Tag: Iran
Syria and the next president
Secretary of State Kerry asked the key question about the Syria ceasefire on NPR this morning: “What’s The Alternative?” He had none, because President Obama is sticking with his determination that vital US interests are not at risk there, apart from the terrorist threat. So the President is doing whatever is necessary–even military cooperation with the Russians that Defense Secretary Carter thinks unwise–to attack the Islamic State and Al Qaeda-affiliate Jabhat al Nusra (JAN), now Jaish al Fateh al Sham (JFS). Everything else–in particular support for the Syrian opposition–is at best half-hearted.
The US media often picture Obama as hesitant in Syria, citing this half-hearted attitude and his decision not to bomb in response to chemical attacks and instead seek removal of Assad’s chemical weapons by diplomatic means. That is incorrect. He has been remarkably decisive and resolute in sticking with his initial decision on what matters and what doesn’t in Syria. All American presidents since 1989 have resisted big interventions abroad. He is the only one who has stuck to his guns (or pin stripes, if you prefer). There is every indication that in doing so he is in tune with majority American sentiment: the electorate wants to go after the extremists but not worry about how Syria is governed.
The result is that Secretary Kerry had no leverage in dealing with Moscow. Leverage comes from having a better alternative to a negotiated agreement. You know this from bargaining with car salesmen. If you are willing to walk out, you are going to get a better deal. Kerry couldn’t walk out because doing so would have left the situation entirely in the hands of the Russians and Iranians, who were doing serious harm to civilians and helping the extremists to recruit. He also was unable to threaten action against the Syrian government or the many Shia armed groups Iran has put onto the battlefield in defense of Assad. Obama won’t go there.
For the moment, the ceasefire seems to be holding, with some exceptions. Humanitarian aid so far as I can tell has not started flowing into besieged opposition areas. That is supposed to happen consistently before the military cooperation with the Russians to target the ISIS and JAN/JFS starts on Monday. I’d bet on limited humanitarian aid deliveries, if only because Assad does not want to risk displeasing the Russians too much. But it will be surprising if this unsupervised, unobserved, unmonitored ceasefire lasts more than a few weeks.
All sides in the Syrian conflict will want to use the ceasefire–however long it lasts–to rest, regroup, and rearm. It would be a mistake, in the absence of a firmer and longer-term political solution, for them not to do so. No political solution appears on the horizon. The High Negotiation Commission of the Syrian opposition has published its concept for a transition to a democratic society, but Bashar al Assad is showing no interest. The Iranians and Russians, having doubled down on their support for him, can see no alternative that would be even half as friendly to their interests as Bashar. They can no longer back up without losing their privileges in Syria sooner rather than later.
Later it may be, but strategically Moscow and Tehran have lost. They have linked the fate of their interests in Syria to a dictator who has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed the country. The day will come when Syrians will throw out Bashar and his allies. But there is no guarantee the successor government that does that will be a democratic one. It could just as well be a new, Sunni Islamist one, led by the likes of JAN/JFS or some version of ISIS. President Obama has studiously avoided worrying about how Syria is governed, but his successor will have to.
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Faute de mieux
I’ve been hesitating to comment on the Russian/American agreement on Syria. So far as I know no text is available publicly. As the devil is in the details, it is important to read the whole thing. It is also important to see how implementation goes. But herein a few preliminary remarks.
The basic outline is clear enough from press reports and the leak of an earlier draft. Humanitarian corridors are to opened to besieged areas like Aleppo. Starting this evening, which happens to mark the beginning of Eid al Adha, the Russians and Americans will try to restore the cessation of hostilities, after a weekend of ferocious attacks on opposition forces. Provided humanitarian deliveries go well, seven days later Moscow and Washington will begin jointly to target Fateh al Sham, the successor organization to Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al Nusra, which has been largely embedded until now with non-extremist fighters. The idea is to give the non-extremists time and incentive to separate and to prevent the Russian/Syrian government/Iranian coalition from targeting the non-extremists. The war against the Islamic State, which keeps itself separate from the opposition, will also continue.
Secretary of State Kerry describes the agreement as a step in the direction of a political transition. I don’t hear Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov saying that. This agreement in no way threatens the regime, which gets a respite from the fighting during which it will no doubt try to resupply and consolidate its fragmented forces. It is unclear what, if any, restraints on its air and ground attacks are included in the agreement, though it is presumably expected to participate in the ceasefire by not attacking opposition forces that observe it. If there is to be a political transition in accordance with the June 2012 UN communique, it won’t start until the military balance changes significantly from its current tilt in favor of the Syrian government.
The Syrian opposition people I’ve talked to welcome the agreement, more out of resignation than enthusiasm. They doubt the regime will abide by it and know that Fateh al Sham makes important contributions to the resistance to Bashar al Assad. But they also know that the non-extremist opposition is exhausted and needs a break, even if only a temporary one, from a year of indiscriminate but successful Russian/Syrian government/Iranian assault. The US and its Gulf allies could turn off the opposition’s spigot of money and supplies. Better, the opposition figures, to go along with a pause in the fighting and make the best of it. Maybe something like a relatively stable patchwork of opposition-controlled safe areas will emerge.
But the cessation of hostilities isn’t likely to last. Without third party observers, the same frictions that wrecked the last cessation of hostilities are likely to wreck this one as well. The Americans of course know that but hope to do enough damage to Fateh al Sham in the meanwhile to prevent it from being able to launch attacks against Americans, which the Administration is convinced is the extremists’ intention. They do not believe the formal separation of Fateh al Sham from Al Qaeda has made the jihadis any less dangerous to Americans.
Whatever they say about not being wedded to him, the Russians and Iranians have demonstrated unequivocally that they care more to keep Bashar al Assad in power than the Americans care to see him removed. I hope Secretary Kerry at least told them that success in that endeavor means they are responsible for rebuilding Syria, the bill for which will be several hundred billion dollars.
From my point of view, the agreement is a second best and likely temporary solution. President Obama is simply not willing to do more to help the Syrian opposition prevail in forcing a political transition. Secretary Kerry was left with no Plan B. He had no alternative to a negotiated agreement, which means he was over a barrel. The non-extremist opposition is in the same unfortunate state. Faute de mieux, they will go along to get along, hoping that it leads to where they would like to go.
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Talk but little progress
The Middle East Institute published my brief on the G20 summit yesterday:
The weekend’s G20 meeting in peaceful and prosperous Hangzhou, China focused on the world economy, especially trade and finance, as well as climate change. But President Barack Obama met on the sidelines with presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, while Secretary of State John Kerry tried and failed for the umpteenth time to hammer out an agreement on Syria with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The war-ravaged Middle East is never far from world leaders’ priorities these days, but progress is proving elusive.
The American proposal for Syria would renew the cessation of hostilities, allow delivery of humanitarian assistance, and enable joint U.S./Russian targeting of extremists while grounding the Syrian air force. The Russians ran out the clock in Hangzhou, enabling the Syrian army with Russian, Iranian, and Hezbollah support to cut off access again to Aleppo, where opposition forces had managed to breach the siege of several hundred thousand civilians. The Russians may eventually agree to a cease-fire, while Syrian government forces pursue the “starve and surrender” tactics they have used successfully elsewhere. Without a rebalancing of the military situation in favor of the opposition, President Bashar al-Assad is likely to regain control of Syria’s largest city, by foul means.
Obama’s meeting with Turkey’s president focused on responsibility for July’s coup attempt, which the Turkish government blames on an erstwhile Erdogan ally who lives in Pennsylvania. While Obama lauded the survival of Erdogan and Turkish democracy and also promised cooperation on determining responsibility for the failed coup, he is unwilling to short-circuit the extradition procedures, which can be lengthy and complex. Erdogan was undoubtedly disappointed.
The Turkish and American presidents likely also discussed Syria. The Americans want to target the Islamic State and minimize Turkish and C.I.A.-supported Arab opposition clashes with Pentagon-supported Syrian Kurds—only making the contradictions in U.S. policy all too apparent.
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Middle East and Europe: impact and prospects
I had the privilege this morning of speaking today by Skype to the Ambassadors’ Council convened at the Macedonian Foreign Ministry in Skopje. These are the notes I used:
- First let me thank the organizers, in particular Ambassador Abdulkadar Memedi and Edvard Mitevski, for this opportunity. It is rare indeed that I get to talk about my two favorite parts of the world: Europe and the Middle East.
- My focus today will be on the latter, as I am confident that Europeans—a category that in my way of thinking includes all the citizens of Macedonia—know more than I do about the impact of the refugee crisis on your part of the world.
- But big as it looms for you, the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants from the Greater Middle East is a fraction of a much larger problem.
- There are 4.8 million refugees from Syria in neighboring countries, the largest number in Turkey but millions also in Lebanon and Jordan. Upwards of 8.7 million will be displaced within Syrian by the end of the year. 13.5 million are said to be in need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria.
- The number of refugees leaving Syria has leveled off, but asylum applications in Europe are well above 1 million and still rising, albeit at a declining rate.
- The U.S. is committed to taking only 10,000 Syrians. I don’t anticipate that our politics will allow a lot more anytime soon, though eventually we will have many more arrive through family reunification and other modalities.
- The 1.5 million people you saw flow through Macedonia over the past year or so were the relatively fortunate Syrians, not the most unfortunate. Moreover, most who have arrived in Europe are male. If their asylum applications are successful, that will lead to large numbers of family members eventually joining them.
- The vital question for me is this: what are the prospects for ending the wars that are tearing Syria to shreds? And what are the prospects for other potential sources of migrants and refugees from Iraq, from Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya?
- More than five years after Bashar al Assad’s attempted violent repression of the nonviolent demonstrations in his country, prospects for peace still look dim.
- The Russians and Iranians, whose support to Assad has been vital to his survival, show no signs of letting up and have in fact doubled down on their bad bet.
- The Iranians have committed Lebanese Hizbollah, Iraqi Shia militias and their own Revolutionary Guard to the fight, not to mention Afghan and other Shia fighters.
- The Russians have not only redoubled their air attacks but also added flights from Iran, now suspended, as well as cruise missiles fired from the Black Sea. Moscow has now killed more civilians, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, than the Islamic State.
- The Americans continue to refuse to fight Assad, Iran, or Russia. President Obama lacks both legal authorization and popular support to attack them. Americans want him to focus exclusively on the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, which is what he is doing, apart from assistance to some Syrian opposition forces willing to join in the fight against extremists.
- Donald Trump would certainly follow the same policy, perhaps redoubling efforts against the Islamic State and looking for opportunities for cooperation with Russia. Hillary Clinton has pledged to look at other options like protected areas or no-fly zones, but it is not clear that she will pursue them.
- The space for moderates in Syria is shrinking. Violence always polarizes, as you know only too well. In addition, the Americans are restraining the forces that they have equipped and trained from attacking the Syrian army. They want moderates focused exclusively on fighting the Islamic State.
- This morning, Turkish forces entered Syria at Jarablus on the Euphrates, in support of Arab and Turkman forces aiming to deprive the Islamic State of its last border point and block the expansion of Kurdish forces from taking the last stretch of the Turkish/Syrian border they don’t control.
- When will it all end? I don’t know, but I think it likely to end at best not in a clear victory of one side or another but rather in a fragmented and semi-stable division of areas of control.
- The Syrian government will control most of what Assad refers to as “useful Syria”: the western coast and the central axis from Damascus through Homs and Hama, with Idlib and Aleppo still in doubt.
- The opposition will likely control part of the south along the Jordanian border as well as a wedge of the north, including a piece of the border with Turkey stretching from Azaz to Jarablus.
- The Kurds will control the rest of the border with Turkey. Raqqa and Deir Azzour are still up for grabs, with the likely outcome opposition in the former and government in the latter.
- That is the likely best. Will that end the refugee problem?
- I think not. Nothing about this fragmented outcome is likely to make it attractive for Syrians to return home. Security will remain a serious problem and little funding will be available for reconstruction. Syria will remain unstable for years to come.
- What about other parts of the Greater Middle East?
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Shifting currents in Syria
As UN envoy Stefano de Mistura tries to reconvene Syria peace talks next week, there are important developments that could impact his prospects.
The Syrian government has continued to block aid to opposition-controlled areas, causing Stefano to abruptly curtail humanitarian task force deliberations last week. Moscow last week flew bombers from Iran, an innovation now reportedly suspended. The Russians also launched cruise missiles allegedly targeted against Jabhat al Nusra (which is generally embedded with more moderate insurgents) from the Black Sea. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, Russia has now killed more civilians in Syria than ISIS, though it started years earlier. Moscow has shown no visible inclination to limit Syrian government strikes on civilian areas, which it targets on a daily basis.
At the same time, the situation in northern Syria has evolved in a direction favorable to the US. Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who are mostly Kurdish fighters, have retaken Manbij from the Islamic State and are heading for Jarablus on the border where the Euphrates crosses from Turkey into Syria. Arab SDF forces are said to be preparing the assault from inside Turkey, which wants to block the Kurds from taking over the entire northern border of Syria. At the same time, farther east in Hasakeh, US-supported Kurdish forces are fighting with the Syrian army, with which they cooperated in taking the town a year ago and had maintained a truce since. The Syrian air force last week came close to clashing with US aircraft sent to protect the Kurds, who are reportedly trying to oust President Assad’s forces entirely from their northeastern “canton.”
If successful, these operations in northern Syria will cut off the Islamic State from its supply lines in Turkey and possibly end the ambiguous relationship of the Kurdish PYD forces with the Syrian government, though the Syrian opposition is unlikely to accept the PYD into its fold, not least because of Turkey’s opposition. The possibility of an attack on the Islamic State capital at Raqqa is starting to loom on the horizon, perhaps even before an effort to liberate Mosul in Iraq.
Still John Kerry is saddled as the Obama Administration draws to a close with the unenviable task of conducting Middle East diplomacy without any serious threat of coercion. The President, supported by most Americans, simply doesn’t want to use American force against anything but the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. This means not targeting the Syrian government and Hizbollah forces, even when they attack civilians. The Iranians and Russians in Syria are following his lead in a way: they are using force on the issues they care about and ignoring diplomacy. No matter what they say about not being wedded to Assad, the Russians and Iranians are mostly fighting the Syrian opposition in an effort to prevent regime change, with few relatively few attacks on on the Islamic State.
This free for all isn’t likely to work well for John Kerry in his efforts to bring about a ceasefire in Syria. The proposition he has been flogging is this: US cooperation with Russia in targeting the Islamic State and Al Qaeda (presumably including Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the allegedly unaffiliated successor to Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al Nusra) provided Russia ends attacks on the non-extremist Syrian opposition and convinces President Assad to ground his air force. The relative success of US-allied forces in northern Syria may strengthen Kerry’s hand, but there is no sign yet of any willingness on Russia’s part to meet its side of the bargain.
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Fighting to win
No, this won’t be about the American elections. It’s about Syria.
The Russians and the Iranians are doubling down in Aleppo, where the insurgent part of town is virtually surrounded, civilians are under daily bombardment, and too brief humanitarian pauses are routinely flaunted. The breach opposition forces have made in the siege is mostly unusable, as it is constantly under fire. The Russians are now flying their bombers from Iranian territory, in order to shorten the transit time and increase the ops tempo.
Why would they do this?
They have good reasons. If they ever did, Tehran and Moscow no longer have any hope that a successor regime in Syria would treat their interests respectfully. So many Syrians have now suffered from their intervention that they can count only on autocracy, of Assad or someone like him. They may not share Assad’s objective of retaking control of every inch of Syria, but they want him to win in Aleppo because they think that will ensure his survival in power.
Assad understands this and will drag his allies as deep into the hole he has dug for himself as possible. Yesterday and today he attacked Kurdish forces in northern Syria, if not for the first time still for the first time in a long time. There had been a de facto truce between the regime and the Kurds, who have gotten some support from the Russians (as well as the Americans). It looks as if Assad has decided to put the Russians on the spot, knowing that they don’t dare abandon him for the sake of the Kurds.
Assad is even looking strong enough for the Chinese to pitch some military assistance in his direction. They don’t really have a dog in this fight, but they presumably want to come out on the winning side. If that is an autocracy, all the better.
Meanwhile, the Americans are sticking to their game plan, which requires them to focus exclusively on defeating the Islamic State (ISIS): the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have taken the strategically important northern town of Manbij from ISIS and are heading towards Jarablus, on the border where the Euphrates crosses from Turkey into Syria. Washington has supposedly promised that the Kurds will withdraw from the Manbij “pocket” once the fighting is over, leaving Arabs in charge to prevent the Kurds from controlling the entire northern border of Syria and thus to please the Turks. We’ll see if that intention holds.
The big losers in all this are non-extremist Syrians, particularly those who live in opposition-controlled areas. Their cause at this point seems lost, which I suppose is why the White House persists in its indifference. Only resounding defeat of ISIS will play well in the American election campaign. Obama is also fighting to win, but in a different war from the one Putin and Assad are pursuing.
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