Syria’s Uprising: sectarianism, regionalisation, and state order in the Levant

As the Syrian revolution enters its third year, the risks to regional stability are escalating. Violence has spilled over all of Syria’s borders. The conflict has elevated sectarian tensions in Lebanon, threatening the 1990 Taif settlement that ended 15 years of civil war.

It has sharpened ethnic and sectarian frictions in Iraq and engulfed southern Turkey. It has heightened tensions across the Syrian-Israeli border. Violence has also spilled into Syria from across the region.

Regional involvement in the conflict is deepening. Hezbollah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and Iranian Baseej forces actively participante in combat operations against the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and in attacks on civilians. Militant Islamists have joined their Syrian counterparts in the armed opposition. Kurdish Peshmerga units have supported operations by Syrian Kurdish fighters to seize control of border crossings between Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan.

Weapons and fighters, often funded by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and wealthy patrons from throughout the Gulf, are flowing to the opposition through Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan. Syrian refugees, now numbering more than a million, flow in the opposite direction, straining the economies and the social fabric of receiving countries.

This paper first assesses the challenges posed by regionalisation to the stability of the post-Ottoman state order in the Levant and how it is shaping the likely contours of a post-Assad Syria. It then reviews the factors that are shaping regionalisation, highlighting the ways in which shifts in regional politics over the past two decades have led to new and troubling patterns of regional intervention in the Syrian conflict.

The paper then examines factors that have the potential to mitigate the negative effects of regionalisation. In a final section, it explores options for addressing regionalisation. The paper intentionally focuses on the roles of regional actors. It therefore only addresses the broader set of international actors engaged in the Syrian conflict, including Russia, the United States (US), and the Friends of Syria Group countries, to the extent that their intervention in the Syrian revolution is relevant to processes of regionalisation and its effects.