
The
Obama administration’s decision to increase aid to the Syrian rebels,
including now providing military aid, indicates that the United States
is fast becoming a participant in Syria’s civil war. What is so
worrisome about that trend is how much U.S. policy is evolving along
lines similar to the earlier U.S.-led intervention in Libya. Before
Washington goes down that path, it would be wise for officials to take a
closer look at how the Libyan mission has turned out. That would be a
sobering exercise, for post-Qaddafi Libya is hardly a model that any
sensible policy maker should wish to repeat.
Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi both
deservedly acquired reputations as appallingly brutal rulers. Even if
the current allegations that Assad’s regime has used chemical weapons
ultimately prove unfounded, there is no question that government forces
repeatedly have used conventional munitions against various targets with
little regard for the impact on innocent civilians.
But as in the case of Libya, the insurgents in Syria are a motley
coalition ranging from pragmatic, democratic reformers to radical
Islamists closely allied with Al Qaeda. U.S. officials, as well as such
outspoken congressional advocates of aiding the rebels, such as senators
John McCain and Lindsey Graham, display supreme arrogance when they
assume that Washington can direct aid to the former while keeping funds
and weapons out of the hands of the latter faction. As Senator Rand Paul
and other critics of assisting the rebels point out, Washington could
end up strengthening terrorist elements that wish to wreak havoc on the
United States.
The victorious revolutionaries in Libya, which the United States and
its NATO allies assisted so decisively, rather quickly fragmented into
assorted armed militias, many of whom are anything but tolerant
democrats. One hardline militia in Benghazi, Ansar al-Shariah, is widely
believed to have orchestrated the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S.
consulate. Fighting between other militias has turned Libya into a
chaotic, dysfunctional state reminiscent of Lebanon during the 1970s and
early 1980s, or Afghanistan in the years immediately following the
withdrawal of Soviet forces.
Indeed, the Libyan state shows multiple, worrisome signs of
fragmentation. Tribal clashes in the southern part of the country in
February 2012 that resulted in the deaths of more than fifty civilians
and caused hundreds more to flee the area were an early sign of the
underlying instability. In early June 2013, the leader of the oil-rich
province of Cyrenaica declared it a self-governing region, and other
eastern provinces may seek to follow suit. There certainly is not an
abundance of respect on the part of such factions for the national
government in Tripoli or for the Libyan army. On June 15, hundreds of
gunmen (apparently militia members) fired on soldiers of the First
Infantry Brigade in Benghazi, killing six, wounding eleven, and forcing
the remainder to withdraw from several bases in the area.
Libya is more a tribal tapestry than a modern nation state in the
Western sense of the term, and NATO’s military aid to insurgent forces
helped that tapestry begin to unravel. It was no coincidence that the
revolution that overthrew Qaddafi originated in Benghazi and was heavily
dominated by tribes from the eastern part of the country. All previous
rebellions against his rule also began in the east. Conversely,
Qaddafi’s political power base relied on support from the western
tribes. That also was the portion of the country that fell last to the
insurgents. The southern tribes traditionally conducted a wary,
balancing strategy, trying to avoid an overcommitment either to Qaddafi
and his western tribal allies or to his eastern adversaries.
In a similar fashion, Syria is more an amalgam of ethnic and
religious groups than a state with a strong national identity. Syria’s
population is divided among Sunni Arabs (about 60 percent of
population), Christians (about 10-12 percent), Alawites, a Shiite
offshoot, (also about 10-12 percent) Druze (about 6 percent) and
various, mostly Sunni, ethnic minorities, primarily Kurds and Armenians.
The Alawite Assad family has based its power for more than four decades
on the solid loyalty of its religious bloc in a loose alliance with
Christians, Druze and sometimes with one or more of the other smaller,
ethnic groups. What we see today is a largely Sunni Arab bid to
overthrow that “coalition of minorities” regime.
Helping to oust Bashar al-Assad may be morally appealing to
human-rights activists in the United States and elsewhere in the West,
but we need to beware of unintended consequences. If the aftermath is a
turbulent, unstable Syria, with a new government heavily influenced by
radical Islamist elements, or a Syria fragmenting into ethno-religious
ministates, we are not going to like the outcome. Unfortunately, as we
have seen in Libya, one of those scenarios is quite probable in
countries that lack national cohesion. And as in the case of Libya, the
intellectual architects of such a policy fiasco will likely develop
amnesia and avoid taking responsibility for their dubious handiwork.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor to The National Interest, is the author of nine books on international affairs, including Smart Power: Toward a Prudent Foreign Policy for America.
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