I have posted this before, but modernity has completely altered the economic logic of a State or a tribe. Most importantly, land itself is literally approaching irrelevancy. It still must be farmed and optimized but all the customers are living on sheets of concrete and physical proximity is optional.
From this it follows that we need to establish both the super state to which no one actually belongs but all somewhat participate as needed and the natural city state which captures the cultural aspirations of a tribal grouping or any such grouping as people accept.
Thus we can establish city states for the Palestinians in say Tyre, Bethlehem, and Gaza. Everyone there today become a direct citizen of his city state. The rest of the land is then managed by say Israel. Israel has its own City States if necessary to establish individual citizenship. Think of all those orthodox types. What this means though is that everyone has the right to buy and sell land and open enterprises in the balance of all the lands.
After all, good land husbandry happens to be a universal objective and requires conforming laws and willing hands. Thus a Palestinian, a citizen of say Tyre, could own a farm near Jerusalem and actually reside there most of the time. With common interests with one's neighbors, security issues end.
This has to be applied throughout the Middle East and in many other places as well. What it voids is a conflict based on the spoils system of governance which will take a long time to end.
In Syria it is obvious that the alowites of Bashir Assad need their own established City States as do the Sunnis and the Kurds at least. The rest is mostly desert now but that can change as well once wilful cooperation becomes possible...
It's Time to Break Up Syria
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/its-time-break-syria-21308
THE ELIMINATION of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria
has become an unhealthy obsession for Western nations, most of which
operate under the assumption that the destruction of ISIS is the only
thing standing between peace and eternal crisis. It isn’t. Focusing on
ISIS’s defeat is a nonstrategy that has been seen before, one familiar
to anyone involved in the invasion and rebuilding of Iraq, where a
U.S.-led coalition removed Saddam Hussein without a coherent plan for
the day after. Our combined experiences in Iraq as senior military and
humanitarian leaders prompt us to call for careful consideration of what
comes next—before today’s actions lead us down an even more treacherous
path.
Whether it’s the deployment of special forces against ISIS or firing
Tomahawk missiles against Bashar al-Assad, regardless of which faction
is eliminated or who is removed from their position of power, the
likelihood of stabilizing Syria is low. The country has traveled too far
down a path that no amount of international goodwill can bring back.
“Syria,” as it was previously known, is dead. Investing in an attempt to
revive the pre-war status quo of a unitary state is a fool’s errand,
which will drain immense resources, drag out the suffering of the people
and distract the international community from seeking more achievable
goals. The limited capacity of the international community (both
resources and will), the conflicting geopolitical interests, and the
depth of animosity among people on the ground mean that a strategy
premised upon a return to the Syria that once was is bound to fail.
Although
success in rebuilding countries after war appears elusive, especially
considering the precariousness of Iraq and Afghanistan, research shows
that when three goals are achieved—legitimacy of the state, security for
the people and the provision of basic needs—success follows. Lacking
any of these will lead to a cycle of instability and ongoing conflict.
Eliminating ISIS or removing Assad can only be justified if establishing
a legitimate, stable and functioning state in the aftermath is
possible.
We believe lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan indicate that key
challenges can only be overcome if the borders are redrawn, allowing the
various nations of people to establish their own autonomous
administrations with an agreed pathway, backed by the international
community, to independence.
Our argument for the breakup of Syria isn’t a call to revisit the
Sykes-Picot Agreement and the subsequent Treaty of Sèvres—in which
Western nations mapped out the current Middle East, ignoring what the
local people wanted—but rather to recognize that borders are not
immutable and are a function of an ever-evolving history, culture and
politics. The century-long map of the Middle East, for better or worse,
served the region during the interwar period and the subsequent
postcolonial transitions, but the internal pressures that had been
contained by strongman dictatorships, with the support of various
foreign governments, can no longer be held back. Persisting with the
status quo in Syria without acknowledging these challenges and
realistically considering the likelihood of a sustainable peace will
lead to a far worse situation.
Breaking up the current Syrian state is the best way the various
Syrian groups calling for self-rule can have their demands met. At the
same time, doing so recognizes the changing international political
environment, which is no longer willing to accept the degree of foreign
support that would be necessary to make the status quo work. To make
this case, in the following section we consider the strengths and
weaknesses of pursuing the status-quo unitary state, versus our proposal
of redrawing borders, against the three criteria for successful state
building.
IS IT possible for a legitimate Syrian authority to
emerge from the ravages of what is quickly becoming the most devastating
conflict of this century? Proponents of the putsch against Assad and
those waging the war against the Islamic State should have already
answered this question, yet evidence of any such consideration remains
elusive. The United Nations has been pushing a three-point plan—an
all-inclusive government, a new constitution and a presidential vote.
But will such a plan be able to deliver a stable Syria? Military
commanders have been tasked by President Trump to develop a plan to deal
with the Islamic State, but they haven’t received from their political
leadership a clear answer to the question: “to what end?” Without
considering these questions, any military intervention serves little
purpose if all it achieves is to delay a return to an even more
devastating conflict. A peace plan backed solely by the weight of
diplomacy is only worth pursuing if it is structured in such a way that
it leads to a stable and sustainable outcome.
Can the UN peace plan contribute to establishing a legitimate
government? For the UN and proponents of its plan, a government is
legitimate if elections are held and other states recognize the outcome.
Syria, at war with itself for six years, retains an external legitimacy
in the eyes of the United Nations and its members because its peers
recognize its borders, whereas Somaliland, which has had peace and
stability and internal legitimacy since 1988, is not recognized
internationally as a legitimate state. This preference for external
legitimacy over internal legitimacy is a dangerous idea that is driven
by a fundamental misunderstanding of what kind of legitimacy best
contributes to stability.
According to the British social theorist David Beetham, whose work
builds upon efforts by others such as Max Weber, legitimacy has three
intertwined pillars: a legality of the ascension to power, governance
structures needing to be justified by the prevailing norms of society,
and consent being given by the populace for the new regime to rule. If
the process of a peace plan doesn’t strengthen these pillars of
legitimacy, then the peace plan is unlikely to result in a sustainable
and stable outcome.
While an externally imposed legitimacy might be achieved by heavy
international military pressure on different factions, such an outcome
leaves an internal legitimacy deficit that can easily be manipulated by
embittered local or foreign groups. It’s an imprecise rule of thumb, but
the bigger the legitimacy deficit, the greater the burden upon the
international community to enforce security, which in turn requires
international consensus and a willingness to contribute blood and
treasure to fill the legitimacy void. With renewed Russian assertiveness
and a tired, war-weary United States under the leadership of a
president fond of fewer foreign forays, the collective international
commitment required for success in Syria is beyond the combined
capability of any international coalition. Committing to the cause
without the resources necessary to succeed will entrench the conflict by
creating enemies out of friends, drain the will of the international
community to act elsewhere and probably lead to an even worse outcome
for the people of Syria.
The
alternative approach, being pursued within the confines of a status-quo
state, is an attempt to entice a broad coalition of Syria’s warring
factions to come together as a replacement for Assad’s government. While
possible, this approach will require overcoming the competing
justifications that each group has developed to sustain its legitimacy.
Syria doesn’t have the luxury of a conflict that is defined by a single
dimension, such as class (Cambodia), ethnicity (Rwanda) or
ethnoreligious identity (Balkans). The fundamental drivers of the
competing factions are so diverse, including historical animosity,
economic disenfranchisement, national aspirations, religious
fundamentalism and ethnic hostility, that a genuine commitment to
discussing a common platform would be impossible. Are the Sunni Arabs of
the Islamist movements in Syria expected to sit together with the
Alawites whom they have branded enemies of God? Can the Kurds, having
for the first time established self-governance, be expected to hand back
their hard-earned gains to a regime that will outnumber them ethnically
in any coalition in Damascus? Investing diplomatic and military
resources in the establishment of fractions of coalitions that cannot
foreseeably come together and stay together distracts efforts from
alternative, more achievable opportunities.
Conversely, natural constituencies have emerged through the six years
of conflict, each with their own narratives that justify their ascent
to power. These narratives embed their governance structures within
accepted social norms, as well as having already elicited consent from
the people in various forms. Legitimacy in the eyes of the people has
already been achieved by the Kurds of Rojava, by the rump areas under
control by Assad and arguably by some Sunni groups. This legitimacy is a
gift to those seeking stability in the region—a gift that needs to be
embraced. The international community needs to move away from the
pursuit of de jure external legitimacy and acknowledge the de facto
internal legitimacy that already exists throughout the country.
THE SECOND aspect of successfully rebuilding
countries after war is the provision of security for the people. We
begin by considering the prospects for security were the Islamic State
to be defeated and Syria remain a unitary state.
The legitimacy deficit noted in the previous section, along with
continuing external support to proxies in Syria, guarantees significant
levels of internal conflict into the future. Even if the armies of ISIS
and other similarly aligned Islamists are defeated, their ideology,
leaders and supporters will not simply disappear. Just as the supporters
of Saddam Hussein went underground after his armies were destroyed, so
too will the emergence of a violent underground Sunni extremist
insurgency, sustained by external support, be equally dangerous.
Similarly, removing Assad is popularly touted as a long-term solution,
but doing so would only see minorities finding an alternative ethnic
strongman who, in seeking to ensure his people’s protection, would
negotiate to maintain Iranian and/or Russian support.
The geopolitical reality of the Middle East is such that, as it is
currently played, Syria is a zero-sum game. There is no unitary-state
solution in which the Saudi-Iranian struggle for regional hegemony can
be settled. Furthermore, calls for a Kurdish state are not going away:
whether explicit promises have been made or not, there is a widespread
expectation among the Kurds that they will be rewarded for their crucial
role in any future defeat of ISIS, and the international community is
expected to deliver.
Syria will remain deeply divided, and extreme low-intensity violence
will continue. Enforcing peace in such circumstances will be costly and
politically difficult. Much of the peacekeeping and policing burden will
fall on the international community, since none of the existing parties
to the Syrian Civil War would be considered impartial by other
factions: although locally recruited forces may reinforce an
international security framework, they will largely be confined to areas
of low threat with little ethnic or sectarian tension.
The population of Syria is currently estimated at 22.8 million
(including displaced refugees). Using the commonly accepted rule of
thumb that for a successful counterinsurgency at least twenty
security-force members are needed per one thousand in population, Syria
needs about 450,000 personnel to give it a good chance of achieving
security and stability after the current war. Even if two-thirds are
locally recruited (and it will take some time before this number can be
considered properly trained and organized, as was seen in Iraq) the
remaining 150,000 will need to be provided from the international
community: a number equivalent to the highest level deployed to Iraq
after 2003.
Such a major international commitment would need a UN mandate to
provide the underpinning legitimacy for intervention. This requires a
common approach to Syria, especially between the United States and
Russia, which is noticeably absent at present and unlikely to be reached
in the foreseeable future.
If
the UN Security Council were to reach agreement on Syria, it would
still prove difficult to find the manpower for such a major
international effort. It is unlikely that most Western nations, after a
decade of engagement in Afghanistan and the costly commitment to Iraq,
would volunteer for such a dangerous and open-ended commitment. Regional
powers, such as Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia, all have a vested
interest in influencing the postwar settlement to their own advantage,
and it would be dangerous to rely on them to police an internationally
agreed peace agreement. Many in the West view Russia, Syria’s
traditional protector and ally throughout the Cold War, with grave
suspicion. There are no good or easy options to enforce security
following a peace settlement in Syria as a unitary state within its
existing borders.
If, however, one were to consider the redrawing of borders, the
security situation would look very different. In that case, autonomous
administrations with a longer-term pathway to full independence would
mirror the de facto boundaries that have emerged over six years of
conflict.
New federated or independent states are much more likely to secure
internal peace than the current potpourri of ethnicities, interests and
beliefs. It would be much easier for new governments to provide security
for their people, as the sources of insecurity will be greatly
diminished. To be sure, political differences will remain in the new
states, as we have seen in the Kurdish Regional Government in northern
Iraq or between Shia parties in Baghdad, but they are more likely to be
dealt with by politics than extreme levels of violence: this is because
conflict between homogenous groups is fundamentally self-limiting. They
accept the legitimacy of the state but seek to change its government,
rather than destroy the state as an entity, which is the current goal of
some of Syria’s current warring factions.
There are a number of possible new states that could claim internal
legitimacy among Syria’s people. There will probably continue to be a
large group, including most Alawites, who will owe allegiance to a
Damascus rump state. The Kurds of Rojava could command the legitimacy to
create their own state in the north, as could the Sunnis in the east.
Or, possibly, the current military alliance between the Kurdish YPG,
Sunni Arabs and others in the Syrian Democratic Forces may command
sufficient legitimacy among their people that they could form the basis
of a multiethnic state in eastern and northern Syria.
Whatever new states or autonomous regions are created, they will need
their own security forces, loyal to the state and with support from
their people. Syria’s existing armed forces can provide the basis of
security for the new Damascus rump state. The YPG and other Kurdish
groups can evolve to become national-security forces for any new Kurdish
state. The third possible element—a new, largely Sunni state—would
provide the greatest challenge for managing its own security, as there
are currently a multitude of Sunni rebel groups ranging from the Islamic
State to the more secular Free Syrian Army. Here, international support
will be needed to create a responsible and representative security
force. Regional Sunni states, whose current involvement in a unitary
Syria has many negative repercussions, would become a positive in a new
Sunni state: Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates, Egypt or Jordan can be invited to take the lead in building a
security infrastructure in the new Sunni state.
But it will not be easy. If new states are created within the current
borders of Syria, at least two of them would be deeply antithetical to
each other—one consisting predominantly of Sunnis and the other of
Alawites. Both could expect to be politically and economically supported
by their own sponsors (Saudi Arabia and Iran respectively), for whom
the temptation would be to use them as proxies in their own regional
struggle. The cost, therefore, of lessening tension within a state is likely to be increasing tension between
new states. In such a case, the international community has a choice.
On the one hand, a concerted international effort can be made, with an
uncertain outcome, to stabilize an existing but extremely unstable Syria
with high levels of internal conflict. Or on the other hand, the
creation of new states can be encouraged, largely at peace within
themselves, but with tension between them.
The international community’s record in keeping the peace between
states is better than its efforts at establishing peace within states.
It is what the UN was founded to do; to a large extent, the established
international rules and mechanisms are designed to resolve interstate
differences and make conflict between states difficult. The
international community may need to be prepared to put into place
special mechanisms to stabilize relations between the new states of the
region, not unlike the deployment of UN personnel in the Golan Heights.
It will not be easy, but it will be more achievable than attempting to
enforce internal security within the deeply fractured state that Syria
is today.
THE PROVISION of basic needs is the last of the
three critical elements of successful state building. Following
devastating civil wars, international assistance is the main source of
humanitarian aid, regardless of whether one is rebuilding a unitary
state or multiple states. The two differences to be taken into
consideration are, first, the treatment of minorities by a majority
government and, second, the impact of insecurity upon the distribution
of humanitarian aid.
The
situation in Iraq shows how an elected majority government can
discriminate against minorities. Once the Shia political parties won the
2005 election, they began installing fellow Shia into key positions,
gave contracts to Shia companies and ensured that Shia officers rose
through the ranks of the various security institutions; most
importantly, the rebuilding of infrastructure and provision of basic
services was skewed in favor of Shia regions of Iraq. This prejudice,
driven by a sense of deep grievance and a desire to right the wrongs of
the past, is one reason why so many Sunnis chose to support
fundamentalist militants sustaining the uprising: they felt
disenfranchised from the new government.
Considering that Sunnis make up 74 percent of the Syrian population,
what leverage does the international community have to prevent a
democratically elected Sunni government from acting to right the
perceived wrongs of the past under a unitary state? If this were to
happen, we believe that the response of the Alawite and Christian
populations would resemble that of the Sunnis in Iraq—a sense of
disenfranchisement that leads to support for insurgency.
Iraq also provides an important case study as to how reconstruction
can be hampered by poor security. Militias and terrorist groups, both
Shia and Sunni, deliberately disrupted reconstruction efforts in Iraq,
including attacking electricity distribution networks and oil
infrastructure, to undermine the authority of the established
government, thereby heightening a sense of disillusionment in the new
regime and solidifying their support as alternatives. A return to the
prewar status quo in Syria would inevitably result in high levels of
internal conflict that would hamper attempts to provide for the basic
needs of the population.
Conversely, by creating autonomous states, internal security will be
greatly enhanced, which in turn will lead to better delivery of basic
needs to the people. Each government will not only serve its citizens
well, but is unlikely to feel threatened by any small minority that
chooses to remain, as their nationalist ambitions will already have been
met in a neighboring state.
THERE ARE risks in redrawing borders, though we
believe that these are also present under the current status quo. We
respond here to the four main arguments used against breaking up Syria.
One argument against a shift in borders is the fear that mass
migration of the remaining minorities would occur in a manner similar to
the bloody partition of India. While this is a serious concern—albeit
minimized because of the already considerable movement in population—it
should be treated as a challenge that can be overcome through
international support and working with each new state to ensure that
their minorities are protected. While many believe that a unitary Syrian
state would allow minorities to return to their homes and that Damascus
would rapidly return to being the cosmopolitan city it once was,
postconflict experiences in Iraq and Bosnia suggest that this is
unlikely.
Another argument is that the finely balanced geopolitics of the
region may be disturbed with the creation of new states. We believe that
the opposite is a more realistic assessment. Because of the changing
geopolitics of the Middle East, brought about through the shift of power
from Sunni to Shia in Iraq and the ramifications of the Arab Spring,
controlling Syria becomes a critical objective for players in the
region. With a division of Syria, each of the vying regional powers
attain a part of their ambitions, and thus the likelihood of a larger
conflagration lessens as the benefits of going to war diminish.
The third reason why some fear redrawing borders is the perceived
difficulty in identifying where those boundaries will lie. While a real
challenge, there is a precedent that can be followed in this regard—the
boundaries of the autonomous regions within Bosnia and Herzegovina. The
iterative process of drawing and redrawing the borders led to minimal
additional population movement, as the lines were drawn around each
faction’s existing territory, taking into consideration historical and
cultural exigencies.
The fourth concern raised by those who stand against this approach is
that dictators and belligerents will be rewarded: they argue that it
will legitimize Assad’s use of chemical weapons and possibly lead to a
fundamentalist Sunni state that has failed to respect the most basic of
human rights. While this may be the case, we can’t use peace plans as
tools for rendering justice. We can’t hold hostage an entire population
because we feel aggrieved by how their leaders have acted.
PROPOSALS TO redraw the borders of this part of the
Middle East are not new. We do not attempt here to produce a map or draw
specific boundaries between new states or entities, although such
things do exist. Detailed borders should be the result of negotiations
between Syria’s factions overseen by the United Nations.
Any changes in Syria’s borders conducted through such a process would
of course impact its neighbors, in particular Iraq and Turkey. The
tribes straddling the Syria-Iraq border are largely Sunni, and it can be
argued that it would make sense for any new Sunni state to encompass
both sides. Although Syria’s Kurds have a different political complexion
to Iraq’s, especially in relation to the Kurdish PKK in Turkey, both
may see advantage in some form of unity or confederation. But any move
to include portions of Iraqi territory within the new states should be
done separately from the division of Syria. It would be an internal
matter for individual Iraqi provinces, under the Iraqi constitution,
whether to first become autonomous regions and then, potentially, to
join the emerging states in the long term.
There
is little doubt that the creation of a new Kurdish state on Turkey’s
southern border would further complicate the already-fractious
relationship between Ankara and its own Kurdish population, especially
given the close relationship between Syria’s Kurds and the PKK. Turkey
cannot be expected to welcome such a development. However, a de facto
independent Kurdish state already exists in Syria’s north, and denying
its population the right to hard-won autonomy will only sustain a costly
and simmering tension. Dealing with Turkey’s concerns should become a
major objective for the international community, in order to prevent
Ankara from attempting to veto what will be the best opportunity for
long-term peace in Syria.
THERE IS a stark choice that faces the international
community. Continuing to pursue the current strategy is unlikely to
lead to stability. Embracing a rare opportunity that has emerged from
the devastating conflict, however, could lay the groundwork for lasting
peace. Our experience leads us to conclude that the likelihood of
guiding a Syrian transition from the current state of war to peace and
stability is very low. We have argued that eliminating ISIS or Assad
should only be done if establishing a legitimate, stable and functioning
state in the aftermath is possible. We have argued that it is not, and
furthermore, that the consequences of pursuing this goal are far
costlier than the alternative options.
The most sustainable and least costly in terms of human suffering is
the redrawing of borders. This should not be undertaken as part of a
grandiose scheme to build a new Middle East, but as a unique opportunity
to reshape Syria and break the cycle of intense violence. Acknowledging
the demographic changes on the ground, recognizing the will of the
people to live separately from those they have fought against or
suffered under, and understanding the geopolitical benefits of smaller
states makes the choice clear: Syria needs to be broken up.
Denis Dragovic is the author of the book Religion and Post-Conflict Statebuilding: Roman Catholic and Sunni Islamic Perspectives as well as the forthcoming No Dancing, No Dancing: Inside the Global Humanitarian Crisis. Richard Iron, a forty-year veteran of the British army, edited British Generals in Blair’s Wars.
This essay was published in the July/August 2017 print magazine under the headline “Farewell, Syria.”
Image: Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units
(YPG) stand in a house in Raqqa, Syria June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Goran
Tomasevic
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