That Volcanic Centre

Syria's Baathist regime has now flagrantly demonstrated to the international community what it has always been, a rigidly religiously ideological dictatorship of the few over the many. In its own way a reflection of Iraq's former leadership, another Baathist regime, where the governing minority under the tyrannical Saddam Hussein dominated and preyed upon the human rights of the majority Shia.

Oddly enough, though both were Baathist, the Alawite Syrian regime is Shiite where Saddam's was Sunni-dominated. Typical, in its convoluted religious strains and antipathies of Islam and the tribal nature of the Middle East, where dictators, tyrants, royalty and theistic states remain mired in the Middle Ages of a faith that has lost its original flexibility and zest for science, scholarship and the arts.

(So deeply mired in the tenets of a faith insisting on utter control and submission that there is no way forward. The insistence on complete surrender to the demands of Islam leads directly to the lack of personal growth, of initiative and innovation, creativity and empowerment. Every fact of life is circumscribed, there is no incentive to national achievement other than to complacently trade on natural resources.)

But both dictators, President Bashar al-Assad and Saddam Hussein afforded certain protections to their populations along sectarian lines; although oppressing their opposite Muslim brethren, they gave protection to their minorities as long as the Druze, Christians, Kurds, Ismailis and others, were careful enough not to contest the will of the ruling Sunni in Iraq, Shia (offshoot) in Syria. They were/are dependent on the goodwill of the ruling tyrant for survival.

Once Saddam was removed from power the violent antagonisms of Sunni versus Shia was unleashed, leading to bloody carnage. And the Iraqi Christians felt vulnerable, with good cause. A similar scenario is now playing out in Syria, where Christians and other minority groups are concerned that once the al-Assad regime succumbs to the rebellion and the Sunnis take charge, their days in Syria will be numbered.

Violent belligerence toward non-Muslims and Christians in particular - in Iran, the Baha'i - is on the increase in the Middle East, with the downfall of dictators who had, despite their iron rules, protected them. Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak kept the peace and protected Christians far more energetically than the ruling military council. And once the now-surging Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood reach their pinnacle of governing power, the plight of Egyptian Christians will only increase.

Talk of arming the opposition in Syria is ongoing, along with much hand-wringing over the regime's hard-line butchery of its Sunni civilian population. Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan sticks to his optimism that reason will prevail, that the Alawite regime will backtrack and agree to reach a cease-fire with the Syrian Free Army, even as the refugees stream into Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan telling of fearful torture and despair.

Creating a protective zone for the protesters and the Free Syrian Army between Syria and Turkey with a 'no-fly' zone as was done in Libya will certainly mean that this kind of interference will have the likelihood - even if the Arab League agrees and becomes physically involved with Saudi Arabia and Qatar lending their forces - of initiating a possible conflagration between opposing forces in the Middle East.

The axis of Iran, (Iraq) Syria and Hezbollah arrayed against the Sunni Muslim states would guarantee that the tinder box of the Middle East would become incredibly unstable, in a state where no one could predict the outcome. The U.S., U.K., France, Jordan and Turkey are reputed to be already 'on the ground' involved in reconnaissance missions and training of opposition forces. The idea being to wage a campaign of guerrilla attacks, to break the resolve of the Alawite regime.

Syria's military is armed with modern defences and artilleries, thanks to its position as a favoured arms-buying client state of Russia. And the warnings Damascus keeps repeating about Islamists, 'terrorists', 'foreign' interventions and 'al-Qaeda' are not completely without cause. There is an opportunity for violence to escalate beyond containment when and if all these groups become involved in the chaos of war.

What results from all these complicated issues and interrelationships is anyone's guess. And a lot of people who believe they know the actors and the mechanics guess that the region, once completely destabilized will become a flaming volcanic centre of destruction.