Not a hopeless mess

I spent a week yesterday talking with well-informed, Syria opposition-sympathizing people in Istanbul. I heard some interesting things.

While the reelection of Ahmad Tomeh as prime minister of the Syrian Interim Government (SIG) has been bumpy due to a boycott by some members of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), it is a done deal. The issue now is who the ministers will be. Their number will shrink to eight or nine. They are supposed to be capable technocrats but will come through a committee of the SOC, which will shift its role to that of a legislative body with oversight responsibilities, instituted through new bylaws. So the ministers will have to pass political muster, and be politically balanced, even if they are supposed to be technocrats. Executive functions will reside with the SIG, whose staff has been getting a lot of training over the past year. Its capacity to govern is improving.

The SIG’s priorities at the moment are clear. Number 1 is food security. Syria faces a massive grain shortfall this winter, due to a dramatic drop in production (by 75% since the year before the war) and a cut in funding to the World Food Programme. Opposition areas need close to 250,000 (presumably) metric tons. Less than this will risk starvation, which would not only be a humanitarian disaster. It means people will flee opposition areas. The war can be lost in many ways, including by losing the population to regime- and Islamic State (ISIS)-controlled areas and to Syria’s neighbors.

Number 2 priority is getting the SIG back into Syria. Already three-quarters of its personnel are said to be there, but the leadership is still in Istanbul and Gaziantep, on the Turkish/Syrian border. It won’t do any good to get them back in unless they, and the people who work for them and benefit from the SIG’s limited services, are reasonably safe.

Here things get complicated. The SIG and SOC want a safe area inside Syria, presumably along the border with Turkey but possibly also in the south. This would require the Americans to lead a coalition effort committed to enforcing it, by pledging to attack anyone or anything that bombarded the safe zone. A no-fly zone is really not sufficient, since a safe area along the Turkish border would also be vulnerable to artillery bombardment. It was a Serb mortar attack on the Sarajevo safe area that precipitated the air attacks on Serb military installations and led to the end of the Bosnian war in 1995. The no-fly zone had not been violated.

The Americans know that the significance of safe areas resides mostly in their failure. An attack on a designated safe area initiates broader military action. They don’t want to start down that slippery slope in Syria. But the SIG and the Turks want the safe area, the former so they can start governing within Syria and establishing their credentials as a serious institution and the latter to slow the massive influxes of refugees (Turkey is now hosting more than 1.5 million).

There is a deal to be had here, because the Americans want the Turks to take up the cudgels against ISIS, in addition to supporting the rebellion against Syrian President Assad. Ankara hasn’t wanted to do as much as it might to support the fight against ISIS, mainly because the people fighting ISIS at the moment along the border with Turkey are Kurds allied with Assad who have also supported a rebellion inside Turkey.

So let’s make a deal: the Turks and the SIG/SOC get their American-protected safe zone, but only if they agree with the Americans to help the Kurds they don’t like to push ISIS away from the border.

In this scenario, Washington would have to twist the Kurds’ arm hard to get them to disassociate from the Assad regime and join the anti-Assad coalition, also pledging not to support insurgency inside Turkey. Otherwise the Turks could find themselves moving into Syria and having to fight both ISIS and the Kurds, which would make a real hash of things.

Washington is still refusing, claiming that it has no ally on the ground in Syria to fight Assad, so it has to limit itself to attacks on ISIS. This is specious. There is even less of an ally on the ground to fight ISIS. Washington is apparently planning to fight a war of attrition against ISIS exclusively from the air, while training a new Syrian opposition force from scratch over the next couple of years. That is not a formula for a quick end to this agony. And I wonder how ISIS, the Kurds and the Free Syrian Army are going to greet the newcomers if and when they finally arrive?

There is some good news. Small but important water, agriculture and energy projects are beginning to take root in opposition-controlled parts of Syria. The multi-donor Syria Recovery Trust Fund is beginning to move money to infrastructure projects that will bring electricity, water, health care and food to liberated areas. Its short life hasn’t been easy, but it is up and running faster than previous trust funds, which have had the benefit of World Bank and EU expertise and have not faced the same conflict conditions or the same political uncertainties in the host country.

Syria is a mess. But it is not a hopeless mess. Defeating both ISIS and Assad will however require a good deal more cooperative commitment from the Americans, the Turks and the Syrian opposition.