The Aleppo defeat

You can always tell when a cause is lost: the UN General Assembly passes a resolution to stop the bombing, allow in aid, and protect civilians. This was the clear signal this week that Syrian opposition forces in Aleppo are on the verge of defeat at the hands of multinational Shia militias as well as Iranian, Russian and Syrian government forces. Russian efforts to arrange a ceasefire for evacuation of civilians have failed, so far. Fighting age men are reportedly disappearing, likely some of them into prisons from which they will never emerge.

Assad is crowing. For good reason: victory in Aleppo will allow him to concentrate his forces against Idlib, which is the last remaining bit of what he has termed “useful Syria” that he doesn’t control. It runs from Damascus north to Aleppo and west to Lebanon and the Mediterranean. If he doesn’t already, Assad will soon control about one-third of the country’s territory and tw0-thirds of its population.

But the war will still not be over. The opposition will have some territory in the south along the Jordanian border and some in the north (west of the Euphrates), while the Kurds will control the rest of the border with Turkey and the Islamic State will control Raqqa and much of the relatively unpopulated east. The defeat at Aleppo and the impending defeat at Idlib will drive more opposition fighters into the arms of extremist jihadis, strengthening both Jabhat al Sham (the erstwhile Al Qaeda affiliate) and the Islamic State.

Assad now seems likely to survive, if only because the Americans will continue to pursue Jabhat al Sham and the Islamic State, which now represent by far the largest threat to his hold on power. This will make life easy for Trump. In order to ally with Russia as he says he wants to do, he’ll need only to cut American assistance to those few non-jihadi opposition who are still fighting Assad and provide support only to those willing to join the campaign against the Islamic State at Raqqa.

How Trump and National Security Adviser Flynn will square this de facto alignment with Iran I don’t know, but who’s watching? Like George W. Bush before him, Trump is likely to open still another door to Iranian power projection to the west.

Assad’s survival is not however the end of the story. Syria is a shambles. It needs hundreds of billions in aid. The Americans have already provided billions, but that has been overwhelmingly humanitarian assistance, much of which went to regime-controlled areas. I doubt however that the Americans will be interested in providing reconstruction assistance to the Assad regime. Even for a Trump administration, that might be a bit much, and in any event Congress likely wouldn’t go along.

The Europeans will be under a lot pressure to provide aid, since Assad will provide them with some minimal reason to hope that refugees will return if the Syrian economy revives. That however will be a false promise, as he doesn’t want them to return and restart the rebellion against him. He prefers to provide homes and livelihoods to non-Syrians, mainly Shia, who have fought on his behalf.

The people who should ante up are the Russians and Iranians, who have caused much of the damage and are coming out on the winning side. That entails obligations that the Washington and Brussels recognize, but Moscow and Tehran don’t. They aren’t likely to do more than minimal assistance calculated to help Assad regain and maintain control over strategically important turf.

Without a significant influx of resources, Syria will remain a fragmented basket case for many years to come. Even after Raqqa and Deir Azzour fall (precisely to whom is not yet clear), Islamist insurgency is likely to continue. Turkey and its Arab and Turkmen allies will control part of the north, with the Syrian Kurdish PYD controlling the rest. A bit of the south will remain in opposition control.

The Aleppo defeat may be the beginning of the end, but it is not yet the end.