Political upheaval within the Syrian National Council (SNC) is
worsening the chaos that has defined Syria for the past two years. In
recent times, we’ve also seen allegations of chemical weapon use and the
increasing dominance of jihadist groups to add further tumult to a
nation still gripped by civil war.
The resignation of opposition leader Moaz al-Khatib
from the SNC last month further exposed the organisation’s political
instability. The SNC remains far removed from the reality on the ground,
where some analysts estimate over a thousand separate groups are waging
war on the Ba’ath regime.
At the apparent helm of the SNC now sits Ghassan Hitto. Although, given Khatib’s leading role
at the Arab League conference in Doha last month, even this is in
doubt. An outsider technocrat who has spent the majority of his life
living in the United States, Hitto has already stated his opposition to engage in dialogue with the Assad regime.
Whereas Khatib could at least claim a veneer of legitimacy through
recognition from the secular elements of the rebel forces, Hitto has
already been seen to be politically divisive and lacking in authority.
Unlike in Libya, where opposition groups were able to assemble a coherent political alternative to the Gaddafi regime,
Syrian rebels have been thus far incapable of presenting a consolidated
and unified front. The clear divisions within the SNC itself – as well
as between secular and Islamist groups – only serve to make potential
backers hesitant to lend major assistance.
At the same time international players have failed to enforce the same redlines that were set in Libya. Threats by Gaddafi to lay waste to Benghazi
were cited by the US and its allies as clear justification for
intervention. Yet Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has flagrantly
reduced much of Syria to an image reminiscent of a mid-1990s Grozny with little repercussion.
While the use of warplanes quickly brought about a NATO-enforced
no-fly zone that saw Libyan skies free of fighter aircraft, heavy aerial
bombing has become a daily occurrence in many of the major Syrian
population centres with only muted protests from Western governments.
Even more concerning was a March 19 explosion
in Aleppo, which left 25 people dead. This may represent the first use
of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war. Allegations of
responsibility have been made at both sides, but given the relatively
small number of casualties, the suggestion that many of those killed
were loyalists, and the clear lack of strategic interest in using chemical weapons, regime responsibility remains contentious.
Although Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has authorised a UN investigation into the matter, that the UN is currently evacuating half its Syrian staff
from the Damascus Sheraton (including special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi)
doesn’t bode well for a serious forensic investigation in the northern
warzone.
Adding fuel to the speculation is the fact that a chlorine plant
within 25km of Aleppo has been in rebel hands for months. There is also
the suggestion by some senior UN military officials that the device was
a rudimentary “dirty bomb” with an attached chemical payload, rather
than a high-lethality military munition.
These claims of chemical use, combined with the increasingly prominent role being played by radical jihadist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham inside Syria, may be playing a part in rousing a limited amount of discernible action from the West. The possible use of chemical weapons by unknown parties has further complicated the situation on the ground. EPA/STR
Despite the establishment of US and French training camps
for the secular Free Syrian Army personnel in neighbouring Jordan, the
Islamists continue to display an efficacy unsurpassed by their
nationalistic contemporaries. Responsible for over 75% of suicide
attacks in the war to date, al-Nusra has been of particular concern to
many Syria watchers due to its links with al-Qaeda and its professed end-game objective of establishing a theocratic state that disregards the current borders of the region.
While the Free Syria Army has withered after two sustained years of
fighting with limited support, jihadists have been able to prosper via
links with Gulf states – like Saudi Arabia and Qatar – who have a vested
interest in proxying such groups against their enemies and a historical
strategic tendencies towards just that.
As the tug-of-war between regime and rebel forces continues to devastate the Levant region,
the likelihood of a near-term resolution to the war has been
extinguished. Whispers throughout the corridors of the UN general
secretariat in New York are now predicting a protracted and “Balkanised”
struggle lasting years.
Although the conflict may once have been about personalities, its increasingly sectarian nature
from jihadist influence indicates that even if Assad were to be ousted
or killed, the drivers for mass violence would remain. Should the Assad
regime somehow cease to be a factor in the equation, the aftermath would
likely see a repeat of post-war Chechnya or Afghanistan, with secular,
moderate and radical groups turning on each other to fight over the
scraps in the rubble.
Interventionists will continue to appeal
for some form of multilateral resolution to the crisis. However, the
reality seems to suggest it would be the international relations'
equivalent of sticking one’s hand into a flaming blender full of bees
just to stymie the blades.
The announcement
in early August by Saudi officials of a planned segregated ‘industrial city’
exclusively for female workers is an unprecedented development for the Arabian
Kingdom’s domestic politics. In a country that ranks 131 out of
135 for global gender inequality, the move is a simultaneous evolutionary
and devolutionary for women’s rights and reflective of a broader structural paradox
between progress and tradition inherent within the Saudi state and culture.
The more things
change…
The issue of women’s rights has
been controversial inside Saudi Arabia since the inception of the first Saud
dynasty in 1744. The status of women in the Kingdom has long been of concern
for advocacy groups in the Islamic world and the West. A 2002 incident in Makkah
highlighted the issue and caused national and global outrage when religious
police caused the death and injury of around 80 young girls by preventing them from
exiting a burning building due to their lack of what the state deemed as modest
attire. The tragic event acted as one of main drivers behind reforms that have
at once sought to move the Kingdom forward, while at same time preserving its sense
of traditional identity; a dual policy that some argue is unsustainable.
The past 5 years have seen moderate
developments in the social mobility of Saudi women. No longer restricted to
traditional roles in the home, many are now entering the service sector in
certain state-approved areas. Women business owners are becoming increasingly
common and the regime has set up specific
gender-biased loan schemes to facilitate their participation in the
ownership of selected private businesses. Saudi female athletes competed in the
Olympics for the first time in history this year. Women are scheduled to engage
in municipal elections in 2016, only lagging four years behind their male
counterparts in a political process that itself is unprecedented in the country.
The Niqab, the visage-obscuring veil that has become universally symbolic of
Saudi society, has become noticeably less common on the streets of Jeddah and
Riyadh over the past 5 years. The new proposed industrial city in Hofuf is part
of a series of new institutions and areas set up specifically for women, including
the largest
women’s university in the world just outside of Riyadh. These innovations certainly
represent tangible positive change to the status of Saudi women in some
fashions, but also serve as reinforcers to the structural segregation inherent
in the underlying Arabian culture.
The more they stay
the same.
Despite the measures that have
empowered them economically and socially, the overall status of Saudi women
remains heavily restricted.While many
have flocked to the newly-opened service economy, physically traveling to the
workplace remains problematic. 20 years on from the famous driving protests conducted
in the wake of the 2nd Gulf War, women still remain legally unable
to operate any form of automobile (although, strangely, flying a plane is
completely fine). Despite recent restrictions to their prerogatives, the
religious morality police, known locally as Mutawin, continue to harass women
in public and overzealously
pursue their religious-cultural mandate. The opening of the immense
all-female industrial city in the nation’s east will likely serve to empower its
female employees in some ways, but at the same time will maintain the country’s
entrenched socio-sexual schisms and complicate moves towards integration and
mutual respect. Such policies of social liberalization are becoming
increasingly crucial to the Arabian Kingdom if it is to continue to modernize
and build a stronger pluralistic economy for the long term, but are heavily
impaired by the Salafic Sharia doctrine that the regime utilizes as a tool for
social cohesion and order in the short term.
Minor innovations are certainly possible in
spite of such religious dogma and the house of Saud, along with the clerical
establishment, has proven remarkably pragmatic in their adoption of such
reforms in times of crisis. As change occurs, in gender politics and elsewhere,
the contradiction found in the Saudi state’s endless juggling act of
maintaining values that are schizophrenically both cosmopolitan and traditional
becomes ever-more visible and may lead to heightened internal social and
cultural tensions . The fallout of such anti-modernist friction is not without
historical precedent in Saudi conservative Islamic circles, and has been shown
to precede political extremism, both non-violent and otherwise: from Sahwa to Al Qaeda.
