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Syria's Six Simultaneous Conflicts
(Daily Star-Lebanon) Rami G. Khouri - The war in Syria is a multilayered conflict, comprising at least six separate battles taking place at the same time. First, it is a domestic citizen revolt against the Assad family regime that has ruled Syria for 43 years. The second layer of conflict can be described as conservative versus radical, or capitalist versus socialist, or royalist versus republican, or Islamo-monarchist versus Arab nationalist, or pro-Western versus anti-Western. The third layer of conflict is the old Iranian-Arab rivalry, recently also often defined as a Shiite-Sunni rivalry. The fourth conflict is the renewed but more limited version of the Cold War between the U.S. and Russia. The fifth conflict is the tension between the centralized modern Arab security state and the forces of fragmentation along ethnic, religious, sectarian, national and tribal lines. The sixth is between the forces of al-Qaeda-inspired Salafist fanatic militants and mainstream opposition groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood or the more secular Syrian National Opposition Coalition.