SAUDI ARABIA’S FOREIGN POLICY TOWARDS SYIRIAN CONFLICT

Abstract

Syirian conflict is one of the most kontroversial conflict occurred in middle east. The

political crisis in Syria it’s seems to have reached an anti climax, especially with growing

clashes between Assad's government Bechar with rebel stronghold in several cities. Since

the outbreak of the revolution of tens of thousands of people were killed. The complexity of

this conflict caused by the number of actor included to take a part on this conflict. Basically

syirian conflict occurred just on local areas between the Assad-led government and the

political and military opposition forces within Syria has increasingly become a regional

conflict and international level since several countries plays a role towards this conflict

based on their interest. Because of this conflict violent deaths have been considerable in

Syria. There are many countries that involved on this arm conflict like US, Russia, China,

Saudi, Iran, and several middle east countries. Based on this issues, Saudi’s standpoint

toward syirian confict as one of the most important Arab and Islamic countries,

strategically located and with huge financial resources at its disposal in middle east take an

action as one of country that support the transition of Assad. Saudi and US as allies give

military aid to opposition in this arms conflict. This is particularly true in the case of the

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which has been one of the stronger regional supporters of the

anti-Assad opposition. In this research will discuss about why Saudi Arabia efforts to

against Assad’s regime.

Keywords : Syria, conflict, Saudi’s policy

History of syirian conflict

The conflict in Syria is essentially the ideological conflicts of interest and involve a

variety of both state actors and non-state. This conflict occurs be cause the regime Bashar al-

Assad has lost its political legitimacy, it is caused by the regime of al-Assad's government

Bassar using possessed power in the authoritarian, political power is actually in use to oppress

its people. The implications of the use of power that tends to suppress lead to a condition where

people begin to feel unhappy about the repressive actions of the authorities which eventually

led to the movement at the level of society that demands that Bashar al-Assad's fall from

power. Conditions and the resistance movement began to grow from the public to demand that

Assad's fall from power eventually more widespread, on the other hand the movement of these

people find momentum.

Since March 2011, the conflict has driven more than 2.7 million Syrians into

neighboring countries as refugees (out of a total population of more than 22 million). Millions

more Syrians are internally displaced and in need of humanitarian assistance, of which the

United States remains the largest bilateral provider, with more than $1.7 billion in funding

identified to date. U.S. nonlethal assistance to opposition forces was placed on hold in

December 2013, as fighting in northern Syria disrupted mechanisms put in place to monitor

and secure U.S. supplies. Administration officials have since resumed some assistance to select

opposition groups and have allocated $287 million to date (Christopher, 2014: 1). Other report

commissioned by the United Nations found that from March 2011 to April 2014 over 191 369

verifiable violent deaths of individuals had occurred, including both combatants and civilians
 Bashar al Assad has ruled since 2000 when his father passed away following 30 years

in charge. An anti regime uprising that started in March 2011has spiraled in to civil war (CNN

Library, 2015). There are four faction of fighting groups throughout the country : Kurdish

forces, ISIS, other opposition ( such as Jaish al Fateh, an alliance between nusrah front and

ahrar al sham) and Assad regime.

Neither pro-Asad forces nor their opponents appear capable of consolidating their

battlefield gains in Syria or achieving outright victory there in the short term. Improved

coordination among some anti-government forces and attrition in government ranks make a

swift reassertion of state control over all of Syria unlikely. Conflict between the Islamic State

of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and other anti-Asad forces has intensified. The war in Syria is

exacerbating local sectarian and political conflicts within Lebanon and Iraq, threatening

national stability.

The opposition movement against Assad’s regime in Syria has been fragmented from

its inception, a direct reflection of Syria’s social complexity and the decentralized grassroots

origin of the uprising. This condition has plagued Syria’s armed opposition since peaceful

protestors took up arms and began forming rebel groups under the umbrella of the Free Syrian

Army (FSA) in the summer of 2011(Elizabeth, 2013: 9). A lack of unity has made cooperation

and coordination difficult on the battlefield and has limited the effectiveness of rebel

operations. It has also reduced the rebels’ ability to garner international support and backing.

There are hundreds of active militia forces, ranging in size from a few dozen to

thousands and organized around a wide variety of local communities, ethnic andreligious

identities, and political-religious ideologies. The size and relative strength of groups have
varied and will continue to vary by location and time. At present, significant elements of the

opposition are engaged in outright conflict against one another. Some observers suggest that

more than 75% of the armed opposition may seek to replace the Asad government.

Trends in the conflict have reflected both diversification and profusion of armed groups

and improvement in the size and capabilities of some actors relative to others. Many groups

and units who claim to coordinate under various fronts and coalitions in fact appear to operate

independently and reserve the right to change allegiances.

Two years after the outbreak of a largely peaceful uprising, Syria has fallen into a deep

civil war that is increasingly drawing in regional actors. While the battle on the ground

continues to be predominantly fought by Syrians, neighbouring powers have a growing stake in

the conflict, providing important patronage to the warring parties as part of a broader regional

struggle. This confrontation has drawn in Iran, Iraq, and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement in

support of the Assad regime, and Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey behind the rebels. Other

players, including Jordan, the Kurds, and Israel, are active in pursuit of narrower interests.

Violent tensions are now spreading out beyond Syria’s porous borders and the risk of a

regional conflagration is growing.

While regional players have been active in Syria since the early months of the conflict

in 2011, the intensity of their involvement has clearly escalated in recent months. In June,

Hezbollah fighters played a key role in helping President Bashar al-Assad seize the strategic

town of Qusair and, together with Iranian advisors, have now assumed a greater role in

facilitating regime efforts. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey remain the key

sponsors of the rebel movement, providing it with arms and finance (Julian, 2013: 5).
 After numerous failed attempts at unification, rebel commanders have created a new

centralized leadership body that may succeed where others have failed, if given sufficient

resources. On December 7, 2012, rebel leaders from across Syria announced the election of a

new 30- member unified command structure called the Supreme Joint Military Command

Council, or the Supreme Military Command (SMC). This announcement followed a three-day

conference held in Antalya, Turkey that was attended by more than 260 rebel commanders as

well as security officials from the United States, Britain, France, the Gulf States, and

Jordan(Julian, 2013: 9).

This conflict grown as international conflict that give big impact to the regional security

in middle east. One of The negative effects of the humanitarian and regional security crises

emanating from Syria now appear to be beyond the power of any single actor, including the

United States, to independently contain or fully address. The region-wide flood of Syrian

refugees, the growth of armed extremist groups in Syria, and the assertive involvement of Iran,

Turkey, and Sunni Arab governments in Syria’s civil war are negatively affecting overall

regional stability. The war in Syria also is exacerbating local sectarian and political conflicts

within Lebanon and Iraq, where violence is escalating and threatens national stability.

In international level the United States and other members of the United Nations

Security Council seek continued Syrian government cooperation with efforts to remove

chemical weapons from Syria and provide relief. The Security Council also has endorsed

principles for a negotiated settlement of the conflict that could leave members of the current

Syrian government in power as members of a transitional governing body, an outcome that

some opposition groups reject.

Saudi’s stand point towards Syria

Historically, Saudi Arabia's relationship with Syria, while never particularly warm, had

shied away from being directly confrontational. This changed only in 2005, following the

assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister and Saudi Rafic Hariri. The Saudis largely

blamed Syria for the political assassination and thus reacted by taking an openly anti-Syrian

stance, putting pressure on the Syrian president to withdraw from Lebanon while attempting to

contain and even isolate him. From mid-2008 until 2011, the relationship between Saudi

Arabia and Syria improved, with the peak of this reconciliation process being the October 2009

visit of King Abdullah to Damascus. In reaching out to Syria, the Saudis were both recognizing

the role Damascus played in the region (and in Lebanon specifically) as well attempting to

weaken the ties between the Assad regime and Iran (Benedetta, 2012).

Saudi Arabia’s relations with Syria, Iran’s main Middle Eastern and Arab ally, quickly

deteriorated following Assad’s violent suppression of the initially peaceful political protests

there, which began in March 2011, and with the subsequent civil conflict that followed. Saudi

Arabia’s current policy with respect to Syria constitutes a significant change in the kingdom’s

attitude toward the Assad regime.

Since then, relations between Syria and Saudi Arabia have cooled off gradually, with

the protests in Syria sparking a more severe rift between the two parties. Indeed, as the unrest

in Syria grew and the regime’s brutality in handling the mobilizations became clearer, Saudi

Arabia swiftly shifted from an initially cautious stance to one of outright condemnation, with
the kingdom recalling its ambassador to Riyadh as early as August 2011

(Benedetta, 2014: 27).

These measures are in keeping with the approach Saudi Arabia has adopted since the

beginning of the Arab Spring, which is both more assertive than in the past and more forceful

in its attempt to reshape the map of alliances in the region in accordance with its interests.
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Historically, Saudi Arabia has preferred a more nuanced and largely reactionary approach to

confrontation. Even on Syria, the Saudis would have preferred that their historical ally, the

United States, support the anti-Assad opposition and deeply resent it for not having stepped up

to the plate and led the efforts to weaken Assad and Iran.

The US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab nations have long insisted Mr

Assad cannot play any long-term role in Syria's future (BBC News, 2015).

This statetment indicate that the Saudi relationship with the Syrian crisis is complex – a

tangle of domestic and regional priorities. Abroad, Riyadh wants to see the Assad regime

toppled and Iran’s influence in the Levant weakened, but at home Saudi policy has been much

more reactionary and conservative, working hard to quash dissent and maintain stability.

The Saudi stance on Syria is motivated by a combination of personal, sectarian, and,

above all, political factors. First, the Saudis were never head over heels about Assad and his

Ba'athist secular ideology. Second, the continuous crackdown of the mostly Sunni political

opposition by the Alawite-dominated regime made Riyadh very uncomfortable. Third, and

most significant, Saudi Arabia perceived the decline of the Assad regime as a golden

opportunity to weaken Iran, their bigger regional competitor. Moreover, supporting the

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opposition would also play well within Saudi Arabia while deflating some of the regional

criticism regarding the KSA’s policy with respect to the Arab Spring.

In other words, one can see the Saudis' efforts to rally the international community and

the region against Assad as part of a larger regional competition between the Gulf Countries

and Iran. This is why in the case of Syria, the Saudis are openly backing a regime change—a

position which directly contradicts the attitude they have adopted since the beginning of the

Arab Spring. Riyadh has never been particularly fond of revolutions, fearing that regional

instability would endanger their very own power and control of the Kingdom. This is certainly

the rationale behind the Saudis' attempts to prevent the Arab Spring from spreading to regional

allies like Bahrain, and to a lesser extent Jordan.

Because of this combination of personal, sectarian, and political rationales, Saudi

Arabia has been one of the most vocal regional actors in expressing its opposition to Assad and

his regime, as well as in advocating recognition, support and arming of the anti-Assad

opposition forces.

Saudi Arabia's role has been particularly prominent as other regional powers like Egypt.

initially took a back seat in responding to the Syrian crisis. However, in the past few weeks, the

new Egyptian President, Muhammed Morsi, has been trying to raise his country's profile on

Syria, though his attempts to create a regional contact group to solve the conflict have thus far

been unsuccessful.

Similarly, the other Gulf States, albeit sharing Saudi Arabia's interests in seeing Assad

do not have the same resources or power to match the Saudi involvement. Even so, their

attitude has been supportive of the Syrian opposition, either by directly arming them, or simply
by turning a blind eye towards the movement of weapons and militants from their countries

into Syria. For example Qatar, initially took an openly anti-Assad stance, and by the spring of

2012 it went as far as announcing that it approved a fund of 100 million USD to acquire

weapons for the Syrian opposition. However, lately, Qatar has decided to adopt a lower-profile.

Interestingly, Gulf States seem to also be preparing with Saudi Arabia ready to host senior

defectors from the Assad regime.

The Iranian-Saudi Rivalry and Its Impact on Syria

Even though the Saudis are certainly thinking about what could come after the demise of the

Assad regime—the reality on the ground seems to indicate that the conflict between the Syrian

government and the opposition is far from over. On the contrary, the bloody internal

confrontation could be prolonged and, if unchecked, may lead to further regional instability—

something the Saudis have been trying to contain since the beginning of the Arab Spring.

As time goes by, Saudi Arabia does indeed face a dilemma: either to continue to pursue

regime change, risking igniting further regional instability and fueling a bloody and prolonged

civil war, or to bet on a negotiated transition and thus bargain with Iran.

Recently King Abdullah and Iranian President Ahmadinejad met in Mecca in mid-

August 2012, in the context of the meeting Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)

( Angus, 2012). Ahmadinejad, had visited Saudi Arabia previously in December 2005 and in

March 2007, but given the ongoing rift over the conflict in Syria and the increased tensions

between Iran and Saudi Arabia, his visit was particularly important. It appeared that the two

main regional competitors were indeed attempting to maintain open channels of

communication and to mend their differences.

 Both parties understand that they may need each other in the context of Syria. On the

one hand, Iranian attempts to influence a post-Assad Syria would require Saudi cooperation,

especially given the complex and mostly adversarial relationship between Tehran and the

Syrian opposition. For its part, Saudi Arabia, if it seeks to establish a friendly regime in Syria,

also needs Iran. This is the case as Iran does hold considerable influence on Assad and his

political and military entourage. If left out of the post-conflict transition, it could work very

hard to wreak havoc and undermine any post-Assad government. All of these options would

delay the stabilization of Syria and continue to breed regional instability.

Regional stability is a real concern for the Saudis, especially when they look at the

growing impact of the Syrian crisis on their regional ally, Jordan. The Jordanians, already

struggling with as serious economic crisis, have without a doubt been destabilized by the

Syrian conflict—with the country now hosting approximately 85,000 refugees, according to

UNHCR data. Even so, achieving a political resolution of the conflict becomes more difficult

every day. With the war getting bloodier, the stakes for both parties are even higher, as the

warring parties increasingly perceive their struggle in zero-sum terms. Similarly, both Tehran

and Riyadh have been seeing Syrian through a zero-sum prism by standing squarely behind,

respectively, the regime and the opposition forces. As such, a bargain between the Saudis and

the Iranians on Syria appears unlikely at the moment.

In behaving this way, both states are adding fuel to the sectarian fire and leading to the

further regionalization of the conflict. The example of the Lebanese civil war powerfully

illustrates the problem of foreign powers using a domestic conflict as a proxy battlefield for a

larger geo-political battle: it makes the conflict last longer, causes more damage, and becomes

more intractable. Still, the Saudis seem more preoccupied with delivering a blow against Iran
than with engineering a political transition in Syria. This is also the case as Iran is now

perceived as weak, with its main regional ally on the verge of collapsing, and with the regime

struggling to cope with sanctions and growing isolation. Therefore, despite calls for external

intervention and reported covert military assistance for the opposition forces, there seems to be

relatively little focus on pushing the opposition to get its act together politically and to plan for

the “day after.”

To be sure, even though right now the relationship between the Syrian opposition and

Saudi Arabia is a positive one, frictions may arise in the future following the collapse of the

Assad regime. Firstly, arming the opposition could in the future create problems for the Saudis,

while potentially posing a proliferation and stability threat on the regional level. Secondly, the

Saudis may be partly worried about the potential rise of groups like the Syrian Muslim

Brotherhood in a ‘post-Assad’ Syria. This is the case despite the ideological proximity between

the Islamist movement and the Wahhabi school of Islam endorsed by the Saudis.

For the time being however, long-term considerations over how to best ensure a

successful political transition in Syria and on how to deflate internal violence, are being

trumped by the immediate desire to see Iranian influence in the region curbed. As long as this

is the case, and both Saudi Arabia and Iran perceive the Syrian conflict as an opportunity to get

even with each other, one can expect these countries to continue fueling the fire rather than

working towards its extinction.

On the other hand, some countries tend to find the resolution of this conflict. A report

about in 2015 after a series of informal meetings, official talks on the Syrian civil war began

today in Vienna. Seventeen countries, the European Union, and the United Nations are
participating in the discussions, but representatives from the Assad regime and Syrian

opposition were not invited. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was “hopeful” the talks

could reach a breakthrough, but noted that “it is very difficult.” Experts are concerned that the

talks could be derailed by animosity between the Saudi and Iranian delegations; it is the first

time Iran has been invited to participate in international talks on Syria. “If they’re not serious,

we will also know and stop wasting time with them,” Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir

said this week.

The need for a resolution to the war was underscored by reports this morning that

Syrian government forces had fired a dozen missiles into a marketplace in Douma, killing at

least 40 people and wounding more than 100 others (Stuster, 2015). This meeting indicate

iran’s less intention to attend the meeting in order to have a discussion about the resolution and

policy making towards syirian conflict. Saudi give response that Iran is not serious to get peace

on Syria.

Conclusion

Fighting continues across Syria, pitting government forces and their foreign allies against a

range of anti-government insurgents, some of whom also are fighting amongst themselves.

Syirian conflict become more complicated not only because civil war between Assad’s regime

and opposition, but this conflict has involved many external actor that take an action towards

arms conflict on Syria. On regional actor and international actor has their each stand point

about how to solve this conflict. For further many actor used this conflict as tools for gain their

interest. Syirian conflict not only about Syrian interest but it’s become proxy war by

intervention of many actors. In regional level, Saudi Arabia and Iran tend to take a role towards
Syrian conflict. He rivalry of both countries give big impact toward Syria. Saudi’s policy

indicate the intention to support Assad’s opposition by many financial and military aid to some

oppositions. The humanitarian and regional security crises emanating from Syria now appear to

be beyond the power of any single actor, including the Saudi Arabia. For instance, the source

of instability in the Middle East, and therefore stark contrast in conceptualizing the “enemy.”

For Saudi Arabia, Iran is a “nefarious” regional actor that has overstretched its ambitions in the

Arab world, bringing with it great instability

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