Syria and the Middle East on the eve of civil war
As the First World War made painfully clear, when politicians and generals lead nations into war, they almost invariably assume swift victory, and have a remarkably enduring tendency not to foresee problems that, in hindsight, seem obvious.
Adam Hoschchild.1
Syria in the Middle East
Young country in an ancient land
Syria is a young country in an ancient land. While it boasts two of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth, Damascus and Aleppo, the modern state of Syria gained its independence only in 1945. In the 1920s, the territory was created and ruled over by France, the Arab territories of the Ottoman Empire having been divided between France and Britain after the First World War. As elsewhere in the Middle East, and in other colonised states, arbitrary borders drawn up in London and Paris took little account of either the will of the local populace or their pre-existing political, economic and cultural ties. Ancient trade routes from Mosul to Aleppo and Antioch were now divided between the new states of Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Damascus’ main port, Beirut, was now the capital of Lebanon. Tribes in the south were cut off from their kin in Jordan, and in the east from Iraq. The new state was far from homogenous, with its ethnic make-up reflecting the ebbing and flowing of peoples and religions in the region. Ninety per cent of the population were Arabic-speakers, but the 10% who spoke Kurdish had been separated from their co-linguists in Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Tiny pockets of Turkmen and Aramaic speakers also remained, while Armenian and Circassian communities had recently arrived as refugees from Anatolia and Russia. The people newly labelled ‘Syrians’ practised different religions and belonged to different confessions. Under the previous Ottoman rulers the Sunni Muslim majority had periodically persecuted the non-Sunni Muslim sects, often leading to their concentration in remote, defensible areas. Alawis dominated the coastal western mountains, while Druze clustered around a mountain in the south. A small number of other Shia sects, such as Ismailis and Twelvers, were concentrated in isolated villages.2 Syria’s (mostly Orthodox) Christians had a second-class status under the Ottomans, but were largely free from persecution and came to thrive in certain trades and businesses in the urban centres.
Syria was not the first, nor the last, post-colonial state to gain independence within borders imposed by outside powers. Like many such post-colonial states, it faced an uphill battle to bind its disparate population to the idea of a nation state. While an authentic sense of Syrian identity did develop over time, it came alongside a pronounced sense of insecurity and a rise in the popularity of revisionist transnational ideologies.3 Arab nationalism, the call to unite all the Arabs in one state, found a receptive audience, as did Greater Syrian nationalism, which called for Syria to be united with neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. Political Islam also gained traction among some Sunnis. Meanwhile Kurdish nationalism grew in popularity among Kurds as Syria’s Arabs increasingly denied them cultural rights.
These weak building blocks contributed to Syria’s emergence as a fragile and unstable state after independence. The French left a weak parliamentary system and a powerful military that swiftly undermined it. Between 1949 and 1970 there were eight successful coups. These domestic struggles were greatly influenced by regional politics, as Syria’s weakness made it a ripe political battleground for the regional rivals of the day. In 1958 Syria joined into a political union with Egypt as the United Arab Republic (UAR), which saw the Egyptian government introduce new authoritarian structures that remained even after Syria left the UAR in 1961.4 In 1963 Syria’s most prominent Arab nationalists, the socialist Ba’ath Party, seized power. The radical left wing of the party then launched an internal coup in 1966, initiating accelerated land reform and adopting a provocative line with Israel that contributed to the disastrous Six Day War of 1967 and the loss of the Golan Heights. The Syrian political scene was chaotic and unstable, weakened further by the machinations of external actors.
Assad takes over
This changed after November 1970 when Hafez al-Assad, the Ba’athist Defence Minister, seized power in a final coup and began to build a regime that survived long after his death in 2000. Hafez expanded the reach of the state, building institutions to ensure the support of everyday Syrians. He wooed the peasantry and workers with a heavily controlled economy that provided jobs and subsidies, and pursued ambitious infrastructural projects such as the electrification of Syria’s villages.5 He rolled back some of the radical socialism pursued in the 1960s, winning support from much of the merchant class. Hafez proved a savvy politician, patronising key tribal leaders and co-opting trade unions. At the same time, the President sought to protect his regime from the destabilising coups of the past. He restructured the security forces, packing key positions with relatives and Alawis, the sect from which he hailed, believing they would see his regime as protection against any return to the Sunni persecution of the Ottoman era. He disproportionately favoured Druze and Christians for the same reason, all the while ensuring that certain Sunnis remained in key positions, such as that of Prime Minister. A complex set of intelligence agencies was established to spy on regime insiders to prevent plotting, as well as on the population at large. While not as habitually bloody as Saddam Hussein, Hafez was still willing to use ruthless force when necessary, notably slaughtering up to 10,000 in 1982 when the banned Muslim Brotherhood tried to seize control of the city of Hama. For those not persuaded by the material benefits and stability of the regime, a wall of fear was built to keep them in line.
Hafez was a cannier leader than those before him, but he was also helped by three shifts in the regional environment. The first was the oil boom of the late 1970s. Whilst Syria had only modest oil reserves of its own, with exports from the eastern fields beginning in the 1980s, it shared in the region’s increased wealth. This included remittances from Syrians working in the Gulf and generous funding from the newly rich Gulf states for its ‘steadfastness’ against Israel. Hafez eventually became a master of using changing political developments to obtain financial support from wealthy regional actors. The second shift in the 1970s was to an era of Arab cooperation. After Syria, Egypt and Jordan were defeated by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, the previously feuding Arab states agreed at a summit in Khartoum to respect each other’s state sovereignty and no longer interfere in each other’s affairs. While this continued to be flouted in certain cases, notably Lebanon, it ensured that there was less appetite among potential regional rivals to stir up trouble for Assad at home, sparing Syria the machinations of the past. Finally, Cold War dynamics stabilised the region. During the 1950s, the Cold War powers held the region at arm’s length, only signing closer alliances in the 1960s. After the 1973 October War nearly brought the US and USSR to war, Syria was effectively protected by its Soviet patron and there was little question of any external interference in Syrian affairs. As Richard Murphy, US ambassador to Syria 1974–78 remarked years later, “the United States was little concerned with Assad’s repressive domestic policies”.6
This combination of regional factors and Hafez’ regime consolidation prompted Syria’s transformation from an arena of competition to a projector of influence. Hafez took a leading role in Lebanon’s civil war (1975–90), deploying his own troops there from 1976, and establishing a web of client relationships with multiple political actors and militia. Elsewhere he deployed the tactic of supporting non-state militias, with the Turkish Kurdish separatists, the PKK, given safe haven in Lebanon and Syria by Hafez from 1979 to 1998 as a means to pressure his northern neighbour, Turkey. A sign of Syria’s new clout was its alliance with Revolutionary Iran from 1979 against shared enemies in Israel and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Though he spoke the language of an Arab nationalist socialist at home, abroad Hafez was ever the pragmatist. This was seen in 1990–91 when, following the retreat and later collapse of his Soviet patron, Syria nimbly courted US support by backing the western-led coalition to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. Though backing a western power seemed an abandonment of Arab nationalism, it dealt a blow to his long-term personal enemy, Saddam, and by incurring American gratitude gained numerous rewards. One was Washington’s endorsement of Syrian suzerainty over post-war Lebanon. Another was the invitation to engage in a US-led peace process with Israel over the 1990s that, while ultimately failing, allowed Syria to improve its image internationally. Bridges with other Arab states were rebuilt, notably with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, who offered new loans and grants just as Syria’s economy was suffering from the Soviet collapse, all the while quietly maintaining Syria’s ties to Tehran.
Change and continuity under Bashar
Hafez’ health declined in the late 1990s and he died of a heart attack on 10 June 2000, aged 69. Over thirty years he had ended the decades of instability, building a strong autocratic regime that survived military defeat in 1973, the Muslim Brotherhood uprising, an attempted coup by his own brother, and the collapse of his Soviet ally. Hafez had groomed his eldest son, Bassel, to succeed him. When Bassel died in a car crash in 1994, his second son, Bashar, an ophthalmologist training in London at the time, was recalled home and rapidly promoted through Syria’s military. Against the muted objections of a few old regime hands who believed dynastic succession should have no place in a socialist republic, key security and political figures endorsed Hafez’ plan and the way to the presidency was cleared. Bashar was elected in an unopposed referendum and became president on 17 July 2000, aged 34.
While many Syrian and international observers hoped that the young, partly western-educated new president would abandon his father’s ruthlessness at home and abroad, most were soon disappointed. At home, a short-lived liberal reform movement, the ‘Damascus Spring’ was snuffed out by autumn 2001.7 Abroad, Assad’s first decade in power would be defined by a confrontation with the neo-conservative administration of US President George W. Bush.8 Though the US initially courted Damascus after 9/11, leading to some intelligence cooperation, Assad’s staunch opposition to the planned invasion of Iraq in 2003 prompted confrontation, with then Undersecretary of State John Bolton adding Syria to a second tier of Bush’s famous ‘axis of evil’. Assad feared that successful regime change in Iraq would create a pro-western state on his eastern flank, strengthening US and, by extension, Israeli regional power, and might embolden Bush to try the same in Damascus. Assad therefore revived his father’s tactics of backing non-state militia to undermine his enemies, facilitating the flow of Jihadists into Iraq to undermine the US occupation.9
The Bush administration hit back where it hurt: Syria’s control over Lebanon. The Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act, which Bush signed into law on 12 December 2003, linked Syria’s subversion in Iraq to its continued presence in Lebanon for the first time. Banning all US trade with Syria, aside from food and medicine, it demanded both “an end to its occupation of Lebanon,” and to all “illegal shipments of weapons and other military items to Iraq”.10 In September 2004, the US then co-sponsored with France UN Resolution 1559, which called for all ‘foreign forces’ to withdraw from Lebanon – code for the 14,000 Syrian troops and intelligence agents who had remained after the civil war.11 Assad ignored the UN calls, but on 14 February 2005 a massive bomb in Beirut killed former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafic Hariri, a popular supporter of UN1559, and fingers immediately pointed at Damascus. Huge anti-Syrian demonstrations broke out in Beirut, demanding Syrian withdrawal. Counter-demonstrations led by Hezbollah, the militia built during the Lebanese civil war by Syria’s ally, Iran, did little to ease the pressure. Even Syria’s traditional ally, Russia, and key Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, joined western calls for Assad to comply with UN1559 and, on 9–10 April, the last Syrian troops were finally withdrawn.
But the showdown was far from over. As the flow of fighters into Iraq sporadically continued, Bush, who withdrew the US ambassador from Damascus immediately after the Hariri assassination, urged the international community to diplomatically boycott Syria. Facing isolation, Assad drew closer to Iran, also ostracised by Bush. Damascus promoted the idea that, far from an axis of evil they – Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas – were an ‘Axis of Resistance’ against US and Israeli domination of the Middle East. Israel’s inability to defeat Hezbollah in the summer war of 2006 greatly enhanced the Axis’ popularity on the Arab street, even if it frustrated pro-US Arab governments such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and seemed to turn the tide against Bush. While the US continued to oppose Assad, including sending a special forces raid to capture an al-Qaeda operative near the eastern Syrian town of Al-Bukamal in 2008, its attempts to isolate the regime had failed. As well as strengthening ties to Iran, Assad courted Russia, Turkey and Qatar, all of whom helped bring Syria back in from the cold. In July 2008 France became the first western state to end the boycott by inviting Assad to Paris for Bastille Day.
After a trial by fire, Assad emerged at the end of the Bush era in a confident position.12 The new US president, Barack Obama, was talking engagement and in 2010 approved the return of the US ambassador; former regional enemies such as Saudi Arabia were humbly following suit and improving ties; while a series of underhand tactics had ensured that Syria’s allies, led by Hezbollah, held sway again in Lebanon. However, the regional shifts caused by the Bush era actually meant that Assad’s position was not as strong as he and others assumed.
The Middle East and American hegemony
While Hafez made the most of the shift in regional circumstances marked by the end of the Cold War, Bashar conversely suffered from the gradual end of US regional hegemony. In order to understand the full effects of this shift, and how it played a major role in Syria’s descent into civil war, the nature and extent of that dominance needs to be considered.
America’s ‘moment’?
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the end of the Cold War and the bipolar international system that had defined global politics since 1945. In its place came an era of unrivalled American dominance, a ‘unipolar’ order, in which the United States was the only world superpower. Politics in the Middle East seemed to reflect these global trends. While Cold War rivalries had made direct intervention by either Moscow or Washington difficult, the Soviet collapse enabled George H.W. Bush’s campaign against Saddam Hussein in Kuwait in 1991. The swift success of Operation Desert Storm, which had included the key regional states of Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Turkey in the anti-Saddam coalition, suggested George H.W. Bush’s vision of an American-led ‘New World Order’ was at hand. Diplomatically, former Soviet allies either sought accommodation with the United States, such as Syria and South Yemen (the latter via unification with the pro-western north), or faced isolation, such as Iraq or Libya. The US-led Middle East peace process drew Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians into peace agreements, and nearly added Syria (and by extension, Lebanon) too. US trade to the region steadily increased, benefiting from neo-liberal reforms and the opening up of economies, which caused US trade to nearly double in a decade, from $33.67 billion in 1990 to $63.38 billion in 2000.13 In terms of security, new US military bases opened in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar, while operations against Iraq and Sudan in 1998, alongside those further afield in Somalia (1993), Bosnia (1995) and Kosovo (1999), emphasised this new unchallenged US military dominance.
However, the impact of US hegemony on the region should not be overstated. Recent scholarship on the Cold War era questions to what extent the superpowers were actually able to get their way in the Middle East. The ‘globalist’ tendency to view the Middle East, and the Third World as a whole, as merely a region upon which the struggle between the US and USSR was projected has been challenged.14 ‘Regionalists’ have instead emphasised the agency of local governments, often acting against the interests of the superpowers. Egypt and Syria’s attack on Israel in 1973, against the wishes of their Soviet ally, and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, despite objections from the Reagan administration, are examples. Unlike in Europe, the region did not always divide into neat binary camps but displayed complexity, of which Cold War politics was but one dynamic. Saudi Arabia and Israel, for example, were both close US allies, but each other’s enemies. The Iranian revolution in 1979, similarly, created a threat unrelated to the Cold War that impacted US and Soviet allies alike. As Barry Buzan and Ole Waever argue, “superpower intervention neither controlled the Middle East nor played more than a marginal role in shaping the powerful military–political security dynamics at the regional level”.15 While the Cold War was therefore an important context for understanding the evolution of the region’s politics, it was characterised more as an interaction between the global superpowers and the regional actors than as a mere reflection of bipolar rivalry.16
So as America’s ‘moment’ in the Middle East began in 1991, few regional governments had actually subordinated their foreign policy to a superpower patron in the way that most European states had, and many of the intra-regional rivalries were unaffected by the changing global dynamics. Even so, both the George H.W. Bush and the Clinton administrations actively pursued, “maintaining U.S. predominance” as policy and saw the Middle East as one such arena for dominance.17 However, when it came to Middle East policy, the influential voices in each administration tended to be former cold warrior globalists, while the regionalists who knew the region well were sidelined or ignored.18 Whether overestimating the transformative nature of the Cold War’s end and the continued ascendancy of globalists in Washington contributed to US failure in the 1990s is unclear, but fail it did. There was no ‘New World Order’, as American pressure and diplomacy proved unable to persuade or cajole allies and enemies into action – as signified by the failed Arab–Israeli Peace Process. Despite increased economic penetration, only Israel and Turkey developed beyond a level of crony capitalism. The autocratic systems of government that both the US and Soviets had tacitly supported before 1991 remained in place. We should therefore be wary of overstating US dominance after 1991. The US was militarily unchallenged and certainly extended its footprint in the region. However Pax Americana was limited and struggled to transform the region’s politics.19
An important caveat should be added. While in hindsight Washington’s difficulty in translating military dominance into diplomatic and political transformation is clearer, that wasn’t the case for either the regional governments or the emerging hegemon at the time. Not only did the United States government believe that such transformations were possible, but the regional leaders and their populations perceived American power to be the future of the region.20 This explains why states such as Syria felt the need to engage with the US-led peace process. Moreover, though US military power was not able to translate into political transformation, regional media and regime propaganda repeatedly emphasised its ability to do so. In states such as Iraq and Iran, and later Syria when Bashar clashed with Bush, the US was portrayed as all-powerful, thereby reiterating the impressiveness, and therefore legitimacy, of regimes able to resist and thwart the US regional agenda. This reinforced the idea of US hegemony and power, meaning that when the Syrian civil war began, there lingered an expectation from leaders and populations alike, built over decades, that US military power could transform the region’s politics.
Limited though US hegemony was, the post-1991 era had established a relatively balanced regional order in the Middle East. Iran and Iraq were effectively neutralised by dual containment; Gulf security was guaranteed by a heavy US military presence; Turkey had begun a limited re-engagement with its southern neighbours, mostly to subdue Kurdish militants; and Israel and its neighbours, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories, were engaged in an imperfect peace process that at least was diminishing the chances of renewed conflict. While we should be wary of attaching too much importance to a single event, and much of what follows was the consequence of long-term trends as well as short-term triggers, the 2003 Iraq war was still an important turning point. It unleashed three interrelated trends in particular that would have a major impact on the Syrian civil war: the breakdown of the post-1991 order and the re-emergence of regional competition; the regional proliferation of sectarianism, Jihadism and Kurdish nationalism; and the weakening of the US.
Shifting the balance of power: the 2003 Iraq war
The destruction of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003 and the occupation of Iraq by US-led forces shifted the regional balance of power. The major beneficiary was Iran. As one of the region’s largest states, Iran had long sought to expand its influence, an ambition that was amplified and infused by Islamist revolutionary rhetoric after the 1979 revolution. In the modern era Iraq had acted as a barrier to this expansion. Saddam was particularly combative, launching the gruelling 1980–88 Iran–Iraq war that effectively ended Ayatollah Khomeini’s ambitions of exporting the revolution – although the two regional successes he had, founding Hezbollah and forging an alliance with Syria, would be long-lasting. The death of Khomeini in 1989 and the rise of more moderate politicians, a need to focus internally after the long war, and a faltering economy hindered by US sanctions implemented as part of the Clinton administration’s ‘dual containment’ policy put a further brake on Tehran’s aspirations. Then, just as the US was deposing their bête noire Saddam, internal changes in Iran increased the appetite to take advantage of this opportunity. Firstly the economy grew dramatically, seeing a near fourfold increase from 2000 to 2010.21 Secondly, a more radical and regionally expansionist set of politicians closely identified with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) came to power in Tehran, affirmed by the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in August 2005.
In Saddam’s Iraq the regime had disproportionately favoured Sunni Arabs to the detriment of the majority Shia Arabs. Many Shia leaders, particularly those of an Islamist persuasion, had been persecuted and sought refuge in Shia Iran, where they forged close ties with the regime and elements of the IRGC. This meant that after 2003 when these Iraqi Shia leaders returned and were eventually elected to power, Iran had deep and broad ties to a whole generation of Iraqi leaders. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (2006–14), for example, lived in Iran for eight years and pursued strongly pro-Tehran policies while in office. Encouraged by its increased presence in Iraq, Iran bolstered its political ties to actors in Yemen, the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon while growing ever closer to the Syrian government. Moreover, it actively courted regional public opinion. Echoing the Arab nationalist Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser in the 1950s, Ahmadinejad’s populist slogans against Israel and pro-US Arab rulers were well received on the Arab street, notably during the Lebanon war of 2006 and the Gaza war of 2008/9.
If Iran’s increased influence was one post-2003 regional shift, Saudi Arabia’s reaction to that rise was another. Saudi Arabia perceived both a military and an ideational threat from Iran. Militarily, Saudi Arabia’s lucrative oilfields in the Persian Gulf have long been vulnerable to the emergence of a regional hegemon, whether Iraq or Iran. Dual containment had restricted both rivals, so its end with the fall of Saddam exacerbated Riyadh’s fears of increased Iranian activism. The large US military presence in the Gulf guarded against any military attack, but the ideational threat was far greater, both at home and abroad. Up to 15% of Saudi Arabia’s population were Shia and faced discrimination, as in Saddam’s Iraq. Riyadh’s leaders, who are prone to a sectarian outlook, feared that increased Iranian regional power would embolden their own Shia to demand greater rights or even rise up – a particularly damaging prospect given that they form a majority in the Eastern Province, home to Saudi Arabia’s oilfields. Beyond this, ever since the 1979 Revolution Riyadh had feared the alternative model of governance Tehran offers. The House of Saud based the legitimacy of their autocratic monarchical rule on Islam: their alliance with Wahhabi clerics and their custodianship of the holy places of Mecca and Medina. After 1979 Iran presented another, more participatory model of Islamic government that Saudi Arabia feared could inspire its own population.
The ideational threat abroad was newer. The Saudi leadership historically preferred to use their financial clout to steer and balance diplomacy from behind the scenes, leaving leadership to other Arab states. However, with Iraq slipping into the Iranian orbit, and Egypt diminishing in regional influence, Saudi Arabia found itself in the unfamiliar position of leading efforts to counter Iran.22 In a foretaste of what was to come after 2011, certain arenas emerged as low-level proxy conflicts between the Saudi-led pro-US bloc and the Iranian-led ‘Resistance Axis’. Many scholars labelled this a new ‘Cold War’, further weakening the creaking Khartoum consensus of non-interference in Arab states’ internal politics.23 Lebanon was one such arena, where Saudi Arabia led regional support for the anti-Syrian forces, while Iran and Syria’s ally Hezbollah formed their main opponents. Saudi Arabia also reluctantly stepped into Iraqi politics, backing certain Sunni parties in an ultimately forlorn attempt to halt the pro-Iranian tide.24 In Yemen too, Saudi Arabia poured money into the regime of President Saleh, who was battling Shia Houthi rebels, that Riyadh claimed were armed by Iran, and eventually launched its own military campaign against them in 2009–10. Conscious that it was losing the Arab street in this ideational battle, Riyadh and its allies stepped up their own ideational weapons. The al-Arabiya news channel was set up to offer a more pro-Saudi-Arabia perspective in contrast to the popular Qatar-owned pro-Resistance (though not necessarily pro-Iran) al-Jazeera.
The rise of the Saudi–Iranian rivalry was perhaps the most dramatic regional shift caused by the Iraq war, but other changes were facilitated too. Turkey became more active in the Middle East. The US invasion led to the establishment of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), prompting greater Turkish interest both in terms of the security threat this might pose regarding its own Kurds, and also in the commercial opportunities it provided. The 2003 war highlighted the growing divergence in view between the moderately Islamist AKP government in Turkey and Bush’s neo-conservatives. Turkey increasingly adopted an independent Middle Eastern policy, often opposing its American ally. Like Iran, Turkey’s leadership saw an opportunity to fill the regional vacuum created by the fall of Saddam. Qatar also saw opportunities. A wealthy gas state and long-term US ally, Qatar directly benefited not from the Iraq war but from its aftermath. The increased rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran provided space for Qatar to take on Saudi Arabia’s previous role as regional moderator, raising its profile with mediations in Gaza and Lebanon. Like Iran, Qatar’s economy skyrocketed following huge leaps in fuel prices, enabling it to pay for this increased activism. It was also greatly helped by its sponsorship of al-Jazeera which, via its populist anti-US, anti-Israel coverage, also raised Qatar’s standing in the growing arena of competition, the Arab street.
The rise of sectarianism, Jihadism and Kurdish nationalism
Three pre-existing transnational forces were greatly exacerbated and gained region-wide significance as a result of the Iraq war: sectarianism, Jihadism and Kurdish nationalism. Sectarianism, the politicisation of differences between sects within a religion, often leading to discrimination, hate or tension, has a long history the world over.25 The Middle East is no exception, with divisions between Sunni and Shia Muslims well documented since the coming of Islam in the seventh century. However the ‘Sunni–Shia’ divide had not been the defining, perennial struggle within Middle Eastern communities that some contemporary commentators argue.26 In multi-sect states such as Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, communities had lived side by side for generations, often intermarrying, and frequently seeing commonalities, such as a shared religion or Arab ethnicity, rather than divisions. Indeed, contrary to many Iranian expectations, Iraqi Shia mostly sided with their fellow Arab and Iraqi Sunnis against Shia Iran in the Iran–Iraq war. It was modern political developments, in the case of Iraq, Saddam’s systemic discrimination and then brutal oppression of Shia in revolt in 1991, rather than ancient unceasing hatreds that gave rise to sectarian politics.27
The rise in importance of Sunni and Shia identities during the 1990s, which increased as Saddam’s state retreated under international sanctions and sect-based support networks grew, contributed to sectarian conflict in Iraq after 2003.28 Tens of thousands were killed by rival sectarian militia, up to four million were displaced as neighbourhoods were forcefully homogenised, and rival mosques were attacked. With the Middle East increasingly culturally integrated by satellite television, this Shia–Sunni violence was widely publicised, supported by the horror stories told by refugees flooding into Syria and Jordan. Certain voices in the pro-Saudi-Arabia camp risked exacerbating matters by framing Iran’s increased prominence as part of a Shia takeover of the region. In 2004 King Abdullah of Jordan, an ally of the US and Saudi Arabia, spoke of a potential ‘Shia Crescent’ spreading from Lebanon to Syria, Iraq and Iran. In Saudi Arabia a group of thirty-eight ulema (religious leaders) signed an anti-Shia fatwa offering support to Iraq’s Sunnis and calling on Riyadh to do more.29 While this exaggerated the sectarian nature of Iran’s allies in Lebanon and Syria at that time, Tehran did back Shia sectarian forces in Iraq, such as the Badr organisation and Prime Minister Maliki. Interestingly, however, neither Iran’s support for sectarian groups, nor Saudi Arabian warnings seemed to resonate with the Arab street. In 2008, at the peak of the Iraq violence, in a poll of 4,000 Arabs from Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Lebanon and Jordan – all of which are Sunni-majority except for Lebanon – the three most popular leaders were Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar al-Assad, two Shia and an Alawi (a Shia derivative).30 However, a regional sectarian narrative had now been established and, to an extent, normalised. The Syrian civil war would provide it with a more receptive audience.
Jihadism was also transformed into a major regional current by the Iraq war. Prior to 2003, adherents of Sayyid Qutb’s ‘offensive jihad’ were in relative decline. Organic militant Islamists such as Hezbollah and Hamas had moderated to an extent, while others, such as the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya and Algeria’s GIA (Group Islamique Armée), were suppressed. Al-Qaeda, formed primarily from Arabs who had fought in Afghanistan, had failed to attract substantive support in the Middle East in the 1990s, hence its retreat to Taleban-ruled Kabul.31 That said, though the ideology had limited support, it had been far from discredited. It is a tragic irony that the US invasion of Iraq, ostensibly to defeat al-Qaeda and prevent it from acquiring Weapons of Mass Destruction, proved a massive recruiter for regional Jihadism. Not only did the occupation act initially as a rallying point for radicals to flood into, or inspire Jihad elsewhere such as Saudi Arabia, but American-run Iraqi prisons soon served as a further breeding ground.32 The subsequent civil war served to add a more explicit sectarian dimension to Sunni Jihadist ideology. One of the main forces to emerge in this conflict, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), was the parent to two of the Syrian civil war’s most prominent jihadist forces: Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS.
Lastly, Kurdish nationalism was greatly impacted by the Iraq war. The creation of the KRG created a self-ruled Kurdish territory for the first time, an inspiration for Kurdish nationalists in neighbouring Syria, Turkey and Iran. More importantly, it transformed the Iraqi Kurdish lands from an arena of regional competition to a projector of regional influence. In the 1990s internal rivalry between the two main Iraqi forces, Jalal Talabani’s PUK and Massoud Barzani’s KDP had attracted attention from Turkey, Iran and Saddam’s Iraq, as well as the Turkish PKK. However, a deal after 2003 that made Talabani president of Iraq and Barzani leader of the regional KRG government, along with the economic boom brought by northern Iraq’s oil reserves, stabilised this proto-state. This gave Barzani a platform to later influence Syria’s Kurds during the civil war. The second development was the PKK’s reaction to the change in regional climate. The rise of Barzani, as opposed to its traditional ally Talabani, and Turkey’s later alliance with the KRG squeezed the Turkish Kurdish separatists who had always seen themselves as the leaders of region-wide Kurdish nationalism. The PKK too would come to see Syria as an arena where it could recover lost influence.
Ending America’s moment?
Finally, the Iraq war and its consequences shifted US power in the Middle East, both perceptions of it by regional actors, and its own leaders’ views of what it could achieve. The rapid defeat of Saddam’s regime in 2003 appeared to confirm the unchallenged dominance of the US over the region that had emerged in the 1990s. The fact that Bashar al-Assad allowed Jihadis into Iraq from Syria, although they were his sworn enemies, illustrates how seriously the US’ regional opponents perceived America’s military threat. Similarly, the willingness of allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia to acquiesce to Bush’s pressure to hold (albeit restricted) elections in 2005 as part of his post-Iraq ‘agenda for freedom’ suggests they too perceived America’s moment to be at hand. Indeed, that Bush attempted to remake the region off the back of his success, whether pressuring Assad over Lebanon, or supporting democracy in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian territories, suggests that he and his administration believed that they could translate overwhelming military power into a region-wide political transformation.
Such goals were soon shown to be hubristic, however. The freedom agenda was quietly abandoned when undesired Islamists made electoral gains in Egypt in 2005 and the Palestinian Authority in 2006. Wider regional goals were shattered after Israel failed to defeat Hezbollah in the 2006 Lebanon war – illustrating the limitations of military force while providing Syria and Iran with a victory. Meanwhile Iraq, the original success story, was descending into a violent insurgency costing American lives. At the same time a sectarian civil war was undermining any hope that Iraq would become a model pluralist democracy, while the rise of pro-Iranian Shia politicians suggested it would not become the new US regional ally originally hoped for. A troop surge in 2007 and the accompanying alliance with Sunni Iraqi tribes, known as the Awakening councils, helped end the insurgency, opening the door for eventual US withdrawal in 2011, but Bush’s military adventurism was ultimately a failure.
Added to Bush’s failures were three related factors that shifted the US approach to the Middle East. The first was the 2008 financial crisis, which in the short term focussed political attention internally, and in the long term led to cuts in military spending. Second, there was public fatigue with deploying troops and money abroad, particularly in the Middle East. After losing nearly 5,000 killed and 45,000 injured in Iraq, and with priorities on the economy, in 2009 US public opinion temporarily favoured international isolation for the first time since the Cold War.33 Thirdly, in January 2009 and in relation to this, was the coming to power of Barack Obama as president, who had opposed the Iraq war and approached US regional policy with a different worldview. Though committed to continuing Bush’s counter-terrorism policies in his first term – increasing drone warfare and ordering the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 – Obama stepped back US activity in the Middle East, culminating in the withdrawal from Iraq. According to former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack in his conversations with Obama’s team, there was a belief that the US had consistently over-invested in the Middle East in recent years, that its importance to the US was exaggerated and that energy would be better deployed elsewhere in the world, notably Asia.34
There are broadly two schools of thought as to what caused this post-2009 retrenchment. One attributes the shift to agency, mostly the choices of the Obama administration. The other attributes it to structural changes in both the Middle East and the wider world, to which Obama had to react. These two arguments warrant further exploration as they will prove key when it comes to questions over Obama’s Syria policy – whether his reluctance to become involved was really a choice or a realistic assessment of US capacity to affect the situation. Those favouring agency see Obama’s drawdown from the Middle East as a result of his choices. Obama is viewed as a declinist who wrongly believed that the United States’ post- Cold-War global dominance was ending. His preference for multilateralism and offshore balancing – backing regional allies to police the region rather than deploy US troops – was based on learning the wrong lessons from the Iraq war. As Pollack argues, while Bush overstretched, Obama swung the pendulum too far the other way. These anti-declinists, or supremacists, who tend to be Obama’s critics in the US foreign policy establishment, argue that an assertive United States in both the Middle East and beyond is good for both the US and the world, sustaining the post-1991 unipolar order. Importantly, they argue, the US will only lose this global position if its leaders allow it to.35
The counter-argument is that Obama’s retrenchment is a reaction to unstoppable structural changes. Globally, academics such as Christopher Layne argue, the Bush era oversaw the end of unipolarity. The financial crisis and the rise of China and the ‘Beijing model’ of state-led capitalism, undermining the post-Cold-War ‘Washington Consensus’ of free markets, challenged uncontested US economic power. The failure in Iraq exposed the limitations of military power alone, while it made the US wildly unpopular, costing it dearly in ‘soft power’.36 In the Middle East, Fawaz Gerges concurs, arguing that the new multipolar globalised world order has provided space for and “awakened the ambitions of other regional and international powers”.37 Through this reading, versions of which are usually voiced by Obama’s domestic supporters, the President’s policies of disengagement and regional balancing should be seen as managing America’s transition into a new role brought on by structural changes beyond his control.
To an extent, both sides overstate their case. As discussed, even during the era of hegemony after 1991, military and economic dominance did not mean that the US was able to achieve all its goals in the Middle East, with regional actors continuing the Cold War trend of bucking superpower direction. Even if post-2009 the structural shifts against US power were exaggerated, a more engaged Obama would still have been likely to face the same obstacles as Clinton in pursuing his agenda. On the other hand, while it is clear that the global and regional structure was less favourable to US dominance in 2009 than in 2003, Obama’s personal views cannot be dismissed. The new president was not simply a product of his time but someone who actively opposed deeper involvement in the Middle East. In all probability, after the misadventures of Bush, structural factors would have required a major reassertion of US activity in the region to repair the damage to the perception of US hegemony in the Middle East after 2009, but Barack Obama’s approach certainly accelerated its decline. Importantly, whether US regional retreat was due to Obama’s choices or structural shifts, it was something that was increasingly perceived to be the case by the region’s actors. As Gerges notes, after the Iraq debacle and Obama’s retrenchment, “The US is no longer seen as omnipotent and invincible.”38
After America: a shift in power
The Middle East in 2011 was a region in transition. The perceived dominance of the United States, already more limited than assumed, was ebbing after 2009 and a nascent multipolar regional order was emerging. The Syrian civil war must be understood within the context of these regional shifts, as both a symptom and a subsequent reinforcer of them. The US was still the most powerful, but now other powers were independently asserting or reasserting their influence. This book focusses on the five that, alongside the US, would go on to shape the Syria conflict: Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.
The six players were not of equal power or influence in Syria, yet each was sizeable enough to impact the conflict, often independently of the others. Due to this variation in power, different players deployed a variety of tools at different times whether military, economic or diplomatic, sometimes overtly, but more often covertly. Each actor was constrained by structural forces, whether international or domestic, but the agency of their leaders should not be discounted, with personal decisions having major consequences. Importantly, these actors all had interests beyond just Syria, and developments elsewhere as well as inside Syria affected their policies. The remainder of this chapter assesses their regional positions on the eve of the crisis.
The view from the United States
Barack Obama had an ambivalent approach to foreign policy. On the one hand, he had little foreign policy experience, having a background in domestic campaigns and a preference to focus on an economy in crisis.39 On the other hand, in his election campaign he made much of his opposition to the unpopular Iraq war, distinguishing himself from both his predecessor Bush and his main Democrat rival, Hillary Clinton. He came to office with a clear idea of how US foreign affairs should be conducted differently and, with the public disillusioned with foreign adventures, had a mandate to do it. Some observers claim that he transformed from a foreign policy idealist into a realist once in office, but even on the campaign trail Obama had praised the realism of George H.W. Bush. Similarly, in a 2007 speech he critiqued humanitarian intervention.40 In office, while liberal interventionists as Samantha Power and Susan Rice were drafted into his administration, Obama’s most influential foreign policy advisers, such as national-security adviser Thomas Donilon, and deputy national-security adviser Denis McDonough, later to become White House Chief of Staff, were realists. Clinton was appointed Secretary of State but often found herself marginalised on key decisions. That said, insiders insist that there was plenty of scope for debate in the Oval Office, with the president keen to understand the complexities of foreign policy decisions, especially on the Middle East. As it had with all US presidents, internal pressures impacted foreign policy, not only in terms of public opinion – with Obama’s team particularly sensitive to opinion polls – but also the rival views of government institutions such as the State Department, military and intelligence branches.41 His detractors argued that Obama was inconsistent and lacked grand strategy, but supporters replied that a single ‘one size fits all’ approach is a Cold War relic incompatible with today’s complexities. Obama’s non-ideological approach instead allowed him to deal with issues on a case-by-case basis to best protect American interests.42
When the Arab Spring began in December 2010, Obama had been in office nearly two years and his priorities in the Middle East were relatively clear.43 Firstly, he wanted to reduce the US physical presence. He announced in December 2009 that US troops would be removed from Iraq and Afghanistan by the end of his first term, although he later extended the Afghanistan deadline. Secondly, he wanted to rebuild America’s reputation in the Middle East and wider Islamic world. He made two high-profile speeches in Ankara and Cairo in 2009, rolling back on Bush’s interventionism, stating, “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone.” This signalled a retreat from democracy proselytising, although investment in grass-roots civil society activism quietly continued.44 An attempt was made as part of this to relaunch the Israel–Palestinian peace process, but this was put on the back burner when it became clear that Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu was determined to act as spoiler.45 Thirdly, he had sought to reach out to the US’ enemies, most notably Iran and Russia. After repeated tensions between former Russian President Putin and Bush, Obama pushed the idea of relations being ‘reset’ with new President Dmitri Medvedev. Similarly, in a video message to the Iranian public on 20 March 2009, he addressed “the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran”.46 While this agenda was somewhat derailed by the Iranian regime’s crushing of unrest in 2009, Obama’s comparative silence was interpreted as a sign of rapprochement. At the same time, Obama was committed to nuclear non-proliferation, and stepped up the pressure on Tehran to abandon its programme. After the 2009 crackdown, the White House backed a new round of UN sanctions in June 2010.
A shift in approach to Syria was part of Obama’s new agenda. The administration cautiously retreated from Bush’s isolation of Assad, nominating an ambassador, Robert Ford, to Damascus for the first time in five years in February 2010. Re-engagement with Assad was a means to several other ends: to help stabilise Iraq in order to enable US withdrawal by 2012 and ensure that Damascus didn’t reactivate its flow of Jihadi fighters eastward; and to increase pressure on Iran by pursuing a long-hoped-for Saudi Arabian goal of ‘flipping’ Syria into the pro-western orbit. However, US officials noted in private how low a priority Syria was prior to 2011.47 Re-engagement efforts were led by individuals such as Ford and Clinton’s adviser Fred Hof, but there was little coordination between them, the State Department or the White House. After five years of isolating Assad, knowledge of his regime, and interest in it, was limited. Moreover, outside the State Department, Syria was viewed primarily through the lens of relations to Israel. The pro-Israeli American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) briefed Congressmen on Syria, offering certain biases, which contributed to an anti-engagement atmosphere on the Capitol. Indeed, such views stalled Ford’s confirmation, meaning that he only arrived in Damascus in January 2011.
Washington’s closest western allies, when it came to the Middle East, France and Britain, were more up to date on Syria, having retained a diplomatic presence in Damascus. France, as Syria’s former colonial master, believed itself particularly well placed. The new French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, had taken the lead in bringing Damascus in from the cold – a departure from the policy of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, who as a close friend of Rafiq Hariri led international outrage at Assad after the 2005 assassination. Sarkozy became the first western leader to break the Bush boycott and visit Damascus in September 2008. French diplomats cautiously briefed that a separation of Syria from Iran was possible, while intelligence cooperation had reportedly never stopped.48
Like the US, Britain was prioritising internal matters, weary after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and implementing a strict post-financial crisis austerity programme that was cutting deep into the defence budget. Traditionally more aligned with US regional policy than France, it too had improved ties with Syria in the wake of the new direction from Washington. The new government of 2010 under Premier David Cameron continued this, and seemed to favour a commerce-led realist approach – both the UK and France significantly increased their economic and related diplomatic ties with the Gulf. When Foreign Secretary William Hague met with Assad in Damascus in January 2011, he met business leaders as well as civil society activists and spoke about openness to investment, as well as political pluralism.49 Both Britain and France would go on to play an important role supporting and augmenting US efforts in Syria once the crisis began a few months later.
Russia: Putin’s evolving view
America’s Cold War rival had seen its position in the Middle East quietly transformed during the 2000s. Once of similar regional prestige to the US with a rival number of allies and bases, diplomatic and military defeats in the 1970s and ’80s, followed by the collapse of the USSR and internal chaos under President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, left Moscow peripheral. However, Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, slowly reasserted Russia’s clout. A former KGB officer from St Petersburg, Putin has often been portrayed by western commentators as ruthless, autocratic and expansionist, seeking a return to Russia’s power under the Soviet era – whose collapse he remarked in 2005 was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the twentieth century. However, Russian Middle East policy under Putin was more nuanced than this simple caricature allows.
Firstly, Putin’s worldview was far from fixed and appears to have evolved. Up until 2003 balance-of-power realists such as former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov had Putin’s ear, while afterwards he was more inclined towards nationalists.50 Secondly, despite autocratic tendencies, Putin was a populist and public opinion mattered. In his first term (2000–2004) the average Russian saw a 26% increase in their annual income.51 Benefiting from the increase in oil and gas prices, the Russian economy grew fivefold between 2000 and 2010. This allowed Putin to modernise his military, boosting Russian prestige and, consequently, the support of an increasingly nationalist public. However, it also meant economics became a core pillar of foreign policy. Thirdly, Putin was opportunistic and reactive. While he opposed the US’ invasion of Iraq publicly, he only began to step up his rhetoric when Bush’s wars started going badly, and global (and Russian) public opinion turned against them. In his 2006 annual state of the nation speech, the Russian President compared the US to a hungry wolf that “eats and listens to no one”.52 Relations sank even lower when Russia launched an attack on America’s ally Georgia in 2008. By this point Putin’s protégé, Dmitri Medvedev had taken over as President, with the Russian constitution forbidding more than two terms in office. While most assumed that Putin, who was appointed Prime Minister, remained the power behind the throne, the Obama administration hoped that the change of leader might allow space for its ‘reset’ agenda.
As 2010 ended, the Kremlin looked at the Middle East through three lenses.53 First was the domestic security lens. Moscow feared the long ties between Middle Eastern Islamists and secessionists in its Muslim north Caucasus region, having fought a long war in Chechnya and suffered numerous terrorist attacks by Islamists in the 2000s. Second was the regional economic lens. As part of his economy-anchored foreign policy, Putin had greatly expanded Russian trade with the Middle East. Gas was sold to energy-poor states such as Turkey while opportunities for arms sales greatly increased.54 The third lens was geopolitical. Putin and his nationalists mostly saw the Middle East through a zero-sum perspective, seeing each diplomatic or economic gain for Russia there as a defeat for the US, and vice versa.55 Therefore, as US popularity decreased under Bush, a major effort was made to improve Russia’s image. Israel, to which almost a million Russian Jews emigrated after 1990, was consciously courted. Putin was the first Russian President to visit, in 2005, visa-free agreements were made between the states in 2008, and trade increased considerably – more than with any Arab country.56 Russia also sought to soften its image with Arab and Muslim states, obtaining observer status at the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in 2007. Russia did not simply align with the anti-US ‘resistance axis’ of Iran and Syria, but rather courted both US enemies and allies, promoting itself as a third force in the region. A sign of this was Moscow’s endorsement of the 2010 UN sanctions on Iran.
As for Syria, Damascus may have been a close Soviet ally, but in the 1990s that connection had largely lapsed. Tartous hosted Russia’s only Mediterranean naval installation, but it was not dredged and revived until 2007, and even then hosted barely fifty personnel.57 Eight thousand Russians lived in Syria, but far more lived in Israel. Assad had purchased a considerable amount of Russian weaponry before 2011, including sophisticated anti-aircraft weaponry, but more had been sold to other Arab states and Putin had had to agree to write off most of Syria’s $13 billion Cold War debt with Russia in 2005 to enable the purchase. Assad had courted Putin, especially during his years of isolation, notably endorsing Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, but Syria was afforded no special place in Russian strategic thinking. Putin did not personally like Assad, quipping once that he spent more time in Paris than Moscow. As will be discussed in the coming chapters, Moscow’s ultimate backing of the Assad regime once the crisis began owed much to the events of 2011.
Iran: competing powers
Another state with a more complex leadership than often characterised was Iran. Though no liberal democracy in the western sense, the post-1979 Islamic Republic is far more participatory than most of its Arab autocratic neighbours. Moreover it has various competing centres of power that influence its regional policy. The most powerful figure is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Ruhollah Khomeini as Iran’s Supreme Leader in 1989. According to Carnegie’s Karim Sadjadpour, Khamenei’s worldview was shaped by four priorities: to resist the US’ and, by extension Israel’s, plans to dominate the region and Iran; to maintain support for the Palestinians (and Lebanese) in their struggle against Israel; to pursue nuclear power as a route to Iranian independence and regional prestige; and to be a key player, even the key player within the Islamic world.58 However, while these views guided Iranian strategy, the Supreme Leader was no absolute dictator and other currents operated below him influencing how these policies, and others, were pursued.59 Several factions emerged in the early 2000s, the most powerful of which, the radicals dominated by the IRGC, reached the peak of power with the election of Ahmadinejad as President 2005–13.60 As discussed above, this prompted a more aggressive anti-American, anti-Israel line of rhetoric, a more assertive regional policy and accelerated the pursuit of nuclear power. Importantly, Ahmadinejad was but one figure in the IRGC establishment whose political and economic power was growing. Yet this was far from unchallenged and three other factions, the Reformists, the Traditionalist Conservatives and the Conservative Pragmatists each retained a power base and differing levels of popular and elite support.61
While Iran had emerged as the big winner of the 2003 Iraq war and its aftermath, on the eve of the Syria crisis Tehran’s confidence had been somewhat checked. The ‘Green Revolution’ anti-Ahmadinejad protests of 2009, led by Reformists who claimed that the President had fraudulently claimed re-election, damaged Iran’s regional reputation. Having spent much of the preceding four years berating the region’s pro-western Arab autocrats and winning a reputation in the Arab street as a man of the people, the sight of Iranian security forces brutally suppressing unarmed protesters broadcast widely on al-Jazeera made Ahmadinejad seem a hypocrite. Khamenei damaged his own domestic reputation by endorsing the disputed election result, and Ahmadinejad soon lost his crown as hero of the Arab street to Turkey’s populist Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The protests also made it difficult for Obama to continue with his hoped-for rapprochement, though it is questionable how receptive Iran ever was. It was also easier for its enemies, notably Israel’s Netanyahu, to present Iran as a repressive autocracy in his campaign to highlight Tehran’s continued nuclear enrichment, ultimately leading to the 2010 sanctions. Even so, the regional gains of the 2000s were far from lost. Iran consolidated its alliances with Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas and a growing relationship with Yemen’s Houthis. Moreover, it had developed a strong diplomatic and trade relationship with Turkey, who, with Brazil, had led calls against the UN sanctions. However, its IRGC leaders were increasingly feeling paranoid and encircled by enemies determined to prevent Iran emerging as a leading regional power.62
On the eve of the 2011 crisis Syria remained a key pillar of Iran’s regional policy. While the fall of Saddam meant that Iraq was now its greatest strategic priority, Revolutionary Iran’s oldest regional ally was still of great value. Immediately after the 2006 war, Hezbollah began preparing for the next possible round with Israel, and Syria was a key land bridge via which Iran seat its Lebanese ally weapons, money and training. As both states were isolated by the Bush administration, Iranian trade with Syria grew steadily, with a fourfold increase from 2006 to 2011, though it remained small compared to that of other states.63 While grand infrastructural projects were announced, such as a $10 billion proposed Iran–Iraq–Syria–Lebanon gas pipeline in July 2011, some analysts doubted they would ever come about, as Syria’s value to Iran was primarily political rather than economic.64 The ‘Resistance Axis’ had given both regimes domestic and regional legitimacy and the alliance continued to flourish. In February 2010 Assad frustrated the many western and Arab diplomats trying to ‘flip’ him from Iran by hosting a lavish dinner for Ahmadinejad and Hassan Nasrallah in Damascus, announcing, “There is no separating Iran and Syria.”65 That said, it would be wrong to see Assad as subservient to Iran on the eve of the crisis and he continued to pursue independent policies.
Unfamiliar ground for Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia was among the biggest losers of the 2003 Iraq war. King Abdullah, then Crown Prince, had urged the Bush administration against the invasion in vain. The regional fluctuations that followed, particularly the rise of Iran, forced Saudi Arabia away from its preferred quiet diplomacy towards greater activism. However, this unfamiliar shift did not come easily, and numerous internal concerns proved a distraction. First among these were questions over generational change in Saudi Arabia’s leadership. Since Ibn Saud founded the kingdom in 1932, his successors had been drawn from his legitimate sons. Yet this pool was ageing and questions arose over which of the hundreds of grandsons would ultimately succeed, with competing factions accumulating power to press their claims. Abdullah, who turned 87 in 2011 and was in ill health, promoted himself as a reformer, improving women’s rights for example, and so promoted princes whom he believed would continue this legacy, notably his son, Mutaib, and half-brother, Muqrin. In opposition to these reforms, was another half-brother; the more hard-line conservative Interior Minister Prince Nayef. He led the main competing royal faction to Abdullah’s: ‘the Sudairi clan’, a powerful group of seven of Ibn Saud’s sons who shared the same mother, and their sons.66
Alongside and often related to these dynastic manoeuvres, Abdullah faced other domestic concerns. First was his relationship with the powerful Wahhabi clerical establishment, a strict ultra-conservative form of Islam that Ibn Saud had aligned with in a mutually supportive pact that continued to define the religious and political nature of the kingdom. Far from controlled by the regime, many Wahhabi ulema proved a constant source of pressure on Abdullah to be more conservative at home and abroad, particularly targeting the Shia. Nayef and the Sudairis enjoyed close ties to these ulema. Second was the threat of domestic Jihadist terrorism. After encouraging jihad abroad against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Riyadh was surprised when its citizens, among them Osama bin Laden, returned radicalised and determined to wage jihad at home. Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi Arabian citizens. From 2003 to 2006 Riyadh had to battle with the newly formed al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) , ultimately crushing them and forcing them into neighbouring Yemen. While the ulema officially urged loyalty to the kingdom, there remained a strong potential for domestic radicalisation. This related to a final concern: the economy. Saudi Arabia is blessed with 16% of the world’s petroleum reserves and oil dominates the economy, in 2015 making up roughly 80% of budget revenues, 45% of GDP, and 90% of export earnings.67 Unlike smaller Gulf States, however, Saudi Arabia had a large population of close to 30 million whose continued loyalty to the state appeared to be determined by the continuation of royal patronage. This made its domestic sector sensitive to fluctuations in the oil market and therefore encouraged a desire for regional stability. Fears remained that an unsatisfied domestic population might challenge Saudi Arabian rule and be more susceptible to Islamic radicalisation.
Despite these internal concerns there was broad consensus among Saudi Arabia’s elite after 2003 that the threat from Iran was the number one regional issue, especially Tehran’s accelerated nuclear programme. As enrichment intensified, Saudi Arabia poured money into its military, benefiting from high oil prices. Arms imports from the US were nine times greater in 2008–11 than in 2004–7.68 Saudi Arabia’s leaders became increasingly paranoid. Riyadh perceived Yemen’s Houthis as Tehran’s proxy, yet there is scant evidence its involvement was any more than superficial before 2011.69 International relations were diversified, improving ties with China, from whom it purchased a long-range missile system, but the US remained by far its most important ally. The Iranian question was causing tension, however. Abdullah had urged the Bush administration to attack Iran to end its nuclear programme, to ‘cut off the head of the snake’, as the king reportedly told US General David Petraeus in April 2008.70 The accession of Obama in January 2009, with his desire to increasingly disengage from the Middle East and even pursue detente with Iran, worsened matters. Obama and Abdullah’s first meeting, in Riyadh in 2009, was an hour-long lecture from the king on the dangers of Iran.71 Obama’s contrasting style to Bush didn’t help. While Bush’s amiable character fitted well with the Saudi Arabian personal approach to politics, including issuing numerous invitations to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Obama’s more detached professionalism left Abdullah cold. At the same time Saudi Arabian commentators criticised Riyadh’s naïvety, and especially its diplomatic staff in Washington, for being too slow to adjust to Obama’s new foreign policy team.72 The end result was a distinct cooling in US–Saudi ties on the eve of the Syrian civil war.
Fear of Iran partly motivated Saudi Arabia’s own detente with Syria. In 2009–10 Assad visited Saudi Arabia three times, and Abdullah paid one return visit to Damascus.73 The Syrian President had reacted personally to the Saudi-Arabia-led regional diplomatic boycott after 2005, publicly calling Abdullah and other pro-western leaders ‘half men’ for not supporting Hezbollah against Israel in the 2006 war. This was the latest in a long line of strained Saudi Arabia–Syria ties. They had different patrons during the Cold War, and the Syrian–Iranian alliance of 1979 worsened matters. Ideologically, the Assads’ socialist Arab nationalism clashed with the conservative Islamic monarchy of the Sauds, while their Alawite sect seemed a natural enemy to the self-declared guardians of Sunnism in Riyadh. However, the relationship was far from static, with neither ideology nor religion truly defining it. In bad times Saudi Arabia tended to back opposition to Assad, whether Sunni politicians in Lebanon or the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, many of whom were welcomed in Saudi Arabia after their defeat in 1982. However, in 1973 and 1990 the regimes formed a military alliance in the face of a common enemy, Israel and Iraq respectively, and Saudi Arabia expelled members of the pro-Saddam Syrian Muslim Brotherhood during the latter conflict. Riyadh’s 2009–10 detente was therefore typical of a fluctuating relationship, not an anomaly. Given the animosity to follow after 2011, this temporary reconciliation suggests a realism in Riyadh’s thinking: driven primarily by a desire to contain Iran but not seeing Assad’s sect or professed ideology as an obstacle to courting his support.
Turkey’s return to the Middle East
Historically Turkey had limited its engagement with the Middle East, propelled by founding father Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s desire to face westwards and a lingering perception that the Arabs betrayed the Ottoman Turks in the First World War.74 Three factors shifted that position in the 2000s. First, the aftermath of the Iraq war created dangers and opportunities. The danger was the militant Islamism, sectarianism and Kurdish separatism described earlier. This necessitated greater cooperation with fellow southern neighbours Syria and Iran, and later on the KRG, in search of stability.75 The opportunity came from the regional power vacuum left after the fall of Saddam and the entanglement of the US in the subsequent quagmire. Like Iran, Turkey’s ambitious leadership saw its chance. Secondly, Turkey’s export-driven economy was growing rapidly. Particularly successful were the ‘Anatolian Tigers’ – southern industrial cities, such as Gaziantep, that produced medium-level manufactured goods ideal for the developing economies of the Middle East. These business leaders, distinct from the old economic elites of Istanbul and Ankara, were strong supporters of the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, or AKP) that came to power in 2002. As a result, the pursuit of new markets, particularly in the Middle East, became a key tenet of foreign policy.
The third factor was the election of the mildly Islamist AKP and its ambitious founder, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Prime Minister from 2003 to 2014 and President thereafter, Erdoğan departed from Atatürk’s legacy (Kemalism). At home he challenged the traditional elite’s quasi-autocratic secularism, curbing the power of the Kemalist military and judiciary in the name of democracy, though ultimately adopting autocratic tendencies himself. As part of a cultural war over Turkish identity between secularists and religious conservatives, Erdoğan sought to rehabilitate the Ottoman Empire, moving it away from the negative Kemalist historical view, proudly referring to himself and his supporters as Osmanlı torunu (descendant of the Ottomans). A more active foreign policy in the former Ottoman lands of the Middle East, ‘neo-Ottomanism’ became a feature of this.76 Ahmet Davutoğlu, a professor of international relations, Erdoğan’s foreign policy adviser, Foreign Minister 2009–14 and Prime Minister 2014-16, was instrumental in this. Davutoğlu rejected the ‘neo-Ottomanism’ tag, instead formulating his foreign policy as pursuing ‘strategic depth’ in foreign relations and seeking ‘zero problems with neighbours’ in order for Turkey to become a ‘central country’ in the Middle East and beyond.77 With trade at its centre, ties were improved with Syria, Iran, Libya, Egypt and the Gulf while, initially at least, military cooperation with Israel, begun in the 1990s, continued. The Arab world in particular was courted, in an attempt to improve Turkey’s (historically maligned) regional image. Much was made of the popularity of Turkish soap operas dubbed into Syrian Arabic, increasing Turkey’s soft power, while Erdoğan’s growing vehemence against Bush’s policies and Israel’s repression of the Palestinians increased his popularity on the Arab street.
However, despite the rhetoric of ‘zero problems’ there was a mismatch between Turkey’s regional ambitions and its capacity to bring them about. The US ambassador to Ankara, James Jeffrey, noted in 2010 that Turkey had “Rolls Royce ambitions but Rover resources”.78 Having spent most of its history facing westward, it lacked both the institutional depth and the material resources to suddenly become a Middle Eastern power. Moreover, already by 2010 foreign policy was becoming personalised under Erdoğan. Turkey had far more developed institutions than its Middle Eastern neighbours, notably the military and foreign service, but both were dominated by the AKP’s Kemalist rivals and so Erdoğan and Davutoğlu increasingly bypassed or subordinated them. This concentration of power allowed for sudden shifts in policy to be announced based on Erdoğan’s whims – seen most dramatically when he walked out of a Davos meeting with Israeli leaders during the 2008/9 Gaza war, prompting a sudden and unplanned break in Turkish–Israeli ties.
Moreover, despite presenting their regional approach as new, the AKP retained two core Kemalist policies. First was the steadfast rejection of Kurdish secession from Turkey. While the AKP would propose concessions to Turkey’s long-suffering Kurds, it remained committed to preserving Turkey’s borders and the post-First World War regional settlement. Any factor that could threaten that, notably the growth of pro-secessionist groups in Syria, Iraq or Iran, was viewed as a threat. Second, it remained committed to Turkey’s long alliance with the US and NATO. Erdoğan built a regional image as an anti-US voice: criticising Bush after the Iraq war, clashing with the US over Israel, and also frustrating Obama with his last-minute opposition to the Iran sanctions in 2010. However, at the same time Bush pressured the EU to welcome Turkey as a model of Muslim moderation, while Obama hoped a close alliance with Turkey, referred to by Deputy Secretary of State Nicholas Burns in 2012 as “an important model of success”, would allow for US regional retrenchment.79 The ultimate importance of this tie was seen in September 2011 when Turkey agreed to host NATO’s missile defence radar on its territory – 435 miles from Iran – despite Iranian objections.80
Syria was the ‘poster child’ of the zero problems policy, having overcome historical enmity to forge a close relationship by 2010.81 Sharing Turkey’s longest border, 910 kilometres, Syria had been on the opposite side of the Cold War, claimed the right to the Turkish province of Hatay, demanded greater access to Euphrates water that Turkey dammed upstream, and supported the PKK in its struggle with Ankara. The states almost went to war in 1998 over the latter. However, with goodwill from new leadership on both sides, long-running issues were swiftly settled. Hafez had already expelled the PKK in 1998 to avoid Turkish invasion, but Bashar al-Assad accelerated the rapprochement, becoming the first Syrian leader to visit Ankara in 2004, deliberately sidelining the Hatay issue in 2005, and reaching agreement on Euphrates water in 2008. This enabled an ever-deepening economic, diplomatic and cultural relationship. A free trade agreement, initiated in 2007, and a visa-free travel arrangement in 2009 saw trade flourish. Syria’s exports to Turkey more than tripled from $187m in 2006 to $662m in 2010, while Turkish exports to Syria grew from $609m to $1.85bn in the same period.82 Syrian visitors to Turkey increased more than sevenfold between 2002 and 2011 to just under a million a year.83 In a sign of the personalisation of Turkish foreign policy, Erdoğan and Assad formed a friendship, even holidaying together. Both benefited from these public ties: Assad ended his diplomatic isolation, while Erdoğan enhanced his anti-US credentials on the Arab street by associating with a ‘Resistance Axis’ leader. Few would have expected Turkey to emerge soon as a leading sponsor of the anti-Assad opposition.
The same could be said of Qatar, which had grown close to Assad in the late 2000s. The emirate boasted three significant assets for the activist foreign policy it would pursue after 2011: a tiny population, enormous wealth, and, like Turkey and Iran, an ambitious leadership. The fossil fuel boom of 2002–8, aided by sensible reforms to its Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) sector, and a diversification in its economy saw an explosion in Qatar’s wealth, from a GDP of $25bn in 2001, to $100bn in 2010, and $200bn in 2013.84 This attracted a wave of migrants to the peninsular state, increasing the population from under 700,000 in 2002 to 1.7 million in 2010 and 2.3 million in 2015. Yet of these, only 300,000 were citizens, giving Qatar by far the highest per capita income in the world, resulting in considerable largesse from the state.85 The Qatari leadership could therefore conduct foreign policy largely unrestrained by domestic concerns. However, unlike small states in similar positions, such as Singapore, Qatar’s emir had grand ambitions.
Having seized power from his father in a bloodless coup in 1995, Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani utilised Qatar’s vast gas wealth to set it on the path to rapid economic growth. While under his father Qatar had followed Saudi Arabian leadership alongside the other Gulf states, Hamad was determined to pursue an independent path. This was seen almost immediately when he permitted al-Jazeera to be founded in Doha in 1996 by a group of mostly anti-Saudi Arab journalists.86 This distinction from Saudi Arabia was a key trait of Hamad’s foreign policy, including more amiable ties with Iran, with whom Qatar shared the vast South Pars / North Field gas field. Hamad was autocratic and ran his country in a highly personalised way, making his foreign policy somewhat idiosyncratic and unpredictable.87 While this meant a lack of institutional depth and a weak bureaucracy, it allowed for swift decision-making and rapid policy shifts.88 Alongside Hamad was a small circle of decision-makers, most importantly Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani (HBJ), Foreign Minister from 1992 to 2013, and Prime Minister as well from 2007–13.
On the eve of the Syrian civil war, Qatar was in the process of greatly expanding its regional and international influence.89 Its security was guaranteed after the US agreed to relocate its air force from Saudi Arabia to the purpose-built Al Udeid base in Qatar in 2003. Rather like Turkey, this deep alliance with Washington should always be recalled even when Doha pursued seemingly anti-American policies. Further to this, it aimed to manage its relationship with Iran. It was seemingly on course with this too, aligning itself more with the ‘Resistance Axis’ in the late 2000s by improving ties with Assad’s Syria and promoting an anti-western agenda on al-Jazeera. Secondly, it sought to expand its regional influence, particularly distinguishing itself from Saudi Arabia. This was done in two stages. Firstly via al-Jazeera’s dramatic rise, which boosted the tiny emirate’s profile and increased its popularity on the Arab street. Secondly, after 2006 it took on Saudi Arabia’s traditional role as mediator in regional disputes, sponsoring mediation after the Gaza war in January 2009 and brokering the 2008 Doha Agreement in Lebanon. A third stage, financial and armed support for opposition groups, would follow in 2011. A final, related, aim was to boost Qatar’s international ‘brand’, by spending much of its wealth on high profile projects at home and abroad, such as sponsoring football clubs or buying London department stores – certainly helped by the 2007 financial crisis, which resulted in assets being offered abroad at comparatively low prices. This branding reached its apex in 2010 when Qatar was awarded the FIFA World Cup for 2022.
Qatar’s improved ties with Syria thus should be seen as part of its bid to boost its regional influence. As with Erdoğan, there was kudos on the Arab street to be won for Hamad by associating with the then-popular Assad, but there were other advantages. Helping the diplomatic boycott of Assad to fail represented a defeat for Saudi Arabia. Indeed, it was Qatar that facilitated French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s rapprochement with Damascus. Similarly, Hamad had helped effectively reverse Saudi Arabian gains in Lebanon at Syria and Iran’s expense after the 2005 Cedar Revolution by brokering the 2008 Doha Agreement that helped consolidate Hezbollah, Syria and Iran’s power there. As with Erdoğan, Hamad’s ties to Assad were personal, with the Syrian leader also forming a close bond with the Emir’s son and heir, Tamim. As a further sign of friendship Doha announced up to $12bn in investments from 2006 to 2010, a huge amount for Syria, although many remained unrealised.90 That said, Assad did refuse a Qatari proposal in 2009 to build a gas pipeline over Syrian territory to Europe via Turkey. Some later claimed this was to protect Russian and possible future Iranian dominance of the European market – seemingly confirmed when the Iran–Iraq–Syria–Lebanon pipeline was announced soon afterwards.91 As with Iran, Syria’s main value to Qatar was the political rather than economic, with the platform it lent Doha. Such ties, however, were expedient and, as was soon to be seen during the 2011 crisis, ultimately proved shallow and expendable.
On the eve of civil war, Syria and the Middle East appeared deceptively stable. Regionally, Barack Obama’s proposed engagement with former enemies Iran, Russia and Syria suggested a less militaristic approach to the region than that of his predecessor. However, the Bush administration’s policies, particularly the 2003 Iraq war and its aftermath, had already set about transforming the regional order. The previous balance of power was upset to the advantage of Iran, in turn provoking more active policies from Saudi Arabia and creating opportunities for ambitious states such as Turkey, Qatar and Russia. Three previously more marginal transnational forces – sectarianism, Jihadism and Kurdish nationalism – were exacerbated and saw their reach considerably widened, while the non-state actors promoting them proliferated. Moreover, this prompted a reassessment of US power in the region, both in Washington and among America’s regional allies and enemies. Whether due to changing global structural forces such as the financial crisis, globalisation and the rise of China, or due to policy choices, the US was increasingly seen as in decline and questions over the extent of US hegemony, already overstated, were being raised.
Against this backdrop in Syria President Bashar al-Assad had come through an uneasy first decade in power. He had survived confrontation and isolation with the west and its regional allies, all of whom were now seeking detente with Damascus. However, this foreign policy victory couldn’t mask the array of problems below the surface that Assad faced at home. As shall be discussed in the next chapter, he failed to adapt the autocratic regime he inherited from his father to new and pre-existing economic, political and social challenges, often making matters considerably worse.