The latest news is that - President Obama and the defense minister are discussing on the action plan should a situation arise to attack Syria. President Obama has put the case with Congress (to be on the safer side for majority of the US population is against the war) for approval. I am not sure if Obama would stop if Congress does not approve attack. Legally he can still attack Syria. In addition, he has support of France. UK has withdrawn their support however it goes to see which side Germany will take. For a long time now Germany has remained silent on wars (the last time Angela Merkel supported Iraq war - she lost miserably). Should a war arise, US will be countering not Syria but its key allies - Russia, Iran, and China in most likelihood. The notion behind the war is a separate post by itself so we will return to Syria.
Syria huh! for a long time the press has been talking about an Arab spring uprising in Syria. When i dig deeper, i see very little inclination for this statement. The appropriate definition of Arab Spring is what happened in Libya, Yemen, Tunisia, and traces in Bahrain. In all these countries, the vast Muslim population was agitating against the governance to bring in a liberal mindset as against a typical policing act by rulers in these countries. When we look at Syria, i hardly find traces of this - the Socialist Baath party has been ruling the country for more than 40 years now (from 1970) and the party and its supporters constitute Shiites. Shiites as against Sunnis are not hard line Islamist. So the people of Syria, who have been fighting against the government ruled by Assad, have not been protesting against hard-line Islamists, as happened in other countries which participated in the Arab Spring uprisings. However people are angry at the government that the regime could not live up to any of the promises that were made for the last 40 years.
On the other hand, when i look at the composition of the FSA (Free Syrian Army), there are people from Saudi Arabia, Russia, and neighboring Iran. In other words, FSA is a loose coalition of individuals (primarily ex army personnel) with their own Islamist agenda. This actually frightens me a lot because the outcome of an Arab spring is likely to be a republic nation (could take a long time depending upon the aggressiveness of the agitation) as it is tending to happen in Tunisia. However the outcome of what is happening in Syria is unknown for it is difficult to define what is happening (the unrest between the government and the rebels is resulting in 1000s of civilian deaths and at last the usage of Chemical weapon) and a war at this juncture can only deteriorate the situation for it could create another Iraq.
I am not saying that the condition in Syria - usage of chemical weapons - should be left unnoticed. In fact this is going to be a big time agenda on the German political campaigns. It will be interesting to see if the CDU or the SPD will have Syria on their agenda. I will cover this aspect on a different post but for now I just want to conclude that the war in Syria is actually bad for the Middle East. Possible concerns could be increase in oil prices as export of oil might decline (although UK's withdrawal might not push the prices too low but for India which is dependent on Iran, war in Syria is surely a setback and even more so considering the foreign exchange reserves we have), fall in movement of personnel within the Middle Eastern region (Kindly note that the sheer survival of the Middle East is in the floating business population), and Impacts it might have on other neighboring economies including Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq. These countries already have their own problems. This is likely to result in decline of the Middle Eastern income I am afraid to say. Again my point is not to support what is happening in Syria but just wondering if a war might change what is happening there. What we need is a change in regime, change in the mindset of both the rulers and the rebels, and some economic stimulus. Neither of these could be achieved through a war!
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