Part 2. Syria: A Fractured Society

In part two of this three-part series on Syria, director of CNA Strategic Studies, Eric Thompson, Ph.D., explains why Syrian society is fractured and how the Assad regime has fostered these divisions:   "...setting community against community, ethnic group against ethnic group, and sowing seeds of distrust across society."   
Part 3:  What to Watch For    (A transcript of the full interview with Dr. Thompson follows.)   

An interview with Eric Thompson, Ph.D., CNA vice president and director of CNA Strategic Studies

Who are the Syrian Rebels? 

“The Syrian opposition is really made up of three primary groups. One are the people on the ground who are opposed to the regime. They’re mainly organized around what are called local coordination committees. There are a number of folks who are opposed to the regime. Some have longstanding grievances against the regime. These are folks who associate with the Muslim Brotherhood, the longest standing opposition group to the Assad regime; the Kurdish population who have long felt they’ve been discriminated against, but there are also those who are seeking political change along the lines of Arab Spring countries we’ve seen elsewhere in the Middle East. And then there are those with immediate grievances and discomfort with the way the regime has been treating its own population. An example of this are families and tribes in the town of Daraa, where the uprising really started, who were upset with the way the regime had detained and held incommunicado a number of youths who had been caught painting some graffiti.

“They’re also very much concerned with folks who are supportive of the regime and taking action on their own. An organization called the Shabiha, which are essentially militias or paramilitary forces that are carrying out regime-inspired actions and violence against folks, so there’s a great deal of concern about that.

“The second group of people who are involved in the opposition are called the expatriate opponents: those people who live outside of Syria. Those who are members of groups that have been banned, or dissidents or exiles who left previously, and they formed organizations in order to create an organized opposition. The most notable of these is the Syrian National Council, which is a 313-member committee of various groups that have come together to try to create organized opposition and a face for the opposition outside of Syria. But there are rivals to this organization such as the National Coordination Committee which is made up of 14 other separate groups that don’t directly associate with the SNC. And then there are a number of independent opponents as well.

“The third group is the armed opposition. One that’s most notable is called the Free Syrian Army and this is an interesting organization. It has claimed leadership in Turkey. A colonel by the name of Riyadh al-Asaad and a brigadier general by the name of Mustafa al-Sheik had said that they are the commanding element of this organization. But all the evidence suggests that these are primarily either soldiers who defected to go back to their towns, communities and villages to protect their family, or they are local civilians who have taken up arms and trying to organize themselves at the community level – at the block or town or village level – to protect themselves and their families from Syrian government forces and security forces and the Shabiha.

“An emerging armed group is something called the al-Nusra group, which is a self-styled jihadist organization that is claiming responsibility for a number of high profile bombings, including bombings of military headquarters, intelligence headquarters and other government institutions. This is not a well-known group. It’s only been around for a short period of time, but it has many of the aspects we’ve seen in jihadists’ movements in Iraq, for example. And so there is some question as to do they have associations with outsiders, might they link later with al-Qaeda. But there is no direct evidence of al-Qaeda being actively involved in Syrian opposition directly, although an extended period of chaos or a civil war may lead to opportunities for al-Qaeda to take root.

“And I think generally you can also point to sources of opposition in the international community. There is the Friends of Syria group. Over 70 nations have agreed to oppose the activities the Assad regime has undertaken. The United Nations are obviously involved in a few regional countries, like Saudi Arabia. Qatar and Turkey are particularly interested in finding ways to support the opposition in Syria.”

What role is the Muslim Brotherhood attempting to play in the Syrian conflict?

“The role of the Muslim Brotherhood is attracting a lot of attention and the reality is it’s evolving over time. The Muslim Brotherhood has been a source of opposition to the Alawi regime of the Assad family for decades. We know in 1982 there was the significant massacre of civilians in Hama by the Assad regime in response to an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood.“Interestingly, the Muslim Brotherhood has continued to exist throughout the Assad regime at the local level, working on charity issues, getting involved in education, sometimes organizing for taking care of people the regime hadn’t taken care of. But it’s part of a, sort of a, larger movement across the region where there is a political element to their agenda; an end state they’re seeking to reach which is a more Islamicized government and society. The Muslim Brotherhood right now is taking advantage of the organizational network and its ability to distribute charity and goods and take care of people in this  environment of chaos. So they’re attracting a lot of attention and a lot of support within Syria and, importantly, the Muslim Brotherhood is actively involved with, and engaged in, the expatriate opposition movement. So you see the Muslim Brotherhood represented in the Syrian National Council. So they are increasingly playing an active political role and trying to bring political change, as well as grassroots organizational effort to support the opposition on the ground. They are representative of some of the views of Syrians. Syrians are primarily Sunnis, primarily Arab Sunnis. Many of the sentiments the Muslim Brotherhood articulate, resonate with that community. How much support there is, is very, very difficult to tell, but this is a politically savvy organization with a broad reaching social and political agenda, so I expect them to be players throughout this conflict as it unfolds and to set themselves up to having a role in whatever the next regime in Syria is, like we’ve seen in the case of Egypt and Tunisia, as well.”

On Foreign Military Intervention 

“Well, one of the challenges for the international community is the fact that the Assad regime has been so effective in dividing Syrian society; setting community against community, ethnic group against ethnic group, and sowing seeds of distrust across society through the use of the secret police, the use of a wide variety of intimidation tactics and so there is no natural inclination for the Syrian people to work together, to trust each other and to organize themselves outside the bounds of the state. And so it’s difficult for us as outsiders to understand who the opponents are, what their views are, whether we can trust what they say, whether they’re willing to work together for a common end, so that makes for part of the challenge. But another piece of it is – and this has been why the international community has been largely reluctant to provide lethal assistance, military assistance to the opposition – is because the society is so fractured and there are different groups that have made deals with the Assad regime, or have isolated themselves, that there may be large scale, widespread sectarian or ethnic conflict following the breakdown of central control, that would then be fueled and extended and made more violent by this additional supply of outside military force. So the chaos that may come and the violence and retribution across a society that might result from a proliferation of arms and the encouragement of military activity is a great fear for the international community and that explains a lot of the reluctance.”

What to Watch For

“Well, I think there are a couple of things we should be watching out for. I think the rise of the Shabiha. These are informal, paramilitary groups that, for example, may have been involved in the Houla massacre, as a way of sparking fears of intersectarian violence or mass atrocities to try to discourage the opponents from continuing their struggle against the Assad regime. What we saw in Algeria over the course of their 10-year civil war between the government and the opposition was widespread use of violence against civilians to try to disrupt support for the government. And so this idea that civilians could be a pawn in this process and could be exposed to violence in order to create largely symbolic events to either motivate opposition or undercut opposition is something to be very much concerned about. It’s difficult to figure out how to prevent this, but that is very, very important.

“Another thing to watch closely is, does the international approach to bringing pressure on the Assad regime break down. Right now the United Nations is involved; Kofi Annan has been sent as a special representative to bring about, hopefully, a ceasefire and the beginning of reconciliation. But if we see individual countries supplying weapons to the opposition, if we see outside groups like al-Qaeda getting involved, this sort of disruption or break down of an international consensus and a coordinated diplomatic front may be something to be concerned about.

“And the third piece is the break down of cooperation between either local coordination committees on the ground or the expatriate opposition may bring internecine fighting or conflict that prevents the rapid transition or even the resolution of this conflict as people who are unified in their opposition to the regime turn on each other because of the disputes that they have amongst their other previously cooperative partners in this undertaking.”

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