WHICH EVIL WILL PREVAIL IN SYRIA?

Syrian dictator Bashar Assad fled Damascus last week after three senior officials were killed by a suicide bomber.  He’s is holed up in the coastal city of Latakia. Whether Mr. Assad is driven from power depends mostly on what he’s willing to do to keep it.

Syria will use weapons of mass destruction if attacked by foreigners, the foreign ministry has declared.  Satellite photos indicate the regime has been removing chemical munitions from storage sites, reports the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

The regime would never use these weapons against its own people, claims a foreign ministry spokesman.  But a former official told the BBC Mr. Assad wouldn’t hesitate to use WMD against the rebels.

Mr. Assad is an Alawite, an offshoot of Shia Islam.  They are just 10-12 percent of Syrians (70 percent are Sunni Moslems), but hold almost all the important jobs.

So all Alawites, not just Mr. Assad, must keep riding the tiger, or be consumed by it. In 1982, Mr. Assad’s father massacred at least 10,000 Sunni Islamist rebels in the city of Hama.  Islamists have been looking for payback ever since.  If dad was so ruthless then, why wouldn’t junior be as ruthless now?  The 19,000 dead so far may be just a down payment on the ultimate butcher’s bill.

Then there’s this question:  What happens to Syria’s WMD if Mr. Assad is ousted?

He could turn it over to Hezbollah, the Iranian-sponsored terror group that dominates Lebanon.  That would be bad for the United States, very bad for Israel, which says it will strike if it happens.  If the rebels capture the WMD, it could be worse, because Islamists aligned with the Moslem Brotherhood and al Qaida are dominant among them. 

Syria has hundreds of tons of chemical munitions; has weaponized infectious diseases, and has a nuclear weapons program — or had until the Israelis bombed it in 2008.

You didn’t know Syria had so robust a WMD program?  It didn’t – until just before the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003.  About half the WMD the CIA thought Saddam Hussein possessed was transferred to Syria just before hostilities commenced, according  to captured documents, the testimony of eyewitnesses, and analysis of satellite photos.

Most dangerous in the hands of terrorists are biological weapons.  Small amounts kill many.  Because infectious diseases spread, they go on killing, far from the site of the attack. 

Chemical weapons aren’t of much use to terrorists, because large volumes of poison gas are required to kill a lot of people, and most dissipate quickly.  The exception is VX nerve gas, which is 10 times more deadly than other nerve agents, and can contaminate a site for weeks.

The conflict has intensified Moslem sectarian strife.  Iran supports Mr. Assad.  Saudi Arabia and Turkey supply the rebels with money and arms. 

And revived Cold War tensions.  Russia and China back the regime, the U.S. and NATO the rebels.

The naval base at Tartus is Russia’s only outside the old Soviet Union.  Mr. Assad spends billions on Russian military equipment.  Shale gas and the recession have hammered Russian exports of oil and natural gas, so weapons sales matter more now than ever.  All this goes away if Mr. Assad does.  Russia reportedly has thousands of military advisers in Syria to see he doesn’t.

Iran will lose its land link to Hezbollah if Mr. Assad falls.  So Iran, too, provides military support. (The head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Force is rumored to have been killed in that suicide bombing.)

If Mr. Assad is ruthless, a likely outcome is the breakup of Syria.  The Alawites would control their enclave in the northwest; the Kurds theirs in the northeast; the Druze in the southwest; the Sunni Arabs the rest of the country.

Modern Syria was carved from the corpse of the Ottoman Empire.  Religious and ethnic groups who don’t like each other much were thrown together for the convenience of France.  Regional autonomy could be better — if it weren’t for the chaos and bloodshed that would accompany disintegration. 

Bloodshed could spill across borders.  The foreign ministry’s warning was directed at Western powers that might intervene to secure the WMD.  Intervention could trigger a military confrontation with Russia, Iran, or both.

Mr. Assad is an evil mean nasty rotten guy who sponsors terrorism, so many Republicans urge President Barack Obama to do more to oust him.  But as a secular dictator aligned with Russia, Mr. Assad accepts restraints Islamists do not.

Whatever happens in Syria, the forces of evil will prevail.  We don’t know yet which evil.  In the meantime, it’s better to have Sunni and Shia extremists fight each other than plot attacks on us.  And as long as he’s struggling for survival at home, Mr. Assad is less likely to make trouble for Israel or Lebanon.

So in Syria, "leading from behind" is in America’s interest.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.