U.S. diffidence in Syria means failure

President Barack Obama’s attitude toward the Syrian conflict is the equivalent of wanting to win the lottery without buying a ticket. Obama has used his aircraft to bombard ISIS in Syria, but the president does not want to do anything yet, or allow his allies to do anything, that may affect military outcomes there.

This attitude has been highlighted in American-Turkish differences over Kobani, or Ain al-Arab. The Turks seek to create safety zones inside Syria, which would include no-fly zones. But the Obama administration fears this would decisively shift the balance of power against the Assad regime and bring about its sudden collapse, which may benefit the jihadists.

The Assad regime is indeed living on borrowed time. It has been taking heavy losses in recent months, which are unsustainable, and it does not have enough manpower to regain and control significant territory. President Bashar Assad’s sole option is to try to survive, another way of saying he cannot win.

In this context, the Turks have been telling the Americans that the anti-ISIS campaign must, above all, lead to Assad’s removal. Obama is resisting pushing in such a direction, even though this contradicts the logic he has used in Iraq. There, he has affirmed that only a more inclusive political system, one that integrates the disgruntled Sunnis, can bring about an ISIS defeat.

Why does he refuse to acknowledge a similar argument for Syria? Unless the ultimate objective is to get rid of Assad and impose a more inclusive political system, none of the rebels, moderate or otherwise, will have much motive to fight ISIS.

This is obvious to the Turks, and everyone else, but the Obama administration still clings to the illusion that one can become half pregnant. Obama’s caution in Syria is perhaps understandable, but now that he has outlined a strategy to deal with ISIS, he cannot afford to hesitate midpassage. And yet all we see is an unwillingness to accept the inevitable.

If Washington’s view is that the only way for the anti-ISIS offensive to work is if there are troops on the ground, it should accept that those with troops may have agendas different than that of the United States. Obama’s priority is ISIS, but in the region the countries are struggling with much more than that, including a massive and potentially volatile refugee population, economic uncertainty, the presence of foreign armed groups in their midst and along their borders, and much more.

To assume that such countries will embrace an effort principally to weaken ISIS while nothing is done to affect the dynamics of the Syrian conflict, which has created all the problems that they are now facing, is the height of self-centered conceit. If Obama ever thought that was possible, he needs to hire foreign policy advisers who will tell him the truth.

Nor is doing nothing a solution. Even people close to the Syrian regime are quietly saying Assad will not last. If America is discouraging Turkey from intervening because it fears the sudden downfall of the regime, that downfall is likely to come anyway. And the U.S. had better prepare for it now to avoid picking up the broken pieces if the jihadists take Damascus.

That is why the outlines of a political solution are necessary. There are those who point out that such a solution comes too late. It may, but the international community cannot afford not to have a political plan to guide a transition in Syria, one that creates a context for its air attacks against ISIS. More important, such a plan would show the United States is serious about resolving the crisis in Syria, which would give it greater leverage to rally “moderate” opposition groups to its side.

The principles of such a political plan are well known. They must involve Assad’s departure; a commitment to protect the Alawite community, perhaps by deploying a joint Arab military force; a fundamental reform of the army and security services; repatriation of Syrian refugees in secure conditions; outside commitment to rebuild the Syrian economy; the elimination of terrorist threats; and agreement on a new political structure for Syria – whether federalism or some other arrangement.

These are all fine principles, each of which poses great challenges. But the West and the Arab world need a road map in Syria. Ideally, they could discuss this with Iran and Russia to try to arrive at a managed transition.

But neither Moscow nor Tehran is willing to give up on Assad just yet, particularly not when the international coalition is pounding ISIS. Yet the Russians, like the Iranians, can also increasingly see that the man they have supported, and in whom they have invested considerable political and financial capital, is losing.

Hence, the need for the West to have a plan it can eventually submit to Iran and Russia for when the balance of power shifts decisively against Assad. At some stage Syria will require a postwar arrangement, and building a consensus around a plan can be very helpful. Recall that in Lebanon ideas for reform first raised in 1976 were revived more than a decade later and made a part of the Taif Accord. Most important, by accepting such an approach, Obama will show that his campaign against ISIS is part of a broader package to normalize the situation in Syria.

The Americans must accept that for three years they neglected Syria and allowed the situation to deteriorate to the point where they have to intervene today. Against this backdrop, having narrow objectives there makes little sense. Syria may be a problem from hell, as some commentators have written, but allowing it to remain in order to focus on ISIS is absurd. ISIS grew because the situation in Syria was so bad. Obama gains nothing by curing the symptom while ignoring the illness.

Flawed as it may be, Lebanon can serve as a model

A cliché about Lebanon is that its strength lies in its weakness. For Lebanese living constantly in an unstable country, such a statement sounds vacuous. However, it also happens to be true.

For a long time, to many people in the Arab world, Lebanon’s weakness was its sectarian political system. Sectarianism guaranteed a divided society, undermined the notion of a unifying statehood, and left the country at the mercy of sectarian politicians. This, the argument went, was archaic, so it seemed natural in 1975 that Lebanon should enter into a civil war.

Indeed, but what critics never looked at was that Lebanon emerged from its war as one country – not two, three or four. That was partly due to the fact that Syria imposed its hegemony during the conflict, preventing a breakup. But there was more to it than that: the country had reflexes to manage its sectarian differences and institutionalise pluralism. Therefore when the state broke down, there were mechanisms to pursue reconciliation.

What we have seen in the Arab world – particularly in Syria and Iraq, two countries with sectarian makeups similar to Lebanon’s – is something different. Under the regimes of Hafez Al Assad, followed by his son Bashar, and Saddam Hussein, sectarianism was buried under a veneer of Baathist Arab nationalism.

So prevalent was the nationalist mythology that few people in either country would venture to discuss sectarianism. Many years ago, I travelled to Damascus to interview people for a report I was writing on Lebanese-Syrian relations. Virtually all my interlocutors were careful to steer away from any discussion of sectarianism in Syria, saying only that this was Lebanon’s curse.

The alleged Arab nationalist systems in Syria and Iraq, however, were dominated by minorities – Alawites in Syria, Sunnis in Iraq – whose rule was upheld by vast apparatuses of repression.

The forced removal of the old order in Iraq and Syria, whether by foreign military intervention or domestic revolt, undermined the instruments of repression. Yet there were no formal or informal institutions to fill the vacuum and help regulate sectarian or ethnic relations afterward. That is why the breakdowns in both countries were so sweeping and catastrophic.

Lebanon is far from being out of the woods, as the destructive sectarian impulse sweeps the Middle East. However, in its favour the country does have in place institutions to alleviate its sectarian tensions. This may not be enough to contain rising Sunni-Shia hostility in the country, but it can delay the worst, allowing for solutions to diffuse crises.

Paying a heavy price today are the region’s religious and ethnic minorities. Iraq’s and Syria’s Christian communities are not likely to reconstitute themselves again. Syria’s Alawite-dominated regime is collapsing. Once that happens Alawites, too, will slowly disappear from Syria, especially after the crimes they perpetrated there.

The Shia will hold out, even if they lose ground, but at what cost in terms of death and devastation? In Iraq, relying on Shia solidarity, as the Iranians have advised, will only make matters worse. What is required is a new social contract with the Sunnis to reach a compromise over power-sharing that is respected.

The Lebanese showed foresight in embracing a sectarian-based political system at independence. It was France, the Mandatory power in Lebanon after the First World War, that helped them do so. They built on sectarian institutions and traditions already introduced at the time of Ottoman rule, and that had been pushed partly by the Ottomans and partly by the European powers.

However, sectarian political systems tend to impose elaborate mechanisms that, if disregarded, exacerbate sectarian relations. The reason for this is that interactions between sects tend to rub up against existential sensitivities. When the rules are not acknowledged by one sect, the other sects very quickly feel this may pose a potential threat to their existence.

In Lebanon, Hizbollah has systematically ignored the rules of sectarian compromise in the past decade. The party’s attacks against the Sunni community and Sunni political figures in the years 2005-2008, coupled with its entry into the Syrian civil war on behalf of Mr Al Assad’s regime and Iran, greatly angered Lebanon’s Sunnis, persuading some to take up arms.

Today, Hizbollah must adopt the rules of sectarian compromise quickly, because the strains with the country’s Sunnis have reached disturbing levels. By and large Lebanese Sunnis are moderate, but the reality is that in times of conflict, it is the extremists who gain and eliminate alternative approaches.

Had Lebanon not had institutions in place to reduce tensions – a preference for national-unity governments, a distribution of the top three posts in the state among members of the three main sects, Sunnis, Shia and Maronite Christians, as well as a predilection for taking national decisions based on consensus – it might have been far deeper in civil conflict than it is today.

By the same token, it is difficult to imagine normalisation in Syria and Iraq without the introduction of some kind of system that ingrains sectarian and ethnic compromise in political life. It may not make for the most efficient systems, but it will make for ones where sectarian coexistence can succeed.

Lebanon is hardly an ideal model for the Middle East. But in a region where sectarianism was never neutralised, only hidden away under layers of intimidation, it is a more appropriate model than any other. The country may still succumb to sectarian conflict, but that it hasn’t done so until now is itself worthy of mention.

Exit stage left - Ziad Rahbani plans an improbable exile

The announcement by musician and playwright Ziad al-Rahbani that he intended to “emigrate” to Russia because political horizons in Lebanon had narrowed was rich in contradiction.

Recently, there was some question whether Rahbani suspected that Hezbollah was behind an effort to disrupt a concert he gave in Tyre. In an interview with Al-Jadeed, Rahbani also began criticizing the party’s behavior, saying, “We can no longer defend Hezbollah all the time. Hezbollah takes from us, but gives nothing in return. What we do with [the party] it doesn’t do with us, to the extent that it doesn’t mention my name at all.”

Doubtless, Rahbani’s departure for Russia will not be permanent. It’s difficult to imagine him lasting very long in the endless Arctic nights, or getting much recognition in a country that is drawn to Vladimir Putin’s brand of xenophobia.

Come to think of it, it’s very hard to imagine Rahbani discovering political horizons in Putin’s Russia that are wider than in Lebanon. Even the artist’s attraction to communism is unlikely to mean much in a country that has preserved only a chauvinist form of nationalism from the communist era, grafted onto an oligarchic and corrupt capitalist economic system headed by a man who systematically creates new enemies to remain in power.  

You wonder, then, if the motive is less ideological than cultural, a consequence of how Russia is perceived, perhaps mythically, in the Lebanese Greek Orthodox imagination. Then again, even culturally, can Rahbani long delight in a country governed by a hooligan, blessed by a materialistic and fatuous clergy as influential as the materialistic, fatuous clergy is in Lebanon?

Rahbani’s disenchantment with Hezbollah is hardly surprising. But it took him rather a long time to notice the party’s authoritarian core, its suffocation of any alternative paths in the Shiite community, and its habitual resort to intimidation, or worse, with opponents. Last December Rahbani publicly declared that his mother, the singer Fairuz, admired Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, an announcement that provoked a furor.

But Rahbani is not leaving Lebanon and Hezbollah for more open climes. The behavior of the authorities in Putin’s Russia is not very different than that of Hezbollah. For all his contradictions, Rahbani may soon realize that it is much easier to put on a play in Lebanon that welcomes the arrival of a dictator, as he did with Bikhsous al-Karameh wal Shaab al-Aaneed (With Respect to Dignity and the Stubborn People), than it is to put on a play in Russia that would welcome the arrival of democracy.

Notwithstanding Rahbani’s fine ability to pick apart the idiosyncrasies and pathologies in Lebanese society, Lebanon remains – despite its dysfunctional nature, its self-destructiveness, the incompetence of its leadership, and the deep frustrations it engenders – an outpost of pluralism and liberty in a region where this has almost disappeared.

Rahbani is living proof of this. Before and during the civil war he wrote a series of biting, brilliant plays that have become standards in Lebanon’s cultural consciousness. All were in some ways critical of the country and society, but Rahbani’s humor made them perfectly tolerable and greatly enjoyable. He showed us that the Lebanese could laugh at themselves and that was enough.

Yet once Hezbollah came onto the scene the laughing stopped, except to the extent that when Rahbani declared his backing for Hezbollah, many of us laughed, so improbable was the match. That Rahbani and Fairuz, artists of immense talent and imagination, should beat to the same rhythm as an authoritarian, sectarian, secretive party that gains its life-force from perpetual conflict and a cult of martyrdom remains a genuine oddity.

Rahbani is hardly the first person from the political left to have developed sympathies for Hezbollah. It’s reassuring that he’s finally seen through the impossibility of that marriage. You can only presume that one day the Shiite community, with its own innate pluralism, will go in a similar direction, once the sectarian wars that Hezbollah has been fueling begin to die down and the exhausted Shiites have time to take stock.

All one can say to Ziad al-Rahbani is stick around. Lebanon may not be Nirvana, but at least you have the country’s number, and it can always benefit from your wicked wit. Give us another jazz album, if you have nothing to do. Fight Hezbollah with Charlie Parker and Bud Powell, not with Vladimir Putin. Rest assured, at least we will continue to mention your name.

An embarrassment with a portfolio

Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil has been ridiculed in recent days for his embarrassing performance at a meeting he held on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly session with the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates.

A video of the incident has been circulating, so there is not much to add. A smirking Bassil is repeatedly seen calling out to an assistant, asking “Rami, where is Caroline?” He then makes a hand gesture indicating that the woman, Caroline Ziadeh, the deputy permanent representative of Lebanon at the U.N., is attractive. The scene then cuts to Ziadeh, who is seen sitting down and straightening her skirt with an expression suggesting she is not happy.

On Wednesday, Bassil held a press conference to explain the incident. Yet he only dug his hole deeper by saying, “Yes she is an elegant woman, and Iwas in competition with the Emirati foreign minister, each of us praising our country’s women.”

The incident was humiliating for Ziadeh, but above all it was humiliating for Lebanon, which Bassil represents before the world. That the post once held by Charles Malek and Fouad Boutros should now be in such hands is a disgrace. But it is not surprising.

After all, Lebanese officialdom became agitated earlier this year when skier Jackie Chamoun had the misfortune of showing her breasts in the film of a photo-shoot for a calendar. She did not pose nude in the calendar itself, nor was her nudity on film meant to be seen by the public. Yet Chamoun issued a cringing apology and Sports and Youth Minister Faisal Karami asked Lebanon’s Olympic Committee to initiate the “necessary inquiries” into the incident.

I doubt anyone will make the necessary inquiries into Bassil’s performance. Yet that idea would not seem so strange in countries where such issues are taken seriously. The minister is hierarchically Ziadeh’s superior, someone in a position to advance her career or interrupt it. That this individual should be seen commenting on the physical attributes of his envoy, and in front of a ministerial counterpart no less, is remarkable. No one is suggesting Bassil has taken advantage of his position, but in many countries even the potential for that to happen is never dismissed as irrelevant.

But Lebanon is a country where there have been obstacles to passing laws curbing domestic violence, so don’t expect there to be any momentum to tighten legislation to end sexual harassment in the workplace. Again, no one is accusing Bassil of this, but given his actions, clearly he is not someone whose priority is to create a work environment in which proper behavior is respected.

When it comes to relations between the sexes at work, an argument can be made that the West has gone too far. Not every wink and nod needs to signify sexually harassment, and not every salacious story has to be brought up with one’s lawyer. It is frequently better for problems to be resolved within the work environment when possible, with the law available when it becomes impossible.

In Lebanon the margin women have to respond against harassment is much narrower than in the West. Don’t expect the courts to become a vanguard for action in this regard, or Lebanese society to take a strong stand against sexual harassment, especially when it involves an employee accusing a boss. I would wager that in most such cases it is the employee who is dispensable, not the boss, and that it is far easier for a company to resolve a problem by dismissing a subordinate.

In one noted case last April, a woman, Hoda Sankari, secretly filmed the governor of north Lebanon and acting governor of Beirut, Nassif Qaloush, implying that her contract with the governorate had not been renewed because she had not slept with him. The video was shown on primetime news and forced Qaloush to resign in May.

Since then Sankari has said she would file a lawsuit against Qaloush, who no longer enjoys immunity from prosecution as a grade-one civil servant. Yet no disciplinary action was taken against the former governor by the Interior Ministry, despite the evidence. Sankari reminded us there is a swath of top-level civil servants who are legally protected if they ever decide to take advantage of their employees.

With Bassil, it was different. The minister suggested that Ziadeh was worth bringing into the room not because she is a professional diplomat whose presence was required, but because she has a nice body. It was his sheer vulgarity that was striking, the lack of respect for her competence, from a man whose job it is to show Lebanon’s best face. You dare not wonder what the Emirati minister thought.

But what many Lebanese thought was that Bassil had behaved in a nauseating way. Ziadeh has reached a level of qualification in her job that can serve as a model for young Lebanese. But after watching the video, how many of them would want to follow in her footsteps and work for ministers who get away with behaving so boorishly?

Even in admitting failure, Obama is disingenuous

On Sunday, President Barack Obama admitted that the United States had underestimated the rise of ISIL. Agreeing with the director of national intelligence, Mr Obama observed: “Jim Clapper has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria.”

For Mr Obama to shift the burden of responsibility onto Mr Clapper was disingenuous. From the start of the conflict in Syria in 2011, numerous people warned that if the breakdown there was allowed to continue unabated, it could spread, creating blowback that could ultimately target the United States.

Indeed, the initial American reluctance to get involved in Syria was due to a fear that this might tip the balance in favour of Islamist groups fighting Bashar Al Assad’s regime. Early on there was an understanding in Washington of the nexus between violence in Syria and the fact that the growing sectarianism in the country might attract foreign jihadists.

Is that surprising? The link was well grasped by Mr Al Assad’s intelligence services, which falsely labelled the opposition “Islamist terrorists”, then tried to create that reality. By crushing peaceful demonstrations, the regime knew it would push the opposition to arm, drawing foreign jihadists and allowing the regime to portray itself as a victim of terrorism.

Mr Obama acknowledged that ISIL had exploited the vacuum in Syria, stating: “Over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swathes of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos.”

Blaming America for that void is unfair, but it is not unfair to insist that America should have foreseen the consequences. Mr Obama came to office promising a rules-based international system. That promise collapsed in Syria, which did not mean Mr Obama had a licence to do nothing. Time and again his unwillingness to involve America in another Middle East conflict hit up against the rationale for doing so to uphold a rules-based order.

This was most flagrant in August last year, when Mr Al Assad’s forces used chemical weapons against civilians in Ghouta, killing perhaps as many as 1,700 people. Mr Obama prepared to retaliate, though when he was offered a way out by Russia, he took it, allowing Mr Al Assad to get away, literally, with murder. This hardly reinforced international norms of behaviour.

The president’s refusal to act in Syria was bolstered by an isolationist mood in the United States. For instance, earlier this year a Politico poll asked Americans about, among other things, their country’s involvement in Syria. Only 15 per cent supported more involvement; 42 per cent sought less involvement; and 26 per cent supported the current level of involvement.

These attitudes changed radically when two Americans were decapitated by ISIL. But conducting foreign policy by opinion polls is never a good idea. The public, unlike an administration, rarely has all the information needed for making sound judgements.

When ISIL last year was seizing larger expanses of territory in eastern Syria and seeking to cut off the Syrian opposition’s access to Turkey, the administration was in a good position to assess where this was going. After all, it involved the successor to Al Qaeda in Iraq, which America had fought years earlier.

The reality is that Mr Obama’s Syria policy has been irresponsible and hypocritical, but in no way has it been based on a misunderstanding of the Syrian situation. His administration stood aside and did as little as possible to stop a great crime of the decade, couching its position in high principles that Mr Obama had no intention of implementing.

The president’s reference to his administration’s “underestimation” of the ISIL threat was embarrassing. What Mr Obama should have said is that he was responsible for a massive failure in policy. Senior administration officials – including former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, defence secretary Leon Panetta, CIA director David Petraeus and joint chiefs of staff chairman General Martin Dempsey – had advocated arming the less-dangerous rebels, but Mr Obama rejected their views.

Now the president intends to arm the rebels. It may be too late either to defeat Mr Al Assad or prevail against ISIL. Mr Obama had hoped to kick that can into early next year, but ISIL’s murder of two Americans forced him to act now. As some have observed, this, not the death of nearly 200,000 Syrians, turned the tide. No wonder the Syrian opposition mistrusts America.

Mr Obama might respond that the US is being unfairly blamed when the rest of the world, too, did nothing about Syria. True, but only America anchors the international system and claims to uphold the values that have been systematically undermined in Syria for more than three years.

Mr Obama would agree. As he told an interviewer with the CBS network this week: “America leads. We are the indispensable nation. We have capacity no one else has. Our military is the best in the history of the world. And when trouble comes up anywhere in the world, they don’t call Beijing. They don’t call Moscow. They call us. That’s the deal.”

It’s good that the president has finally acted, even if the outcome is unclear. Had he done so sooner ISIL might not have become so strong. Some will welcome Mr Obama’s honesty about Syria, but it is tinged with more than a little dishonesty.

Toward a Syrian endgame? - The anti-ISIS campaign may lead to an Assad exit

If Iran and Hezbollah appear worried about the attacks being directed by the United States and its allies against the Islamic State, or ISIS, the reason is simple. They realize that the logical outcome of military operations in Syria is likely to be pressure for a political solution that leads to Bashar al-Assad’s departure.

The connection between the anti-ISIS campaign and the Syrian conflict was made on Thursday at a Friends of Syria foreign ministers’ meeting in New York. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal expressed it succinctly: “For as long as the strife in Syria continues, the growth of extremist groups will continue.”

Applying the same logic as in Iraq, the Americans are also likely to soon conclude that only a more inclusive government in Syria can consolidate the gains made against ISIS. In Iraq, the aim was to bring Sunnis into the political process, in the belief that they are necessary to defeating ISIS, and to do so the Obama administration helped remove Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Why should Syria be any different?

Perhaps what disturbs Iran and Hezbollah the most is that their strategy in both Iraq and Syria is crumbling. When Mosul fell to ISIS, Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, was asked what was to be done. “We must rely on Shiite solidarity,” Suleimani allegedly replied.

That was decidedly not the solution that the United States pursued, nor one that would have allowed the Iraqi government to prevail over ISIS. If anything, Shiite solidarity would only have solidified the Iraqi divide, allowing ISIS, with its core of Saddam-era officers, to reinforce its hold over Sunni areas.

In Syria, Iran’s policies have brought little more than fragmentation. That may be an Iranian objective, but the repercussions are turning to Tehran’s disadvantage. The minority backbone of the regime is breaking as Alawites and Christians take increasingly heavy losses. This is unsustainable, and already there are signs that the regime’s supporters are becoming angry over the way the war is being conducted.

In Qalamoun, Hezbollah and the Syrian army announced earlier this year that they had defeated the rebels. In fact, not wanting to engage in a bloody final push in such places as Qusayr and Yabroud, they allowed the rebels to evacuate the towns with their weapons and regroup in the hinterland.

Now Hezbollah is trapped in a battle it cannot win in Qalamoun, while the Syrian regime has lost ground in the south of Syria and around Damascus – not to mention its loss of large outposts in the north and east of the country. Assad once said that the fighting in Syria would be largely over by the end of this year. He may yet be right, but not quite in the way he envisaged.

Officially, Russian support for Assad has not diminished, but as Moscow wrestles with the consequences of the conflict in the Ukraine and an economy suffering from Western sanctions, its outlook toward Syria may change. Earlier this year Egypt’s foreign minister, Nabil Fahmy, told one of his Lebanese interlocutors that in speaking to Russian officials, he felt that they had reached an impasse over Syria.

If true, the Russian impasse, along with the Iranian impasse, along with the air war against ISIS, may create the elements of a broader deal in Syria that sees Assad’s removal while also offering guarantees to the country’s frightened minorities. Yet Iran and Russia are wary that it may be Assad’s enemies who will get the best of any such deal, in part because it is their airplanes that are flying sorties above Syria and their weapons that will be sent to the “moderates” among the rebels.

The question is how the Obama administration will react to the inescapable reality that for its anti-ISIS campaign to succeed in Syria, it will require a parallel political solution to end the conflict there. President Barack Obama is not about to admit that openly, just weeks before midterm congressional elections, when isolationist impulses are still strong in America. However, once the voting is done, anticipate a change in attitude.

The challenge for Obama will be to prepare the ground for a political solution, even if we’re not there yet. The meeting in New York between the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers this week was a useful start, though Tehran and Riyadh remain far apart on Syria. Obama’s decision to bar Iran from the recent anti-ISIS coalition meeting in Paris was probably a mistake, given Tehran’s influence in both Baghdad and Damascus. The Gulf states may have been pleased, but reaching a consensus over Syria will not happen without Iran being a part of it.

In the end, Bashar Assad is expendable. Not even the Iranians can seriously believe that normalization in Syria will take place with him remaining in office. That means that a mechanism must be found to reduce the differences between the various regional actors involved in Syria. And there is a major difference today when compared to the past: America is engaged and it has an interest in creating a new political context that can shore up the gains it makes against ISIS.

Not so long ago, Obama didn’t want to hear about Syria. Now his aircraft are bombing Syria on a daily basis. Before long, expect the president to talk more about a resolution of the Syrian conflict. It is becoming plain that he cannot avoid doing so, even if the president’s predisposition to avoid problems usually means they come back to hit him twice as hard.

The Army is being sucked into Syria

The rising number of attacks against the Lebanese Army in Arsal and northern Lebanon is a worrying reminder of what is at stake for the military. In entering the fray in Arsal, the Army has immersed itself in the treacherous dynamics of Syria’s civil war.

By trying to close off the Lebanese-Syrian border, a legitimate aim in principle, the Army is effectively participating in strangling the Syrian rebels in the Qalamoun district. The rebels rely on access to Arsal to resupply themselves and to rest. With winter coming, the rebels realize that they will have to come down from the high ground in Qalamoun, and if they are denied access to Arsal, they will have to find alternatives, leaving them more vulnerable to attack by the Syrian regime and Hezbollah.

The Army can say that it is trying to guarantee that the conflict in Syria does not reach Lebanon. That would be convincing if Hezbollah had not deployed thousands of combatants in Syria, and if negotiations over the release of the abducted soldiers had not been hindered by the party, because it wants its own members captured or killed in Syria to be part the deal.

It would be even more convincing if we did not know that Hezbollah has played a significant role in pushing the Army to take a more aggressive stance in Arsal than it has previously taken. The reason is that the party is struggling in Qalamoun, caught in a war of attrition that it cannot win against a motivated foe with nothing to lose.

So, Hezbollah has maneuvered the Army into serving as its partner. To lend this legitimacy, it has been depicted as an anti-terrorism campaign against Salafist-jihadists such as the Nusra Front and ISIS. But how accurate is that portrayal?

In private conversation, a Lebanese ally of Syria admits that the bulk of the armed men in Qalamoun are inhabitants of the area who were forced to evacuate their towns and villages when the Syrian army and Hezbollah went on the offensive last year. That is not to say that there are no jihadists among them, let alone to play down the murder of soldiers; but rather to suggest that the picture is more varied than the Army’s public relations arm has let on and media have been led to believe.

What are the options for the Army? Today it has no real strategy in the Arsal hinterland, and is setting itself up for a grinding battle without resolution. Soldiers will continue to be the target of attack; the hostage situation will remain stalemated; and the country will continue to shake to the repercussions of the Arsal situation. Sectarian tensions in the Bekaa Valley may worsen given that the state and political parties have only a limited capacity to control their communities there.

Under these circumstances it may be preferable to consider a de facto agreement with the rebels governing passage to and from Arsal, in exchange for the release of the abducted soldiers and policemen and a clear definition of the conditions for entry and exit. This would include ensuring that weapons will not cross the border, only food and humanitarian supplies.

Hezbollah would doubtless oppose such an arrangement, and could be expected to block it on the ground. But there are circumstances that could make the party more open to an implicit accord.

For starters, given the stalemate in Qalamoun, Hezbollah has an interest in maintaining channels to the opposition in the event more of its fighters are made prisoner. Because of the unlikeliness of a total cutoff of communication lines between Arsal and Qalamoun, it may be preferable for both sides to get something out of a deal as opposed to what they might lose by refusing such an alternative.

Hezbollah also must think of the future. The Syrian regime is slowly losing ground everywhere. Its armed forces are depleted and the casualty toll among Syria’s minorities, especially Alawites, is high and unsustainable. Even in the best scenario, if ISIS is beaten, which is unlikely in the coming weeks, the regime cannot regain what it has lost.

Given all this, Hezbollah gains from being flexible. If Bashar Assad and the party cannot prevail militarily in Syria, Hezbollah may eventually have to consider a fallback strategy to contain the consequences of the Syrian conflict inside Syria. Having already reached a modus vivendi with rebel groups in the border area could become very useful if that occurs.

There are those who believe that, despite the dangers of a sectarian war in Lebanon, the armed men in Qalamoun have no intention of extending the Syrian conflict to Lebanon. That could well be true, but don’t take anybody’s word for it. Hezbollah is a prisoner of two contradictory logics: It wants to help the Assad regime win in Syria, and it wants to ensure that the Syrian violence is kept out of Lebanon. The first objective, almost by definition, has undermined the second.

However, the contrary is less evident. A desire to keep Lebanon separate from the Syrian conflict need not weaken Assad, and an implicit deal in the area of Arsal may show why. While it is improbable that Hezbollah will embrace such a reality, the Lebanese Army can tell the party that it refuses to be drawn into Syria, and intends to find a means to ensure this.

It can do so with Hezbollah’s approval or not, but the Army is in a better position to impose an arrangement, one that does not harm the party’s interests, because Hezbollah is vulnerable. The Army is not doing enough to stay clear of the Syrian war, and this can benefit only Hezbollah and Assad.