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Can Syria be saved?

I spoke yesterday on “Can Syria Be Saved” at the Italian Institute of International Affairs (IAI).  I was honored at the last minute by Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Staffan de Mistura, who joined the event and provided some comments.  Here are the notes I used, amplified with Stefano’s comments and a bit of the Q and A:

       1.  The situation inside Syria

Military:  The regime can clear, but less and less; the revolution can clear more and more.  Neither can hold securely or build without the other being able to strike.  This is the significance of air power and Scuds, which prevent consolidation of rebel control.

Civilian:  The government is doing all right in areas that are loyal, but not gaining and under severe economic pressure.  The revolution is unable to supply many areas outside government control and therefore unable to consolidate control and support.

       2.  Who is doing what outside Syria

There is no sign of the Russians or Iranians abandoning Assad, despite some change in Russian rhetoric.  Russian arms supplies continue.  Iranian forces are active within Syria, as is Hizbollah.  Arms are flowing to the opposition, but unevenly and not always what they need.

The June 2012 Geneva communique, which provides for a fully empowered transition government approved by both the regime and the opposition, is still the only agreed diplomatic route.  Brahimi is quiet, which is the best way to be until he has something definite.  The Americans are exasperated but unwilling as yet to send arms.  The naming of a prime minister this week should bring more civilian assistance, which is already topping $400 million from the US.

        3.  Why Obama hesitates to intervene more decisively, why Putin backs Assad

President Obama’s hesitation has little to do with Syria.  He recognizes full well that a successful revolution there will be a blow to Iran and Hizbollah, but even an unsuccessful one is bleeding them profusely.  The main issues for Obama are the Northern Distribution Network, which is vital for American withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Iran.  He does not want to risk alienating the Russians on either front.

For the Russians, the main issues are no longer the port and arms sales, if ever they were.  Now the question is one of prestige and power.  Putin is defining his Russia in explicitly anti-Western terms, all the more so since what he portrays as Western trickery during the Libya intervention.

For Iran, the issue is an existential one.  Loss of Syria would disable the connection to Hizbollah and isolate Iran from the Arab world, with the important exception of Iraq.  This would be a big loss to a country that thinks of itself increasingly as a regional hegemon.  The Islamic Republic would regard the loss of Syria as a big blow.

        4.  Options for the US and Europe

Britain and France are considering supplying weapons.  That is unlikely to buy much allegiance.  The best that can be hoped for is to strengthen relatively secularist and pro-Western forces, but that is going to be diffficult given the good military and relief performance of the Islamists, including those the US regards as extremist and even linked to Al Qaeda.

The US hesitates about arms transfers because of “fast and furious,” a US government scheme to track weapons transferred to the Mexican cartels.  One of the weapons was used to kill an American border patrol agent.  If an American-supplied shoulder-fired missile were to bring down a commercial aircraft, the incident would have major domestic political repurcussions.

Washington is instead focusing on enabling the civilian side, in particularly the newly named Prime Minister Ghassan Hitto and whatever interim government he cobbles together.  This should certainly include ample humanitarian assistance and operating expenses.

It might also include military intervention, since the Hitto government won’t be safe inside Syria if Assad continues to use his air force and Scuds.  The idea gaining ground outside the US administration is to destroy as much of that capability as possible while it sits on the ground.  No one in Washington wants a no-fly zone that requires daily patroling.  This is also a possible response to chemical weapons, whose possible use was mentioned during the IAI event but the facts were still very unclear (as they still are today so far as I can tell).

       5.  Possible outcomes and their implications

The fall of Bashar will be a beginning, not an end.  It is not clear that the state structure in this Levant will hold.  Lebanon is clearly at risk.  You’ve got Kurds in Syria and Iraq who want to unite, in  addition to an ongoing if somewhat sporadic Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.  You’ve got Sunnis in Iraq fighting in Syria who might eventually turn around and fight again in Iraq.  You’ve got Alawites, Druze, Christians and others who will want to protect their own communities, isolated from others in enclaves.

Even if the state structure holds, there are big questions about the future direction of Syria.  Will Islamists triumph?  Of which variety?  Will secularists do as badly in a post-war transition as they have in Egypt?  The opposition in Syria agrees that the state should remain intact, but will it be able to under pressure from a “stay-behind” insurgency like the one that Saddam Hussein mounted in Iraq?

I also ran quickly through the options for post-war Syria that I’ve already published.

Staffan reacted underlining the importance of continuing to talk with the Russians, who are convinced that the intervention in Libya has opened the door to Al Qaeda extremism in Mali and Syria.  He also underlined the importance of the opposition forming an inclusive and cohesive government that enunciates a clear plan for how to deal with the previous regime, including an exit for Bashar al Assad, and how to provide guarantees to the Alawites.  He underlined that we should be putting together an international peacekeeping force now.  We should not be tricked into international intervention by allegations of chemical weapons use.

I’ll stop my account there, as I’ve already gone on too long.  It was a stimulating discussion.  Many thanks to my hosts at IAI!