West­ern gov­ern­ments, ana­lysts and “experts” has­ten­ing for influ­ence and rush­ing to judge­ment in the wake of the rebel takeover of Syr­ia would do well to pause, take a good look at recent his­to­ry, and con­sid­er the pigs’ com­mand­ment in “Ani­mal Farm”: All ani­mals are equal, but some ani­mals are more equal than oth­ers.”.

The famous quote in George Orwell’s novel­la is an admo­ni­tion dis­guised as a truism.
Its rel­e­vance to deal­ing  with  Hyat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which oust­ed the Assad dynasty, is the oft-repeat­ed con­cern that the once al-Qae­da-linked move­ment will revert to type and impose an Islamist-based rule, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to free­dom of wor­ship for reli­gious minori­ties and repres­sion of women.
Hop­ing, even pres­sur­ing for them not to do so would seem rea­son­able. Except it falls firm­ly into Orwellian ter­ri­to­ry, in the form of West­ern gen­u­flect­ing before the regime in Sau­di Ara­bia, which gets away with all of the things and more that it is feared HTS might do.
The kingdom’s dom­i­nant form of Islam is Wah­habism, which “…eschews ‘inno­va­tions, includ­ing prac­tices viewed as poly­the­is­tic, such as the wor­ship of saints, mys­ti­cism, and dec­o­ra­tion of graves.”
Its tenets are also “a foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ple of Al-Qae­da and ISIS alike”.
Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al recent­ly con­clud­ed that Sau­di Ara­bia has “an abysmal record when it comes to pro­tect­ing and pro­mot­ing the rights of women.”
Polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion is supressed, the Press is any­thing but free and dis­si­dents have been sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed in exile. (Remem­ber Jamal Khashog­gi of the Wash­ing­ton Post?)
For­bear­ance of the Saud­is is indica­tive of a dis­turb­ing inabil­i­ty on the part of West­ern gov­ern­ments to dis­tin­guish between prag­ma­tism and hypocrisy. Hard­ly firm ground for dic­tat­ing to or cas­ti­gat­ing Syria’s new rulers.

      DESPERATION DISGUISED AS DIPLOMACY?

In an effort to influ­ence (if not dic­tate) what form the new order in Syr­ia will take, West­ern diplo­mats are fan­ning out and scram­bling “…to find ways to engage with groups in Syr­ia and around the Mid­dle East.”
If post-Assad Syr­ia opts to eschew emu­lat­ing U.S.-style democ­ra­cy, who can blame them? The most recent exer­cise of it involved more than 10 BILLION dol­lars in polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing alone.
On the rea­son­able assump­tion that megabucks donors expect a quid pro quo in the form of poli­cies, leg­is­la­tion and pref­er­en­tial treat­ment for their source of wealth, that adds up to democ­ra­cy for sale, anoth­er way of say­ing bribery. Not a great exam­ple to expect those who’ve just over­thrown a regime on the basis that it was, among oth­er evil things, cor­rupt on an epic scale to follow.
Try­ing too hard to push for alliances, amal­ga­ma­tions or even-hand­ed pow­er-shar­ing with periph­er­al fac­tions who hap­pen, or seem to be, on your side, is also fraught.
Accord­ing to some reports. intel­li­gence agen­cies are “eval­u­at­ing” the var­i­ous mil­i­tant groups in Syr­ia to fig­ure out which ones might be use­ful part­ners (or tools, if you’re a cyn­ic) for the U.S. and “allied secu­ri­ty interests.”
A Reuters analy­sis not­ed that the Syr­i­an upris­ing includ­ed “a con­fus­ing mosa­ic of local groups espous­ing a range of Islamist and nation­al­ist ideologies”.
In north­ern Syr­ia, Kur­dish forces sup­port­ed by the Unit­ed States (whose record of loy­al­ty to Kurds is check­ered at best) are at flash­point with those backed by Turkey.
If two NATO allies can’t co-oper­ate to reign in and rec­on­cile their prox­ies for the greater good, how can they expect HTS to uni­fy Syria’s rebel fac­tions so they can start rebuild­ing a bro­ken and essen­tial­ly broke coun­try in short order?

                  GLARING LESSONS

That’s more or less what was dreamed of when rebel­lion broke out in Libya. Fac­tions were laud­ed as hero­ic regard­less of where they stood on the polit­i­cal or reli­gious spec­trum, or how inept­ly they han­dled the lim­it­less sup­ply of weapon­ry they loot­ed from state armouries, as long as they claimed to be fight­ing to replace Muam­mar Khadafi with “democ­ra­cy and freedom”.
They end­ed up swap­ping  a dic­ta­tor­ship for a cor­rupt, vio­lent failed state.|Amer­i­can inter­ven­tion in Iraq didn’t fare much better.
West­ern aid, eco­nom­ic assis­tance and invest­ment for Syr­ia can rea­son­ably be con­tin­gent on a demon­stra­ble adher­ence by the new rulers  to human rights, polit­i­cal free­doms and the rule of law.
Iron­i­cal­ly, per­haps the best piece of guid­ance for those who want to help Syr­ia renew itself, comes from some­one who, along with the senior mem­bers of the admo­ni­tion he served, ought to have been brought before the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court for their poli­cies and actions in the over­throw a bru­tal dictatorship.
As part of his jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the deba­cle that was the U.S. inva­sion of Iraq, for­mer U.S. Defence Sec­re­tary Don­ald Rums­feld said: “Free­dom’s untidy, and free peo­ple are free to make mis­takes and com­mit crimes and do bad things.”
The caveat, which Rums­feld either did not under­stand, or chose to ignore, is that true friends do what’s best to help avoid “crimes and bad things” from happening.
In Syr­ia, that will require more patience, fore­sight and com­mit­ment to work­ing with what is, rather than what out­siders think it should be, than has been prac­tised in recent times.

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