The Shenanigan in the Shenanigan
Looking for an angle in the recent
Syrian presidential elections? You could marvel at Hassan Nassrallah’s pleadings (always in the style of I know
everything and you’re an idiot) to fully appreciate, grasp, buy, and then eat
up the full significance of a
shenanigan.
If that doesn’t work and you’re still desperate for some
insight that you are sure is hidden deep inside this silly story, then to you père
Assad.
Pick a day between 20 and 25, February 1985. A late afternoon
chat in Amman. I was sitting mute
(ok, and just a tad bit giddy) between a seasoned Lebanese journalist,
who worked then for a French outlet, and a wily Jordanian politician. Across
the border, Hafez Assad had just been reelected President of Syria with 99.4%
of the vote in a referendum for which an impeccable 100% of voters turned out.
Of course, it escaped no one
that this routine constitutional exercise came on the blood soaked heels of the
Hama Cleansing and years
of civil rumblings encouraged by internal failures and external nemeses.
The journalist, obviously oscillating between amusement and
bemusement, asked, “It’s bizarre this charade, no? How does Assad expect us to
take these ridiculous results seriously?” To which the good politician answered
with a wry smile, “ Ah, but that is precisely Assad’s point: that he could pull
off something this ridiculous--and with such ease so soon after all the
bloodshed.”
To one and all, the man was saying: I am in control.
I am paraphrasing, it goes without saying. And so is Bashar now.
It has been 29 years since that plebiscite. In the throes of an existential challenge
that has broken the son’s grip and the country’s back, presidential elections proceeded,
as commentators, oscillating between amusement and bemusement, cried foul.
For Bashar this
is nothing short of applause. He has just demonstrated that,
even under extreme duress, he can pull off an absolute farce; to boot, that he
can pull it off in an old, favorite fiefdom, rousing tens of thousands of “expats”
to throng the Syrian embassy in Lebanon to do their duty for Bashar w bass—Only Bashar.
But the mob
scene in Beirut still needed
a prop to deliver the full force of the stunt. In an arrangement
that is signature House of Assad, the embassy lined up three boxes, one for each candidate in curtain
free space, as if Bashar was giggling to one and all: I am still in
control.
But the undeniable fact is that he isn’t. If Hafez’s referendum
in 1985 was designed to show off his strength in a Syria united behind him,
Bashar’s elections were meant to camouflage weakness in a Syria divided all
around him.
You’re about to say he’s done well—considering. And you would
be right—kind of. Syria is gone, the man is but a fraction of his original size, but there is a growing
sense that his will be a voice in any future settlement. Increasingly, you come
across even the most anti-Assad die-hards who have quit because of the horrors
of the chaos, because of the unbearable sight of a nation dying, the forbidding
promise of Islamist extremism. And
perhaps because they finally caught up with the long established consensus between
enough of Assad’s friends and foes that the regime shall remain intact.
Alas, for all these “blessings,” Bashar owes a huge debt to a
long list of others. Sitting alone in his office, he could blow kisses every
which way the wind will take them. But no favor
has been more consequential for him and Syria than that extended by Hezbollah
and Iran, not only because it is the very one that saved his neck, but because
it is the very one with the most intriguing implications for the geopolitics of
the region.
How these implications will play out is, of course, an
important question for which a number of intertwining, booby trapped files lie in wait, only one of which is
titled The Arab Uprisings and the Dust They’ve Kicked Up From Sanaa’ to
Benghazi. Others you should keep in mind? Let’s see, first the big regional
folders: America
Does Iran; Is This A Shiite Crescent I Behold Or An Ignis Fatuus?; (click
on the link if this is the first time you come across this beauty); Regional
Models Are For The Birds, with the very helpful subheading of Let’s Not Talk Turkey & Only The
Southern Suburbs Want to Speak Farsi.
As for the local dossiers, they all, regrettably if inevitably,
end in a question mark: Please, Might Turkey Dump Erdogan? Who Will Keel Over
First, Second And Third In The Saudi Kingdom? Will Iran’s Theocracy Die In
Order To Live? Is Netanyahu The Gift That Keeps On Giving Or What?
Bashar, being Bashar, would have a mother of a file all his
own, but I am not altogether sure it is of any comfort for this former leader
of the former “pulse of Arabhood”: The Trials and Travails of A Master Turned
Pawn.
While working
your way through any of these recipes, here’s a piece of advice recently given
to me by one of the sharpest cooks in this mess of a kitchen: think a whole lot
of improvisation with only sprinkles of strategy.
