It鈥檚 Friday again, and across the Middle East people are waiting to see if and where the next uprising gathers steam. In retrospect, perhaps this period, starting with Mohamed Boazizi鈥檚 self-immolation in a small Tunisian city, will be seen as the season that Arabs poured out of their mosques after Friday prayers to take to the streets and wrest their destiny from their ruling regimes. In the midst of this season of Fridays, we鈥檒l soon have a sense of what鈥檚 going to happen in Syria.
Protesters are now out in most of the country鈥檚 major cities鈥攆rom Deraa, where the protests kicked off, to the capital Damascus, as well as Sunni strongholds in Homs and Hama. Perhaps worst of all for the regime is that the Kurds have now entered the fray as well, going to the streets in Qamishli in Idlib. The security services are out in force, but the fact is that the Alawite minority that runs Syria鈥檚 repressive state apparatus is simply incapable of policing so large a country, if the more than 75 percent of Syria comprising the Sunnis and Kurds has in fact turned on Assad as it now seems.
The Lebanese have been quiet these last few weeks regarding the bloody protests unfolding next door. There鈥檚 no reason to attract the attention of a wounded mastiff like the regime in Damascus. Even so, the Syrians are believed to be responsible for minor acts of discord here?鈥�?the bombing of a church in Zahle, the kidnapping of seven Estonian tourists from the Bekaa Valley whose freedom, when secured, will no doubt be thanks to the gratuity-induced exertions of the Damascus government, kidnapper-cum-liberator of long standing.
That part of Lebanon鈥檚 political spectrum that has been held hostage to the violent whims of Syria is watching with a sense of hopeful expectation that events may eventually usher in a friendly government in Damascus, or at least one less inclined to use Beirut as a laboratory for its sociopathies. And all of the Lebanese, including allies of Syria like Hezbollah, fear that the violence likely to follow a mass uprising will visit this country as well. Other regional actors are watching too, especially Iran and Saudi Arabia, both of whose futures may be shaped by events in Syria.
A rumor circulating in Lebanon鈥檚 Shia regions is that the Saudis have reached out to a number of Syrian Sunni sheikhs and told them to keep people off the streets. Even as Syria鈥檚 relationship with Iran has set it against Riyadh over a number of issues these last few years?鈥�?from the 2005 murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri to Iraq鈥檚 2010 elections?鈥�?in the end, both are Arab regimes that must stand back-to-back or else risk losing power should the wave of uprisings keep coursing through the region. The Saudis see Syria as a good place to stop the domino effect?鈥�?by helping the Syrians dig in, the Saudis hope they can save themselves.
Of course it鈥檚 not clear that a bunch of Sunni clerics in Syria tarnished by their association with the Assad regime have much influence with the young men who have already taken to the streets against their rulers. Bashar al-Assad certainly didn鈥檛 help himself with his performance the other day before the Syrian parliament, a bizarrely self-involved oration suggesting that the regime does not understand that the global media revolution has pushed its regional theater troupe?鈥�?Bedouins, heroes, revolutionary poetry, etc.?鈥�?onto the world stage.
In 1982, news of the regime鈥檚 massacre at Hama, where Bashar鈥檚 uncle Rifaat al-Assad led the forces that killed 20,000 to 40,000 Syrians, took weeks to reach even Beirut. Today, cell phone video feeds posted to YouTube make the regime鈥檚 crimes public within minutes, while CNN exposes for all the world to see that the giggling dictator in Damascus is a maniacal adolescent who holds the lives of 21 million Syrians in his nervous fingers.
Many observers argue that the Assad speech was evidence of a difference of opinion in the regime. After one of his chief spokesmen suggested earlier in the week that the government would lift the country鈥檚 48-year-old emergency law, Assad made no mention of the law or of any other reforms. Perhaps he remembered that the emergency law is the regime鈥檚 sole source of legitimacy?鈥�?only the cold war with Israel, and the danger that any criticism may fragment the country and keep it from presenting a unified front to the Zionist enemy, justifies Assad鈥檚 repression. Accordingly, Assad blamed the antiregime demonstrations on 鈥渃onspirators.鈥�
鈥淗e鈥檚 signaling that he means to crush the demonstrators ruthlessly,鈥� says Lebanese political analyst Elie Fawaz. 鈥淚f they were just protesters, then he鈥檇 have to listen and take their complaints seriously. But if they鈥檙e just plotters, then he can deal with them any way he likes.鈥�
Nonetheless, independent Shia activist Lokman Slim says he was relieved to hear Assad use the word 鈥減lot.鈥� 鈥淩ight then I knew he was an idiot,鈥� says Slim. 鈥淥ur enemy is not intelligent.鈥�
What Slim means is that Assad鈥檚 rhetoric is astonishingly out of touch with the political events of the last three months. The talk in the region has not been about Israel and the United States, plots and conspiracies, but rather corruption, discrimination, jobs, economics, food, and hunger. Ideological language is, for the first time in years, taking a backseat to the stuff of real politics.
鈥淚t is because there are no real politics here that this region is so heavily politicized,鈥� says Hazem Saghieh, a Beirut-based columnist with Al Hayat. 鈥淵ou go to Europe, the United States, where politics is one subject among 20, 25 different things. Here it鈥檚 the main subject, the only subject, because we do not have real politics. We鈥檙e politicized.鈥�
鈥淲e live below the political level,鈥� says Slim. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like the poverty level. But now we鈥檙e seeing how to get there. How we can be serious about state-building, for instance.鈥�
But for many, the immediate concern isn鈥檛 state-building鈥攊t鈥檚 protecting vulnerable minority communities. One can鈥檛 rule out the worst for Syria, a civil war that will set its majority Sunni population against the regime and the Alawite community it鈥檚 drawn from, as well as against the regime鈥檚 Christian supporters. There鈥檚 no way to tell who will come out on top?鈥�?whether the Muslim Brotherhood is still powerful enough to topple the regime that waged war against it a generation ago, culminating in the siege and slaughter of Hama in 1982.
This scenario鈥攁 Sunni Islamist-run Syria鈥攈as spooked American and Israeli policymakers from trying to tip the balance of power against the devil they know in Damascus. Perhaps the Sunni urban merchant class will wind up in power, or maybe there will be a series of coups and countercoups, as was the case before Bashar鈥檚 father, Hafez al-Assad, came to power in 1970.
Of course, it鈥檚 also possible that it will be quite a while before anyone governs Syria. If so, the chaos that will prevail there cannot help but touch Lebanon, where Hezbollah will also come under fire from the Sunnis. Iran, says Lokman Slim, will have no choice but to fill that vacuum by intervening directly. 鈥淭hey鈥檝e invested in Hezbollah for 30 years,鈥� says Slim, 鈥渟o they鈥檙e going to do anything they can to protect it.鈥�
This is the kind of conflict that could not only shift the balance of power in the region, but redraw borders. 鈥淭he Arab nationalists always complain that the problem with the region is due to the borders drawn by the European powers,鈥� says Saghieh, the argument being that they imposed contrived divisions on what would otherwise be a harmonious community. 鈥淚n reality, the problem is that the borders unified us too much. These borders were all useful to the United States and the Soviets during the Cold War, but now it鈥檚 something else.鈥� Saghieh thinks the Middle East may see a 鈥渟econd wave鈥� of post-Cold War 鈥渄islocation,鈥� the first wave being the breakup of the Soviet empire in the Eastern bloc.
If the Syrian revolution has begun in earnest, the ruling Alawite regime will have to decide whether to stay in Damascus and fight, or make a run for the Syrian port city of Latakia on the Mediterranean, the de facto capital of the Alawites鈥� escape-hatch rump state. The rest of the region is also in a race: Can it reach the shores of a post-ideological era toward which this wave of Arab uprisings seems to be cresting? Or are the Arabs doomed once again to crash against the sectarian, tribal, and national barriers that have set them against one another for centuries, if not millennia?