http://www.reuters.com
Wed Aug 1, 2012

No happy outcome in Syria as conflict turns into proxy war
By Samia Nakhoul

Beirut: Ayham Kamel of the Eurasia Group political risk consultancy. "At this point of the conflict it is difficult not to say that the international dimension of the Syrian conflict precedes the domestic one."

"Syria is an open field now. The day after Assad falls you will have all of these different groups with different agendas, with different allegiances, with different states supporting them yet unable to form a coherent leadership."

"The Free Syrian army is only a slogan. There is no unity in these rebel groups," he argues. "To have an FSA you would need a command structure, and everybody following that command structure." Instead, he says, "There are different groups supplied financially and militarily by different states and they are quasi-independent."

"Different regions are controlled by different groups, whether of ideological or sectarian background, and whether Bashar's regime remains a player, we already have a lot more players than before," Kamel says.

"I don't discount the possibility that you will have different rebel groups struggling with each other for control of territory."

Close watchers of Syria say the real danger is of a prolonged and very bloody civil war and a sectarian struggle, exacerbated by the lack of a unified and credible opposition.

"I don't think there is anybody to take over," said George Joffe, a Middle East expert at Cambridge University. "The really big problem is that there is no credible opposition."

"How do you bring them together, how do you get them to collaborate at this late stage because they are diametrically opposed on what should be done?" he said.

Sarkis Naoum, a long-time critic of the Assad dictatorship who writes for Beirut's an-Nahar newspaper, says: "The opposition is fractured, with some outside and some inside (the country), some are Islamists, some are secular, but it is not easy to have an organized opposition with a government-in-waiting after 40 years of totalitarian rule."

"Any perception that a post-Assad Syria will involve a smooth transition is misplaced," insists Ayman Kamel.

Lebanese columnist Rajeh Khoury predicted: “Syria could plunge into a long protracted civil war that could last years. The civil war in Lebanon, with its much smaller population of five million, lasted 15 years due to foreign interference so Syria would be much more complicated.