Dr. Yahya Al-Aridi
The US did not ask the “Assad regime” to change its behavior following the killing of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, but rather ordered it to leave Lebanon immediately. And the order was executed faster than the specified time. For more than a decade, the “regime” itself has been behind the arrest, torture, disappearance, killing, and displacement of millions of Syrians who are supposedly “its people,” and destroyed what is supposedly its “country”. The most that America itself asked of it was to change its behavior.
America realizes more than others that any change in the Assad regime’s behavior means it’s end. It actually has based its request on countervailing fortifications that exist in the regime’s build-up, which is reflected in its detachment from reality, stubbornness, arrogance, and fear of the slightest change. Moreover, The regime’s immunity is reinforced by America’s turning a blind eye to Iranian militias’ suppor and Russian intervention that guarantee its survival. What is added to all that is the regime’s lack of responsiveness to already weak and vague international resolutions, that no one seems to care about implementing them.
In the policy of its successive administrations towards the Syrian issue over the past years, the US has adhered to the formula of “indecisiveness” so that {the regime does not win, nor lose}; and {the Syrian revolution does not triumph, nor does it end}. This exhaustive policy necessitated interaction with the developments of the Syrian issue and the positions and actions of those involved in it, turning Syria into an arena for settling accounts and achieving the associated interests on their part, while ignoring the essence of the Syrian issue represented by the struggle of a people who want to regain their freedom and rights; and a tyrannical regime that is obsessed with staying in power at any cost.
After all these years, and with the situation in Syria reaching a state of stagnation in which it is impossible for the regime to continue; it was necessary to make a final attempt to recycle it, and turn the page on its criminality by approaching it publicly, with no muffled objection or public support from the main thread-holder, the USA. Herein, Russia turned into the “dynamo” and the main engine of the normalization process, aspiring for a political achievement after its military actions in Syria, from which it generated nothing but ruins; and its diplomacy in the international arena, from which it reaped just keeping the al-Assad regime corpse alive.
In this regard, Russia worked on two fronts: one by exploiting the “Astana” process, to bring about rapprochement between the “Assad regime” and Turkey; and another on the front of the Arab League. In the first, Russia took advantage of its special relationship with Türkiye and its presidential elections. In the second, it relied on the absence of any Arab plan towards the Syrian issue, and on the acrobatics of one of the Gulf countries (UAE) and its deep desire for normalization that are broader than normalization with Assad,; specifically with Israel.
Putin has always been keen to present his credentials to Israel, in order to guarantee Western approval, and to tighten his grip on the Russian interior; and to have a distinguished position in the international arena. He must have believed that his act of “normalizing” the Assad regime will find the way paved through this “Abrahamic” path, in line with the American approach. Unfortunately for him, “the darkness of the night was not as desired by the thief”:
– Putin thought that he could bypass the role and the suffocating influence of the mullahs’ of Iran on Assad. He found himself at a time forced to accept Iran’s imposition of itself on the tripartite meeting that brought together (the Assad regime, Russia and Turkey) in Moscow; and turned the meeting into a quadripartite one, with the presence of Iran. They made Assad dictate conditions on Türkiye. The wave of Turkish-Assad normalization has cooled. Then his friend Erdogan won the elections, and the wave froze.
– On the other “Arab” front, Putin thought his chances would be better by virtue of the desire of the Arabs for an active political role in their region, and their dream of repelling Iranian influence and its futility. He tempted them to take their “brother” back into their bosom; however, there are those who sent Putin’s enemy “Zelinsky” to the normalization summit hall with Assad’s arrival there, to remind him of his invasion of Ukraine, and to deliver a message that reflects the Euro-American strategy of curtailing Putin’s presence, or even strangling him in the global political arena.
– What is worse than all of this was the wear and deterioration of the Regime, its inability to take any step that would qualify it to be “normal”. The Assad regime is like Putin’s and that of the mullahs’ languishing under suffocating penal laws, in a quasi-state stripped of capabilities and resources. It is a regime terrified by more than a million documents criminalizing it; and with a social incubator seriously restless; and with Iran infiltrating its life and its social fabric. This is in addition to a regional environment that is fed up with displaced Syrian refugees, who have been taken as a pretext for rapprochement with it, and a political process aborted by it, and detention centers filled up with the detainees, whose screams are deafening. In short, this regime is in a state of complete exposure, like a rotting corpse just awaiting burial.
– On top of this and that, if some of the normalizers believe that what they have done will facilitate their normalization with Israel, then they are delusional, because this regime, with its record towards its “people”, will be a burden even on Israel, despite the great services rendered to it. For its part, if the regime thinks of jumping into the space of normalization with Israel, it will have lost what it has lived on by outbidding and lying in “resistance and opposition” throughout its life. Hence, even the hopes of some of them to obtain such a “gain” will be empty.
With this scandalous exposure for all, with the absence of arguments for approaching that toxic corpse, with its living on the revenue of Captagon, with the continued expansion of the Iranian project that crosses Arab borders, and with the mullahs continuing to live on tensions spreading its epidemic, and with Putin drowning in Ukraine; and with Western sanctions and anti-normalization efforts; and most importantly with the full exposure of this toxic corpse; isn’t it time to reverse the Arab wave, return to the essence of the Syrian cause, and stand with millions of Syrians who want to restore their country and their lives?
