DEMOGRAPHY IS DESTINY IN SYRIA

The article I co-authored for the American Spectator in 2012.
First published here

The "peripheralism" and Malthusian underpinnings of an unexpected uprising.

Among the second wave of Arab Spring uprisings that followed Tunisia, Syria was the most spectacular "out of the blue" that suddenly arose in the face of the media and analytic community. Just days before Deraa exploded with protests last March, some analysts were still scrutinizing Syria's circumstances and declaring the country to be immune from the Arab Spring. Nor did reporters who visited the country spot signs of a brewing storm.

In fact, throughout the Arab Spring, the media and experts repeatedly fell into the same trap of confusing the capital city with the whole country. On the eve of the Islamist landslide in Egypt's elections various polls and informed individuals were putting the popularity of radical Salafis at between 5% and 10%. The Salafis have indeed won about 10% of the vote… but only in Cairo. Nationwide they took almost 30%, beating even those unrepentant pessimists who were betting on a Muslim Brotherhood spring. In some provinces they grabbed all of 50%.

This routine of the periphery ambushing the media and analysts during the Arab Spring and making a mockery of their reports and predictions has reached such grotesque proportions in Syria partly thanks to the media restrictions imposed by the regime, but mostly owing to the very peripheral nature of the Syrian uprising itself. This "peripheralism" has also laid waste to the best efforts of Iranian advisers who came to Syria to share with their Syrian colleagues the know-how accumulated by the regime in Tehran in crushing the Greens.

In truth, the escalation in Syria took by surprise only the people who never bothered to examine Syria's population pyramid. It was no "out of the blue" to anybody even slightly familiar with the basic facts on demography and climate in the region. In the Middle East's long list of hopeless basket cases Yemen is surely beyond competition. However, for quite a while Syria has positioned herself as a formidable contender for respectable second place.

In some respects, the seeds of the current disaster were planted as far back as 1956, when Youssef Helbaoui -- head of economic analysis in Syria's Planning Department -- famously declared: "A birth control policy has no reason for being in this country. Malthus could not find any followers among us." Since then Syria has been living in a state of one uninterrupted demographic cataclysm. The regime was so obsessively pro-natalist that in the early 1970s, the trade and use of contraceptives in Syria were officially banned. By 1975, the birth rate reached 50 live births per 1,000 people, with Hafez al-Assad asserting that a "high population growth rate and internal migration" were responsible for stimulating "proper socio-economic improvements" within the development framework.

Even when other nations in the Middle East began to take measures to curb their population growth as the danger of demographic collapse started to loom over the region, the regime in Syria was struggling to make up its mind on the issue. Only in recent years has the regime introduced some measure of family planning, but by now the sheer amount of population momentum accumulated in previous decades has kept the population swelling to new highs. It's true that the average Syrian woman entering the child bearing age now is expected to have no more than three children in her lifetime. Yet, the sheer proportion of such young people in the population continues to propel the population forward. And the workforce is still expanding at a neck breaking rate of 4%.

The impact of the rapidly mounting population pressures on the economy has been exacerbated by the steady depletion of natural resources that, critically for the regime, included declining oil production, with an output of 385,000 barrels per day (bpd) as of 2010 against the peak of about 583,000 bpd back in 1996. To give the reader some perception on the decline, even after hitting the bottom the oil sector still accounted for a majority of the country's export income and about a quarter of government revenues.

The final blow came during the last decade. With Malthus sending broad smiles in the direction of Syria from his grave, the climate change that has hit the region has wrecked Syria's countryside. Shifts in rain patterns have led to prolonged droughts all around the Middle East in recent years. But their impact was particularly devastating in Syria, where agriculture remains a major part of the economy and the lifestyle of a large section of the population, some 20% of Syria's GDP being generated by this sector. With water shortages reported in many parts of the country, some rural areas have become impoverished disaster zones. Whole villages and fields have been abandoned, while slums around Syrian cities have been swelling with hundreds of thousands of climate refugees.

In 2009, the International Institute for Sustainable Development noted that a decline in rainfall and subsequent aggravation of water scarcity led to the abandonment of around 160 villages in northern Syria in the period 2007-2008. In eastern Syria, the Inezi tribe saw some 85% of its livestock killed between 2005 and 2010 because of prolonged drought. In 2010 the United Nations estimated that more than a million people have left the northeast of the country, "with farmers simply not cultivating enough food or earning enough money to sustain them."

Basically, Syria's GDP per capita was declining during the 1980s and stagnating in the 1990s. This trend was reversed only with the beginning of market reforms in 2000s, but the economic renaissance was largely confined to Damascus and Aleppo and struggled to spread to other parts of the country. A measure of prosperity brought into some cities by the economic liberalization, unevenly distributed in any case, was simply not enough to balance out the tremendous demographic and social pressures that were piling up in provinces like Deraa and Deir ez Zor and spilling into the center from the periphery. Regardless of whether the urban classes in Damascus and Aleppo were fully aware of their precarious existence living by the side of this volcano, they showed limited enthusiasm for fireworks once the volcano finally erupted and sent its flames towards the suburbs of their cities.

To be sure, the peripheral character of the uprising in Syria makes the task of ensuring the survival of the Assad regime rather difficult compared with the experience of its patrons in Tehran. However, getting rid of the regime would be an easy task for the country compared to surviving the post-revolution.

The uprising in Syria has many characteristics of a poor man's revolt and a "periphery against center" conflict at the same time and as such it's the exact opposite of the kind of unrest the regime in Tehran was facing in its big cities in 2009.

While the protest movement in Iran was led by the urban classes of the capital and major city centers, the Syrian uprising is very much powered by the same underclass that in Iran is providing the bulk of the recruits for the Baseej squads that eventually crushed the Green opposition. In Iran, Tehran was the epicenter of the protests, but the Syrian revolution started in the heavily Bedouin and undeveloped Deraa, and from its very beginning the uprising featured a rather unusual degree of mobilization in the countryside against the regime. Protests were regularly reported in villages and small towns. During the siege of Deraa and Hama, nearby villagers were reported trying to break blockades with supply convoys and clashing with security cordons.

Even where the Syrian regime was successfully keeping city centers clean of protesters, the unrest persisted in suburbs and the countryside. In far-flung provinces, towns and localities have been changing hands several times, with protesters and the Free Syrian Army reinfiltrating them immediately after the army had departed. The regime is clearly overstretched and struggling to contain such a widely geographically distributed and increasingly militarized unrest, as shown by the recent reports of unrest creeping in towards the centers of Damascus and Aleppo. More critically for the regime, the challenge of defending the country's energy infrastructure over vast expanses of such a big country seems to be overwhelming the Syrian army, with attacks on oil and gas pipelines escalating.

Much was made of Syria's sectarian configuration, which is indeed one of the most challenging in the region. The steady stream of reports about sectarian killings in Homs suggests mounting tensions and troubles for the future. Yet, even if stripped of all its minorities down to the bare Sunni heartland, the post-Assad Syria is still very likely to be resistant to any notion of unity and stability.

As a poor man's revolt, the uprising in Syria, which by all accounts remains predominantly Sunni, is often blessed with the involvement of the most backward and conservative sections of the society. The Syrian opposition abroad may be represented by the finest intellectuals and members of all Syria's minorities. However, a Voice of America reporter, recently allowed into one of the opposition's strongholds in the area of Damascus-Douma, couldn't help noticing how the place was teeming with fully veiled women.

Many parts of the Syrian periphery are severely impoverished and many are heavily tribal. The tribes in Deir ez-Zor are officially allowed to carry arms as a counterweight to the Kurdish population in the North. Tribes in Deraa and other provinces are also quickly becoming militarized.

The potential for internal conflicts over the country's limited resources remains enormous. The same Deir ez-Zor, for example, is Syria's poorest province. Yet Deir ez-Zor accounts for 70% of Syria's oil production. Once the regime falls, the tribes in the province should be expected to demand their share of the oil revenues, either sending the rest of the country to beg the Saudis for a bailout, or starting a new "periphery against center" conflict.

None of this is to say that the survival of Bashar Assad's regime is necessarily in the interests of the West, Syria's neighbors and even the Syrians themselves. If only because it's not obvious that Syria in its current configuration can survive at all. However, while the Western media can keep cheering on the Arab Spring and the triumph of liberal democracy in the Middle East until it's blue in the face, the basic fact remains that this march to freedom in many parts of the region looks more like a modern species of a classic Malthusian collapse. Syria's immunity to the Arab Spring was a short-lived notion. However, those who think that a better future beckons for the Middle East had better hope that by the time that future arrives Syria will be still hanging around.

THE DEAD MAN AND HIS LONG SHADOW

The article I co-authored for the American Spectator in 2012.
First published here

Muammar Gaddafi was certainly more than prophetic during the summit of the Arab League (AL) in 2008 when he inquired about the fate of his Iraqi predecessor for Western military interventions: Saddam Hussein. "The ruler and head of an AL member has been hanged. Why?" he asked. "In the future it's going to be your turn. Even you, the friends of America," he told the Arab leaders present as the audience was rolling on the floor laughing. "Friends of America… No, I say," said Gaddafi, "We are friends of America, but America can approve of our hanging one day."

Two years later, the eccentric dictator was dragged out of a sewage channel and lynched by a mob of rebels after the regime succumbed to an alliance of domestic insurgents and NATO air strikes. In the White House, Obama hailed Gaddafi's demise, saying, "One of the world's longest-serving dictators is no more. The dark shadow of tyranny has been lifted."

Well, Gaddafi might be no more, but his long shadow keeps chasing Obama and other enthusiasts of the intervention in Libya even now. When Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, the rationale behind the award rested in significant part on the president's commitment to nuclear disarmament, with the Nobel committee's citation hailing Obama for a "vision of a world free from nuclear arms."

Furthermore, the citation affirmed the following: "Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts."

Or as Professor Juan Cole -- the go-to Middle East "expert" for pundits like Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald -- put it: "Barack Obama was given the prize because he is a game-changer.… Two years ago we were talking about whether Cheney could convince Americans to go to war on Iran. Now Washington is engaging in direct talks with Tehran that have eased tensions."

However, when the next installment -- the Libyan civil war -- of that reality show otherwise known as the Arab Spring was hitting TV screens, NATO involvement attracted an unwanted and unintended audience: namely, North Korea and Iran.

An unnamed North Korean foreign policy official quoted by North Korea's news agency lambasted air strikes on Libya and drew a direct parallel between his country's nuclear arsenal and the ill-fated WMD program of Libya, which Gaddafi dismantled in 2003 as part of his plans to co-operate with the West. Calling the West's bargain with Gaddafi "an invasion tactic to disarm the country," the North Korean official said that the subsequent bombing of Libya by NATO forces was "teaching the international community a grave lesson," and proclaimed that a powerful military was the only means of ensuring peace in the Korean Peninsula.

More ominously for the administration, the implications of the war in Libya did not escape the attention of Iran's Supreme Leader -- Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Supreme Leader compared the West's tempting Gaddafi with diplomatic and economic incentives in 2003 in exchange for giving up his nuclear ambitions to "giving candy to a child." Khamenei said Iran was right to reject restrictions on its nuclear program, making it clear that one can fool a child with sweets, but only once. Having seen what happened to Gaddafi, Iran is not going to trade its nuclear ambitions for any "candy."

The non-proliferation connection of the war in Libya was completely missed by many analysts. The same Juan Cole endorsed the war in Libya as follows (while expressing slight reservations over the fact that Obama continued U.S. participation without authorization from Congress): "The Libya intervention, in and of itself, is therefore legal in international law in a way that the Iraq War was not. I personally believe that the UN attempt to forbid unilateral aggressive war is absolutely central to our survival on earth, and although it has had many failures, it is an ideal worth reaching for." His position on Iran remained unchanged.

In a blog post last October, Juan Cole again called for dialogue between the administration and Iran, "Obama came into office convinced that the negotiating table was the only plausible way to deal with Iran. He should go back to that."

But by now it has become abundantly clear that if a plausible way to deal with Iran exists at all, it is not the negotiating table.

Common sense suggests that a regime will only abandon a WMD program on the understanding that the other party will not subsequently try to take advantage of the degradation of the regime's deterrence capabilities.

By backing the anti-Gaddafi forces in the Libyan civil war to the point of pushing a de facto policy of regime change (and not simply "protecting civilians"), Obama broke the United States' tacit agreement with Gaddafi that had been in place since the Libyan autocrat gave up his WMD ambitions in 2003. The president has indeed become a "game-changer"… by eliminating the negotiating table from the list of options for dealing with Iran.

Gaddafi was not even the first dictator in the Middle East to be toppled after it dismantled its WMD program at the request of the Wet. That honor belongs to Saddam Hussein. Yet unlike Saddam, Gaddafi was never accused of failing to carry out his part of the bargain. After reaching a de facto agreement to give up his WMD program, Gaddafi joined forces with Western powers as a supposed ally against terrorism and became a regular visitor in Western capitals.

The truth is that the casus belli behind the NATO intervention in Libya was the violent crackdown on a popular uprising against Gaddafi's rule. On the other hand, violent crackdowns on popular uprisings are exactly what Iran has been very busy with in recent years. The regime crushed the Green Revolution in 2009 under heavy criticism from the same Western powers that later intervened in Libya when Gaddafi forces were on the verge of defeating the rebels. At the beginning of 2011 the regime in Tehran faced off an attempt to revive the protests.

Meanwhile, the Saudi prince stated the monarchy's position on Iran's nuclear ambitions in very clear terms at a conference in Riyadh: "If our efforts, and the efforts of the world community, fail to convince Israel to shed its weapons of mass destruction and to prevent Iran from obtaining similar weapons, we must, as a duty to our country and people, look into all options we are given, including obtaining these weapons ourselves."

The Saudi warning, while clearly being insincere as regards Israel's nuclear weapons that have existed for a few decades, leaves no doubt regarding the nasty potential for a nuclear Iran to unleash an Arab-Persian nuclear arms race in a region that is generally not known for stability or predictability.

In 2010, the United Arab Emirates' ambassador in the U.S. was even more frank. Calling Iran the only country in the region to pose a threat to the UAE, Yousef Al-Otaiba said, "We cannot live with a nuclear Iran."

Today the Obama administration is facing a dilemma undreamed of in the philosophy of Professor Cole. The manner in which the ideal of preventing unilateral aggressive wars ended with the lynching of Gaddafi has unnerved the regimes of Iran and North Korea. The chances that either country will voluntarily discontinue WMD programs or surrender existing weapons have turned from very slim to non-existent. Indeed, on what basis should they do so in light of Gaddafi's fate?

Under the present circumstances, the Obama administration may well be considering a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear installations before the regime acquires a nuclear deterrent and sends the whole region on a WMD acquisition spree. Contrary to the arguments of some pundits like Jeffrey Goldberg, a preemptive attack is the only realistic option now, if Obama's vision of a nuclear free world is to have any chance of survival in the Middle East in the near future. The regime in Tehran is not going to back off through a carrot-and-stick approach of negotiations and sanctions after what transpired in Libya.

However, such a unilateral, preemptive attack was certainly not the original intention of the Nobel committee that commended Obama's non-proliferation efforts with the Peace Prize. Nor did Juan Cole have such an outcome in mind when he was lauding the administration's "leading from behind" in Libya.

Truly one should never underestimate the shadow of a dead man: in this case, Gaddafi.

Here we go!