I spoke today at SETA with Charles Lister, Bassam Barabandi, Geoffrey Aronson, and Kadir Ustun on Syria. Here are the talking notes I prepared. I started at number 13 and didn’t use them all. The video of the event is below:
I find it difficult to know what to say about Syria.
I could of course just repeat what many others have rightly said: the war is not over, Assad has not won because the country is in ruins and he lacks the means to fix it, it is all tragic and more tragedy impends because the underlying drivers of conflict have not been resolved.
I could even go further and say that President Trump’s decision to withdraw was foolish, the US must stay in Syria, because otherwise we will have no say in its future, and that those who are trying to at least partially reverse that decision are correct.
But I really don’t believe much of that: the policy implications for the US merit deeper examination.
Assad has defeated any chance for a transition to democracy in Damascus: who in Syria would trust others to govern them today? Assad is demographically engineering the part of the country he controls to ensure regime security and has for most practical purposes won.
He will keep most of the refugees out of regime-controlled Syria because he knows full well he cannot allow them back. He lacks the resources for reconstruction and fears they will threaten his hold on power.
The Americans are not going to have much say over what happens in Syria, partly because they don’t want to. Neither President Obama nor President Trump thinks Syria is worth a candle.
They cared about ISIS and Iran, not Syria.
It is the Astana three that will determine Syria’s fate.
Iran is there to stay because they have to. They think propping up Assad responds to threats from Israel and from Sunni extremists. Only regular bombing will limit Iranian power projection into the Levant. The Americans should prefer that the Israelis do it.
The Russians are there to stay because they want to. Syria has given them not only an important naval base and now an air base, but also a toehold in Middle East geopolitics. At the very least, they can now cause trouble for the Americans in most of the region.
The Turks are there to stay because they want to chase the PKK/PYD away from their borders and enable at least some of the refugees they host to return to Syria.
The Syria Study Group in its interim report suggested that the Americans stay in northeastern Syria and do what is needed to enable civilians to stabilize it.
But before a decision like that can be made, the Americans need to ask themselves what it would take. The Study Group put the cart before the horse.
The six American civilians working there on contracting for rubble removal and a few other basic necessities like demining, water and electricity before being withdrawn by the Trump Administration were nowhere near what is required for a serious stabilization operation.
That’s what you need if you ISIS is to be prevented from returning: governance and justice decent enough to be preferable to the caliphate.
Experience, as Frances Z. Brown suggested in Monkey Cage last week, demonstrates that much more will be needed.
How much more?
Jim Dobbins is the best guide I know on this subject. For a “heavy peace enforcement” operation in a territory with, let us assume, 2.5 million people, which is my guess at how many are in northeastern Syria (and at least that many in Idlib), Jim suggests a force of more then 35,000 internationals and 13,000 locals costing almost 8 billion dollars per year.
On top of that, you’ll need dozens if not hundreds of civilians supervising and guiding the disposition of stabilization funding.
Sure, you can skimp or trade off locals for internationals, but not without consequences. I’ve heard little about Raqqa that suggests reconstruction there is going well there.
The Turkish reconstruction efforts in the Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch territories, which are said to be “comprehensive” in SETA’s recent description of them, suggest Dobbins’ numbers are not far off.
The simple conclusion is that nowhere near the required resources are likely to be available for a serious American stabilization effort in northeastern Syria.
What about the Turks? They want a buffer zone of 30 km or so inside Syria. Could they be relied upon to do the necessary stabilization and reconstruction all across their southern border?
The answer is likely yes, but not without consequences.
Upwards of 600,000 Kurds live in northeastern Syria. A significant percentage of them would likely flee, as many did from Afrin during and after Olive Branch, and the PKK fighters so vital to the effort against ISIS would be forced back into the arms of the Syrian regime, which would no doubt expect them to do what they were created to do: attack Turkey.
US troops remaining in northeastern Syria while the Turks repress the Kurds they think support the PKK and the Syrian regime supports the same Kurds to attack Turkey is not my idea of a place I would want US troops to be.
What about Idlib? It looks to me as if Assad is determined to retake it, with massive consequences: millions might seek to leave. There is no real ceasefire.
Maybe these two dire scenarios lead to a standoff? The regime might hold off in Idlib fearing that Ankara would use the occasion to go into northeastern Syria? Maybe Ankara will hold off in northeastern Syria for fear Damascus will go after Idlib in a serious way?
Might it be possible to deploy Arab peacekeepers to both areas? Now I’m in fantasyland.
Whatever happens, I don’t think the US presence in Syria, even if doubled or quadrupled, is adequate to the task of enabling stabilization of the territory the SDF now controls, especially as ISIS reconstitutes and the Iranians decide to test our mettle.
We can’t get out for fear of the consequences. And we don’t want to put enough effort in to make a real difference in repressing ISIS and repelling Iranian-backed proxies. That’s not a good place for America to be.
My recommendation would be just this: go big and fix Syria or get out and let the chips fall where they may. But neither is likely to happen.
That will reduce us to putting US troops at risk for the sake of a possible future role in some imagined UN-sponsored peace negotiation. I argued in favor of that 18 months ago. Today it is hard to justify.
It is fitting that Hulu has revived Catch-22 at this fraught moment.