Prince Bandar did not fail Syria: the West lost its nerve

History may not judge the policy of Saudi Arabia well. But it will perhaps record the countries that really sought to end the Syrian conflict, while others merely talked of doing so

The removal of Prince Bandar bin Sultan has been seen by many as part of a shift in policy of Saudi Arabia towards Syria. Hassan Ammar /AP Photo
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The removal of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, has intrigued those who seek to read the tea-leaves of Riyadh.

In the swirl of rumours and gossip that passes for informed comment on Saudi Arabia's secretive politics, the removal of Prince Bandar has been seen as part of a shift in policy of the Gulf state towards Syria.

That is true, although the shift is subtle, in tactics not in intent. Saudi Arabia still seeks the removal of the Assad regime, but recognises that the reality on the ground has changed, that the dynamics of the conflict have altered. No longer is this simply the rebels versus the regime. The long drawn out civil war has brought in new actors, some with the agendas of foreign governments, some with their own religious wars.

The Saudis, who may have expected a swift ending to the war, now have to contend with the reality that Syria is becoming the next Iraq, a training ground for the next generation of jihadis and a battleground on which they are fighting their centuries-old wars.

Yet it wasn’t always so. Since the news that Prince Bandar – who was the architect of Saudi’s policy towards Syria – was stepping down, a narrative has grown up that he failed to deliver victory in Syria and that the actions he spearheaded in arming the rebels led directly to the conflagration seen today.

This is a revision of history. It was not Saudi’s Prince Bandar who failed. It was the West which lost its nerve.

To see why, go back exactly two years, to mid-April 2012, when a UN-brokered ceasefire was meant to come into effect.

A year after the conflict began, there were still sporadic non-violent protests, but the Assad regime had responded so forcefully to the earlier protests that the rebellion had become armed.

In the two months before the ceasefire came into effect, the epicentre of the protest movement, Homs, the country’s third largest city, had been pulverised by the regime.

The whole city was under siege. Go back and look at photographs and online videos of the siege and it is clear it was merciless: the army bombarded the city with tanks and helicopters. Mortars were used indiscriminately in civilian areas. This was not a proportionate response by the regime, this was total war. The UN brokered a ceasefire because of the destruction of Homs.

It was against that backdrop that Saudi Arabia entered the conflict, providing money and weapons to the rebels. Those who argue that Saudi Arabia did the wrong thing are misremembering two things. First, it was not at all obvious that the conflict would drag on this long.

In the spring of 2012, Syria was the only one of the five Arab Spring countries not to have reached some sort of resolution. Yemen had only just reached a resolution a couple of months before, when Ali Abdullah Saleh resigned the presidency in favour of Abd Rabbo Mansur Hadi. It was plausible to imagine that a resolution would swiftly be reached, that the tide of history was turning, even if the rebels appeared to be weakening.

And they were weakening. The second important part of judging Saudi’s strategy is to recall that it was essential to the survival of the rebel movement. Without the guns and money of the Gulf, the rebels would have been wiped out eventually. The siege of Homs showed that. Every strategy that the Assad regime subsequently employed across the country was tried there: starvation, indiscriminate bombing, targeting of civilians. It was obvious that without support, the rebels could not face the guns of Assad’s army.

In hindsight, it is easy to say that Saudi’s efforts inflamed the situation. It wasn’t the most coherent strategy. Yet it wasn’t meant to be. There was a coherent strategy that Saudi was part of, but the West backed down from playing its part. In the end, the United States lost its nerve.

Putting money and guns into the conflict was, at best, a temporary measure, not to end the conflict but to bring Assad, or elements in his regime, to realise that the international community was serious.

But as the UN ceasefire was violated and the international community bickered, it became clear to the regime that there was no appetite for confrontation. Piece by piece, the regime expanded the conflict, until it could use chemical weapons against civilians and fear no sanction.

There is truth in the suggestion that Saudi’s policy, and that of Qatar and Turkey, was opportunistic and uncoordinated. But it was in the beginning a genuine attempt to help the rebels and save Syria from destruction.

Again and again critics of any interventionist strategy have criticised the form of the strategy, without offering anything better, anything that would not consign Syrians to be slaughtered and their country ravaged while the representatives of the Assad regime talk in circles in the hotels of Geneva.

It is reasonable to criticise the policy that Prince Bandar spearheaded as wrong or right for a different era or another war. But to imagine that he, or Saudi Arabia, alone are responsible for the sectarian nature of the conflict today is to forget that theirs was meant to be only part of a strategy.

History may not judge the policy of Saudi Arabia well. But it will perhaps at least record that there were countries that sought to end the Syrian conflict, while others merely talked of doing so.

falyafai@thenational.ae

On Twitter: @FaisalAlYafai