Uncertain Future

Maj. Gen. Atanu Pattanaik (retd)

Damascus was the quintessential well preserved old world of the Middle East when I visited it as the chief humanitarian officer of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon in 2002. The Grand Mosque was majestic and the Al-Hamidiyah Souk, a colourful tangle of stores offering a wide range of goods, from jewellery and handicrafts to spices and textiles, was bustling with crowd and fancily dressed tea sellers.

Little could have I visualised then that so much would change, leaving Syria and alongside it, Lebanon, virtually unrecognisable. The exit of long ruling despot, former president of Syria, Basher al-Assad on December 8, marked a new phase in the war in the Middle East. The impact reverberates across the entire region for its potential to reshape the power play in the region not imagined hitherto. For Syria, the exit of Assad doesn’t necessarily bring relief for its hapless masses once the initial euphoria dies down. The disparate jihadi groups backed by different powers will battle it out for carving out their fiefdoms of radical Islam. Syria may have travelled the same road to medieval obscurity and debilitating tribal wars as witnessed in Afghanistan or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, far removed from modernity and technological progress driving the rest of the world.

For Israel, however, the exit of Assad has brought the Hanukkah festival early. Israeli tanks and armoured personnel carriers have rolled into the buffer zone across Golan with glee, with Prime Minister Netanyahu announcing a USD11 million plan that entails doubling settlements in this area from