What's next for Syria in 2013?
January 2, 2013 -- Updated 1944 GMT (0344 HKT)
Rebel fighters inspect the debris
on a street in the Bustan al-Basha district in the Syrian city of Aleppo
on Tuesday, January 1. Click through to view images from Syria from
December, or see photos of the conflict from November.
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Showdown in Syria
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- CNN's Nic Robertson and Nick Paton Walsh examine what the future may hold for Syria
- Paton Walsh: 'Very little doubt' the rebels will defeat the regime of Bashar al-Assad
- Robertson: It will take years to rebuild the country's infrastructure, economy
More than 500,000 Syrians
have sought refuge in neighboring countries, and the U.N. believes that
number could top a million in the coming year.
Will the situation
improve in 2013, or will the bloody stalemate continue? There have been
encouraging signs lately for the opposition, which has made military
gains against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. But some
observers say al-Assad's grip on power remains strong.
CNN's Nic Robertson and
Nick Paton Walsh, who have reported from inside Syria, analyze the
conflict and what the future may hold.
Will the rebels defeat the regime?
Nick Paton Walsh:
I think there's very little doubt that will happen. It's not going to
be one day in which there's a decisive changing of the flags over a
building in Damascus and then the whole country turns 180 degrees in
terms of its government. But there have been weeks now of consistent bad
news for the regime. ...
Where things stand in Syria
Military police chief reportedly defects
Rebels claim major gains in Damascus
That affects not only how
people feel inside the regime's inner circle, it affects how their
sponsors feel. And, of course, it boosts morale for the rebels as well.
So that real sense of momentum has been in place for months. It's
beginning to nip around the capital, and I don't think any observer at
this point thinks that the Assad government really has a chance in terms
of retaining long-term power over the country.
Will al-Assad stay and fight until the end as he has said? Or will he go?
Nic Robertson: The rebels have said that they won't rest until Assad is completely gone; they won't negotiate with them. But he's showing no signs of leaving whatsoever.
Perhaps there are early indications
that Assad does realize that he cannot hold on to complete power as he
has in the past. So perhaps what we're seeing is the regime entering a
new phase now where, rather than fight to hold on to everything, they're
fighting to have a better negotiating position in the future.
Paton Walsh:
The question really is how messy is that final stand of Assad actually
going to be? You'll see pockets of these regime forces, particularly in
the north, being left to their own devices. ... The real problem of
course is going to be how does the rebel militia, how do these disparate
groups deal with these Allawi military prisoners once they've actually
taken them into custody?
If al-Assad is overthrown, then what?
Paton Walsh:
There will be a period of definitely chaos, warlordism perhaps, and
sort of a vacuum whilst the armed groups who won the rebellion struggle
for some degree of control over territory.
I don't really agree with the more dramatic visions of a nightmare future in Syria that's something between "Mad Max"
and the Taliban. I think it's going to be a much more watered-down
version of that. I think there's an optimism, perhaps amongst many
Syrians, that they are educated, moderate in terms of the Islamic values
they have. And remember also, this wasn't really a rebellion started
over Islamic principles. It is not Iran or Afghanistan. This was about
trying to reject what they saw as a corrupt and repressive regime. ...
It's classic in these
situations, once the major battle is finished, for world attention to
radically drift elsewhere onto the next crisis. But that will be the
moment when Syria needs help at its most. It will be the moment where
the Syrians finally expect the West to actually step in now that the complicated issue of who's arming who and who's fighting who has been put aside.
What kind of help will Syria need?
Robertson:
The economy in Syria is completely destroyed, and it's going to take
years to rebuild. So any notion that there can be a quick turnaround in
2013 is fiction.
What we're going to see in 2013 are large numbers of displaced people,
millions internally inside the country. Thousands, tens, possibly
hundreds of thousands of people without shelter, their homes have been
destroyed. Large areas of Damascus, Homs, Hama, Aleppo have been
destroyed, people without homes. And they're going to be desperate for food.
Will Assad stay or leave Syria?
Russian official: Assad losing control
Syrian rebels or terrorists?
Paton Walsh:
I think once the majority of the violence ends, once the nuts and bolts
of the civil war are behind them, then food, utilities will come back
reasonably quickly because of the nature of where Syria is and who it's
bordered by.
The real question though
is, how do you rebuild a country where so many districts of so many of
its cities have already been flattened in many ways? I mean, two or
three months ago, Aleppo was in pieces, really struggling to keep
anything going.
Robertson: You
have this whole opposition that hasn't even engaged yet with the
opposition outside of the country and the opposition that's fighting
there. So to see how they're going to get together and govern together
is very difficult. ... Any sort of sense of these opposition groups want
to coalesce around democracy, those are not the indications we have at
the moment. They're talking about "We won't stop until we get rid of
Assad." These are not people who are showing a great ability to
compromise so far.
How will the world respond or help or engage with the new Syria?
Paton Walsh:
I think, in many ways, the process of that is under way, with the U.S.
trying to influence a government in exile (and) many opposition figures
gathering in Doha or Turkey to try and work out how that government
would look like.
But the problem is that
might not relate to the daily struggles people are facing on the ground
inside Syria after what would be a two-year long war. And bridging that
gulf between the men in suits in five-star hotels ... and people on the
ground who may be starving or missing the roof of their house from
shelling is going to be the enormous challenge.
Robertson:
Distrust is endemic region-wide. The distrust of the United States and
Europe is deep-rooted in the culture in Syria already from 40 years of
Assad rule, from watching what's happened in other Arab countries, from
hearing what radical Islamists say what the West is trying to do with
Islam.
All these things have
been fomenting in the background. And now you have a scenario where the
West hasn't come to the aid of the Syrians, so people are deeply angry.
I don't think we're
going to find friends quickly in Syria. We're certainly not going to win
trust there quickly. And that's going to make whatever we want to see
-- the international community wants to see happen in Syria -- that's
going to make it much, much harder to achieve.
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