A Syrian fatality

Whenever the struggle against tyranny reaches a climax, it can mutate into civil war. Tyrants install and maintain their dominion by force and constraint. Right is nothing without might, and the power of numbers is nullified by armed power, just as their organisation is disrupted by arrests and executions. The crucial moment is when moral and vocal resistance turns into violent rebellion. Its outcome depends on how the military react to a civilian show of force. Often they support the tyrant, or they put a senior officer in his place. Occasionally they stay on the side-line as spectators. More rarely they side with the people as in the Carnation Revolution of 1974 in Portugal. And sometimes they are divided, with some units staying faithful to the tyrant while others join the civilian uprising. This seems to be the path to civil war, when both sides have an army.

Guerrilla wars and insurgencies are asymmetric. Small poorly armed groups fight against a regular army and police. This entails hit-and-run tactics without battle fronts. Combatants are among the people like fish in the sea. In a civil war, equivalent forces and armaments face each other. Territory is held and front lines are fought over. Civil war is a high intensity conflict producing a lot of deaths and, when one army is victorious, the defeated troops go into exile. This happened in Russia (1920), Spain (1939), China (1949), Vietnam (1975), Rwanda (1994), and Syria will follow suite whichever side wins. As for a cease fire and new borders, the precedents of Palestine, Korea and Bosnia-Herzegovina are not very encouraging. What seems most likely is that the Syrian regime, with abundant help from Russia, Iran and Lebanon, will annihilate the minor opposition groups (Free Syrian Army, al-Nusra Front, etc.) and will only then fight ISIL, at which stage the American coalition will have to support them. Whether this strategy was imagined in Moscow or Damascus, it has destroyed any hope of political change and will force even more Syrians to leave their country. A half-hearted backing to a popular uprising against a murderous regime is doomed to fail. The Syrian people needed guns and planes, not words and promises. All that can be done now, short of fighting the Russians, is to welcome the refugees.