Syrians are going to have to endure a further period of darkness before any signs of daylight emerge.
On 20 October 2011, Muammar Gaddafi, the dictator of Libya, was captured at Sirte and brutally executed by the ultra-Wahhabi forces that had been armed, funded and trained by allies of the US in the region. Although he would sometimes be referred to as the King of Kings, Gaddafi had a tenuous relationship with several of the ruling families of the monarchies in the region. He considered them effete, and puppets of the US. During the final period of his career as a dictator, Gaddafi finally sought to make up with the Atlanticist powers. He befriended several of their leaders, and presented them with lavish gifts, including gold and jewellery. Trusting in their goodwill, Gaddafi went the way of Saddam Hussein and surrendered whatever WMD he had, thereby rendering himself defenceless to a future attack. Gaddafi had failed to internalise the lessons behind the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003. Saddam, a dictator more brutal to his foes than Gaddafi, surrendered his WMD and destroyed his WMD stockpile in 1991 after his defeat at the hands of the US. As a consequence, he was easy prey for the US military under President George W. Bush in 2003, when he was toppled from power and subsequently hanged. While France under Jacques Chirac stood aloof from the US war against Saddam, the UK military under Tony Blair marched into Iraq in 2003 alongside US troops. In the case of Gaddafi, when the time came when he was judged ripe for removal, those western leaders who had been seen consorting with him immediately distanced themselves from the dictator, and joined hands with those who sought his downfall. In 2011, this columnist had warned that the killing of Gaddafi and Saddam after they had each disposed of their WMD stockpile meant that North Korea under the Kims would never surrender their WMD, but develop it at an accelerated pace, a forecast which turned out to be accurate. North Korea is on the cusp of developing nuclear-capable missiles that would have the ability of hitting the eastern seaboard of the US. Regionally, North Korean supremo Kim Jong Un has been strengthened by the self-inflicted downfall of President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea, who has long been clearer-eyed about the risks posed by Pyongyang to not just South Korea but the international order, than several of his regional contemporaries.
Yoon went too far in imposing martial law (albeit for just six hours) and in sending weapons to Ukraine to help fight the Russian Federation. Ukraine is not South Korea’s war, he ought to have kept away from it. By entering the war, Yoon made an enemy out of President Putin. And now has come the revolt in Syria against Bashar Assad, who had grown confident by around 2013 about his permanence in power. Assad neglected the military, not paying his soldiers for long stretches of time, denying them adequate weapons and even clothing, thereby destroying morale to such an extent that his soldiers offered no resistance when various rebel groups marched into Damascus weeks ago. Over the years, Assad had become focussed on making money for his friends and family, and refused to heed not only the more straightforward of his advisers but the Kremlin itself. He has now become a refugee in Russia, much the way Sheikh Hasina, the deposed Prime Minister of Bangladesh, has in India. Although much of the press in Atlanticist capitals is singing the praises of the post-coup regimes in Bangladesh and Syria, the fact remains that both countries are on the way to becoming failed states. Where Syria is concerned, several hundreds of thousands of its people are likely to make their way into Europe, just as took place after the so-called Arab Spring in 2011. The various militias in Syria are reported in credulous newspapers and magazines from the Atlanticist powers as having come together in a united manner. The fact is that each of the numerous factions of the armed resistance to Assad dislikes most of the other factions as much as they do the former dictator of Syria. As took place in Libya, these factions are likely to soon begin fighting each other, thereby causing still greater travail for the hapless population of the territories they now rule over. Syrians are going to have to endure a further period of darkness before any signs of daylight emerge. As for the apparent kingmaker Recip Tayyip Erdogan, the new regime in Syria is likely to cause the Turkish President and the country he runs far more trouble than Assad ever caused to Ankara. The temptation to open wide the gates of the flood of Syrian refugees from Turkey into Europe may soon become impossible for Erdogan to resist, not that he has any real desire to. It will be remembered that to this day, despite the glowing headlines post-Gaddafi of 2011, Libya is a cauldron of hostile militaries facing each other, and remains very far from stability. Syria is likely to go the same way. Incoming US President Donald Trump is going to find the world far more troubled by 20 January 2025 than it was when he defeated Kamala Harris in the US Presidential race on 6 November. As for India, the best course to follow would be to distance itself to the extent possible from what is happening in Syria in a way that is impossible to do where Bangladesh is concerned. India has immense stakes in that corner of the world. Hence a time may come when a repeat of 1971 may have to take place, preferably together with other countries such as the US under Trump, although the ground forces would almost entirely be contributed by India, given its highly motivated soldiers and immense reserves of trained and trainable youths.