed in creating a supportive social environment. Thus, the current Syrian reality appears to be one that can be overcome in the future, regardless of the outcomes of the global conflict, provided that Syrian society succeeds in healing its wounds and restoring its capacity for struggle according to a comprehensive liberationist vision and strategy at the political, economic, and social levels.
