What would stop Iran, Russia, China or any other country from supplying weapons to opposition groups in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, or even Turkey, where legitimate protest movements have risen up and were met with brutal repression by government forces?
The outcome of the Syrian crisis, no matter what that might be, will delimit the new Middle East in a way that will affect the entire world—not just Syria and the region
Relying on the regional and world powers has proven to be a costly participation in a proxy war that is devastating the country.
The peculiar enthusiasm of former colonizers of the Arab world, like France, for recognizing Syria’s representatives without waiting for the Syrian people to decide through ballots (not bullets), has delegitimized the Coalition in the eyes of many Syrians.
The rulers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar insist that Bashar Assad step down or be removed by force because the Syrian people want him gone. Yet, they ignore the fact that the Arab peoples want them all gone, not just Assad.
The first and most important casualty of the militarization of the Syrian uprising is the non-violent movement.
Syrian state-controlled media blames most of the deaths on armed groups (which it calls terrorists). These allegations have awakened Russia’s dormant–but not forgotten–memory of the Saudi-American alliance that created the Mujahidin networks in Afghanistan, which in turn defeated the Soviet Union.
The three parties in the new coalition government of Tunisia have months, not years, to deliver on unemployment, political reform and economic growth.
If the Gulf Cooperation Council wanted to support democracy and stability, they would have invested in Tunisia and Egypt. Instead, they are investing in regimes that mimic their own Umayyad model of governance.
