Will the Syrian leadership behave in a way that necessitates "foreign intervention" in the country's ongoing crisis, which has begun to expand and see a copious river of blood, after the regime dealt negatively with the initiative by the Arab League? Or, will the leadership be able to take the opportunity to avoid intervention once again, via the Arab League meeting on Saturday in Cairo, which will be preceded by Friday's meeting of the ministerial committee tasked with following up the crisis in Syria? Those concerned with the issue are not optimistic when it comes to the answer to this question. Some Arab officials expect that the Arab League will declare its inability to solve the crisis. If this happens, it will put the Syrian regime in a confrontation with Arab states this time, and permit the crisis to move from a struggle over Syria to an international one, as the Arabs wash their hands of it. In fact, when the Syrian leadership was forced to endorse the Arab League initiative two weeks ago, it dropped the argument that the popular protests were a foreign conspiracy. This took place due to the regime's mere acceptance of the principle of dialogue with the Syrian opposition, whether in the country or at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo. This dialogue was supposed to begin this weekend, if the initiative's various items were carried out, namely withdrawing army and security troops from the street, halting the killing, releasing prisoners, and allowing foreign media and Arab observers to enter various parts of the country. However, the regime, which does not want to acknowledge that the crisis is an internal one, believes in its ability to end it by using the "security approach," however bloody the cost. The regime goes so far as to be unconcerned with the possibility of foreign intervention. This could be because it is wagering on widening the scope of the crisis so as to draw in foreign powers to help it confront other foreign powers. Alternatively, some leading figures in the regime might be deeply convinced that the outside world should pay the price of sympathizing with the groups inside the country that have dared challenge the regime's legitimacy. Those forces have no objection to seeing the repercussions of the fall of the regime, if it falls, affect the entire region. This is why there is talk about an earthquake, or a regional war, by leaders of the regime. The Syrian leadership is singing the tune of foreign conspiracy, like its allies in Lebanon. This makes it easier to find pretexts to continue with this theory, without being embarrassed by the contradictions it contains. When European countries put forward a draft resolution to condemn the regime's violence against the popular uprising, after the Syrian Army entered Hama a few weeks ago, the pretext was that the regime-preserving forces were foiling a conspiracy to bring down the regime from inside the country. Thus, the moves by western countries to topple the regime from the outside, and the resort to the Security Council, were part of this argument. However, the failure of the vote in the Security Council, because of the Russian and Chinese veto of the European draft resolution, should have defeated the "foreign conspiracy." But this development returned the crisis to its domestic source, which has seen the announcement of the establishment of the Syrian National Council, and with it, a return of the momentum of popular actions in areas that have seen the Syrian army's intervention a number of times since March. After each such incident, the regime says that the crisis has ended, or is on its way to ending. Not a week goes by without the regime making such an announcement, saying the crisis has ended because of the bloody "security" solutions that have been used in Syrian cities. But by going so deeply into the foreign conspiracy argument, the regime forgets the following week that it had previously announced the crisis, in domestic terms, was over, and resumes the intensive crackdown in this or that city. Then, it declares once again that the crisis has ended, and on and on. In such a case, all it is doing is causing more bloodshed and violence, angering more Syrians, to record levels. The actual number of casualties is much greater than the announced figure, based on information on Homs, Hama and elsewhere, this week. The regime sings the tune of foreign conspiracy to the degree that it manufactures its victories against the outside world, by saying, for example, that the regime will survive while others do not. It expects that Nicolas Sarkozy will be defeated in next year's French presidential elections, and that Barack Obama will fail to be elected at the end of 2012, while it will survive as these elections take place. This argument ignores the fact that whether or not Sarkozy and Obama leave office, this will be the result of elections in which the "domestic" French and American popular moods, respectively, impose this result on their rulers, and not as a result of blood and fire.
