Robert G. Rabil: Syria and the Power of Sectarian Strife

Robert G. Rabil served as a chief of emergency for the Red Cross in Lebanon during the country's civil war. He is associate professor of political science and the LLS Distinguished Professor of Current Events at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author of Syria, United States and The War on Terror in the Middle East and most recently Religion, National Identity and Confessional Politics in Lebanon: The Challenge of Islamism.

Major world powers, meeting in Geneva over the weekend in an effort to strike a meaningful pose on the ongoing crisis in Syria, failed to do so. There was no consensus on calling for the removal of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad from power, and the ultimate agreement favoring a political transition lacked any real meaning. Russia and China, as expected, blocked the other seven nations from issuing a statement calling for Assad’s removal. Meanwhile, Syria experienced a particularly bloody spurt of violence, with more than 100 people killed.

Thus will the Syrian crisis continue along the lines of what the UN undersecretary general for peacekeeping operations, Herve Ladsou, has tacitly called a civil war. Both the Syrian government and the opposition forces resist acknowledging this reality, but it is reality nonetheless. The nation faces the danger of being overtaken by sectarian cleansing....