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Disintegration is hard to stop

Susan Yackee at Voice of America asked a few questions today about Syria. Here are my replies, which VoA published under the headline “The Syrian Regime Is Coming Apart.” That’s not quite what I said, but judge for yourself. Here is the interview in its entirety (I’ve made a few [corrections] in the transcript):

Syria watchers are trying to decipher the significance of the defection of Prime Minister Riad Hijab, just two months after he took the post. The Sunni Muslim is the most high-profile member of President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite-dominated government to leave the country and join the opposition. The Assad government says he was fired. Daniel Serwer, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a scholar at the Middle East Institute, spoke with VOA’s Susan Yackee about the defection.

‘Losing your prime minister says something about your regime’

“The prime minister is not very important within the power structure in Syria, but when you’re losing your prime minister, it says something about your regime. What it says in this case, I’m afraid, is that the Sunni part of the regime is peeling off. Hijab is a Sunni, and the regime is dominated by Alawites. This is one more indication that sectarian conflict is coming to dominate the situation in Syria.”

‘The regime is coming apart’

“A defection of this sort encourages other defections among his friends and family. I certainly think [it] gives the impression, both inside Syria and outside, that the regime is coming apart.”

Sectarian conflict is ‘difficult to stop’

“The history of these things is that once sectarian conflict starts, it’s extremely difficult to stop. I know that many Syrians associated with the revolution don’t regard this as a sectarian conflict, and wouldn’t be happy with a sectarian conflict. But the fact is that people, when there’s violence, retreat into sectarian [and] ethnic protection, and I anticipate that will happen in Syria as it has happened in many other places.”

It’s ‘hard to picture stability returning quickly’

“The most important thing at this point is to reach out as best the revolution can to Alawites, Christians and [Druze] who are still loyal to the Assad regime because they’re frightened of what will happen to them after the fact. I think the revolution has to reach out to them and try to bring them over. At the same time, I think the international community needs to be thinking very hard about what kind of effort to stabilize Syria will be required in the future. It’s very hard for me to picture stability returning quickly to Syria unless there’s external force applied.”