While Bashar al-Assad announced his new solution for Syria on Jan. 6, many recalled the widely known saying about the country’s heritage and its diaspora abroad, which reads: Every person in the world has two homelands, his place of birth first, and Syria second. For some time now Syria’s bordering countries have developed a similar saying: The border countries suffer from two crises, the Syrian crisis in Syria, and the Syrian crisis in the surrounding region.
The violent events in Syria that have dragged on for more than a year and a half have laid bare the fact that Syria's center actually lies in its neighboring countries. As a result of complicated historical, geographical and demographic factors, it seems that any crisis that befalls Syria befalls the entire region. Iraq, for instance, is experiencing the Syrian crisis on two levels: the fate of Syria's Kurds and its subsequent impact on Iraqi Kurdistan, and the effect that the displaced Sunni majority from Syria will have on the growing Sunni Awakening that stands opposed to the al-Maliki regime. It is no coincidence that just as the Syrian crisis has reached its critical stages, relations between Erbil and Baghdad have become strained and demonstrations have grown in the Sunni Anbar governorate in western Iraq.
Turkey is riding out the Syrian crisis with equal dread and is concerned with two uncertainties: What will Syria's Kurds do, and how will they impact Turkey's Kurds? And what repercussions will Syria’s fate have on the pluralist demographic composition of Turkey itself? The latter question is especially relevant to the relations between Turkey’s Kurds, Turks and its more than 20 million Alawites, who are composed of both Arab Alawites and Alawites with Asian roots.
As for Jordan, it is too fragile to establish even one refugee camp for displaced Syrians within its borders. When it tried this, clashes erupted at the Zaatari Camp on the Syrian-Jordanian border between Libyan mujahideen displaced from Syria’s Daraa region and the Jordanian armed forces. Meanwhile, the Palestinian and Muslim Brotherhood contingents are active in Jordan, and both are strongly tied and reactive to the events unfolding in Syria.
AL-MONITOR All-Access gives you unlimited access to all our journalism, the full Daily Briefing, exclusive interviews, premium newsletters, and live events — for less than $2/week.
