Aram Nerguizian is a visiting fellow with the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at CSIS, where he conducts research on the Middle East and North Africa. He specializes in security, politics, and military development in the Middle East, focusing on specialized themes such as the Lebanese military, U.S. and Iranian strategic competition in the Levant, and challenges to civil-military relations and force development in post-conflict and divided societies.

1- The extended Syrian situation is vulnerable to turn into any disaster, humanitarian disaster and mass murdering is not far from happening. In your opinion, to where Syria is heading as Assad's regime is remaining in power?

One has to be realistic. There are a lot of underline socioeconomic and political pressures. Now, there are problems or sectarian pressures: Christians, Sunnis and Al-Alawi's pressures, and of course of the Kurdish minorities, all of these pressures complicate the emergence of any kind of stable solution for Syria. Even if tomorrow you had Assad step aside or you had the emergence of a new government or a power-sharing arrangement, even the best government would probably have to deal with the effects of the underline pressures for years to come. My assessment to the level of stability after seventeen months of unrest is that we're looking at the Syrian decade of instability, where it will be very difficult to map out, in the short term, where any of this is going. The only certainty is that, at the domestic level, there is still very little incentive on either side, both in terms of the Assad regime and its supporters, on the one hand, and the fighters and the opposition players, on the other. There is no real effort to try and reach a political compromise or negotiations settled, and this replicate or is an error of a mirror image of the fact that, on the regional level, you still have very deep and very devised Sunni-Shiite competition between the gulf states and Iran and polarization about that conflict, and unwillingness to make major concession, and that is also complicated by the fact that international players like the US, Russia and United Nations are all very divided about what the best strategy is and which effort should be pursued with the most support. And none of these makes me optimistic that a solution to this will emerge in short-term and frankly I think a lot of estimates about the Assad strength and the strength of opposition and insurgents are inflated or deflated by the regime and by the opposition respectively, both sides are involved in what is essentially inflated issue, so we have to keep tracking this, it is not going to be resolved in the short term and it is certainly not come up with a result in an easy way at all, if there is not some effort to recognize the underlined pressures from governance, politics and communalism, whether it is for the Al-Alawi community, the Sunni majority or other minority groups that have their own identity issues such as the Kurdish community.

2- International community is quiet afraid of military intervention and cannot take any decision so as to limit the mass murdering by Assad's regime or to initiate any attempt for toppling Assad from power. In your opinion; how long is international community going to witness the everyday civilian victims of Syria?

First of all there is no such thing as International community when it comes to Syria. Everyone is divided. Second, I think the unwillingness of the international actors that are on the board, Russia, China, the EU states, NATO states, and even the gulf states, are willing to intervene directly because they realize frankly none of them can solve the instability in Syria and they can maybe compete to achieve their own national interest, but competing doesn't require military intervention that is likely to make things far worse than better. Even if you have the current cycle of violence where you have seventeen thousand fatalities, they're still looking at the environment that is going to map out of the time, and there are lessons from Iraq, not so much Libya, that matter a great deal, because you've the sectarian division, you have regional Sunni-Shiite tension and you've all of this happening in a country with a chemical weapon and air defense capability and systems frankly are complicated by the fact that you've this kind of down if you do down if you don't scenario, which is to say; if you intervene, if you probably try to do it or prevent the proliferation of these chemical weapons, but if you intervene, it is very likely that those weapons will become much more unsafe because units will abandon their post, I'm much likely thinking that people in the west and in the gulf are interested in intervening or want to do something for the sake of Syrian people, it is not the case, it is more related to fears about stability, fears about proliferation and fears about long term viability of Syria and then lastly the humanitarian effect.

3- The Syrian situation cannot be solved through dialogue, since neither the opposition believes in dialogue with Assad, nor Assad can make any reform. The only option remains is supporting the opposition. Recently Syrian opposition has held many meetings in Turkey, Qatar and Egypt, and currently is about to hold meeting in France also. To what extent is it possible to topple Syrian regime by the opposition or to force Assad to step down?

I think the challenge that Assad and the opposition face is respectively the following: Assad can hang on to power for extended period of time, and is having a very difficult time though eliminating an opposition that is very flat, very decentralized and can pretty much vanish in terms of its deployment, it is not stuck to bases or facilities that it can target, and that makes it very difficult, and also the opposition cannot change the fact that they cannot penetrate the broader military capabilities of the Assad regime which still remains largely intact and there is still a portion of Syrian population that maybe doesn't like Assad, but doesn't see any political viability in terms of where the opposition is going. A lot of folks are asking if the opposition is the solution. My question is Opposition is the solution to what? If you have a scenario where Assad leaves, it is my expectation that the competing forces, inside Syria, will then end up in an environment where they compete as well. You have secular elements and the Army insurgency, you also have more and more Islamist or ideological one, these are compatible today because they're both fighting Assad but at the moment you don't have that unified threat, you have an environment where they compete with each other. And that is why there are so many Syrians who don't like Assad but don't like where the opposition is going and one also has to bear in mind that as far as the opposition is concerned no one is sure that the group like SNC even has a role to play anymore. Right now, it is the opposition forces that are underground and are fighting Assad and are getting the most attention. It is my expectation that unlike the Iraqi national congress, the SNC and the Syrian opposition will not be the players that shape the future of Syria or players at the table, it is going to have to be, for better or for worse, a combination of fires on the ground, whatever remains of the Assad's regime live among the Al-Alawi community. So I don't think there is a solution. What you're looking at is a couple of scenarios: you're looking at a scenario where different communities cannot find a solution together, and they will have to try to live apart, that could be at best a federal structure whereas it could be the associations of different segments of the country. We're already seeing those pressures among the Kurdish community, let alone among the Al-Alawi center of west. The other scenario is the Assad regime hangs on and you see more cycles of violence, and no one knows how long that could last and where is the end. And the other scenario is you do have a political settlement, but I think the window for that are either too far behind us or too far ahead, so there are no good scenarios right now for Syria.

5- Although the West is willing to see Assad falling down, they're also concerned about the alternative to Assad's regime, and currently the West wants to be sure about the alternative to Assad. Anyhow, the alternative is going to be Islamic parties. In your view, to what extent has fearing from the alternative to Assad made the situation more complex?

Well, fearing from the alternative to Assad, certainly, complicates the western decision-making process. In the gulf, you don't have that problem. You have a very practical view of the crisis and namely what that means is they are not thinking about the long-term future for minority groups, for socioeconomic stability. The focuses are on the short-term removal of Assad and supporting new forces which are likely to be Sunni and does co-actable by the Gulf States. The US's former concern about Syrian 2020-2025 is whether it will be a viable country and will have stable socioeconomics, whether it protects its minorities. You have two million Christians, two million Al-Alawis and a sizable Kurdish community; can all these exist in a way that guarantees their autonomy and their politics? And beyond that, I think that many, in the West, recognize that Syria does not have a tradition of democracy, representative government, and politics. Given how badly transition goes on in other countries like Yemen and Egypt, and given the pressures of minority groups and the pressures of economies of these countries, I think there is a realization now that none of these countries is transitioning well and none of them will. And they will go through difficult periods. So, Syria is no different. The problem with Syria is that Assad has made every mistake that an authoritarian leader can make to make things worse, but by the same token, as good as it has been for the opposition to be leaderless, SNC and so on. The reality of Syrian politics and Middle East politics is that you need the unified figures, individuals who are viewed as incredible for representative and right now the only individual that has some kind of unitary prestige is Assad and the opposition does not have someone who shines the way… In the short-term the facts that you don't have that complicated the decision-making for countries like the United States.


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