Fight and muddle

It took longer than anticipated, but it appears now that the cessation of hostilities in Syria is ending, mainly due to regime attacks on relatively moderate opposition forces in the center of the country. Fighting has also erupted in the far northeast, where Kurdish and regime forces had long divided the turf between them but are now going after each other.

The opposition’s High Negotiation Council has been leaving the UN-sponsored talks in Geneva, disappointed that in the minimal progress on humanitarian access and release of detainees, as well as the regime’s refusal to discuss political transition. I suspect they stayed long enough to avoid any American backlash, but we’ll have to wait and see. Technical level talks on some issues are said to be proceeding.

On the regime side, President Assad is feeling strong in the aftermath of Russia’s fall offensive, which succeeded in preventing the opposition from reaching the Alawite heartland it was aiming for. Both Moscow and Tehran have now doubled down on their support for Assad. No matter how often they deny being wedded to him, neither Russia nor Iran can hope for a successor regime even half as friendly to their interests as he has been. They know they are cooked in the long term if Syria becomes even remotely democratic, as the substantial Sunni majority will no doubt remember what they’ve done and seek eventually to exclude them from any substantial influence in the country.

What this amounts to for the US is a short term loss even if it can hope for a long term gain. The cessation of hostilities worked mainly by reducing Russian and regime attacks, which this fall were responsible for most of the violence, and freed the relatively moderate opposition to do what the Americans have long wanted them to do: attack the Islamic State (ISIS). They were somewhat successful, especially in northern Syria but also in the south. That was good news for Washington. So too were the demonstrations that broke out in some cities against Jabhat al Nusra, Syria’s Qaeda affiliate.

Now the big question is whether the Americans have done what is normally done during a cessation of hostilities: prepared its Syrian allies for the renewal of violence. If the relatively moderate opposition has been strengthened, it will be difficult for the regime to make further progress or even hold the territory the Russian offensive helped it to gain. Particularly important is whether the opposition has acquired antiaircraft weapons, which could tilt the military balance against the regime even if the still active Russians remain relatively unscathed. The regime uses vulnerable helicopters to drop so-called “barrel bombs,” which devastate civilian areas.

The situation in the region remains tense and confused. Turkey continues to be more concerned with countering the Syrian Kurds (as well as their own) than with fighting the Islamic State. Saudi Arabia still seems more focused on its support for what it considers the legitimate government in Yemen rather than support for the Syrian opposition or the fight against ISIS. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu took the opportunity of a cabinet meeting held on the Golan Heights to declare that they would never be returned to Syria, thus undermining the rapprochement between Israel and the Sunni Arab states even more than Israel’s growing cooperation with Russia.

President Obama remains determined to minimize American exposure in Syria and the Middle East generally, even as he beefs up aid and advising to both Baghdad’s security forces and the Kurdish peshmerga in Iraq, where the jabber about an impending assault on Mosul belies the shortcomings of the Iraqi army. If his meeting with Gulf states this week produced a new approach in Syria or Iraq, it has not yet become apparent. Washington seems resigned to muddling through until the January end of this administration, when more likely than not Hillary Clinton will begin to serve Obama’s third term. She will then have to decide whether to follow through on her pledges to take greater risks in Syria not only against ISIS but also against Assad by imposing a no-fly zone over part of the country.