Tag: Russia
Getting to Syria’s next regime
The fall of the Assad regime in Syria was swift. Now comes the hard part: building a new regime that is an improvement. We know from past experience some of the elements required. Let’s review those, in light of the discussion among Syrians above.
Safe and secure environment
Above all, a safe and secure environment free of large-scale violence is a prerequisite.
The biggest threat for now is in the north. Turkish and Turkish-supported forces there are pressing hard against Kurdish and Kurdish-led forces. Turkiye President Erdogan wants the Kurds east of the Euphrates and at least 30 kilometers from the border. An American-mediated truce between the Turks and the Kurds has broken down. There is a real risk of a major conflict between them. Turkiye says its objective is eliminating the Kurdish forces. But Ankara and its allies don’t seem to make much distinction between specific Kurdish forces and Kurds iin general.
In other parts of the country there are also risks. It would be a mistake to assume that Assad did not organize “stay behind” forces. Even if not organized, they may emerge spontaneously, or Islamic State sleeper cells may awaken. In Iraq, the Saddam Fedayeen originated the insurgency against the American occupation that the Islamic State continued. There is still the possibility of revenge killings. A single mass grave near Damascus apparently holds 100,000 bodies. That means close to one million people with motives for seeking revenge.
Unifying the many armed groups under the new Syrian government will be a major challenge and priority. HTS has announced its intention to do this. But it will need to convince rebel leaders and find the resources to pay the fighters. Eventually it will need to demobilize many of them and integrate them into civilian life.
Rule of law
While there was some looting of government offices in Damascus, most Syrians have maintained law and order. Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), the leading force in the revolution, has kept police and government officials in their positions. Opposition forces in the south and other parts of the country have done likewise. There has been no sign, yet, of widespread revenge killings.
It will be years before Syria can reform its laws. In the meanwhile, there are urgent issues. Perhaps first among them is establishment and protection of property rights. In Idlib, HTS had a serious system for property issues. Expanding that to the national level will be a major challenge. Without that, it will be hard even to start reconstruction. According to the World Bank and the European Union, Syria has suffered an enormous amount of infrastructure damage. In 14 cities, they estimate damages of $8.7-11.4 billion.
Syria’s judicial sector was not independent of the Assad regime. It did what it was told. Judges and prosecutors will need to be vetted and new ones trained and named. Prison officials and guards will need to be likewise vetted and many replaced. Lawyers will need to be trained and retrained.
Accountability will be a priority. Identifying those responsible for Assad regime abuses will be easy at the top levels. But most of those people will have fled. Europe and the US need to be alert for their entry and capture them sooner rather than later. At the lower levels, many perpetrators will try to melt into the general population. It will be difficult to ferret them out and put them on trial quickly. Doing so will take years of concerted effort. It is not easy to gather the evidence a serious jury trial requires.
Stable governance
While Assad’s Syria conducted elections and had a parliament, it operated as an autocracy. The Assad family, the Ba’ath party, and Alawite military officers were pillars of the regime. It showed no respect for the rights of others. The new regime should reflect what Rafif calls a core commitment to human rights, including freedom of expression and religion. The mantra today is “inclusion,” which ultimately will require political pluralism, including full participation of women and minorities.
That will not be easy. HTS is also an autocratic organization, with little respect for women’s equality and dubious commitment to equal rights for minorities. It has appointed an interim government with little “inclusion” and has been less than clear about the role of women.
Political parties and civil society organizations are emerging quickly, but elections are still far off. It may be possible and desirable to convene a national dialogue of notable citizens. Russia and Iran, the foreign mainstays of the Assad regime are calling for one. Choice of participants would of course be problematic. But a national dialogue may provide common ground not only for Syrians but also for international powers interested in Syria.
Ultimately Syria will need a new constitution. Lots of constitutional proposals already exist. But Syria will need a constituent assembly of some sort to draft a democratic and inclusive document. Many of the issues involved have been discussed, but difficult choices lie ahead.
In the meanwhile, local governance will need to suffice. Syrians have practiced it a good deal in opposition-held areas in recent years. It won’t be a bad place to start.
Sustainable economy
Syrians are destitute. Their most immediate needs are food and fuel. Humanitarian assistance should flow as soon and as quickly as possible. This means using the United Nations and international relief organizations, which are already overburdened by Gaza and Lebanon.
Going much beyond humanitarian relief will require relief from sanctions and de-designation of HTS as a terrorist group. This will take time and convincing. The Americans and Europeans will want to be sure they are not snookered. They won’t want to provide reconstruction assistance to a new regime that fails to meet reasonable criteria. The big money will come from the World Bank and the Gulf. Washington and Brussels control the former and influence the latter.
Assad’s regime was dependent on production and trade of Captagon, an amphetamine. That will have to stop. HTS will crack down hard, but it will need also to generate economic opportunities to replace the drug trade. Syria is a country with limited oil and gas resources, big agricultural and tourism potential, and a good geographic location. Where its future livelihood will come from is unclear. Like Jordan and Egypt, it will need international assistance for decades into the future.
The World Bank has found that disruption of social networks has caused most of the economic damage in Syria. Restoring trust will take time and effort.
Social well-being
Half of Syria’s population is either refugees or displaced within the country. Many will want to return home. Others will not. Compensation for destroyed or expropriated property will be a major issue. Some communities will never return to their pre-war composition. Others will want to make an effort to do so.
The health system in Syria has imploded. Even in areas where the Russians and Syrian did not attack hospitals, sanitary supplies and equipment are limited. Many doctors and nurses have fled. Technical capabilities are not up to modern standards. Rebuilding will be a major enterprise.
The education system still functions in most of the country. Children go to school in both government and opposition controlled areas. But many buildings are destroyed and students will be behind in learning. Efforts were made to keep the education system in some opposition-controlled areas compatible with Syrian government requirements. But the culture of the schools and the experience of the students will be dramatically different.
The international dimension
Syria now faces two main challenges from neighbors. One is the Turkish effort to destroy the Kurdish institutions in the northeast. The other is the effort to destroy the strategic assets of the Syrian Arab Army, which Israel is bombing. Additionally, Israel has seized a UN-patroled buffer zone on the Golan Heights. HTS leadership is not prepared to fight Israel, even though some of its cadres would like to do so. HTS wants to bring the Kurdish institutions under Damascus authority. The Kurds are amenable. They do not advocate independence or union with the Kurds in Iraq. But Turkiye has vowed to try to destroy the Kurdish institutions. This is a serious threat and could vastly complicate the post-war situation.
Russia appears to be withdrawing much of its military assets from Syria. Iran has already done so. The US for now is maintaining its troops in support of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. The Americans will want to withdraw, but will not do so before Donald Trump takes office in January. What he will do is not clear.
United Nations Security Council resolution 2254 (2015) is still the main international community statement on political transition in Syria. It is not a bad one.
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More remains to be done, but credit is due
Opposition and Turkish forces now control Syria’s northwest, northeast, north, south and the main cities of its north/south axis. But most of the west–the provinces of Latakia and Tartus–are still not fully in opposition control. Ditto much of the center.
The Alawites
The Alawite sect to which Bashar al Assad belonged constituted only about 10% of Syria’s population before the civil war. But Alawites are a plurality in the west. They live more in the countryside than in the main cities. The leader of the opposition, Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), has named a military commander for the west. He met with Alawite notables in Latakia Tuesday. @GregoryPWaters cites an Alawite professor present, who reports:
The broad, summarized headlines that we all felt were true:
– No to sectarianism absolutely
– No to violating the property of individuals and institutions
– No to division
– No going back, everyone was harmed by the previous regime in one way or another
That is as friendly a message from HTS as possible. It is not entirely surprising. HTS has been reaching out to Syria’s minorities to preserve Syria’s unity. The Alawites of Latakia and Tartus suffered a great under their co-religionist Assad. They lost a lot of young people in the war. They had to toe the line or risk the full weight of his repression. Many Sunnis and others resented their access to privilege and power.
The trick now is to somehow hold individuals who committed abuses accountable while not mistreatinthe rest. Many of Assad’s henchmen, Sunni as well as Alawite, will have fled to Latakia and Tartus. Ferreting them out and giving them fair trials will not be easy.
The Russians
Besides the Alawites, the Russians are a problem in the west. They operate the Syrian Khmeimim Air Base in Latakia and lease a naval base farther south in Tartus. The air base has since 2015 launched thousands of sorties against opposition forces and civilians. The naval base is Russia’s only naval facility in the Mediterranean. Turkey has closed the Bosporus to military traffic due to the war in Ukraine. So the Tartus base is particularly important to the Russians. The air base is not, as its role has been overtaken by events.
Still, Moscow is insisting on keeping both. Russia will be arguing that the Syrians shouldn’t rely too heavily on Turkey. HTS has not signaled that it wants them out. Putin will be lucky to retain the naval facility.
The Islamic State
Much of the white area on the above map is sparsely populated. But it hosts Islamic State cells. HTS will now have to shoulder the burden of eliminating them. It should be willing to do so, as the Islamic State is a rival, not an ally. But it isn’t easy. The Americans could be helpful from the air and might be willing. Someone should ask, or offer. Once HTS gets that done, the Americans will not want to stay in Syria. And future President Trump won’t want them to.
A remarkable job
HTS-led forces have done a remarkable job in a short time. The risks of fragmentation are still there, but lower than a week ago. Abu Mohammed al Jolani has sent the right political signals. There is still more to be done, but credit is due.
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Winners and losers from Assad’s fall
The success of Syrians in deposing Bashar al Assad poses the question of who wins and who loses. Inside Syria, Hayat Tahrir al Sham is the big winner for now. It led the breakout from Idlib and inspired the many risings elsewhere in Syria.
There are lots of other countries that stand to win or lose something in the transition. Let’s assume Syria remains reasonably stable and its government basically inclusive and not vindictive, which appears to be HTS’ intention. We can try to guess the pluses and minuses for the rest of the world.
Turkiye is the big winner
In the region, Turkiye is the big winner. President Erdogan had been ready to negotiate with Assad, who refused to engage. Erdogan lost patience and backed a military outcome. He unleashed both Turkish proxies and HTS, which could not have armed and equipped itself adequately without Ankara’s cooperation. He does not control HTS 100%, especially now that it is in Damascus. But he will have a good deal of influence over its behavior. Let’s hope he uses it in the democratic and less religious direction. That however is the opposite of what he has been doing at home.
Erdogan has two primary goals in Syria. First is achieving enough stability there to allow many of the three million Syrian refugees in Turkiye to return. Returns will take time, but there is already a spontaneous flow back into Syria. The second is keeping the Syrian Kurds associated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) away from Turkiye’s border with Syria. Erdogan would also like its Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) dissolved. Or at least as far from power as possible.
Refugee returns look like a good bet. Disempowering the Kurds in eastern and northern Syria does not. They are well-established and cooperate closely with US forces in that area. Future President Trump will want to withdraw the Americans. But the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces will remain essential to fighting the Islamic State (IS). HTS, IS, and the PKK all carry the “terrorist” label in the US and Europe. But HTS and IS are rivals. HTS will want the Kurds to continue to fight IS. They will also be vital, at least temporarily, to preventing Iran from re-establishing a land route through Syria to Lebanon.
Israel wins and loses
The Israeli government would have preferred to see the Assad devil it knew stay in power. But his fall means the Iranians and their proxies will no longer be stationed along the northeastern border of Israel. The Israelis have already moved their troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone inside Syria. They didn’t want some known or unknown force filling that vacuum. That advance might give them a stronger position in future negotiations with Damascus, whenever those occur.
But Israelis have to be worried that a jihadist group led the overthrow of Assad. Ahmed al Sharaa, the birth name of HTS’s Abu Mohammed al Jolani, was born in Riyadh to Syrian parents. They were displaced from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The second Palestinian intifada motivated his conversion to jihad. It is hard to picture someone with that background more pliable than the impacable Assad on border and Palestinian issues. Jolani himself appears to have said little about Gaza or the Lebanon war. But some of his followers are clear about where they want to go next:
Lebanon and Jordan
Lebanon and Jordan, two key neighbors of Syria, can hope to be winners from the change of regime . Both will want to see Syrian refugees return home, as they were a strain on their economies. They will also stand to gain from reconstruction and eventually a more prosperous Syria.
Assad had been financing his government and his cronies with proceeds from the export of the stimulant Captagon. Decent people in both Beirut and Amman will welcome relief from that flood of poison into and through their societies. Some of their corrupted politicians may regret it.
Lebanon will have to reabsorb Hezbollah fighters who supported Assad. They will be a defeated and unhappy lot. But the Lebanese Army and state stand to gain from any weakening and demoralization of Hezbollah. Anyone serious in Beirut should see the current situation as an opportunity to strengthen both.
Iran and Russia are the biggest losers
Apart from Assad, Tehran and Moscow are the biggest losers. They backed Assad with people, force, money, and diplomacy. They are now thoroughly discredited.
Iran has already evacuated its personnel from Syria. Tehran has lost not only its best ally but also its land route to Lebanon.
Russia still has its bases. Almost any future Syrian government will have a hard time seeing what it gains from the Russian air force presence. Moscow’s air force brutalized Syrian civilians for almost 10 years. The air bases will no longer have utility even to Moscow. Moscow will prioritize keeping the naval base at Tartus, which is important for its Mediterranean operations.
The Gulf gains, Iraq loses
Gulf diplomacy was trying to normalize relations with Assad in the past year or two. But few Gulfies will mourn his regime, provided stability is maintained. Qatar may be more pleased than Saudi Arabia or Abu Dhabi. The Saudis and Emiratis are less tolerant of political Islam. Nor do they like to see regimes fall. Qatar is more comfortable with political change, including of the Islamist variety.
Iraq’s Shia-dominated government loses a companion in Damascus. It won’t welcome a Sunni-dominated government in Damascus. But Baghdad, like the Gulf, is unlikely to mourn the fall of Assad. He did his damnedest to make life difficult for Iraqis after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The United States and Europe gain but will need to ante up
The US and Europe have long viewed Assad as a regrettable but necessary evil. They hesitated to bring him down for fear of what might come next. Now they need to step up and fund Syria’s recovery, mainly through the IMF and the World Bank. They will want Gulf money invested as well. The best way to get that is for them to ante up matching funds.
That is also the best way for them to gain leverage over the political settlement. If they want an inclusive outcome, they’ll need to be ready to pay for it. Hesitation could open the door to malicious influence.
Let the Syrians decide
That said, the details of the political settlement should be left to the Syrians. They will need to write a new constitution and eventually hold elections. The extensive constitutional discussions the UN has hosted for a decade may offer some enlightenment on what Syrians want. Just as important in my view is how the new powers that be handle property issues. Only if property rights are clearly established and protected can Syria’s economy revive. But who rightfully owns what and what to do about destroyed property are complicated and difficult issues.
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Will Syria stay together or fragment?
One of the threats to Syria now that Assad has fallen is fragmentation. In my experience, all Syrians say they want to preserve the country and its borders. But the conflicts among them and with neighboring countries can foil that goal and lead to partition.
The pieces of the puzzle
Syria’s population is mixed. Ninety per cent of its population is Arab. The rest is mainly Kurdish and Turkmen. More than 70% of Syrians are Sunni Muslim. But there are also various denominations of Christians as well as Alawites, Druze, Ismailis, Shiites and others. Damascus was thoroughly mixed. Several concentrations of Kurds were found along the northern border with Turkey, along with Turkmen and Arabs. The Alawite “homeland” was in the western, Mediterranean provinces of Tartous and Latakis. But they were a plurality and not a majority there. More Sunnis have sought refuge there, as under Bashar al Assad, an Alawite, those provinces were relatively safe.
The war is superimposing on this hodge-podge an additional dimension: military control of territory. Hayat Tahrir al Sham, the leader of the uprising, will control much of Idlib, Aleppo, Hama, and Homs. Turkey and its surrogates will control most of the northern border. They are trying to push Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) east of the Euphrates, an area the SDF already dominates. Other opposition forces will be in charge of the south and the Jordanian border. The Druze have long maintained their insular community in Suwayda. It is unclear who will dominate Damascus. The southerners are arriving there first, but it is hard to picture HTS settling for second fiddle there.
There are no clear pre-existing regional lines along which Syria might fragment, except for the provincial boundaries. But those do not generally correspond to ethnic or religious divisions. The pieces of the puzzle do not fit together. They overlap and melt into each other.
The divisive forces
That would be a good reason to avoid fragmentation. Homogenization of ethnic groups on specific territory would require an enormous amount of ethnic “cleansing.” Ordinary Syrians don’t want that. But there will be forces at work that might make it happen.
The Turkmen/Kurdish conflict has already removed a lot of Kurds from Afrin in the northwest and border areas farther east. Ankara backs the Turkmen and wants to prevent Kurdish access to Türkiye. This is because the Syrian Kurds have supported Kurdish rebels inside Türkiye. The Kurds have built their own governing institutions in eastern Syria. They might seek independence if they get an unsatisfactory political outcome at the end of the war.
The Alawites of Tartous and Latakia are dreading revenge from the rest of Syria for mistreatment under the Assad dictatorship. They could try to set up their own statelet, perhaps even attaching it to Lebanon. They could also try to chase the Sunni Arab population out, while importing as many Alawites as possible from Damascus. Many there served the Assad regime and will want out.
The unifying forces
Syria’s neighbors won’t want a breakup. Türkiye has the most clout because of its presence in Syria and support for HTS. Ankara will oppose even autonomy for the Kurds. Jordan and Iraq have less clout, but they won’t want fragmentation either. Nor will Russia and Iran, which supported Assad and are big losers due to his fall. Ditto Israel and the United States, which would fear radicalization of any rump Syria if its Kurds or Alawites secede. Israel doesn’t want a jihadist entity on its northern border.
HTS and other opposition forces will also resist fragmentation. They want to govern all of Syria, not a part of it. HTS has moderated its attitude toward non-Arab and non-Sunni Muslims. It has also tried to minimize revenge and has emphasized continuity of the Syrian state. But HTS is an authoritarian movement, not a democratic one. It remains to be seen how it will behave in practice.
The obvious solutions
The obvious solution is decentralization. Devolving authority to provincial and municipal institutions offers minorities opportunities to govern themselves, or strongly influence how they are governed. The Alawites and Kurds might be satisfied with decentralization, provided they also get reasonable representation at the national level. The Kurds already have their own institutions. Some non-Kurdish opposition areas in Syria have used local councils for governance since the 2011 uprising against Assad.
There are also power-sharing arrangements that can assuage minority concerns at the national level and lower levels. Quotas in parliament, reserved positions in the state hierarchy, and qualified majority voting in parliament or local councils. I’m not an enthusiast for these, as they often entrench ethnic warlords, but sometimes they prove necessary.
Syrians may invent mechanisms I haven’t considered. In any event it is they who should decide. The country will need a new constitution, then in due course elections. The existing road map for Syria’s political process is UN Security Council resolution 2254, which Assad stymied. HTS and the rest of the opposition can revive it and gain international support by doing so.
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Make Kosovo and Bosnia Greater!
Biden Administration policy in the Balkans has been a failure. Kosovo and Serbia have continued their dialogue but with only minor results. The political normalization the US and EU aimed for is further off than in 2020. Bosnia’s constitutional arrangement is inconsistent with the European Union membership the country nominally seeks. The Serb and Croat nationalists who have vetoes over its politics prefer a state well-fed with EU funds but unable to enforce the rule of law.
Appeasement hasn’t worked
Mistaken policy is the root of these failures. Biden’s State Department chose to appease Belgrade, the biggest country in the Western Balkans by both population and area. Officials who like to repeat those factoids hoped Serbia would choose alignment with the West. They thought that would pull Bosnia in the right direction.
Appeasement hasn’t worked. Belgrade instead has pocketed Biden’s support and aligned Serbia with Russia and China. While selling ammunition to Ukraine and buying French warplanes, Belgrade has been re-arming mainly with Chinese and Russian equipment and supplying Russia with electronic components. Serbia, which has an official policy of military neutrality, has refused to align with EU sanctions on Russia.
Belgrade has also adopted irredentist goals. It seeks to establish a “Serbian world,” analogous to Moscow’s “Russian world.” That would unify the Serb populations of neighboring countries in a single de facto if not de jure political space. Montenegro has already joined up, the result of elections in which Belgrade and Moscow weighed in heavily. Bosnia’s Republika Srpska, its Serb-dominated 49%, is dependent on Russia and increasingly part of the Serbian world. Belgrade aims to incorporate the Serbs of northern Kosovo as well.
Creeping authoritarianism is the result
To compensate for its lean toward Serbia, the State Department also chose to mollify Albania, the second largest country in the Western Balkans. State Department officials hoped that would pull Kosovo in a more malleable direction.
Albania is a NATO member and has remained loyal to the Alliance. But its Prime Minister is a political rival of Kosovo’s Prime Minister. Their political competition has prevented any positive impact of Washington’s coddling of the former and antagonism toward the latter. But American favor towards Albania’s Prime Minister has enabled him to establish a de facto monopoly on power. He has fragmented and disempowered the opposition. Corruption is rampant.
Something similar has also occurred in Serbia, whose President has obliterated the opposition. The US and EU rarely speak out against corruption or abuse of power in Serbia. The security forces regularly beat and brutalize protesters. Brussels and Washington nevertheless consistently advocate for Belgrade’s priorities. They have bent over backwards to support lithium mining in Serbia that the Serbian environmental movement opposes. This despite the existence of bigger lithium deposits in both North and South America.
The right policy direction
The approach of the first Trump Administration to the Balkans favored partition of Kosovo, which would have also resulted in partition of Bosnia. That would have rewarded Serbia and Russia. The effort failed. The new American administration should not repeat that mistake.
It should also recognize the failures of the Biden Administration. That should not be hard. They are glaring: too much support for Belgrade and Tirana, too little attention to corruption and rule of law. And too little support for the sovereignty of Bosnia and Kosovo.
A realistic assessment of geopolitics in the Balkans should guide a change in policy. Serbia and Montenegro have aligned with Russia. They willingly help Moscow destabilize the rest of the Balkans. Serbia and Montenegro are also major recipients of Chinese financing. Kosovo and Albania remain pro-American and prepared to resist both Russian and Chinese malfeasance.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is split. The Dayton peace treaty gave it a constitution that enables Republika Srpska and its Croat nationalist leadership to align with Russia while the Bosniak and its relatively weak non-nationalist Croat leadership remains staunchly anti-Russian.
The right policy direction for the Trump Administration is towards helping America’s friends and undermining its adversaries.
Pristina and Sarajevo are frontline states in the geopolitical rivalry with Russia and China. But Kosovo and Bosnia are both still weak states. They need to consolidate their state sovereignty. Washington and Brussels should help with that. They merit military, intelligence, financial, and political support.
The Americans and Europeans should tone down support for Belgrade and Tirana. They should no longer ignore corruption in Albania and Serbia. Brussels and Washington should publicly criticize infringement on human rights and democratic norms. They should cut back financing.
This won’t be easy
It sounds easy enough, but there is a complication. During the past four years, Belgrade has assiduously courted former President Trump, his family, and his supporters. Jared Kushner is investing Saudi money in Serbian real estate development. If personal connections prevail, there is little hope for a good change of US policy in the Balkans.
But both Secretary of State-designate Rubio and National Security Advisor-designate Kellogg are not part of this real estate cabal, so far as I know. They should be amenable to the argument that America should be good to its friends. Rubio has supported Kosovo in the past. Kellogg won’t want instability in the Balkans while the US tries to settle the Ukraine war. Partition of Bosnia or Kosovo would reward Russian aggression.
Trump himself might like the notion of shoring up sovereignty of America’s friends in the Balkans. Neither Bosnia nor Kosovo has ever been “great.” But making them greater is still a worthy cause.
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Who should the US back in Syria?
The rapid advance in the past week of Syrian opposition forces raises difficult questions for the United States. The leadership of those forces lies with Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), a designated terrorist group. The US already cooperates with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which include Syrian Kurds aligned with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). It is also a designated terrorist group that operates inside Turkey. Turkey backs opposition forces in Syria generally termed the Syrian National Army (SNA), which control Afrin under the command of the Turkish Army.
Too many friends
The US cooperates with the SDF because it helps fight against the Islamic State (IS), still another designated terrorist group. HTS has also been effective against IS as well as Al Qaeda in the territory it has controlled for several years in northwestern Syria.
HTS’ leader, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, has been trying for years to soften his group’s jihadist rhetoric. He has sent messages in recent days to Syrian Christians, Kurds, and Alawites suggesting that they will not be mistreated in HTS-controlled territory. He has also indicated HTS will step back from governance, which it will delegate to an interim authority with broad representation. Its Syrian Salvation Government in Idlib province has administered the territory HTS controls there for several years.
Turkiye, a NATO ally, is unhappy that the Americans cooperate with the Kurdish-led SDF. Washington has tried to soften Ankara’s attitude toward the Syrian Kurds for years, to no avail. Turkiye wants the SDF pushed east of the Euphrates River and at least 30 kilometers from the Turkish border. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds are said to be on the move.
Israel, another de facto US ally, won’t be happy to see jihadists conquering Syria. The damage Israel has wreaked on President Assad’s Syrian Arab Army, Lebanese Hezbollah, and Iranian forces is one of the reasons HTS has been able to advance, but Netanyahu is not going to be greeting al-Julani with open arms. He, and perhaps Biden, had hopes that Assad would cut, or at least diminish, his ties to Iran.
So how should the US lean in this complicated situation? With the Turks against the SDF? That isn’t possible without abandoning the fight against IS. With HTS against Assad? That would risk helping a group the Israelis fear may have less benign intentions than its current behavior suggests. With Assad against HTS? That could wreck prospects for a transition in Syria that the US has backed for more than a decade. It would also preserve an ally of Russia and Iran who has brutalized his own population.
Creating new options
If the current options don’t look good, perhaps the right approach is to create new ones. America doesn’t have enough troops in Syria (maybe 1500, depending on how you count) to command the situation. But Washington could lean one way or another to open up better options. This could be better than the current policy paralysis, which has failed to take advantage of a situation that could spell defeat for Russia and Iran.
The Turkish-backed forces in Syria want to chase the Kurds from Manbij, on the western side of the Euphrates. That is a fight that could split the opposition to Assad and give him a new lease on power. The US should encourage the Kurds to withdraw east of the Euphrates and duck a fight they are not likely to win.
The Syrian Arab Army (Assad’s army) will want to withdraw its forces from central Syria to meet these threats. There are still IS remnants in central Syria. The US should press SDF, after withdrawal form Manbij, to fill this vacuum and continue its fight against IS.
HTS and its allies today took Hama, south of Aleppo. Both Homs and the Mediterranean provinces of Tartous and Latakia, where many Alawites live, are now at risk. Risings against Assad could facilitate HTS takeovers. Damascus could be next.
The US could communicate to HTS that Washington would be willing to see creation of an interim government not only in Aleppo but also at the national level. Washington could then work with that government, provided it behaves in a civilized way, rather than HTS directly, in planning for the future of Syria.
What does the US gain?
Success of the rebellion against Assad would be a serious defeat for Russia and Iran, which have backed Assad through more than 13 years of civil war. It would be foolish to imagine the result will be Western-style democracy. But even an outcome (without all the interim steps please!) like Iraq’s current non-autocratic mishmash would be better than the homicidal regime that has governed Syria since the rebellion started in 2011.
PS: And Assad comes down:
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