MUKHTARA, Lebanon, (Reuters) – Foreign states must do more to help Syrian rebels defeat President Bashar al-Assad and spare the country an “endless civil war” and possible partition, a leading politician in neighbouring Lebanon said yesterday.
Walid Jumblatt said the battle for Syria hinged on foreign backing to the rebels, who he believes can “easily” expel Assad from Damascus if the necessary weapons are supplied to their forces in the south, not far from the capital. He said the failure to provide such weapons was hypocritical and “fishy”.
“The more you accelerate the downfall, the more you save Syria from a possible partition,” Jumblatt, head of Lebanon’s most influential Druze family, said in an interview at Mukhtara, his family mansion in the mountains south of Beirut.
Asked what such a break-up would entail, he said: “It would look like an endless civil war in Syria.”
Jumblatt is the latest regional leader to raise the spectre of civil war leading to the division of Syria along ethnic and sectarian lines that could separate the Alawite minority to which Assad belongs from a mainly Sunni population, while creating new boundaries between Syrian Kurds and Arabs.
King Abdullah of Jordan last week said Assad could seek to establish an Alawite enclave if he cannot keep control of the whole country, describing it as the “worst-case scenario” in a region whose modern borders were drawn less than a century ago.
But Jumblatt, a leader during Lebanon’s civil war, said he was “not that pessimistic” about Syria’s future, saying nationalist sentiment in the Syrian opposition should help hold the country together. “But they have to be helped,” he said.
“Up until now, they are just begging for help, and the more it goes on, the more you have the danger of sectarian bloodshed,” he said. “The Syrians have enough awareness, enough knowledge and enough power to keep Syria united,” he said.
A leader of one of Lebanon’s smaller communities, Jumblatt’s stance towards Syria has shifted more than once in recent years as he adjusts to shifting power dynamics at home and abroad.
He was a leading voice in the anti-Syrian movement that sought to curb Assad’s influence in Lebanon before and after the 2005 assassination of Rafik al-Hariri – a killing he still blames on Syria. Following the Hariri assassination, he publicly accused Syria of killing his father, Kamal Jumblatt, in 1977.
Jumblatt then moderated his attitude after a rapprochement with Syria’s allies in Lebanon, including the powerful Hezbollah, a Shi’ite party and guerrilla group backed by Tehran.
