For many years, long before the Arab Spring, Palestinian leaders liked to warn Europeans that conflict in the Middle East could spill over and set the fire burning in Europe. The prediction is turning out to be true, only not quite in the way the Palestinians meant.

While Europeans – not least, EU officials and politicians – go off on vacation, something momentous is happening in Syria. The world to which European officials will gear up to face in late September could be, in effect, very different from the one they left in the hands of a skeleton staff in Brussels in late July.

The de facto break-up of Syria might seem remote from European concerns. At worst it might seem to be a Greek problem (as if that country didn’t have enough). Greece has already had some 64,000 refugees reach its territory in the first six months of this year.

We should resist such complacency. The break-up of Syria could well threaten a chain of events that facilitate the break-up of key European ideals.

Less than two weeks ago, the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, made his first public speech in a year.

Speaking on TV, he acknowledged that the national army was ceding territory because of lack of human resources (tens of thousands of desertions by conscripts, which the regime tried to attract back a day before the speech by announcing an amnesty).

Assad went beyond that admission. He described the army as fatigued, while drawing a distinction between fatigue and defeat.

Meanwhile, he ruled out any political compromise with ‘terrorists’, meaning both the secular and the Islamist rebels.

It’s calculated that Assad currently controls only a third of the country – the western part – with further support on the Lebanese border from the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite group, Hizbollah (whose help Assad acknowledged in his speech for the first time).

That fraction does not convey the full political picture, however. Assad controls the major population centres. He still controls the apparatus of the State. Rebel administration has not replaced his in the towns that have fallen to one or another of the various rebel groups. Assad has seen to that.

He has strafed areas under rebel control so hard as to make normal administration nearly impossible. People are fleeing the towns being bombed to find protection from the very regime that is bombing them.

That’s not the only factor. The secular rebels are so internally divided that they are incapable of governing territory under their control.

While the Islamist extremists are pushing people – especially members of religious minorities, including Christians – into Assad’s realm. What else can a non-Sunni Syrian do when told, flatly, that their only chance of being integrated into a new Islamist Syria would be to renounce their religion and embrace Sunni Islam (or, rather, the crackpot version espoused by these groups)?

The break-up of Syria could well threaten a chain of events that facilitate the break-up of key European ideals

The very extremism of these Islamists has turned the rest of the international world against them. Even Turkey, which, until recently, was of the view that ridding Syria of Assad was more important than defeating ISIS, has now begun to bomb territories under ISIS control.

This combination of factors suggests that Syria is in a stalemate. Assad cannot be defeated but neither is he in a position to hang on to Syria’s entire territory. He is likely to find himself restricted to an enclave, while the remaining territory will not be able to develop into a stable, new State.

It will, instead, export instability, not least to Europe. First, because of the refugees that will continue to spill out of the country – four million at the present count but other millions remain internally displaced.

Second, because groups like ISIS, facing containment in Syria, may decide to increase their activities in other countries bordering Europe.

If this were the full extent of the problem, then we could say the Palestinian warning was not too far off. It might have misidentified the source of Europe’s Middle East problem – a Syrian civil war rather than the Palestinian question – and, therefore, its size.

But, otherwise, the character of the issue remains the same: an external problem, made up of refugees arriving at Europe’s doors, while perhaps also bringing the fighting with them, as scores are settled on European territory while other bombs go off as a warning to European governments.

However, that is clearly only part of the problem. What is happening is that the refugee problem has bred a European reaction. An internal malaise is eating Europe from within: the rise of a European neo-fascism to counter fascism of an Islamist variety.

Syria is hardly the only factor in the rise of far-right parties across Europe, not least in those former beacons of international decency, the Scandinavian states. Conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa are bringing in larger waves of migrants and asylum seekers to Europe.

Even here, however, the Syrian conflict is indirectly involved. Insofar as it strengthens the profile and resources of a group like ISIS, the Syrian conflict contributes to the spread of groups undermining the stability of various countries situated close or on the route to Africa’s Mediterranean coast.

The impact on Europe is dramatic. It is being felt on mainstream political parties, not just in the rise of extremist ones.

The Danish government has issued an advertisement in the English language warning potential asylum seekers not to apply to Denmark.

France criticises the UK for not accepting refugees trying to cross the Channel but it is also trying to stem back the migrants attempting to leave Italy.

Meanwhile, Italy has stretched the boundaries of good neighbourliness by rescuing migrants at sea but then looking the other way when they seek to go to other European countries.

It’s not just bickering between governments, either. Mainstream discourse has shifted to such an extent that, even in a traditionally tolerant country such as the UK, one hears less and less these days about keeping an open door for genuine refugees fleeing war and systemic violence.

The popular European image of what is happening is that there is an attempted Islamist takeover of Europe. In fact, something more insidious is happening.

The ugliness of the Islamist fringe, with its high profile attacks and the refugees it leaves in its wake, is bringing forth a counter-ugliness in European politics.

Twenty years ago, it was a political fringe. Today, it is making inroads. And it is making mainstream Europe turn in on itself: giving up on the original European ideal of being a political experiment that could serve as a beacon for global solidarity and cooperation.

Instead, we’re beginning to nurse those resentments that have made the Republican Party in the US a stomping ground for clowns and bigots.

If Europe wants to avoid that fate in the medium-term future, it will have to return to thinking big and intelligently about the world around it.

ranierfsadni@europe.com

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