The Eighth Gate

How Syria Came to This

2018-04-18T12:17:00.000-04:00

How Syria Came to This

A story of ethnic and sectarian conflict, international connivance, and above all civilian suffering

Andrew Tabler

April 18, 2018

The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/04/syria-chemical-weapons/558065/

Seven years of horrific twists and turns in the Syrian Civil War make it hard to remember that it all started with a little graffiti.

In March 2011, four children in the southern city of Der'a scrawled on a wall "It's your turn, Doctor"—a not so subtle prediction that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a British-trained ophthalmologist and self-styled reformer, would go down in the manner of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, the Mubarak regime in Egypt, and eventually, the Qaddafi regime in Libya. But Syria's story would turn out differently.

The crackdown started small. Assad's security services arrested the four graffiti artists, refusing to tell their parents where they were. After two weeks of waiting, the residents of Der'a—who are famously direct and fiery—held protests demanding the children's release. The regime responded with live gunfire, killing several, and drawing the first blood in a war that's now killed some half a million people. With every funeral came more opportunities for protests—and for the regime to respond with more violence.

The protests quickly spread to other towns and cities—Homs, Damascus, Idlib, and beyond—engulfing what is nominally still the Syrian Arab Republic in flames. The underlying dynamic that drove the Arab uprisings—a rapidly growing youthful population and a rigid repressive regime incapable of change—was consistent across a number of countries. But the effects varied widely, and nowhere were they more ferocious than in Syria, where early hopes that Assad would go the way of other dictators have crumbled in the ruins of Syria's ancient cities and the shattered lives of its people. The progression of the regime's brutality, from deploying snipers to pick off protesters demanding freedom and dignity, to dropping chemical weapons on entire towns, has unfolded with the world watching in real time.

And now the world has again observed, through snippets on social media, what appears to have been a chemical-weapons attack in a rebel stronghold. It has watched the retaliatory strikes of the United States and allies, and heard the Pentagon claim success in the bombing of three facilities associated with Assad's chemical weapons program. How Syria moved from graffiti, to the near-toppling of its dictator, to that same tyrant's reassertion of control over a broken country, is a story of ethnic conflict, international connivance, and above all civilian suffering. And it's not ending now, but only entering a new and perhaps even more dangerous phase.

Decision-makers in Western capitals had long viewed the Assad regime as a grim model of Middle Eastern stability, but in 2011, they suddenly thought that "people power" would bring down Assad as it had other Arab despots. The Assad regime, however, had something the others didn't. "Popular resistance" strategies work well against authoritarian systems whose leadership come from the country's ethnic and sectarian majority, such as Egypt. Soldiers ordered to turn their guns on protestors are faced with a choice: Shoot their brethren among the protestors, or help get rid of those ordering them to do so. This causes a split in the army and security services, which can lead to a toppling of the government.

Assad's by contrast is a minority government with a kind of fortress of sectarian interests around it. Minority Alawites serve at the core, followed by concentric rings of other minorities (Christians, Shia, etc.), and finally by coopted Sunnis who represent the majority in Syria. Minority army and security officers are therefore farther removed from the majority Sunni population, making them more likely to order fire against protestors than to topple their brethren in power. This has galvanized the Assad regime against the kind of splits that toppled Ben Ali and Mubarak.

But this evidently wasn't part of President Obama's calculation when, in August of 2011, he declared that Assad should "step aside," as if Syria's strongman would magically leave on his own. To speed up the process, Obama organized European and Arab League allies to adopt similar language, as well as a raft of sanctions on the Assad regime, most notably a ban on purchases of Syrian crude oil, the regime's lifeline. Totally missing was a plan for removing Assad in the event he didn't go peacefully.

And Assad wasn't about to. In the autumn of 2011 and the first half of 2012, multiple UN initiatives failed to bring about sustainable ceasefires or a solution to the hostilities. While Western governments urged Syrians to keep the protests peaceful, the regime's military escalation to include more snipers, minority militiamen dubbed "ghosts," and rotary and fixed-wing aircraft caused death tolls to skyrocket. More and more Syrians picked up weapons to defend themselves, and hundreds of local militias were organized under the banner of the Free Syrian Army. The insignia included the old nationalist flag of Syria, but the FSA was more of a franchise than a true army.

The uprising had morphed into a civil war. So when in the summer of 2012 Russia and the United States offered a transition plan to help stop the violence, both sides dismissed it, each one believing it could defeat the other militarily. If anything, it looked like the rebels were gaining the upper hand; one group managed to seize half of Aleppo, Syria's largest city and industrial center, that July. At that point the pattern was set: When the regime faced serious losses, it resorted to extreme measures. In Aleppo Assad's forces resisted, holding onto the western side of the city and firing Scud missiles at rebel bases—becoming the second largest user, after Najibullah in Afghanistan, to deploy these weapons against their own people. Death tolls and refugee outflows spiked.

As the battle overshadowed diplomacy, the United States and its allies had hard decisions to make. First was what to do with the Syrian opposition, within which jihadist groups had rapidly sprung up, and which were poised to grow stronger in the absence of outside efforts to corral and arm the nationalist opposition. Obama, however, famously rejected plans to do so. Just as important, and ultimately disastrous, was an ancillary decision to allow U.S. regional allies to arm the opposition instead. Money from various Arab Gulf countries flowed into Syria, sowing even more division among those fighting Assad, and making Salafist and jihadist groups the strongest among them.

The second issue, and one that would usher in another turning point in the Syrian war, concerned U.S. intelligence reports that Assad was preparing to escalate further, by using his chemical weapons stockpile, which at that time was estimated to be the largest in the region if not the world. In an August 20, 2012 press conference, Obama said "that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized." As the war raged on that autumn, more and more reports and samples indicated the Assad regime had indeed begun using chemical agents in low concentrations.

By then, death tolls were already skyrocketing, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) estimating around 50,000 dead by the end of 2012, and refugee outflows approaching a half million. Syria was melting down quickly. Evidence of chemical weapons use kept accumulating; refugees kept fleeing; and money kept flowing to jihadist groups, including what would ultimately become the Islamic State. And new combatants were entering the field. Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias were operating on the side of the Assad regime, while in the northeast, Kurdish fighters called the shots in an effort to secure their own autonomy. As the country fell apart, terrorist organizations filled up the vacuum on every side.

By summer 2013, opposition groups gained more ground in and around the capital Damascus. Either out of military desperation or pure brutality, the Assad regime doubled down on chemical weapons use. On August 21, 2013, nearly a year to the day after Obama set his fated "red line," the Syrian military launched sarin-filled rockets on the Eastern Ghouta pocket east of Damascus, an attack that the U.S. estimated killed around 1,400 civilians. As warships assembled off the Syrian coast for a possible retaliation, Obama backed down under pressure from Congress and his base, opting instead for a Russian proposed deal that would supposedly rid Syria of chemical weapons.

This dramatic turn of events caused whatever remained of Syrian opposition support for the U.S. to evaporate. On a trip to southern Turkey that autumn, I spoke to representatives of the Syrian opposition who told me they were furious over the decision. Many believed Assad had used chemical weapons and gotten away with it. But most were surprised that Washington believed the deal would stop him from doing it again—a tragically prescient conclusion.

Refugee outflows hit 2 million that September. And ISIS duly expanded throughout Syria and Iraq. In 2014, its territory was approximately the size of Great Britain, and the militants were suddenly threatening not just the Assad regime but also the Iraqi state Washington had spent billions cobbling together. It was at this point that the Obama administration decided to strike Syria. While international headlines focused on the horrific execution of Americans in ISIS captivity, more than 76,000 Syrians were killed in 2014 alone, the conflict's highest yearly death toll, and 1.3 million more Syrians fled to neighboring countries. Hundreds of thousands were displaced inside Syria as well.

America was not then targeting Assad directly—though Obama had by that point begun a covert program to arm some of the rebellion—but the regime was contracting as the U.S.-backed rebels crossed deep into the Alawites' heartland, threatening Assad's sectarian base. This was perhaps why Assad began dragging his feet on the chemical-weapons deal, missing deadlines for moving stockpiles out of the country even as reports surfaced that it hadn't fully declared all of them.

Alarms were going off in Moscow, but over a different problem. The concern was not the pace of the deal's implementation, but that its Syrian ally was in a dangerous position: It had limited deployable manpower, and was losing territory even with the support of Iranian-backed militias. Only days after the United States signed the Iran nuclear accord in 2015, Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' external operations wing, flew to Moscow; within about a month, Russia had established a base in the threatened Alawite stronghold of Latakia on the Mediterranean coast. Throughout the autumn of 2015, Russian aircraft dropped Vietnam-war era "dummy" bombs in support of Assad regime and Iranian forces throughout Syria, slowly reversing the regime's losses in Latakia and allowing Assad and Iranian-backed groups to march north on Aleppo.

A million more Syrians fled the country, with many fleeing beyond neighboring Turkey onward to Europe. Over 55,000 Syrians were killed in 2015 alone, bringing the overall total for the conflict to over a quarter million, with an estimated 100,000 more undocumented deaths.

The United States, now saddled with defeating ISIS and supporting the Syrian opposition, buckled. It engaged both Russia and Iran in an attempt to establish ceasefires and talks to end the war—even as Russia continued to pound rebel positions, allowing what was left of Assad's army and an array of Iranian-sponsored militias, including Hezbollah to push the rebels back. By summer 2016, this hybrid force surrounded and pulverized east Aleppo. And the U.S. was meanwhile seeing one of its allies challenged by another, as Turkey effectively invaded Syria to block U.S.-backed and Kurdish-dominated forces from consolidating their territory. Americans were focused on the outcome of the 2016 presidential election; Syrians, though, were focused on fleeing, with an estimated 11 million—half of Syria's prewar population—on the run either in neighboring countries or inside Syria. Aleppo fell by late December, sending thousands of oppositionists into Idlib province, where many pro-Assad commentators claimed they would be corralled for slaughter.

As U.S. President Donald Trump took the reins in Washington, the Assad regime turned its attention to Idlib province and rebel-controlled areas of southwest Syria adjacent to Israel and Jordan. But a closer look at the force composition of those offensives showed a larger Iranian-supported and Hezbollah component than ever. U.S.-supported rebels fought back, pushing the regime south despite Russian air support.

This was the context in which the Trump administration faced its first major instance of a chemical attack in Syria, in April 2017, in the village of Idlib's Khan Sheikhoun. The United Nations ultimately confirmed it included the nerve agent sarin—a substance the Assad regime was supposed to have given up. This time, instead of trying to do a deal, Trump struck the airbase responsible for delivering the attack.

And yet Washington also found itself fighting one of Assad's enemies, ISIS. In the summer of 2017, the U.S., Russia, and Jordan managed to strike a deal to dramatically decrease the fighting in pockets of the country, allowing the Assad regime to launch an offensive against the jihadist group. Its army by now depleted, it relied in part on major contingents of Shia militias and Russian-organized units. Sunni areas liberated from ISIS afterward were expected to welcome the regime's offensive, but the Assad regime's brutality, combined with the Shia composition of the Iranian-backed forces coming to occupy Sunni Arab areas, caused most internally displaced persons to head toward the Kurdish-dominated zones.

ISIS, however, was not the regime's only priority, or even its primary one. In early 2018, the Assad regime launched an offensive to capture the Ghouta pocket—by then the opposition's last major presence near the Syrian capital and site of the 2013 chemical weapons attack. The regime and associated Iranian-backed militias were able to cut the pocket in two as Russia attempted to broker an evacuation of civilians and fighters to other areas. When those talks broke down, the Assad regime launched a military assault to take Ghouta by force. For reasons of limited manpower, sheer brutality, or both, Assad appears to have resorted to chemical weapons once again, killing dozens and again stepping over Washington's red line.

And once again, American strikes followed against regime targets. On Friday night, Secretary of Defense James Mattis characterized these strikes as a "one-off" meant to deter the use of chemical weapons, but no matter what comes next, those weapons are but one gruesome part of settling the Syrian Civil War. The war is now arguably the world's largest humanitarian disaster since World War II. The death toll now stands at nearly half a million, though the UN has stopped counting. Countless others are wounded and missing. A U.S. government report that the Assad regime is using a crematorium near the Saidnaya Prison outside Damascus indicates many of their remains may never be found. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates 13.1 million Syrians are in need of humanitarian assistance, with more than 6 million internally displaced and 5 million registered as refugees. Hundreds of thousands more remain unregistered. Estimates of the total number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon today surpass a quarter of the country's population, with only slighter smaller figures for Jordan.

This is horrible enough. But meanwhile, the way the Syrian Civil War is "winding down" is increasingly unacceptable to regional countries. Israel, worried about the spike in Iranian militias and influence in Syria, is bombing there like never before. Turkey, concerned about the growth of the Kurdish-dominated forces linked to Ankara's archenemy, the PKK, has invaded northwest Syria, pushing Kurds out of one stronghold in Afrin with threats to do the same in another one, Manbij. Meanwhile, negotiations in Geneva and elsewhere have yet to produce viable ceasefires or anything resembling a political settlement.

Like the civil war in neighboring Lebanon, the Syrian Civil War now threatens to morph into the Syria War—a regional conflagration which seems likely to burn for a generation. And civilians are cursed to live it, and die in it, every day.

Andrew Tabler is the Martin J. Gross Fellow at The Washington Institute.

Russia Crosses the Euphrates: Implications

2017-09-22T16:21:00.000-04:00

POLICY ALERT

Andrew J. Tabler

Also available in

September 18, 2017

By helping Assad's forces bridge the river, Moscow is increasing the risk of direct confrontation while obstructing U.S. efforts to defeat IS, stabilize eastern Syria, and limit Iranian arms transfers.

The Russian Ministry of Defense announced today that "Syrian government troops" crossed to the east bank of the Euphrates River using a Russian pontoon bridge and amphibious vehicles. Although the situation remains fluid, the crossing by what appeared to be elements of Syria's Iranian-trained and Russian-supported "5th Corps" has deep implications for U.S. policy on the Islamic State (IS), the Syria war, and Iran.

First, the move significantly discredits the argument that the Euphrates can serve as a viable deconfliction line while IS implodes, much like the Elbe River separated Russian and American forces in Europe at the conclusion of World War II. The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are arriving at Deir al-Zour from the northeast while Russian-supported Syrian forces and Shia militias (including Hezbollah) are arriving from the west. According to Russian media, the contingent crossing the Euphrates is a collection of local and national regime forces called the 5th Corps, many of whose members have been trained and organized by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Russia. The crossing increases the likelihood of confrontation between proxies or even between U.S. and Russian forces, as highlighted on September 16 when Russian aviation reportedly bombed SDF targets located within a couple miles of U.S. Special Operations Forces. This raises the question of how the United States intends to protect the SDF and other proxies fighting IS.

The move also complicates any potential SDF push down the east bank of the Euphrates toward local oil and gas fields, which could be used to fund reconstruction in former IS-controlled areas. Syrian regime spokeswoman Bouthaina Shaaban told Iran's Press TV that Bashar al-Assad's "strategic intent" was to halt the SDF's advance, describing the joint Kurdish-Arab brigade as an illegitimate aggressor and equating it with IS. If Russian and pro-Assad forces hold the bridgehead on the east bank, they will likely block the primary north-south road on that side of the river, forcing the SDF to continue pushing down the IS-controlled Khabur River Valley in order to reach the oil fields further south.

Assuming they are unable to capture the major energy and agricultural zones south of Deir al-Zour, the SDF -- and Washington -- would lose much of their leverage over the Assad regime, Iran, and Russia in any political settlement to the Syria crisis. That scenario might also further Assad's plan to retake "every inch" of the country by military means. In light of the regime's depleted manpower, that approach would likely entail wider involvement by the IRGC and Shia militias from Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond. Given the large Sunni Arab majority population in the Euphrates Valley, such an outcome would exacerbate sectarian and extremist violence in the area, resulting in a "New Syria" that refugees are unlikely to return to.

In addition, the crossing brings Iran one step closer to its stated goal of creating a land bridge between Iraq and Syria, giving the Islamic Republic another avenue through which to place troops and weapons on the borders of U.S. allies. Tehran has steadily worked toward that goal even as Israel reached a de-escalation agreement in southwestern Syria designed to keep Hezbollah and other Iranian-supported militias a few kilometers away from the Golan Heights frontier. Such developments have incensed Israel's security establishment, increasing the likelihood that they will expand their military operations in and around Syria to loosen Iran's deepening grip on the country.

To head off this growing list of problems, the United States is engaging in serious diplomacy and communication with Moscow to avoid further military complications. Yet Washington also needs to reemphasize its support for the SDF at a time when the lines of control between them and pro-Assad forces are narrowing. This means establishing clear policy on what the United States will and will not do to defend its proxies in eastern Syria and elsewhere. In June, U.S. forces struck Shia militias threatening al-Tanf base in southern Syria, then downed an Assad regime aircraft attacking the SDF; these incidents serve as models for how to support proxies while avoiding escalation.

Washington's primary objective is to defeat IS, but the administration has also stated its intent to contain Iran's "malign activity" in the region. Russian diplomats claim there is no military solution to the conflict, but today's Euphrates crossing shows that defense officials in Moscow and Tehran have something different in mind, raising the risk of direct U.S. confrontation with Assad, Iran, and Russia. If one purpose of U.S. support for local actors such as the SDF is "shaping the environment" to contain Iran and its allies, then Washington needs to recognize that Tehran and Assad are directly challenging this goal with the help of Russian airpower. U.S. officials therefore need to decide what diplomatic and military moves are necessary, including frank conversations with the Russians.

Andrew J. Tabler is the Martin J. Gross Fellow in The Washington Institute's Program on Arab Politics.

The Scramble for Eastern Syria

2017-06-03T07:03:00.000-04:00

Saturday, June 3, 2017

The Scramble for Eastern Syria

With ISIS Weakening, the Game Is On

Andrew J. Tabler

ANDREW J. TABLER is Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of In the Lion’s Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington’s Battle with Syria [1].

The game for who will rule eastern Syria after the Islamic State (or ISIS) is on. On May 18, the United States destroyed a military convoy [2] allied with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after it ignored repeated warnings to stop its advance on al-Tanf, a U.S. and British special operations base on the Syrian-Jordanian border. The base is covered under the October 2015 U.S.-Russian deconfliction agreement, which established a hotline for avoiding direct military confrontation between Russian- and U.S.-backed forces in Syria. This came a few days after the Russian base at Khmeimim [3] had declared that its air force, along with Iranian military advisers, would support Assad’s troops in their attempt to push east, clearing the road from Damascus to Baghdad and preventing the formation of a U.S.-supported buffer zone in eastern Syria. All of this followed Washington’s announcement on May 9 that it would provide heavier weapons [4] to the Kurdish factions of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to help them take ISIS’ capital, Raqqa—enraging U.S. ally Turkey.

Such actions are nominally about fighting ISIS. But the various actors in Syria are increasingly thinking about what comes next [5], with an eye toward the weaknesses of the other side. U.S.-Russian deconfliction agreements in Syria will likely soon be put to the test, increasing the likelihood for accidents at best. There is now a greater risk that the United States and its allies will be brought into direct military confrontation not only with Assad but with his Russian and Iranian backers—a risk that was previously tempered by the need of both factions to fight ISIS. To ensure that the risk of military confrontation remains manageable, the United States and Russia should agree on the parameters of a de-escalation zone in southern Syria that keeps the focus on ISIS and contains Iran’s ambitions for a land bridge through Syria to the Mediterranean. As things are going, however, this is unlikely to occur anytime soon, unless the Assad regime’s weaknesses are laid bare for its Russian and Iranian backers.

THE GREAT GAME

According to media reports, the May 18 U.S. strike on pro-Assad forces came after the column, made up of government troops and Shiite militiamen, refused instructions to turn around and ignored warning shots from U.S. aircraft. Although such aggressive moves by regime forces seemed to come from nowhere, bellicose messages had been emerging from the Russian air base at Khmeimim all week. These were noteworthy for their explicit intent and the degree to which they promised Russian cooperation with Iran. For instance, one message from the base’s Telegram feed stated:

The decision by Russia and Iran to encourage the Syrian government to push east comes in the wake of two major moves by the United States. The first was a missile strike against the Assad regime in April in response to its alleged use of sarin nerve gas [6]—a violation of international law (the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Syria joined in 2013 as part of Security Council Resolution 2118) as well as of a 2013 U.S.-Russian agreement [7] to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles. The second was Washington’s recent decision to ramp up support for the Kurdish-led SDF in its effort to liberate Raqqa.

Together, these moves signaled a deepening U.S. involvement in the Syrian war. The Americans’ previous plan for fighting ISIS in Syria, developed under former President Barack Obama, was based on support for the Kurdish People’s Protection Units [8] (YPG), the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party, a Syrian offshoot of the Turkish Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The PKK is officially considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department and is the archenemy of Washington’s NATO ally Turkey. To square this circle, the United States created an umbrella organization around the YPG—the SDF—that encouraged non-Kurdish groups to help the Kurds fight ISIS in eastern Syria and the Euphrates River valley in return for U.S. support. The hope was that as the SDF took over more territory, it would gain support from the Kurds’ Sunni Arab rivals, who make up the majority of the population in eastern Syria and in the Euphrates valley in particular. The valley is the heartland of ISIS and its precursor, al Qaeda, and holding it is key not only to defeating the organization but, most importantly, to ensuring that it does not come back stronger in the future.

Militarily, the plan has been a success. The SDF has significantly reduced ISIS’ territorial holdings, surrounded Raqqa, and gained the admiration of U.S. military advisers. Politically, however, the SDF remains dominated by the Kurds. And although some Arab fighters have joined the SDF, to date they have mostly been either Arab Christians and other minorities or else Sunni Bedouin tribesmen, who are rivals of the settled tribes of the Euphrates Valley. Unless Washington can convince the YPG to give up its majority shareholding in the SDF and share power with the settled tribes, the Kurds’ ability to hold Raqqa and the rest of the Euphrates Valley seems like a long shot. [9]

Russia and Iran recognize that given the SDF’s limited ability to hold territory, the collapse of ISIS in eastern Syria presents an opportunity for the Assad regime to recapture lost ground. Over the past few months, Moscow and Tehran have thus been supporting the efforts of the government’s new Fifth Corps, an amalgam of pro-Assad militias with Russian and Iranian support, to push east from Aleppo to Manbij in north-central Syria—thereby cutting into Turkey’s buffer zone north of Aleppo—and then press south and east along the west bank of the Euphrates toward Raqqa. This move gives Russia multiple options: it can present the regime to the Sunni Arabs of the Euphrates Valley as a viable alternative to the SDF while leaving open the possibility of supporting the YPG in the event of greater U.S. cooperation with YPG rival Turkey. The move also enables Russia to play the role of spoiler to the United States’ plans in the region.

GETTING IN THE ZONE

The Russian-Iranian plan is ambitious, but it retains a critical flaw: the Assad regime’s depleted manpower means that it cannot conquer one piece of territory without exposing itself somewhere else. For instance, as the Fifth Corps pressed east over the past few months, the government began rapidly losing territory north of Hama, raising fears it would lose the city. Although Assad had repeatedly [10] used chlorine gas since the 2013 deal, it was only after these recent losses that his forces turned to the far more deadly sarin. This in turn prompted the U.S. missile strike on Assad’s Shayrat airfield, which destroyed around one-fifth of the Syrian air force. But it also sent a message: the United States will not allow the Assad regime to gas its way out of the conflict with Russian and Iranian help.

Realizing the regime doesn’t have the resources to fight on multiple fronts, Moscow and Tehran proposed in early May the creation of several “de-escalation zones,” or areas that the regime would not attack, in exchange for Russian and Iranian forces acting as “guarantors” that would monitor ceasefire violations. Such an arrangement would have allowed Russia and Iran to accept a de facto partition of the country without ceding control of the zones to neighboring countries, particularly Jordan and Turkey, supporting the opposition in those areas. From a U.S. perspective, the area with the greatest potential (and highest priority) for a prospective de-escalation zone is southwest Syria, including Deraa and the area abutting the Golan Heights. There, the armed opposition is more moderate—and, to date, more manageable—than in many other areas, and the Iranians’ presence is small enough that their ability to act as spoilers may be limited. As a result, southwest Syria is an area where a deconfliction agreement backed by U.S. and Russian security guarantees has a more realistic chance of succeeding.

Securing the south would not only protect U.S. allies Jordan and Israel from jihadists and the Assad regime, it would also provide a foothold for future anti-ISIS military operations to move east into the Euphrates Valley. Southern Syria’s Sunni Arabs, supported from Jordan, could also provide a possible alternative, or complement, to the SDF.

Russia’s announcement of joint operations with Iran to help Assad push toward the Euphrates also signaled that, as the Americans long suspected, Moscow intends to help Tehran secure a land bridge—a contiguous stretch of territory controlled by Iranian allies—from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Hezbollah-controlled areas in Lebanon, which would allow for the delivery of more and heavier weapons westward to Syria and Lebanon. Yet this is unlikely to convince other countries in the region, such as the Gulf states and Jordan, to stop supporting the opposition and may actually intensify the conflict. It could also provoke a response from U.S. President Donald Trump [11], whose administration seeks to counter Iran’s expansionist ambitions in places far outside its traditional sphere of influence, including the wilds of eastern Syria.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

The outcome of the Russian- and Iranian-supported thrust eastward remains unclear. Over the past few days, pro-regime forces and allied Shiite militias—reportedly flying Russian flags [12] at the head of their columns—have been capturing territory from ISIS in the Badiya, the area east of Damascus in southern Syria. Yet taking and holding areas closer to the Euphrates will require many more troops, highlighting the regime’s manpower deficiencies and putting the Russians’ and Iranians’ willingness to escalate to the test.

The best way for Washington to manage this situation is to let the regime expend its energy pushing out toward the Euphrates while preparing for the advance to stall, as it looks likely to do. This requires sticking with the U.S.-Russian deconfliction agreements to protect al-Tanf while strengthening opposition groups in the region, many of which include Sunni Arabs and are therefore more politically acceptable to the locals. Initial indications [13] from Syrian and Russian sources are that Assad intends to take the ISIS stronghold of Deir ez-Zor in the central Euphrates Valley, giving the United States time to bolster opposition forces south toward Abu Kamal on the Iraqi border. Such an initiative would give the United States better options in southern Syria, help key U.S. allies Jordan and Israel, and temper Iran’s plans to dominate the Baghdad–Damascus road. It would also give the United States much-needed Sunni Arab political support for—or an alternative to—the Kurdish-dominated SDF in eastern Syria.

Source URL: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2017-06-03/scramble-eastern-syria

Links
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Lions-Den-Eyewitness-Account-Washingtons/dp/1569768439
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/18/world/middleeast/syria-american-warplanes-airstrike-militia-convoy.html?_r=0
[3] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2016-04-21/moscows-playbook-syria
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/us/politics/trump-kurds-syria-army.html
[5] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2015-11-04/not-so-great-game-syria
[6] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2017-04-06/syria-policy-after-chemical-attacks
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/world/middleeast/syria-talks.html
[8] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/2015-04-22/counting-kurds
[9] http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/eyeing-raqqa-a-tale-of-four-tribes
[10] https://www.opcw.org/news/article/media-brief-reported-use-ohttps://www.opcw.org/news/article/media-brief-reported-use-of-chemical-weapons-southern-idlib-syria-4-april-2017/f-chemical-weapons-southern-idlib-syria-4-april-2017/
[11] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2016-11-28/syria-policy-trump
[12] http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/06/syria-desert-tanf-us-backed-rebel-group.html
[13] http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/growing-risk-of-international-confrontation-in-the-syrian-desert

Altering Assad's Course

2017-04-10T16:09:00.001-04:00

POLICYWATCH 2781

Andrew J. Tabler

Also available in العربية

April 6, 2017

As the Trump administration decides whether to pursue a limited military response, it should use existing international legal mechanisms to pressure Damascus and Moscow right away.

On April 4, the Assad regime used chemical weapons against civilians in Syria's Idlib province, creating an early and potent test for the Trump administration's foreign policy. While Washington has prioritized defeating the Islamic State in eastern Syria, the regime's ceasefire violations and use of CW in the western part of the country show that President Bashar al-Assad is continuing his effort to reclaim every inch of Syrian territory, despite lacking the forces to do so. As long as this dynamic persists, the use of CW and other strategic weapons will likely continue, impeding efforts to reach a negotiated settlement that keeps the country intact. This in turn will worsen the humanitarian crisis and allow U.S.-designated terrorist groups to expand their safe havens.

The administration has already begun formulating its public response to the attack, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson indicating a potential policy shift during an April 6 press conference: "Assad's role in the future is uncertain clearly, and with the acts that he has taken it would seem that there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people." If the president decides to back this rhetoric up with robust action, he can draw on several existing international mechanisms.

INTERNATIONAL LEGAL OUTLOOK

As the Fact Finding Mission established by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) gathers evidence on the substance used in this week's attack and those responsible, Washington and its partners should demand that the Assad regime comply with the mission's mandate, particularly the so-called Joint Investigative Mechanism. To date, this mechanism has helped the OPCW determine that the Assad regime used chlorine gas on at least three separate occasions. These are clear violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which Syria joined as part of the much-touted 2013 CW deal brokered by Russia and the United States. If the suspected use of sarin gas on April 4 is likewise verified, it will prove what the OPCW has long suspected -- that Syria has not disclosed all of its CW stockpile as required under the 2013 deal, an equally serious matter with deep consequences for international nonproliferation efforts.

More broadly, these developments show that Assad is escalating his ruthless bid to stay in power. By indiscriminately gassing opposition-held areas and obstructing a political resolution, he is ensuring that the country remains in a permanent state of partition, hemorrhaging people and filling up with terrorist organizations on all sides. And by not following through on his commitments under the CWC, he threatens to supercharge the conflict -- the longer he uses such weapons, the more likely they are to fall into terrorist hands, not to mention the fact that such outrages boost radicalization and recruitment efforts. In short, the situation continues to pose a clear threat to regional and international security.

The United States should therefore turn the tables on Assad, using his CWC violations as leverage to gain compliance on three other issues:

· A sustainable ceasefire that would allow genuine political talks to take place

· A political transition as outlined in the 2012 Geneva Communique and UN Security Council Resolution 2254

· The creation of safe zones in Syria to protect civilians.

Compliance with the OPCW and the Geneva Communique are both enshrined in the same Security Council document: Resolution 2118, which is enforceable by measures such as sanctions and use of force following the passage of a subsequent Chapter VII resolution. Resolution 2235, which created the Joint Investigative Mechanism, is a Chapter VII resolution. Among other benefits, pushing for enforcement of these resolutions would compel Russia to reveal whether it is unable or simply unwilling to goad the Assad regime into stopping its CW use and negotiating a political transition. This approach would also prepare Americans for a possible military showdown with Assad over his CWC violations. Moreover, the resolutions could serve as a means of gaining Russian acquiescence on the necessity of safe zones in Syria.

COMING CLEAN AND NEGOTIATING IN GOOD FAITH

Focusing on the effort to rid Syria of CW would help Washington determine exactly where it stands with both Damascus and Moscow. The best way to prevent Assad from escalating the crisis and dominating the transition is to pressure him into complying with the CWC, particularly the provisions regarding use and disclosure. This would also take away a strategic weapon that the regime has repeatedly used and keep it from falling into terrorist hands. The sequencing of this strategy could unfold as follows:

Create diplomatic pressure around Resolutions 2118 and 2235. This effort should focus on two issues: destroying CW and facilitating the transitional governing body outlined by the Geneva Communique. The CW problem is the only Syrian issue on which there is clear Security Council agreement regarding the steps Assad must take. Similarly, the transition process outlined in the Geneva Communique has broad international acceptance. Emphasizing these two issues by focusing on compliance with Resolution 2118 would keep the regime on agenda and steer it away from justifying its onslaught against civilians as a war on "terrorism." At the same time, the U.S. government should continue pushing for adoption of UN draft resolutions that would hold regime figures accountable for any involvement in CW attacks. Such resolutions should have clear consequences in the event of noncompliance.

Build public pressure on Damascus and Moscow based on Assad's CWC noncompliance. By highlighting the regime's use of CW and repeated ceasefire violations, Washington can determine once and for all whether Russia will convince Assad to meet his commitments on CW and political transition. Such an approach would also prod Moscow on the humanitarian and political front, giving it an excuse to truly pressure Assad.

Increase political support for a viable Syrian settlement and efforts to combat terrorism. Diplomatic and public pressure could help restore opposition support for the United States following its nadir under the Obama administration. Washington could in turn use this goodwill to obtain rebel guarantees concerning a ceasefire and political talks. This could also serve as a good first step toward creating political support for safe zones in order to protect civilians and push out terrorist groups.

Warn Russia to stay clear of Syrian bases. In order to manage the risk of escalation and Russian retaliation for collateral damage from possible U.S. military strikes, Washington should warn Moscow to keep its forces away from all Syrian bases involved in the planning of CW attacks or the mixing/deployment of CW agents.

THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES: LIMITED DIRECT MILITARY FORCE

Assad's record since 2013 shows that he does not change course substantially unless he is confronted with the credible threat of U.S. military force. His response to Israeli military strikes is instructive in this regard. In the past, the regime did little when Israeli jets entered Syrian airspace and bombed convoys attempting to transfer strategic weapons to Hezbollah. More recently, however, it has used antiaircraft systems to fire on Israeli planes as they conduct such missions, seemingly self-assured by its growing military support from Russia and Iran. It is imperative to get Assad off that dangerous course. This is not just a matter of American credibility: by prolonging and escalating the war, the regime is perpetuating direct threats to the United States and its allies in Europe and the Middle East.

The domestic political timing increases the urgency: President Trump will face growing scrutiny over his handling of the crisis, constraining his ability to take assertive steps on other pressing international issues (e.g., the North Korea situation). As the administration decides whether to pursue the relatively low-cost option of a limited military response (e.g., cruise missile strikes), it can take effective international action against the Assad regime's behavior right away, mainly by pressing for implementation of Resolutions 2118 and 2235 and demanding the creation of safe zones.

Andrew Tabler is the Martin J. Gross Fellow in The Washington Institute's Program on Arab Politics.

The Vienna Declaration: Precision Is Key to Avoiding a Slippery Slope

2015-11-09T17:03:00.000-05:00

POLICYWATCH 2518

Andrew J. Tabler and Olivier Decottignies

Also available in

November 5, 2015

For all the sound principles laid out in Vienna, future talks cannot evade the timeline and mechanism of a transition in Syria, and Russia needs to prove its goodwill on the ground.

An October 30 multilateral meeting in Vienna has produced a nine-point statement of "mutual understanding" on how to end the violence in Syria "as soon as possible." The Vienna Declaration, which complements and refers to the 2012 Geneva Communique, seeks to provide a more inclusive mechanism to "narrow remaining areas of disagreement and build on areas of agreement," and thus could be a starting point for involving supporters of the opposition and the regime (including, for the first time, Iran).

Yet while inclusiveness in Syria necessarily implies a certain degree of ambiguity -- as reflected in the declaration's wording -- finding a workable way out of the crisis will require much more precision on the issue of transition, particularly in terms of establishing a timeline to test Russia and the Assad regime. For example, the current declaration omits the word "transition" in favor of "governance," and it fails to acknowledge that a sustainable settlement is a prerequisite for defeating ISIS and other terrorist groups. Such imprecision could allow Russia and Iran to argue that the Vienna Declaration gives them a diplomatic imprimatur to pursue a military solution, one based solely on keeping President Bashar al-Assad in power. This scenario would only perpetuate the war, fuel terrorism, create more refugees, and likely lead to Syria's long-term partition.

THE DECLARATION'S GAPS

In some ways, the Vienna Declaration seems like diplomatic progress. Seventeen countries (including Iran) joined the UN and European Union in signing onto nine points of understanding:

Preserving Syria's territorial integrity and secular character (the first time the latter point has received such recognition).
Maintaining state institutions.
Protecting civil (read: minority) rights.
Accelerating diplomacy to end the war.
Ensuring humanitarian access.
Defeating ISIS and "other terrorist groups."
Establishing "governance" via UN-supervised elections pursuant to the Geneva Communique and Security Council Resolution 2118. The ever-growing Syrian diaspora has the right to participate in these elections, which will determine the country's new leadership (a point that has elicited worries in Damascus).
Ensuring a Syrian-led political process.
Implementing nationwide ceasefires.

But the declaration is far more ambiguous on transition than the Geneva Communique. For example, point seven speaks vaguely of a process leading to "credible, inclusive, non-sectarian governance" without mentioning the word "transition" or related mechanisms. In contrast, the Geneva Communique centered on the creation of a "Transitional Governing Body" with "full executive powers" formed by "members of the present government and the opposition and other groups." And while it allowed regime members to be included in the transition, Geneva precluded the possibility of the sort of Assad-led "reform" process that his backers are now pushing toward.

In addition, the Vienna Declaration does not reiterate Geneva's call for a national dialogue process and the release of political prisoners, freedom of movement for journalists, and the right to demonstrate -- all preconditions for a genuine transition. Also missing is a transition timeline. The talks are due to resume in a fortnight, and other meetings are likely to follow, so setting a timeline is vital to determining whether Russia -- now Assad's most important patron at the negotiating table -- is able and willing to deliver a bona fide transition. Otherwise the default deadline will be 2021, when Assad's current term in office comes to an end following his "reelection" last year. The modalities of transition are unmentioned as well -- while the declaration notes that Syria's state institutions should remain intact, devolving executive powers to a transitional governing body will be crucial, especially regarding the security apparatus.

The international community also needs to sober up about what kind of election is really possible in Syria, and under what kind of supervision. The current regime is one of the world's biggest electoral manipulators, with Assad winning a laughable 94.6 percent of the vote in 2000, 97.6 percent in 2007, and 88.7 percent last year. Parliamentary votes in favor of his Baath Party supporters are a certainty as well. This means that any plan based on the argument "Assad stays until new elections" is really a formula for his continued rule. Only a new government that creates a safe environment for public debate and mobilization can lay the groundwork for new elections at the local, provincial, and national level. As in Bosnia and Kosovo years ago, the UN should seek a more serious and sustained formula than the awkward wording in point seven of the Vienna Declaration: "These elections must be administered under UN supervision to the satisfaction of the governance and to the highest international standards of transparency and accountability."

NEXT STEPS

Explicitly outlining a transition process (as described in the Geneva Communique) and setting a firm timeline will help avoid the mistakes made last year, when battlefield developments overtook diplomacy. In early 2014, when Washington anticipated regime "victory" and advocated "de-escalation" and "local ceasefires," UN Special Representative Staffan de Mistura put forward his "Freeze Plan" for Aleppo, in which the regime would halt its attempt to encircle that city in exchange for a ceasefire and negotiations with the opposition. The plan failed, largely because the regime lacked the manpower to retake and hold Aleppo and the various Sunni-dominated areas where opposition forces were strongest. While Russia's intervention has now propped up Assad for the time being, lack of manpower remains a hard reality, and moving the diplomatic goalposts from "transition" to "governance" will not alleviate that shortage, leaving no viable alternative to a negotiated solution.

Agreeing on these issues will likely require more than one round of negotiation. Although it is unclear whether Assad's allies can actually bring him into such a settlement, their willingness to try should be put to the test. Regarding Iran, questions remain about the Foreign Ministry's mandate to negotiate a true transition given that the Supreme Leader's Office and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have primacy on Syria policy and have invested a great deal of blood and treasure in preserving the Assad regime. Meanwhile, Assad has repeatedly thumbed his nose at the opposition during attempts to negotiate a settlement in Moscow, most recently in April.

Other tests should come on the battlefield: Russia claims that its intervention is aimed at fighting terrorists, so its forces should abstain from striking groups that are not recognized as such by the UN Security Council. Moscow's military role also puts it in a unique position to pressure Assad on renouncing assaults against civilian-populated areas (including through the use of barrel bombs) and allowing humanitarian access throughout Syria. Both efforts could serve as short-term confidence-building measures to facilitate diplomacy toward agreement on a stable end state. Without such agreement and a plan to achieve it, the war will not only perpetuate human suffering and displace more people, it also risks becoming a mechanism for Syria's permanent partition into regime-controlled areas and durable terrorist safe havens.

Last but not least is the importance of the declaration's penultimate point: "This political process will be Syrian led and Syrian owned, and the Syrian people will decide the future of Syria." The next rounds of talks should consult with the widest possible circle of Syrians other than those internationally condemned as terrorists. Gone are the days when ending the war required a two-sided negotiation between the regime and a single opposition body. Future declarations should stipulate that any solution to the crisis must be broadly accepted as legitimate and appropriate by this wide circle of Syrians, or else the "solution" will be an empty piece of paper.

Andrew Tabler is the Martin J. Gross Fellow in The Washington Institute's Program on Arab Politics. Olivier Decottignies is a French diplomat-in-residence at the Institute.

The Not-So-Great Game in Syria - Foreign Affairs

2015-11-09T17:01:00.002-05:00

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

The Not-So-Great Game in Syria

And How to End It

Andrew J. Tabler

ANDREW J. TABLER is senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of In the Lion’s Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington’s Battle with Syria [1].

Russia has greatly complicated an already-fraught situation by picking a fight with Syria's majority Sunni rebels and tripping into other regional players' spheres of influence.

In the last few weeks, Russia has returned to the Middle East through a direct military intervention in Syria. In doing so, it has entered the Great Game for the heart of that country and the region. Early speculation that Russia intervened unilaterally to prop up the Bashar al-Assad regime has since been undermined by evidence that Russian air strikes are coordinated with an Iranian-supported regime offensive near Aleppo. In fact, it is likely that a June 2015 visit to Moscow by Qassem Suleimani, leader of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, was part of the planning for the eventual Iranian-Russian intervention.

Assad apparently invited the Russian strikes, which has given them some degree of legitimacy, as has Moscow's concurrent promotion of negotiations, which started in Vienna last week. But by intervening on behalf of what Russian officials call a "mosaic" of Iranian-supported forces, Moscow has picked a fight with Syria's majority Sunni rebels and their brethren in the region. It has also tripped into other regional players' spheres of influence, including those of Turkey, the Gulf countries, the Kurds, Jordan, and Israel.

Before the Russian intervention, Syria seemed to be turning into Bosnia or Somalia. Now, it could well become another Afghanistan.

UNBALANCED

Russia's intervention in Syria is the country's first direct military engagement in the Middle East (in Egypt's war of attrition, Soviet pilots flew Egyptian planes; in the 1973 war, the Soviets sent planes but didn't use them). The intervention has primarily consisted of air strikes in areas where the Assad regime had recently been losing ground: north Latakia, the Ghab plain north of Hama, the Rastan pocket north of Homs, and Aleppo. Meanwhile, according to multiple media reports, Iranian, Assad regime, and Hezbollah fighters have started a ground campaign to retake areas in the north lost earlier this year to the so-called Army of Conquest -- a patchwork of moderate, Islamist, and al-Qaeda-affiliated rebels.

Collectively, the strikes and ground campaign represent a concerted effort to secure three key sites. The first is the Ghab plain, Syria's most fertile area and the boundary between minority populations on the coast and the majority Sunni population inland. The second is the M-5 roadway, the transportation spine linking Damascus to Homs, Hama, and the north. The third is the besieged city of Aleppo.

Russian air strikes and the associated Iranian-backed offensive have already collided head-on with Turkish and Arab Gulf spheres of influence in northern Syria. Russia has indicated to Turkey via multiple incursions into Turkish airspace that it regards northern Syria as being in play. Turkey, as Russia has made clear, must rein in its support for rebel groups at the Bab al-Salam border crossing in the north and the Bab al-Hawa crossing to the west. Although Russian strikes have hit a number of groups, the most significant have been against moderate groups backed by the United States, the Saudi-backed Salafist group Ahrar al-Sham, and al-Qaeda's Jabhat al-Nusra. Rebels in the area have tried to stop or slow the regime's ground offensive using U.S.-made TOW antitank missiles, a weapon rumored to be paid for by Riyadh but that requires Washington's approval of end users.

The Russian strikes have also altered the balance between Turkey and the Kurds. The Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party and the political heavyweight behind the Kurdish People's Defense Units (YPG), is attempting to form a contiguous Kurdish belt along Syria's northern border. Russia is reportedly keen to support this effort in order to block Russian and Chechen fighters in Syria from returning home via the Caucasus. The PYD, sensing Washington's weak hand, has openly asked for U.S. backing to connect the western Kurdish canton of Afrin to Kobani by seizing the area west of the Euphrates River (which, not incidentally, is where Turkey has said it intends to create a safe zone).

Washington has encouraged the PYD to focus on working with Arab tribes, Assyrians, and Syriac Christian units under the umbrella of the Syrian Democratic Forces in eastern Syria against the self-proclaimed Islamic State (also known as ISIS). If the PYD does not receive U.S. support for its unification efforts, though, it could turn to Russia and Iran to close off the belt from the south and cut ISIS off from Turkey. This area is home to a mix of Turkmen, Kurds, and Sunni Arabs, which means that however the situation develops, it is likely to be extremely bloody. The Kurds are strong but likely not strong enough to hold the whole area. ISIS, meanwhile, has long had the region in its cross hairs; ISIS-linked ideologues point to prophecies that in the village of Dabiq, a great battle will take place between an invading "infidel" army that will be turned back by defending Muslims, marking the beginning of the end of the world.

In this conflagration, Russia has been relatively hands-off in southern Syria, with only a few strikes near Tel Harra and Daraa, despite rebel gains there over the last year that have brought them close to Damascus. Southern Syria is split among the Jordanian, Israeli, and Hezbollah spheres of influence, but Israel holds air supremacy in the area. The lack of Russian action there, at least so far, could be the product of a September meeting in Moscow between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Russians have said they have created a joint antiterror "mechanism" in Amman that might keep Russian planes out of the area, at least for now.

What is still unclear is Russia's plans for ISIS. That Russia is serious about combating the terrorist group is doubtful, given that 80 percent of Russian air strikes so far have targeted groups other than ISIS. Unless Russia is willing to commit tens of thousands of ground troops, it is unlikely that it (or Assad) will be able to retake and hold Raqqa and the Euphrates valley. In other words, Moscow is in for a long slog in the Syrian quagmire, a point U.S. President Barack Obama has repeated on multiple occasions.

THE DIPLOMATIC GAME

The Russian intervention, nominally meant to fight terrorism, is designed to strengthen Assad's and Iran's hands in the diplomatic game over a political settlement in Syria. The ongoing talks in Vienna are just the latest move in untying what is often referred to as the "Assad knot" -- the fraught question of the Syrian president's role in a transition that was outlined in the Geneva Communique of 2012, which Russia and the United States negotiated.

At that time, the regime's fall seemed likely, so Western representatives watered down the communique's language over Assad's fate to overcome a Russian veto at the United Nations. Instead of demanding that Assad "step aside" as part of a transition, the United States agreed that a "Transitional Governing Body" with "full executive powers" would be formed by "mutual consent." American negotiators argued that the mutual consent clause would give the opposition a veto over Assad's participation in the transitional government. But by not explicitly ruling Assad out of the scheme, and by failing to define which opposition groups had to be consulted, the agreement allowed Assad to stall for time and gave Russia the upper hand.

The political basis for an Assad-led transition (or a transition led by any other member of the Assad regime) seems far from clear. During the last talks in Moscow between the Assad regime and representatives of the opposition, in April, the Russians failed to gain agreement on an antiterrorism platform -- mainly because the regime insists on labeling anyone in the opposition as a terrorist. Russia's subsequent air strikes against moderate elements of the Syrian opposition indicate that Moscow might see the situation in a similar way. Otherwise, it could indicate that when pressed to choose Assad or ISIS, the opposition will opt for the former. The notion of getting the regime and the opposition to bury the hatchet and unite against terrorism is thus a real long shot.

YOUR MOVE

The ultimate result of Russia's intervention in Syria will depend on what domestic actors and their regional supporters do next. The mothballing, but not cancellation, of the U.S. train-and-equip program shortly after Moscow started bombing Syria was just the latest example of Washington's horrible timing in the Syrian war; the optics are likely to benefit jihadists above all. Washington's sending of 50 Special Forces to back the PYD-supported Syrian Democratic Forces against ISIS is unlikely to help the rebels fighting Assad in western Syria, and it could create considerable tension between the United States and Turkey. Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, a group of 55 clerics and prominent Islamists signed a statement that called for everything just short of jihad to confront the Russian intervention.

In other words, Islamist factions such as Ahrar al-Sham could soon be getting much more support. If Jabhat al-Nusra or ISIS starts spreading its influence in southern Syria, it could trigger Jordan and Israel to seriously consider the creation of a formal safe or buffer zone in southern Syria. Until now, the two have maintained the status quo with a de facto safe area stretching about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) into Syria from the Jordanian border. Something deeper would require a more formal arrangement and, likely, a Security Council resolution.

Turkey and the Gulf states have already facilitated the transfer of TOW missiles into Syria, but the real dilemma remains whether and under what circumstances they will provide their allies with antiaircraft capabilities. For years, the Syrian opposition has demanded shoulder-fired man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) to counter the regime aircraft and now Russian jets. But the lack of clear lines of separation among opposition forces and the prevalence of terrorist groups in the opposition have kept MANPADS out of Syria. Meanwhile, direct air support for the opposition from Turkey or Jordan could set the stage for a direct military confrontation between NATO and Russia. If Russia continues to pound opposition positions in the north or expand operations to the south in support of the Assad regime, tens of thousands of refugees could go pouring across the border, dramatically accelerating plans for the creation of safe areas.

With the electoral victory of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) on November 1, Ankara is likely to viciously fight any PYD attempt to unite the Afrin and Kobani cantons. Turkey would likely combat such a move by supporting Syrian groups in the area along the Marea line, the main supply route from Turkey's Bab al-Salam crossing south to Aleppo. Although it is unlikely, a PYD move en masse could even trigger a direct Turkish military intervention to fight both the YPG and ISIS.

What remains to be seen is how Tehran will react, not so much to Russia's military campaign (from which it has already benefited) but to Russia's attempts to cobble together a broad-based multisectarian transition in Syria. Up to this point, Tehran's support in Syria has been narrowly focused on building up the minority-dominated National Defense Forces and importing Hezbollah fighters as well as Shiite Iraqi and Afghan militias to fight rebels. Iranians say their approach is based on the assumption that the Assad regime is an inverted pyramid -- that is, that the whole system would crumble without Assad. Russian officials quietly voice an interest in a transition in which the regime is preserved but Assad at some point exits the scene.

Even if Moscow is able to pull a rabbit out of its diplomatic hat and get a process started, it remains far from clear that Tehran would break ranks with the Assad family. For now, deployment of more Iranian forces to the gates of Aleppo indicates that Tehran is doubling down on Assad yet again, even as its nuclear agreement with Washington brings it in from the cold. Such a development would likely ensure Syria's partition indefinitely, and with it, the Great Game of Syria.

Source URL: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2015-11-04/not-so-great-game-syria

Links
[1] http://www.amazon.com/In-Lions-Den-Eyewitness-Washingtons/dp/1569768439
[2] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/regions/russian-federation
[3] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2015-10-01/putins-syria-strategy
[4] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/interviews/2015-01-25/syrias-president-speaks
[5] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/regions/syria
[6] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2015-08-11/new-great-game
[7] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/06/nato-chief-jens-stoltenberg-russia-turkish-airspace-violations-syria
[8] http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/uploads/Maps/PYDProjectRojava-map-Oct2015.pdf
[9] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2015-09-16/putins-damascus-steal
[10] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2015-10-08/should-united-states-work-russia-syria
[11] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAAahUKEwjag7XgsfjIAhVEXD4KHUbqD-o&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.un.org%2FNews%2Fdh%2Finfocus%2FSyria%2FFinalCommuniqueActionGroupforSyria.pdf&usg=AFQjCNF1D7VSjUsI7oetrh930QjeksxRmQ&sig2=VD4Kc24CujxZyxB95yA4NQ
[12] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/turkey/2015-11-02/akps-golden-opportunity

The New Great Game - Foreign Affairs

2015-08-12T12:00:00.001-04:00

The New Great Game

How Regional Powers are Carving Up Syria

By Andrew J. Tabler

SNAPSHOT August 11, 2015

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2015-08-11/new-great-game

Just two weeks ago, the first 54 graduates of Washington’s trumpeted program to train and equip the Syrian opposition crossed from Turkey into Syria. They were immediately attacked by al Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra, which killed and captured a number of the trainees. The media and Congress rightfully focused on the inauspicious start to a program conceived well over a year ago, but lost in the shuffle was the fact that the unit’s commander is a Syrian Turkmen—an ethnic Turk with Syrian citizenship—and that the area through which the unit marched into Syria, the same territory that Turkey now proposes as a safe zone, is dominated by the very same sect.

Turkey is hardly alone in efforts to carve out friendly zones in the mayhem of the Syrian war. For over two years, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is based in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq, has worked with its own local affiliate to establish Rojava, the Western province of Kurdistan. Jordan, whose intelligence services have been active in southern Syria for years, has been reaching out to local fighters and tribesmen in a bid to keep the Islamic State (also called ISIS) at bay. And some in Israel are considering working with Syria’s Druze community, parts of which straddle the Golan frontier. On a regional level, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are also supporting groups in both northern and southern Syria, and Iran is sending record numbers of Hezbollah and Shia militiamen and billions of dollars annually to assist the Bashar al-Assad regime in western Syria.

As most of the world has stood by and watched Syria’s disintegration, regional powers have been busy claiming spheres of influence in the country in the name of security and humanitarian assistance. Bit by bit, Syria’s neighbors are redrawing that country’s map, the balance of power in the Middle East, and U.S. foreign policy.

TURKEY’S TAKE

Perhaps the most prominent country planning to carve out a sphere of influence in Syria is Turkey, which recently reached a tentative agreement with the United States to establish an “Islamic State Free Zone.” The 60-mile-wide zone, extending from the northern Syrian border town of Azaz eastward to Jarabulus on the Euphrates River, is designed to insulate Turkey from ISIS and seal the Syrian-Turkish border. The catalyst was a massive bomb blast in late July, claimed by ISIS, which killed 32 and injured 100 in the Turkish town of Suruc. In theory, Syrian insurgents, supported by Turkish artillery and possibly protected by Turkish and U.S. air cover will secure the zone. The agreement is a culmination of years of Turkish proposals to establish a no-fly zone in northern Syria that would serve as a staging area for rebels aiming to topple Assad.

Initial reports indicate that Turkish forces will not enter the zone. But the territory roughly overlaps with Syria’s largest pocket of ethnic Turkmen, so Turkey could be planning to rely on them as a local base of support.Initial reports indicate that Turkish forces will not enter the zone. But the territory roughly overlaps with Syria’s largest pocket of ethnic Turkmen, so Turkey could be planning to rely on them as a local base of support. Turkmen, who number only 300,000 in Syria, are ethnically distinct from Syrian Sunni Arabs, who represent about 65 percent of the Syrian population and make up the lion’s share of the armed opposition.

KURDISH CONNECTION

Also on Syria’s northern border, the PKK is vying for influence. Two years ago, Syria’s Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian offshoot of the PKK, and the Kurdish National Council (KNC) set up the Kurdish Supreme Committee, which declared the de facto autonomous region of Rojava. The new autonomous region consists of three cantons in Afrin, Kobani, and Hassakah. Although the Supreme Committee and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), insist that they are not the PKK, Turkey has sealed its border with Rojava over concerns that the units are but a fig leaf for the PKK. Ankara, as well as other Kurdish factions, openly dislike the support PYD receives from Iran and its tolerance of Assad regime forces in Hassakah.

Last month, the United States launched airstrikes against ISIS to support the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and conducted an operation to seize the border region of Tal Abyad from ISIS. This key battlefield victory united the long separated cantons of Kobani and Hassakah, giving the Kurdish sphere perhaps the most territorial integrity in Syria outside of Assad regime areas. Some in the PYD now advocate pushing west to Afrin to form a Kurdish belt across the northern border of Syria. In response, Turkey and the United States agreed to keep the PYD out of Turkey’s proposed safe zone.

JORDAN’S ZONE

On Syria’s southwestern border, Jordan is also preparing to carve out a sphere of influence. For years, Jordanian intelligence, which closely coordinates with the United States, has actively tracked and worked with rebels in southern Syria. As the conflict has worsened, Jordanian officials increasingly find themselves in a no-win situation. If the rebels take Damascus, further chaos just 60 miles from the Jordanian border is almost certain. If Assad wins and tries to retake the south, thousands more refugees would pour into Jordan. And, given the Assad regime’s lack of manpower, Syria would still be extremely unstable. If the country’s chaotic partition continues, the regime’s continued use of chemical weapons and reliance on Iran would further push Syria’s rebels into the hands of radical jihadists such as ISIS, a problem no country wants nearby.

A Financial Times report released on June 29 to coincide with the Turkish announcement of a potential safe area, indicates that Jordan is planning to set up its own humanitarian buffer zone inside Syria in response to the Assad regime’s battlefield losses and due to the fear of an ISIS expansion in southern Syria. The exact details of the plan remain sketchy. On June 14, Jordanian King Abdullah pledged to “support” the tribes of southern Syria and western Iraq to protect Jordan from ISIS, which was widely interpreted to mean that he would arm them. But on July 30, the Jordanian government issued a press release saying that the King’s comments “were misinterpreted.”

Regardless, the announcement followed a debate in the Jordanian press on Hashemite interests in southern Syria, which date back to the Great Arab Revolt of 1916–18. Traditionally, Jordan’s sphere of influence roughly overlaps with the Houran, the volcanic plateau south of Damascus that straddles the Syrian–Jordanian border. By relying on Houran-based fighters and tribesmen, with whom Jordanians share kinship, Jordan has successfully kept ISIS out of southern Syria (so far) and kept Nusra, whose southern leadership also hails from the Houran region, in check. Some Jordanians even insist that local Nusra leaders could be “peeled away” to more moderate battalions.

ISRAELI AREA

Jordan’s sphere of influence in Syria partially overlaps with that of Israel, which is increasingly concerned about the political and military vacuum to the east of the Golan frontier. For years, Israel has quietly engaged rebel groups in southern Syria, provided extensive medical support to those fleeing the fighting, and tolerated weakened Assad regime forces on the northern Golan. Israel and Jordan share common goals in southern Syria, most notably keeping ISIS and Iran out of the Houran and Quneitra. But Israel’s policy options have been constrained by two hard realities: first, that the most effective rebel units in southern Syria are jihadists, who are fundamentally opposed to the State of Israel, and second, that the only way the Assad regime, which Israel had generally tolerated, can retake all of southern Syria is with direct help from Iran, which is Israel’s primary strategic enemy.

Some Israelis see a potential middle path through the Druze, an ethnic minority that resides in both Syria and Israel and whose brethren are historically close to the Assad regime. Over the last year, several Israeli officials have quietly indicated that they owe the Druze a debt for their service in the Israeli armed forces. Outreach to the Druze is complicated by the fact that some Druze are actively involved in Hezbollah-inspired IED attacks along the Golan fence. But a series of Assad regime withdrawals from Druze areas over the last few months have reportedly caused some Druze to look for options to defend themselves against jihadists.

IRAN’S GAME

Iran’s motivations for what, by most estimates, is the largest foreign intervention in Syria, are to ensure a safe corridor for arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon, maintain a presence on the Golan Heights to attack Israel, and ensure that what is left of the Assad regime does Iran’s bidding. Iran’s multilayered attempt to prop up the Assad regime has carved out what is arguably the largest sphere of influence in Syria. Based out of Lebanon, Iranian-backed Hezbollah are active in the border region of Qalamoun and in the Assad regime’s northern and southern campaigns. Iraqi and Afghan Shia militias imported by Tehran are actively involved in the same campaigns. Perhaps the most prominent example of Iranian influence has come via Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Quds Force activities to develop Syria’s paramilitary, which by some estimates, is now as large as the Syrian army. This comes in addition to an estimated $6 billion in annual economic and energy support from Tehran that has helped prop up what is left of the Assad regime.

GULF GOALS

Although they lack a territorial foothold, the Gulf Arab states, which are mainly looking to counter Iran, have established influence in Syria by supporting Turkish and Jordanian efforts to arm rebel factions. When, in the summer of 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama decided not to arm the moderate Syrian opposition, Arab Gulf countries stepped in to directly fund Islamist and moderate groups in Syria. Some of these funds made it into the hands of extremists, which spread rapidly in opposition-controlled areas of Syria.

It appears that the Gulf countries mostly support moderate and Islamist factions while tolerating those factions’ coordination with jihadists. Concerned about the rise of extremists, Gulf Arab countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia publicly supported U.S., Turkish, and Jordanian efforts in 2014 to shut off support to Islamists and jihadists in Syria. Yet since then, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have only increased the money they send to Syria. The exact recipients are unclear, but it appears that the Gulf countries mostly support moderate and Islamist factions while tolerating those factions’ coordination with jihadists such as Ahrar al-Sham and Nusra in the Jaysh al Fateh, or Army of Conquest. This group has proven a formidable challenge to the Assad regime in northern and southern Syria.

UNMAPPED TERRITORY

The map of Syria is changing by the day. Its neighbors have brought their own political, military, and sectarian tensions to the civil war there, which has made it more complicated and bloody. Despite recent diplomatic overtures, agreement between Iran, Israel, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey over what to do in Syria seems unlikely anytime soon, as does a softening of the hardline positions of both the Assad regime and jihadists such as ISIS and Nusra.

But the creation of regional spheres of influence does open some possibilities for diplomacy, something Obama hinted at in his remarks following the Iran deal announcement concerning conversations with Tehran about “a political transition that keeps the country intact and does not further fuel the growth of ISIL and other terrorist organizations.” In the short term, neighboring countries and regional forces could use their influence to isolate and punish the most extreme groups in their areas. That would require the White House to orchestrate a balancing act of cutting political deals with neighbors and regional actors on such sticky issues as the role of President Assad, the means of his departure, and what a transition in Syria means. And, in the event an agreement is reached, each country would be given a key role in enforcing it.

In order to open the door for this possibility, the United States needs to recognize that Syria is a broken state that will not be repaired anytime soon—something it has been reticent to do. But recognizing regional spheres of influence in Syria and working with Syria’s neighbors (rather than with Russia in yet another top-down attempt at peace talks) to stabilize each piece of the puzzle could well be a vital first step in putting it back together again.

'Uncoordinated Deconfliction' in Syria: A Recipe to Contain, Not Defeat, ISIS

2015-01-30T12:19:00.000-05:00

Andrew J. Tabler

Also available in

January 26, 2015

If Washington continues to bomb ISIS while sidestepping the question of Assad's future, Syria may wind up partitioned between jihadist and Iranian-backed forces.

Washington's nascent policy of "uncoordinated deconfliction" with Bashar al-Assad's regime in the fight against the "Islamic State"/ISIS may not be a formal alliance, but it does have the potential to foster serious problems. The regime's tacit agreement to avoid firing on coalition strike aircraft -- juxtaposed with long delays in the Obama administration's train-and-equip program for the Syrian opposition and the president's October 2014 letter to Iran's Supreme Leader on cooperation against ISIS -- is creating widespread perceptions that the United States is heading into a de facto alliance with Assad and Tehran regarding the jihadists. If Washington continues this policy as is, it will merely contain ISIS, not "defeat" or "destroy" the group as called for by President Obama. Worse, it could lead to a deadly extremist stalemate in Syria between Iranian-backed/Hezbollah forces and jihadists, amplifying threats to U.S. national security interests.

THE ADVENT OF UNCOORDINATED DECONFLICTION

Following the outbreak of the Syrian uprising in 2011, the United States discarded its policy of "constructive engagement" with the regime and called on Assad to "step aside." Yet as the conflict progressed and President Obama decided not to decisively arm the rebels or enforce his "redline" on regime chemical attacks, jihadists such as ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra quickly filled opposition-controlled areas of Syria, providing strategic depth for offensives back into Iraq. The dramatic ISIS campaign against Mosul, the collapse of the U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces, and the execution of U.S. hostages led President Obama to call for the group's destruction. To reach this goal, the U.S.-led coalition launched a two-pronged approach: a bombing campaign and the arming of selected anti-ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria.

To carry out the first part of the strategy, Washington orchestrated a policy via Baghdad that one unnamed U.S. official referred to in a December 1 Washington Post story as "uncoordinated deconfliction." Last September, right before U.S. airstrikes expanded into Syria, Iraq's Shiite-led, Iranian-allied government sent National Security Advisor Faleh al-Fayyad to see Assad. While the meeting's exact details were not made public, the understanding forged was clear -- since then, over 900 coalition sorties have flown over Syria without regime forces firing a shot at them.

The second part of the strategy involves arming substate actors, most notably the Peshmerga in Iraq and Syria's moderate opposition. U.S. assistance to the Peshmerga is carried out with the permission of the Iraqi government, but the situation is much more complicated in Syria, where the opposition must be trained and equipped without the consent of the "legal" host government. This is something the U.S. military does not like to do but has pulled off in the past, as seen with the Peshmerga during Operation Northern Watch in the 1990s. A complicating factor is that Syrian rebels have shown less political cohesion than their Kurdish counterparts, raising the question of what entity a U.S.-trained force would report to.

While implementing the strategy has worked thus far in Iraq, its two prongs have been at cross-purposes in Syria. When striking ISIS targets, U.S. forces prefer to fly over Syrian territory without the Assad regime shooting at them. In order to truly defeat ISIS, however, the United States and its allies need to train and equip an opposition force to take over Sunni-dominated areas now controlled by ISIS, much to Assad's chagrin.

Unfortunately the optics of the first part of the strategy have seriously hindered the second. When U.S. bombing raids targeting ISIS unexpectedly expanded in September to include Jabhat al-Nusra in western Idlib province, the latter turned on the Western-backed Free Syrian Army groups in their area, dramatically overrunning the Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF) and Harakat Hazm. The decimated groups had been armed with U.S. TOW missiles and were therefore widely reported to be part of the American covert support program. While some of these forces have since regrouped, the U.S. bombing campaign -- combined with President Obama's November statements that Washington was not actively discussing ways to remove Assad -- has nearly collapsed the long-fraying rebel support for the United States. Meanwhile, the jihadist vs. Assad fight has been escalating.

A RECIPE FOR PARTITION AND CONTINUED CHAOS

Flipping back to support the Assad regime against ISIS will not solve Washington's problems, however. Beyond the terrible optics of assisting a president who has used chemical weapons and Scud missiles against his own people, the Assad regime is financially and militarily crippled and therefore unable to retake and hold areas currently controlled by ISIS. Its capture of territory over the past year has been the product of controversial "ceasefires" essentially imposed on besieged populations, as well as military operations carried out by Iranian-trained, Alawite-dominated irregulars from the National Defense Forces as much as army regulars. This means that whatever areas the regime attempts to retake in the coming months will see an influx of increasingly minority-dominated, Iranian-directed forces. In short, Bashar's comeback is not a legitimate ruler returning order to his country, but substantially a product of Iran's foreign legion of substate actors. This fight -- part of Tehran's effort to radically transform the Fertile Crescent -- is something that the region's Sunni powers will continue to oppose, most notably Turkey and the Gulf Arab countries.

Iran's deep and direct involvement in Assad's attempt to shoot his way out of the Syria crisis has implicated Tehran in the mass slaughter of Sunnis and set off a sectarian war that has engulfed Iraq and threatens to spread beyond. Iran's Syria campaign would make more sense if sectarian demographics were not so firmly against it. Syria is 75 percent Sunni Arab, roughly the same percentage as the overall Middle East minus Iran. And the rural areas that ISIS dominates in Syria and Iraq are upwards of 95 percent Sunni Arab. Such figures indicate that Iran will not be able to shoot Sunnis into submission; rather, it could end up in a grinding conflict that many have already described as "Iran's Vietnam."

FOUR STEPS TO A SUSTAINABLE ENDGAME IN SYRIA

Although this trend is unlikely to produce a "regime victory," it could spur Assad and his Iranian sponsors to focus on their parts of lesser Syria and commit to a de facto nonaggression pact with the jihadists. This might help avoid Iran's Vietnam scenario, but it would lead to the worst of both worlds for the United States and its allies: Assad and ISIS both holding on, perhaps permanently. To avoid this scenario and better pursue U.S. security interests in Syria, Washington should adopt the following approach:

Accept that Syria will be a divided, failed state as long as Assad is permitted to remain in power -- something akin to Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, when the regime's policies cost it control over the Kurdish north. Unlike that scenario, however, Assad's continued presence would be a powerful magnet for jihadists and a major driver of Sunni-Shiite tension.
Do not lessen the pressure on Assad. Instead of allowing the regime's strength to grow, Washington should weaken both Assad and ISIS by encouraging the fight between them, weakening Iran's foreign legions and the jihadists at the same time. Assad often brags about fighting terrorism, so the United States should let him do it on his own dime, hanging responsibility for ISIS around his neck and weakening him and Iran's forces in the process. Key issues for Washington to consider include when to ramp up or scale back airstrikes against not only ISIS, but also regime forces -- especially if Assad follows through with the threat he issued on January 20, when he told Foreign Affairsthat the regime would attack any U.S.-trained moderate forces entering Syria. Only then would Damascus and Tehran be pressured to make substantial concessions.
Focus on helping the moderate opposition consolidate their lines of control against the jihadists and regime alike, in addition to sharply increasing humanitarian assistance for displaced persons and efforts to protect civilians. The United States cannot organize and regiment the entire opposition, but it can back any faction that retakes areas from ISIS. The only way to motivate the rebels to do so is to openly support their justified stance against Assad remaining in power.
Develop a strategy to remove Assad via diplomacy, information messaging, and military/economic power. The longer he is in place, the longer Syria will be divided. Once Assad goes, it will be possible to put the pieces of Syria back together again.

Andrew Tabler is a senior fellow in The Washington Institute's Program on Arab Politics. His publications include "Syria's Collapse and How Washington Can Stop It" (Foreign Affairs, July-August 2013) and the 2011 book In the Lion's Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle with Syria.

There Goes the Neighborhood - Foreign Policy

2014-09-18T11:10:00.000-04:00

ARGUMENT

There Goes the Neighborhood

Al Qaeda’s control of Israel’s northern border has Jerusalem nostalgic for the days of Assad.

BY ANDREW TABLER
SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

GOLAN HEIGHTS — While the world focuses on the Islamic State's advances in Iraq and Syria, the Syrian war is spilling over into the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. On Aug. 28, Syrian rebel groups, led by al Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front, captured the old border city of Quneitra from the Syrian army and Iranian-backed National Defense Forces. Al-Nusra Front took 45 Fijian U.N. peacekeepers hostage and then assaulted two other U.N. outposts -- only to be repulsed after the Filipino commander ignored U.N. orders to surrender. The hostage situation was only resolved Thursday, Sept. 11, as all the peacekeepers were released safely after what appears to be Qatari mediation.

But though the latest crisis on the Golan frontier may be over, the larger threats facing Israel still remain. Across the border, more and more black jihadi flags are popping up, mere feet from Israel's Star of David. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces and the Hezbollah-inspired resistance groups that continue to operate under the regime's umbrella have also launched attacks against Israeli-controlled areas in the Golan. This chaotic situation is creating considerable unease in Jerusalem policy circles -- and upending decades of Israeli strategy for dealing with Syria.

Syrian rebels, including al-Nusra Front, have been on the Golan frontier for about a year. Their largest presence has been in the middle of the "zone of separation" between Israeli and Syrian forces -- which has been monitored by peacekeepers from the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) since 1974 -- near the frontier villages of Bir Ajam, ar-Ruwayhinah, and Buraykah. Over the past two weeks, however, al-Nusra Front and five other Syrian opposition groups have launched an offensive in the area, pushing back the regime and upsetting the status quo along the border that has persisted for four decades.

Israeli officials say the latest offensive has introduced two new and potentially game-changing aspects into Syria's southern front. First, al-Nusra Front has dramatically expanded its operations from the southern Syrian city of Deraa into the areas adjacent to the Golan frontier. Theories about the jihadi group's motivations vary: Israeli sources say the Islamic State chased the group out of eastern Syria, causing it to shift its men and firepower south to use against the Assad regime.

The offensive makes it harder for the regime to use its weapons of choice -- including artillery, Scud missiles, and rockets -- against opposition positions without risk of hitting Israeli-controlled areas and drawing an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) response. On Aug. 27, for example, two regime mortars seemingly intended for rebel forces in Quneitra landed in the vineyards of the border kibbutz of Ein Zivan, drawing an Israeli counterstrike hours later against a Syrian government command facility. The rebels' overall goal seems to be relieving a number of regime-encircled rebel positions southwest of Damascus, including Beit Jinn, Khan al-Sheikh, and areas west of al-Kiswah.

The second game-changer is UNDOF's crumbling presence on the Golan. Hostage-taking is nothing new in the Syrian war, but al-Nusra Front's attempt to ransom the 45 Fijian U.N. peacekeepers ups the ante both with Israel and the international community. Before it backed down Thursday, the group issued three demands that show how detached the jihadists are from diplomatic and military realities: It wanted al-Nusra Front's removal from the U.N. terrorist list, humanitarian aid deliveries to besieged areas of Damascus, and compensation for three al-Nusra Front fighters recently killed during action against UNDOF forces.

Qatar, which recently negotiated the release of an American hostage held by al-Nusra Front and which is believed to have some contacts with the group, reportedly played a role in the negotiations to resolve the crisis. A U.N. Security Council statement called upon "countries with influence to strongly convey to those responsible to immediately release the peacekeepers," an indirect reference to Doha.

The hostage situation easily could have been much worse, as al-Nusra Front attempted to capture two UNDOF posts manned by Filipino peacekeepers on Aug. 30 and 31. Disobeying a direct order from their Indian UNDOF commander, the Filipino forces fired back when an al-Nusra Front truck attempted to ram the front of their outpost. In the hours that followed, intervention by a nearby Irish UNDOF battalion, as well as help from Israeli forces and Assad regime mortars, allowed the peacekeepers to escape to safety. While the Indian commander has since scolded his Filipino colleague for jeopardizing the lives of the Fijian and other UNDOF forces, the action is being referred to in Manila as the "greatest escape."

Officials in Jerusalem say al-Nusra Front's advance and UNDOF's increasingly "tattered umbrella" of security are causing a tactical shift in Israeli thinking. Israel never relied on UNDOF to protect Israel from cross-border action -- but its forces are a symbol of international legitimacy of the Golan frontier. The U.N. peacekeepers' reduction to three or four bases is a reflection of the increasing instability along the border.

Another factor behind the shift has been the creation of a responsibility vacuum on the Syrian-controlled side of the Golan. In other words, there is no longer one party that Israel or the United Nations can call to resolve disputes and deter from carrying out future attacks. Thus far, the party exploiting this vacuum has been the Assad regime and its allies. Following Assad's announcement this year that "resistance" along the Golan frontier would continue despite the war, a number of Hezbollah-inspired groups planted improvised explosive devices along the fence marking the Syrian side of the frontier that targeted Israeli patrols on the other side of the border. Israel has defused many of these devices but cannot find them all; so far, at least two have exploded. With these devices added to the regular dangers of cross-border shellfire from the war, Israelis are increasingly concerned about how to protect IDF soldiers and Golan residents from a war that seems set to escalate.

The biggest issue weighing on Israeli thinking on Syria is how to deter al-Nusra Front and jihadists in general. Israel's experience with moderate forces in southern Syria -- as demonstrated recently, when al-Nusra Frontforced a captured Syrian rebel to divulge his Israeli contacts and meetings in a YouTube video -- indicate they are qualitatively weaker than the jihadists. While online sources provide a good amount of information on jihadi leaders and their aspirations, far less is known about their military calculations. The constellation of military and Iranian-trained paramilitary groups that make up the Assad regime seem more predictable -- they at least have the trappings of a state, however crippled, that Israel has dealt with indirectly for decades. Or as Israeli officials always lament: "At least there's an address."

But Israeli officials recognize that dealing with Syria going forward will require having many more addresses than simply Assad's palace. While some Israelis still prefer to deal with Assad's forces in the areas adjacent to the Golan, Tehran's deep involvement in propping up the regime means his outright victory would hand a strategic victory to Israel's archfoe.

For now, Israeli officials will continue to deal with challenges from two Syrias -- Assad's rump state in the west and the varied forces, including al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State, in the chaotic "Sunnistan" in the center -- while carefully looking for opportunities with Kurdish-controlled areas in the northeast that declared their autonomy earlier this year. As one Israeli official put it: "We have to watch each area village by village and keep our expectations low."

ISIL Could Become the Voice of Sunnis If We Don't Find a Way to Stop It Soon

2014-08-14T06:46:00.001-04:00

The Islamic State in Iraq and Levant’s deep-rooted sense of purpose and its political, financial, and military ability have helped it carve out a safe haven between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This week’s American airstrikes could help roll ISIL back—but if the American people really do not want to be sucked into another war in the Middle East, then Washington will need to cement these gains by working with Arab allies to bolster the moderate Sunnis Arabs who would fill the vacuum in Syria and Iraq following an ISIL defeat.

ISIL’s power comes from its effectiveness in rallying Sunni Muslims to fight against what they perceive to be Iranian-backed Shia regimes in Baghdad and Damascus. Bashar al Assad and Nuri Kamal al Maliki’s attempts to shoot and cajole their Sunni populations into submission have attracted jihadists from all over the world to Syria and Iraq. Unlike other terrorist groups, which rely on financial networks and wealthy benefactors, ISIL emphasizes self-sufficiency, using extortion, sale of oil products, and the charging of taxes and fees to generate revenue. These funds allow it to carry out operations that net even more resources, including millions of dollars from Mosul’s banks and American military equipment. It uses these ill-gotten gains to buy the allegiance and support of local groups and tribes.

In return, ISIL institutes order, doling out harsh punishments for violations of Islamic law, while protecting local populations from the Assad and Maliki regimes. It is restoring Sunni pride as well, carrying out successful raids against the Iraqi army and Syrian forces that have seized oil refineries and gas fields. All of this led ISIL leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi on June 30 not only to declare the “Islamic State”, but the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate, an institution formally dissolved 90 years ago.

The Iraqi army has thus far proven incapable of pushing ISIL back, due in no small part to ISIL's military ability and newly captured equipment. But the Iraqi army’s losses are largely due to the Maliki government’s unwillingness to include Sunnis, which is the result of the support it receives from Iran. Kurdish forces, which Washington decided to arm this week, are in a position to push back on ISIL near its northern enclave but will be unable, and most likely unwilling, to deploy in Sunni areas of Iraq.

The same military and political limits hold true in Syria. Despite Assad’s recent battlefield gains in the west, his willingness and ability to operate in Eastern and central Syria, where his forces have sustained heavy losses, remains limited. Assad’s hardline position during the Geneva Peace talks and surrounding his “reelection” last June make it unlikely that the regime will peeling off moderate Sunnis to its side.

Some have advocated inviting Iran to take care of the ISIL problem for the United States as some part of a “grand bargain” over its nuclear program. But those talks are not going so well, and even if they lead to agreement, both Iranian and American officials say the issue of Iran’s nuclear and regional aspirations will remain “stove-piped” for technical and political reasons. Furthermore, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vigorously rejects working with the United States, and he has not given President Rouhani any authority over the Iraq or Syria files, unlike his reluctant assent to nuclear negotiations in pursuit of sanctions relief. Iranian-backed forces also bring little positive to the table: Militant groups backed or trained by the IRGC-Quds Force (the body that orchestrates training of Iranian-backed proxy groups), such as Hezbollah or the National Defense Companies, have had no or very limited ability operating far away from their strategic depth in Iran and Lebanon. Worse, Iran encourages sectarian excesses which drive Sunnis to reluctantly work with ISIL, seeing it as better than Iranian-sponsored death squads.

The much talked about “moderate Sunnis” come from the same demographic as ISIL and Al Qaeda. But Sunni Arab states lack a “Quds Force-like” organization to train moderate Sunnis. Meanwhile, Sunni Arab society has to some extent supported jihadists in terms of money and men, replicating the low cost tools of the Quds Force in backing extremist Shia factions sans the discipline. These state’s lack of unity of purpose have so far only exacerbated the divisions among the Syrian and Iraq Sunnis.

Syria’s neighbors are also not in a position to root out ISIL, preferring to contain—with varying degrees of success—the crisis inside Syria. The most successful thus far has been Jordan, which has policed its border with Syria from the beginning of the conflict while working with the U.S. to covertly support the Syrian rebels. Nevertheless, Jordan has around one million Syrians in the country living outside refugee camps. The threat of terrorist attacks, run by the Assad regime or Sunni extremists, has caused Jordan to thus far shy away from the Obama Administration’s proposed program to more openly train and equip the Syrian opposition.

Turkey, which has the longest and most open border with Syria, has only recently begun efforts to clamp down on jihadist groups operating from its territory into Syria—especially following ISIL’s taking of hostages in Turkey’s Mosul consulate. Like Jordan, Ankara does not want to intervene in Syria due to fears of terrorist attacks on its territory and now ironically sees Kurds, its historic adversary, as its best asset against containing ISIL.

Both Lebanon and Iraq, due to internal divisions and incapacity, are unable to intervene in Syria other than through sub-state actors such as Hezbollah, which has simultaneously coordinated with the working Lebanese government to contain spillover from Syria. Israel, other than covert assistance to some groups in the south and treatment of wounded, has also preferred to stay out of Syria in favor of containment.

ISIL’s recent successes, if sustained, risks not only a redrawing of the Sykes-Picot boundaries, but making ISIL and jihadists in general the authentic and authoritative voice for Sunnis in the Middle East. The continued victories of jihadist forces threaten the Arab Gulf Monarchies, particularly Saudi Arabia, which, as guardians of the holy places, have assumed the primary political role in Islam since the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924. A defeat of jihadist forces at the hands of the Assad and Maliki regimes also risks domestic blowback against Gulf monarchies—indeed some rulers have used the excuse of the power of Salafists and general sympathies for Syria’s Sunni opposition for not cracking down earlier on jihadist financial networks.

Given ISIL’s recent successes, it would be optimistic to think their aspirations are limited to a caliphate between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. ISIL has moved its forces toward the borders with Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and ISIL elements successfully attacked Lebanese Army positions along the frontier with Syria this week, taking prisoners. Meanwhile, analysts and European and American officials say hundreds, if not thousands, of ISIL and Al Qaeda operatives in Syria and the Islamic State are likely planning attacks either back home or elsewhere. These include Muhsin al-Fadhili, former head of Al Qaeda’s Iranian facilitation network; Sanafi al-Nasr, head of Al Qaeda’s Syria “Victory Committee”; Wafa al-Saudi, Al Qaeda’s former head of security for counter intelligence; as well as Al Qaeda founding member Firas al-Suri. Members of Al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) are also reportedly in Syria, indicating a growing opportunity for connectivity, coordination, planning, and synchronization with Jebhat al-Nusra and other jihadists. Taken together with national-based Jihadist units from China, the Caucasus, Libya, Egypt, Sweden, and beyond, the “Islamic State” is already the next Afghanistan or Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas in terms of a durable safe haven and training ground for global Islamic terrorism.1

Given the consolidation of the Islamic State’s gains, and the lack of interest and capacity of its neighbors to uproot the organization in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State is likely to endure absent a more assertive and concerted U.S. policy involving military and political operations. Working with Iran and its clients in the Maliki and Assad governments will not solve the problem, due to both states’ limited military capacities and encouragement of sectarian brutality against Sunnis in both countries. While Iran and its allies may be a natural front on ISIL expansion further afield, empowering Iran and its allies now would be like throwing gasoline on sectarian fire.

If Washington seeks to find the “formula that speaks to the aspirations” of Sunnis outlined in President Obama’s recent New York Times interview, or the “geopolitical equilibrium” between Iran and the Arabs he outlined last autumn, Washington will need to work with allies in Iraq and the Arab Gulf countries to calm tensions and lead Sunnis in Syria and Iraq in a more moderate direction. It will be an uphill struggle: The jihadist narrative that America is waging war on Sunnis post September 11 continues. Many see Obama employing a double-standard in his decision to arm the Kurds and act to prevent a Yezidi “genocide” while refusing for three years to arm Syria’s Sunni-dominated opposition—who he continues to dismiss as mere “doctors, farmers, (and) pharmacists”—and enforce his red line against the Assad regime for its use of chemical weapons against civilians.

These could involve pressure on the Maliki government to be more “inclusive,” supporting a change in that government, and special military operations. The success of that program would be heavily dependent on the degree of cooperation and coordination with Sunni regional allies. The Saudi government, which has been wary of American involvement in Iraq, will have to be convinced that Washington will commit to supporting non-jihadi Sunnis in Iraq and Syria militarily (via training) and politically (vis à vis Iraq and Syria’s Iran-backed governments). Iraqi and Syrian Sunnis, who are worried in a very existential way about working against ISIL, will have to be convinced that such a program carries enough potential to work thus risking their and their families' lives. Fortunately Arab Gulf countries have long-term relations with tribes in the areas ISIL controls and very deep pockets. Instead of relying on them to create a Quds Force-equivalent to train and support Sunni moderates in Syria and Iraq, the U.S. should play that role, working in concert with Arab intelligence agencies to coordinate and streamline their efforts to foster a viable moderate Sunni alternative that will fill the vacuum following any ISIL defeat.

For Washington, such efforts could help stabilize two weak and effectively disintegrated states. For Arab allies, it would provide an opportunity to help moderate forces check both Sunni extremism and Iranian-dominated governments in Baghdad and Damascus. And for the American people, it would make it much less likely its servicemen would have to invade another Middle Eastern country in the wake of another massive terrorist attack.

For an excellent account of the groups and individuals operating in Syria and their comparison to Afghanistan, see Aaron Zelin’s “Syria: The Epicenter of Future Jihad” Policy Watch 2278, Washington Institute for Near East Policy. This argument is supported by the author’s private conversations with European and US officials over the last year, as well as public testimony, outlining the growing Jihadist threat emanating out of Syria.

Andrew Tabler is Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, author of “Syria’s Collapse: And How Washington Can Stop It” (Foreign Affairs; July/August 2013) and the book In the Lion’s Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington’s Battle with Syria (Lawrence Hill Press: 2011)

Securing al-Sham: Syria and the Violence in Iraq

2014-07-30T16:04:00.000-04:00

June 25, 2014

SNAPSHOT

By Andrew J. Tabler

Uprooting the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) from the swath of territory it now holds between Aleppo and Baghdad will take a lot more than airstrikes or a change of government in Iraq. Although the 2003 war in Iraq might have led to the formation of the jihadi group, the chaos in Syria provided it the space to metastasize. To prevent ISIS -- and other such organizations -- from building a permanent safe haven in Iraq and Syria, then, Washington must help settle Syria by supporting Sunni tribes and other moderate opposition groups there.

FRACTURED FRONT

Over the last week, the Obama administration has focused its attention on pushing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (or whoever might replace him) to be more inclusive of the country’s Sunni Arabs, who make up around 20 percent of the population. Washington is right to do so. ISIS and the other groups fighting alongside it rely on this disenchanted community for support. Without Sunni backing, ISIS would crumble and Iraq could stabilize. To help that process along, the United States could launch airstrikes against ISIS camps in the country.

Sunni Arabs are an even larger part of the equation in Syria, where they represent between 65 and 70 percent of the population and make up the backbone of the opposition to the Alawite Assad regime. Western mediators have urged Assad to negotiate with Alawites, Shia, and Sunnis. But he has refused, preferring instead to have himself “re-elected” to a third term as president and to make vague promises of dialogue with the opposition groups that succumb to the regime’s siege-and-starve tactics.

Assad might seem like he is in control, but his troops rarely tangle with ISIS, preferring instead to take on the more moderate factions. In fact, his regime has only been able to go on the offensive in western Syria with help from Hezbollah, Iraqi Shia militias, and Iran’s Quds force. When their support disappears, so, too, will Assad’s luck. For example, when Iraqi Shia militiamen were recently recalled from the Lebanese-Syrian frontier to fight ISIS in Iraq, Syrian opposition forces quickly reappeared, retook part of the area, and continued to stage hit-and-run attacks. In other words, Assad and the rebels are at a stalemate and, unless the West and its Arab allies try something new, the conflict will persist.

BORDERLANDS

The best way to permanently uproot ISIS is to follow the example of Jordan. In recent years, Jordan has relied on a two-part strategy to deal with the Syrian crisis: control the border with Syria and monitor and work with the Syrian opposition to keep radical rebel groups out of the country’s southern reaches, along the border with Jordan. The U.S. intelligence community, which has a close relationship with Jordan, has reportedly participated in this effort.

Moderate groups continue to hold their own in southern Syria, but, as in other areas of the country, they still rely on coordination with more radical groups to fight the Assad regime. To prevent those radical groups from spilling into Jordan, Amman closed one of its border crossings to refugees and reopened it further east, in uncontested territory. It also worked with Western intelligence agencies to increase covert support for moderate groups in southern Syria. As a result, ISIS has yet to take root there.

For Turkey to strengthen its own border with northern Syria, it would have to follow Jordan’s example. So far, though, Ankara has been reluctant to get as strict about people, money, and weapons crossing its frontier into and out of Syria. There is considerable risk that militants could retaliate against Turkey if it decided to clamp down, but surely the Syrians roaming its territory already present such a risk. To help Turkey make the right call, the United States could promise to use drones or airstrikes to help Turkey secure the border.

After closing the borders between Syria and Jordan and Syria and Turkey, it will be time to address the now-gaping border between Syria and Iraq. The best way to do that is by working with tribes in the area and with selective drone strikes. Sunni tribal confederations such as the Baggara, Dulaim, Jabbour, N’eim, Qugaidat, Shammar, and Tai'e extend into Syria and Iraq -- and some even reach into Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. These tribes could be made into a bulwark against ISIS and other jihadists in Syria and Iraq. According to some reports, ISIS has worked to win over their rank and file by offering basic services. For those that don’t accept such carrots, the group has used harsh sticks, such as beheadings and crucifixions. Its pull among the tribal population worries local tribal leaders, who see their influence slipping.

Arab intelligence agencies can play on these fears by supplying tribal leaders with lethal and nonlethal assistance. The United States is not in a good position to lead this effort, since it has no boots on the ground and lacks the qualitative intelligence. However, Washington should coordinate closely with Arab Gulf countries in supporting tribes against militant groups, using air power to aid their fight against ISIS.

Another natural bulwark against ISIS and other such groups is Syria’s Kurdish population in northeast Syria. To stave off the militant threat, the Kurds united two years ago under the banner of the Kurdish Supreme Committee. The group includes the radical Democratic Union Party of Syria, which is the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, and the more moderate Kurdistan National Council, an alliance of 15 Kurdish political parties. Despite tensions among its members, the alliance has battled jihadists for the better part of two years. And like their Arab counterparts, the Kurds are also organized into broad tribal confederations that reach across the border into Iraq and Turkey.

Sealing off Syria’s external borders -- and its internal one with the Kurdish region -- would help contain jihadist groups and interdict ISIS suicide operators coming to Iraq while the United States works with the Iraqi government to win over moderate Sunnis and, possibly, launches drone strikes against ISIS positions. This could be bolstered through the creation of a U.S. Joint Special Operations Task Force to coordinate cross-border operations. Meanwhile, allying with the Arab tribes on both sides of the border will undermine ISIS support in its key Sunni Arab demographic. This could result in a foreign policy twofer, helping address both the current situation in Iraq and Syria and the broader jihadist threat over the long term.

SYRIAN SOLUTION

With ISIS hemmed in, the crisis in Iraq would be far easier to manage through airstrikes and diplomacy.

The world could then turn to the war in Syria. The top-down diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis are going nowhere. According to Samantha Power, U.S. representative to the United Nations, more Syrian civilians died from Assad’s barrel bombs during this year’s failed peace talks in Geneva than during any other period in the Syrian war. And that onslaught continues to this day. The best way to keep the regime from dropping barrel bombs, as well as chlorine gas and other indiscriminate weapons, would be to shoot down its aircraft.

Providing vetted armed groups with antiaircraft weapons would help the opposition secure its territory. It would also empower moderates by making them key to defending against Assad’s onslaught. Although antiaircraft guns would not take care of the regime’s weapon of choice -- artillery -- civilians would at least have less reason to flee to Turkey and Jordan, which are already overwhelmed with refugees and fear spillover violence. The United States could provide the opposition active intelligence to facilitate such operations.

Now the question is how to channel antiaircraft and other heavy weapons so that they don’t fall into radicals’ hands. Much has been made of the bickering and petty rivalries within the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) and the thousand or so armed groups fighting against the Assad regime. The divisions are partly a reflection of Syria’s extremely diverse Sunni population -- from the urbane Sunnis representing the traditional elites, who long collaborated with the regime, to the tribal Sunnis of eastern Syria and Dera, who cooperated with the regime at arm’s length, to the conservative Sunnis of northwestern Syria, who have long fought Alawites and the Assad regime. ISIS and other militant groups, such as the al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, are primarily entrenched within the tribal and conservative Sunni populations.

The Supreme Military Council (SMC), an umbrella organization that Arab and Western intelligence helped set up in late 2012 as the armed wing of the SNC, was meant to unify rebels’ supply chains, encourage moderates to unite, and empower the SNC on the ground. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked, which coalition leaders blame on a lack of outside support. The problem with the SMC is that, like the SNC, it is beset with petty rivalries and has at times been infiltrated by radical Salafis. For that reason, it would be unwise to use the SMC, at least as it exists now, to channel antiaircraft weapons to moderate rebels.

The other major conduit supporting the rebels has been individual groups vetted by Western and Arab intelligence agencies, including the Syrian Revolutionary Front and Harakat Hazm, which have been given American-made antitank missiles. Such vetted groups stand wholly apart from their more radical counterparts, but their lack of resources or political agenda has hobbled them. The SMC leadership, moreover, has criticized Western efforts to supply some groups with weapons as creating warlordism among the moderate Syrian opposition.

But given the threat that jihadist groups pose in Syria, selective arming seems like the least bad option. And antiaircraft weapons would come with strings attached. In the short term, the regional intelligence agencies that are advising moderate groups inside Syria would be best placed to carry out joint antiaircraft operations until the moderate Syrian opposition can stand on its own. Over the longer term, the SMC should be reconstituted as a clear anti-radical force with more tribal leaders and leaders from vetted groups. As was the clear during the SMC’s initial formation, Arab and Western intelligence agencies are best placed carry out the task. A new SMC could be the channel for other heavy weapons as well and the conduit for setting up governments in opposition areas coordinated with the SNC and other groups in exile.

Eventually, as the SMC’s capabilities increase, the group could fill vacuums in areas where ISIS and other jihadi groups give way. Eventually, the SMC would fully train its sights on the Assad regime. Assad, in turn, would come to appreciate that his military solution to the Syria conflict is doomed to fail and that he needs to return to the negotiating table.

PAYING UP

For the second time in less than a year, U.S. President Barack Obama is considering military strikes in the Middle East. Targeted air, missile, and drone attacks could degrade ISIS’ capabilities and should be used carefully. But they will not fix the region’s problems -- especially the ongoing war between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

The United States must start to address those problems by increasing covert support for border security operations and for the Syrian opposition. To do so, it can tap the $5 billion Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund that Obama recently outlined in a speech at West Point. This fund aims to expand the training and equipping of foreign militaries, bolster allied counterterrorism capabilities, and support efforts to counter violence extremism and terrorist ideology.

Yet Syrians cannot unite around groups armed in the shadows. A much more comprehensive and overt training and equipping program, as recently introduced in the National Defense Authorization Act, would help the United States build up moderate forces in Syria that could effectively combat Assad and deescalate the crisis. Although it is still unclear which moderate Sunni oppositionists will be part of any final negotiated settlement, it is clear is that ISIS and other radicals can’t be included.

Jordan and the Syria Crisis: Mitigating the 'Known Unknowns'

2014-07-30T15:59:00.000-04:00

POLICYWATCH 2261

Andrew J. Tabler

Also available in

May 30, 2014

As extremists continue to move into southern Syria, growing security and humanitarian problems may soon outstrip Jordan's ability to handle spillover from the war.

On May 27, Jordan expelled Bahjat Suleiman -- Syria's ambassador to Amman and the Assad regime's former general security director -- for "repeated insults and offenses" against the kingdom. The decision came after Suleiman crashed the Hashemite royal court's Independence Day celebrations, and in response to his track record of propagandistic social media posts. Meanwhile, a week before Suleiman's ouster, Jordanian armed forces clashed with a group of twelve Jordanian and foreign fighters from al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) who were attempting to cross into the kingdom from Syria's southern Deraa region. These measures against two polar opposites in the Syrian war highlight the difficult situation in which Jordan finds itself as the crisis escalates, with potentially dire consequences emerging no matter which course of action it takes.

TENSIONS IN SOUTHERN SYRIA

Both of the main extremist rebel groups in Syria, JN and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), were born in the northern and eastern parts of the country, where they received assistance across the Turkish and Iraqi borders and via financing channels from Persian Gulf states. In the south, however, moderate rebels had been able to hold sway until last fall, due in no small part to Jordan's efforts to control its border and restrain financing to extremists inside Syria.

But following the Obama administration's decision to pull back from enforcing its redline on regime chemical weapons use and its subsequent focus on getting the opposition leadership to the Geneva II peace talks last January to forge a negotiated settlement to the crisis, jihadist/Salafist factions began moving south. This was particularly true of JN, whose approach was less harsh and more locally focused than that of groups like ISIS, and therefore more palatable in tribal southern Syria. At the same time, Jordanian fighters -- who had been active since the war began and now number around two thousand personnel -- also moved into the area in larger numbers.

As the Assad regime refused to discuss a transition at Geneva, answering instead with a barrage of barrel bombs that sharply increased the civilian death toll this spring, Western countries and their regional allies began to worry about the sharp increase in JN activities in southern Syria. To curb the group's influence, Israel and Jordan sealed their borders and stepped up their assistance for moderate opposition groups in the area. According to a May 19 report in the Jordan Times, the kingdom's armed forces have also conducted border operations against extremists, including raids using aircraft against Islamist militants trying to cross into Jordan. Such operations have killed fourteen militants and wounded at least twenty-four others since late April.

For their part, moderate opposition groups in southern Syria began taking a stronger stance toward JN affiliates as well, at least rhetorically. In late April, Deraa military council leader Ahmed al-Naameh, who had reportedly just crossed into Syria from Jordan, released a video criticizing JN and praising moderate Free Syrian Army battalions in the south. On May 3, he was duly captured by JN, which accused him of handing the southern Syrian town of Kherbet Ghazalah to regime forces in a campaign last year. On May 6, a group of sixty moderate rebel groups issued a statement demanding his release, only to mysteriously rescind it shortly thereafter. Despite extensive negotiations, Naameh remains in JN's custody, even after a video "confession" in which he supposedly admitted that countries backing the rebels ordered him to allow Kherbet Ghazalah to fall. JN has also refused to release him to the local sharia council for arbitration.

Following Naameh's capture, Jordan closed the western part of its border with Syria, halting traffic and allowing only ambulances through for the wounded. This further tightened border constraints imposed late last summer, requiring Syrian refugees to cross around 200 kilometers to the east near Ruwaished. While the border closing was said to be intended for the refugees' safety, the additional distance they now have to travel could also allow for better vetting in terms of weeding out extremists.

JORDAN'S VULNERABILITIES

Even before the war next door worsened, Jordan faced domestic unrest and economic difficulties. To this has been added a series of problems stemming from the situation in southern Syria.

The "known unknowns" of Syrians in Jordan. Currently, up to 1.5 million Syrian refugees are believed to be in Jordan, but only 600,000 have registered with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and only 125,000 are living in the kingdom's two main refugee camps (Zaatari and the recently opened Azraq desert camp). While estimates vary, the status of over 750,000 Syrian emigres remains largely unknown; most are believed to be staying with extended family or friends in Jordan. This population represents Jordan's soft underbelly, from which Bashar al-Assad or ISIS could launch terrorist attacks against the kingdom. Even more worrisome is the fact Jordan is now receiving refugees from beyond the Deraa region, including eastern Syria, where JN and ISIS have a stronger grip.

Pressure from Mafraq governorate. While Homs in western Syria may be considered the center of the revolution, Deraa was where it all started, so residents have naturally been seeking shelter in northern Jordan's Mafraq governorate from the outset. The Zaatari camp, which now holds around 100,000 refugees, has been a tremendous burden on Mafraq's 80,000 natives, greatly taxing local resources and polluting the region's aquifer with sewage. But Syrians outside the camp have been an even larger burden on resources, including education, water, and trash collection. Aid programs have been started in the area to help local residents absorb the burden, but given the sheer number of refugees -- and the region's relatively powerful role in Jordan's East Bank-dominated political system -- tensions are on the rise.

Tensions with domestic Salafists. A number of Jordanian Salafists have made their way into southern Syria to fight, raising fears that they could eventually return home to stir trouble in the kingdom. Although some Salafist-related unrest has been reported in Maan, Zarqa, and Salt, Jordanian authorities have been able to contain the tension so far. Yet one Salafist leader in Maan pledged allegiance to ISIS this spring, potentially signaling a worrisome new trend. And if Assad's forces push into southern Syria in the coming months -- sending thousands more refugees across the border and forcing many Jordanian fighters who are now battling the extremists to go back home -- another wave of political and security threats to Jordan could soon arise.

IMPLICATIONS

Jordan's recent moves against the Syrian ambassador and against Islamist extremists along its border are a product of the no-win situation in which Amman now finds itself. If the kingdom allows Assad to continue his barrel bombing of the opposition and associated disinformation campaign (which Bahjat Suleiman has perpetuated via social media over the past three years) and retake Syrian territory down to the border, the resultant refugee influx will exacerbate an already tense situation in Jordan. Moreover, the Assad regime does not have enough troops to truly hold all of the territory it retakes, meaning Syria will remain unstable for years to come. If Jordan does nothing, extremists in southern Syria will expand their numbers and influence, and the palace will suffer criticism at home for doing nothing to help the Syrian opposition in its hour of need. Such sentiment could in turn inflame tribal and Salafist factions in Jordan and invite attacks from domestic extremists.

Alternatively, if Amman actively works against Assad, Damascus would likely use the "unknown" Syrians in Jordan to carry out terrorist attacks, making the plots look as if they were carried out by Jordanian Salafists, ISIS, or both. More broadly, absent a major shift in U.S. policy regarding direct intervention in Syria, the opposition is unlikely to defeat the regime anytime soon, perpetuating a state of war that will only generate more extremism.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

According to the Congressional Research Service, Jordan already receives $360 million in economic aid and $300 million in military aid from the United States per year, plus $340 million in Title VIII funding (labeled for "Overseas Contingency Operations/Global War on Terror") and additional "Migration and Refugee Assistance Funding" to deal with the Syrian refugee crisis. While that is a substantial commitment, Amman still does not have sufficient resources to meet the vast needs created by the war next door.

The humanitarian situation for Syrians in Jordan is bad. Only 25 percent of the pledges made to cover the UNHCR's budget in the kingdom have been fulfilled, and the humanitarian needs will not end anytime soon. Even if the war ended tomorrow, there is little chance that refugees would go home in the near future given the Assad regime's scorched-earth policies, including destruction of much of the country's housing stock.

Jordan also needs to step up border security and antiterror activities, but its resources are too limited to do much more on its own. The $5 billion Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund outlined by President Obama in his May 28 West Point speech is aimed at expanding the training and equipping of foreign militaries, bolstering allied counterterrorism capabilities, and supporting efforts to counter violent extremism and terrorist ideology. Jordan would seem a logical candidate for some of that funding. Still unknown is whether those funds could be used for cross-border activities into southern Syria, or if the money would instead have to come from the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, which permits the Pentagon to "provide equipment, training, supplies, and defense services to assist vetted members of the Syrian opposition."

Whatever the case, security in Jordan will remain precarious so long as the Assad regime continues its vicious attacks on Syrian civilians, which in turn create refugee flows, attract foreign jihadists, and justify extremism as a tit-for-tat response. The best way to counter both the regime and extremists in southern Syria is through better training and equipping of local moderate opposition forces. That means giving the moderates more incentives to work together and shun the jihadists. The United States and Jordan should make the choice clear: moderate rebels in the south can either organize into coherent units and cease fighting alongside al-Qaeda affiliates in order to receive U.S. and Jordanian assistance, or they can continue as is and suffer defeat at the hands of the Assad regime.

Finally, Washington should expand its coordination with Israeli and Jordanian covert efforts in southern Syria. All three states have an interest in rooting out extremism there and pushing the Assad regime back to negotiating a real transition that will end the war, not simply local ceasefires that perpetuate the "dynamic stalemate" and risk generating extremism for years to come.

Andrew J. Tabler is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute and author of the book In the Lion's Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle with Syria.

Assad's Reelection Campaign Matters. Really.

2014-04-30T18:52:00.000-04:00

Photo courtesy of Andrew Butters (andrewbutters.com)

By Andrew Tabler

APR 30 2014, 12:36 PM ET

The Atlantic

The United States and the international community have spent the better part of the last year backing peace talks in Geneva to bring about a “political transition that meets the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people,” and ultimately end the war between the Alawite-dominated regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the Sunni and Kurdish-dominated opposition. But Assad has his own transition in mind: running for a third seven-year term as president. On April 28, the Syrian president nominated himself as a candidate in Syria’s June 3 presidential poll, “hoping the parliament would endorse it.”

This was hardly a surprise. Assad has hinted at his candidacy for months, and “spontaneous rallies” calling for him to run—many complete with images of Assad beside Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah—have sprung up across regime-controlled areas of the country, while shopkeepers have been encouraged to paint their storefronts with Syrian flags and slogans supporting the leader.

What’s Assad’s concession to his opponents after attempting to shoot his way out of the country’s largest uprising, with 150,000-plus killed, 680,000 injured, and up to half of the country’s 23 million people displaced? The Syrian president has made the next poll the first contested presidential election in the nation’s modern history. That pledge, however, is undermined by the state of war in the country and Assad’s previous referendums, including the last presidential election I observed personally in 2007, when he won by a Crimea-like 97.62 percent of the vote. In one polling station in Damascus’s wealthiest and most Westernized neighborhood, a young woman-turned-poll worker not only urged me to vote even though I did not have Syrian nationality, but also encouraged me to follow the lead of Assad’s main election poster and vote with a fingerprint in my own blood. Such tactics helped Assad improve upon his 97.24-percent showing in 2000, when his father Hafez died, and the Syrian parliament lowered the minimum age for seeking the Syrian presidency from 40 to 34 to allow Bashar to run.

Why, then, should anyone care about another rigged election in the Middle East? Because Assad’s reelection is actually part of his larger strategy to destroy the international community-backed plan for a negotiated solution to the increasingly sectarian Syrian crisis in favor of a forced solution on his terms. This solution includes sieges and starvation of opposition-controlled areas, the manipulation of aid supplies, and the dropping of “barrel bombs,” Scud missiles, and alleged chlorine gas canisters on his enemies. While this approach has helped him gain ground in western Syria with help from a legion of Hezbollah, Iraqi, and other Iranian-backed Shiite fighters, Assad lacks the troops to retake and hold all of Syria, unless his allies expand their involvement to a much more costly degree. Short of Syria’s occupation by what is often described as “Iran’s foreign legion,” the opposition and their regional backers will not agree to a Potemkin transition with Assad and his Iranian allies calling the shots.

The likely outcome of all this is a failed state partitioned into regime, Sunni-Arab, and Kurdish areas, all of which are now havens for U.S.-designated terrorist organizations in the heart of the Middle East. Combined with regional tensions between Iran and the Arabs, as well as the deep chill in relations between Russia and the United States, diplomatic solutions seem distant as well. This presents Barack Obama with a dilemma that has far-reaching implications. Allowing Assad’s forced solution to go forward will only contribute to the spread of a Syria-centered Middle Eastern proxy war between Iran and Arab countries, demonstrate to dictators that mass slaughter works, and show Moscow and other U.S. adversaries that Washington is unwilling to follow through on its foreign-policy principles and diplomatic agreements. But reversing Assad’s course will require the kind of military action from the West and its regional allies that Obama has been extremely reluctant to use due to its expense and uncertain result for the United States.

A campaign poster in Damascus for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad reads in Arabic, "We want Assad." (Reuters/Khaled al-Hariri)

***

In early 2012, as the armed insurgency in Syria gathered steam, the Assad regime’s changes to the constitution to establish contested presidential elections attracted little attention in the West, which at the time was focused on Kofi Annan’s five-point plan to end the crisis. When that effort failed, the United States and Russia negotiated the “Geneva Communique of 2012.” At the time, the regime’s contraction, if not its demise, seemed certain, so Western negotiators watered down the text’s language over Assad’s fate to overcome a Russian veto at the United Nations. Instead of demanding Assad “step aside” as part of a transition, the United States agreed to a “Transitional Governing Body” with “full executive powers” to be formed by “mutual consent” that “could include members of the current government and the opposition and other groups.” American negotiators held up the “mutual consent” clause at the time as giving the opposition a veto over Assad’s participation in the TGB. But by not ruling Assad out of the scheme, as well as failing to define which opposition groups had to agree to the TGB, the agreement gave Russia a veto over the process and allowed Assad to play for time.

And he did just that. Last year, with the backing of Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia, Assad launched a counterinsurgency effort that—combined with the use of chemical weapons, Obama’s unwillingness to enforce his “red line” on their use in Syria, and the regime’s foot-dragging on its deal with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in Security Council Resolution 2118—decimated the opposition. As a seeming concession to the Russians for getting the Assad regime to give up its chemical weapons, the United States helped deliver selective representatives from the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), an opposition umbrella organization backed by the West, to negotiations in Geneva with the Assad regime in January and February. But the Syrian regime refused to negotiate a Transitional Governing Body, and went so far as to place opposition negotiators on a list of terrorists. At the same time, Assad increased bombardment of opposition areas with barrel bombs—crude explosive devices dropped from regime helicopters. According to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power “the most concentrated period of killing in the entire duration of the conflict” occurred during the talks in Geneva. Russia, which in Security Council Resolution 2118 had effectively pledged to involve the regime in discussions on the TGB, is now suddenly unwilling to do so.

***

Meanwhile, in interviews with the Western, Russian, and Arab press, Assad and regime spokespersons have announced that he will run in the upcoming presidential poll and that international election observers will not be allowed into the country. The rules stipulate that each candidate file an application with the Supreme Constitutional Court, an all-Assad-appointed body that will reach a verdict on each application within five days. It is unclear what the final arrangements will be and who will run—six other candidates have announced their candidacy. But what is certain is that Syria’s election law forbids candidates who have not resided in Syria for the last 10 years, which eliminates many of the exiled opposition active in the Syrian National Coalition.

Assad says he will only deal with parties that have a “national agenda” in upcoming local and parliamentary elections, which essentially rules out not only the SNC, but also other armed groups that control large swaths of opposition-held Syria. The opposition acceptable to Assad encompasses groups in regime-controlled areas that have been tolerated for years, including the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change (NCC). The NCC is headed by the elderly pan-Arab socialist Hassan Abdel Azim, who has little to no influence on the opposition outside Assad-controlled areas.

A Free Syrian Army fighter in the old city of Aleppo. (Reuters/Muzaffar Salman)

It is here where Assad’s logic collides with the hard realities of Syrian demographics. Following the Assad regime’s last attempt to shoot its way out of an uprising by its Sunni majority, which culminated in the Hama Massacre of 1982, in which up to 30,000 Syrians died, Assad’s father launched a massive, decade-long crackdown in Syria that decimated the economy and confined people to their homes. Predictably, birthrates skyrocketed. In the decade following the Hama Massacre, Syria was among the 20 fastest-growing populations on the planet, particularly in Sunni-dominated rural areas (this accounts for the lack of gray hair among today's opposition fighters). This time around, there are many more Sunnis than Alawites, who had fewer children. If Assad only offers a bankrupt plan for reforms based on his “reelection” as a transition, along with promises of economic largesse that he can ill afford, there is little chance his regime will be able to shoot the Sunni opposition into submission to a degree that would stabilize and reunite the country.

***

The bad news for the fragmented Syrian opposition is that the loose language negotiated by Russia in the Geneva Communique of 2012 concerning the formation of a “Transitional Governing Body” by “mutual consent” could in practice mean that opposition forces who succumb to Assad ultimately form the basis of the TGB. And given the Obama administration’s aversion to supporting the Syrian opposition with lethal assistance or direct military intervention, as well as its current outreach to the Assad regime’s chief supporters in Tehran, the White House might be tempted to take the bait and agree to such a political transition. As might European governments concerned about the growth of jihadists among the Sunni opposition.

That would be a big mistake. Handing Assad and Iran’s foreign legion even a partial victory in Syria right now would make it more difficult to contain Tehran’s regional machinations and secure further concessions over its nuclear program. But more importantly, it would likely stoke a regional, sectarian proxy war centered on Syria. Arab Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait, are deeply worried about Iran’s spreading influence and nuclear ambitions, and appear committed to fighting Iran’s legion to the last dead Syrian. These motivations have spurred some of their citizens to sponsor effective al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria with global aspirations.

The most effective and least costly way to contain Assad’s advance, as well as the influence of jihadists, is through greater lethal support for the moderate opposition—an option the White House has been debating for years and is reportedly debating now in light of the bravado that the Syrian and Russian presidents have been demonstrating recently. As the Assad regime has accelerated shipments of chemical weapons to the Syrian coast, American-made TOW anti-tank missiles have increasingly made their way to moderate Syrian opposition fighters vetted by Western intelligence. But the only way to stop the Assad regime’s aerial bombardment of opposition areas and bring the government to the negotiating table is by providing anti-aircraft weapons to the opposition or launching missile strikes on the regime’s airfields. In recent days, however, Obama has sharply rebuked critics of his Syria policy who are now calling for a military response to Assad’s worsening behavior.

While Obama’s equation of “Syria is Iraq” has worked with the American public so far, Assad’s forced solution has global implications that run directly counter to American values and interests. Permitting the Syrian president to implement his strategy would demonstrate to ruthless dictators around the world that mass slaughter and blocked humanitarian access are effective tactics. And, at a time when Washington and its European allies are contending with a resurgent Russia, U.S. adversaries eager to challenge international law will conclude that the West is weak, does not uphold its principles, and can be effectively ignored. This won’t only prolong the war in Syria. It also makes one much more likely in Ukraine.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/04/assads-reelection-campaign-matters-really/361421/

ANDREW TABLER

Andrew J. Tabler is senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of the book In the Lion’s Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington’s Battle with Syria.

Hezbollah Involvement in Syria Fans Flames of Sectarian War

2014-04-01T17:02:00.000-04:00

Articles & Op-Eds

Andrew J. Tabler

Also available in

NOW Lebanon
April 1, 2014

The Party of God is not only hurting its domestic standing in Lebanon, but also inviting a wider regional conflict it cannot control.

Reports of heavy Hezbollah casualties trickling out of Syria's Qalamoun area are but the latest sign that the Party of God's involvement in Syria will continue to cost it dearly. But the real price for Hezbollah is being paid in Lebanon, where Hezbollah's support for the Assad regime has led to increased suicide car bombings, Sunni-Shiite tension, and armed clashes, not to mention recent concessions to the March 14 alliance in forming a caretaker Lebanese government. While spillover into Lebanon may seem a local issue, my interviews with Lebanese and Syrians during a recent visit to Lebanon indicate that such incidents, combined with a possible security vacuum caused by government bickering over the selection of Lebanon's next president, could fan the flames into a wider regional conflict that Hezbollah and Iran cannot put out and cannot afford. What is more, retaliating against Western targets is not the easy distraction it used to be and will only make things worse, not better, for the Iranian alliance.

In intervening in Syria to save the Assad regime, Hezbollah has made Lebanon a battleground for Syrians and Gulf-supported Salafist-jihadist groups. Fourteen different explosions targeting Hezbollah, Iran, or their affiliates have rocked Lebanon over the past year, including a blast in the Shiite village of Nabi Othman on March 17 that killed local Hezbollah leader Abdul Rahman al-Qadhi. A look at the details of each attack is telling: most have been suicide car bombs, the exception being a sniper killing Hezbollah weapons expert Hassan Lakkis. All have been in either in Beirut's southern suburbs or routes going into those areas, or in Hermel, Hezbollah's stronghold in the north Beqaa. The frequency of attacks has increased in tandem with the degree of Hezbollah's involvement in Syria, with the current rate now approaching four per month. The recent effort to bomb-proof stores, hospitals, and mosques in Dahiyeh has not stopped residents from fleeing to safer areas. One source told me up to 150,000 apartments are now up for rent in south Beirut alone.

But it is not just Salafist bombings in Lebanon against Hezbollah targets that could inadvertently lead to wider war. Starting with the detention of pro-Syrian politician Michel Samaha, Lebanese investigators have uncovered a number of plots sponsored by the Syrian regime against Lebanese citizens, including Sunnis in sectarian tinderbox areas such as Tripoli and Akkar. Lebanese military authorities recently issued arrest warrants in absentia for Lebanese Alawite leader Ali Eid, a staunch supporter of Assad, for smuggling a man involved in an August 23 bombing against Sunnis in Tripoli out of the country to Syria. The Assad regime, recently overconfident, could intensify assassinations in Lebanon (Tripoli in particular) that would only fuel further and more devastating attacks against Hezbollah.

Keeping conflicts in Lebanon from spreading elsewhere used to be easier, mostly as a result of backroom or tacit deals between Riyadh and Tehran. Indeed, many sources in Lebanon speculated to me that the recent government formation was evidence of such efforts. But while Arab and Persian leaders may agree to tamp it down in Lebanon, the increasingly sectarian nature of the fight in Syria has drawn both Iran and the Arab Gulf countries into a bloody battle that the porous Lebanese-Syria border, never clearly demarcated, will not contain. Ironically, Hezbollah's recent efforts to secure the Qalamoun area for the Assad regime could well push the Sunni-based Syrian opposition's central front into Lebanon, making it another theatre in an increasingly regional sectarian war.

Hitting Western targets in Lebanon or Iraq as retribution for jihadist attacks would not make the situation any better, either. Public opinion in the West is gathering against Iran, and Hezbollah opening this second front would only deepen skepticism that the Islamic Republic will cut the kind of deal with Washington that would protect Western interests in the Middle East and check counter proliferation concerns among its regional allies.

To head off further escalation, Hezbollah should scale down its involvement in Syria and return its troops home to Lebanon while a graceful exit is still possible. While reports indicate that Saudi Arabia has launched a campaign to support the Sunni opposition, Hezbollah and Iran should read such support for what it is: an attempt to squeeze out extremists and peel members of Al-Qaeda affiliates over to more moderate groups under control of regional Arab countries, and an attempt to push Bashar al-Assad to the bargaining table.

Andrew Tabler is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute and author of In the Lion's Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle with Syria.

The Key to Pressuring Assad Is UNSCR 2118

2014-02-21T17:04:00.000-05:00

PolicyWatch 2213

Andrew J. Tabler

Also available in

February 21, 2014

By focusing on the Syrian regime's faltering commitment to eliminate its chemical weapons, Washington can decisively push Damascus and Russia toward real progress on larger issues -- and also set the table for limited military strikes if they prove necessary.

The Syria peace talks in Geneva ended in deadlock on February 16, with the Assad regime seizing the personal assets of opposition negotiators and UN Special Representative Lakhdar Brahimi blaming Damascus for the failure to schedule the next round. Brahimi accused the regime of refusing to address the very basis of the talks: a negotiated political transition. It is now patently clear that President Bashar al-Assad feels no need to negotiate, be it a political solution to end the crisis or humanitarian access and evacuation from areas besieged by the regime. Similarly, his backers in Moscow refuse to pressure him into fulfilling his political obligations under the Geneva Communique of 2012. According to U.S. ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, nearly 5,000 Syrians were killed during the latest rounds of talks in what she described as "the most concentrated period of killing in the entire duration of the conflict."
To make matters far worse, the regime is dragging its feet on disposing of its chemical weapons (CW), with only 11 percent of only the first shipment transferred out of the country so far. And on January 30, U.S. authorities reported that the regime has "revised" its initial declarations to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), refusing to destroy its twelve declared weapons sites.
Taken together, these developments show that Assad is not only playing a ruthless game to hold on to power, but also escalating the crisis. By starving out the opposition and obstructing a political solution, he is ensuring that the country remains in a permanent state of partition, with terrorist havens on both sides. And by not following through on his commitments to the OPCW, he is threatening to supercharge the conflict -- the longer such weapons remain in the country, the more likely they are to be used by the regime again or fall into the hands of terrorist groups. In short, the situation presents a clear threat to regional and international security.
Accordingly, the United States should turn the tables on Assad, using Syria's September decision to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention as leverage to gain compliance on two other issues: a political transition as outlined in the Geneva Communique, and humanitarian access/evacuation. While the Security Council has shown little agreement on the humanitarian issue, compliance with the OPCW and the Geneva Communique are both enshrined in the same Security Council document: Resolution 2118, which is enforceable by Chapter VII measures such as sanctions and use of force following the passage of a subsequent Chapter VII resolution. Pushing now on 2118 would create a useful dilemma, forcing Moscow to reveal whether it is unable or simply unwilling to goad the Assad regime into eliminating its CW program and negotiating a political transition. This approach would also prepare the American public for a possible military showdown with Assad this summer over his refusal to dispose of chemical agents.

ONE RESOLUTION, TWO VITAL ISSUES

As Brahimi noted, the peace talks broke down because of the Assad regime's refusal to discuss a "transitional governing body" as outlined under the Geneva Communique, the internationally accepted "Action Plan for Syria" agreed on by the United States and Russia and enshrined in Resolution 2118. Instead, the regime has put forward a forced political solution centered on Assad's "reelection" to a third seven-year term; his current terms expires July 7, but he is virtually guaranteed to win the rigged election slated for this spring. This is a nonstarter for the opposition. And given the regime's inability to reconquer and hold all the territory it has lost, this solution would make it impossible to reunite Syria under central leadership, leading to permanent partition along the lines of Somalia.
Meanwhile, the regime's efforts to remove "chemical agents and key precursor chemicals" have -- as U.S. ambassador to the OPCW Robert Mikulak put it on January 30 -- "seriously languished and stalled" in at least two respects. First, only a small percentage of the first scheduled shipment has been transported to the port of Latakia for transfer outside Syria and destruction. The shipment is supposed to include 500 tonnes of the most toxic chemicals, with another shipment of 700 tonnes due out thereafter. Mikulak's assessment was not surprising: reports indicated that shipments had been remarkably small for some time, leading Assad to blame the OPCW for the "slow" provision of equipment in a January interview with Agence France Press. This was in reference to Syrian requests for extra equipment due to "security concerns" in the Qalamoun area along the M-5 highway north of Damascus, through which CW shipments are transported. Mikulak branded such concerns as "without merit" and said they displayed a "bargaining mentality rather than a security mentality," since the regime and its Hezbollah allies were already known to have consolidated much of their position in that region.
Second, and much more worrisome, Damascus has sought to revise its initial declaration to the OPCW in order to keep its twelve declared CW weapons sites intact. The regime now wants to render these sites "inactivated" by "welding doors shut and constructing interior obstacles" -- measures that Washington has said are "readily reversible within days" and therefore well short of Syria's original commitment to "physically destroy" the sites "as provided for by the Convention and the precedents for implementing that requirement." The proposal followed Assad's statement in the AFP interview that Syria's only obligation was "preparing and collecting data and providing access to inspectors." "The rest," he said, "is up to other parties."
The site request indicated that Damascus was backtracking on its commitments under Resolution 2118 and the Convention on the Destruction of Chemical Weapons, which the regime acceded to last year under threat of U.S. military force. In response, Mikulak stated that the United States was willing to "explore an approach" where the roofs of seven hardened aircraft hangars used as chemical sites could be collapsed. The five remaining CW sites are underground; although Mikulak noted that they present a "more challenging destruction problem," he recommended collapsing the tunnel portals and compromising the "structural integrity" of the tunnels at "key junctures."

USING 2118 TO BRING ASSAD BACK TO THE TABLE

The best way to prevent Assad from escalating the crisis and domineering the transition is to pressure him into complying with the timetable for disposing of CW and destroying chemical sites. Increased shipments out of Syria would take away a strategic weapon that the regime has repeatedly has used and keep it from falling into the wrong hands. But there is another compelling reason to push Assad on 2118: the regime has made itself vulnerable on other fronts by dragging its feet on the OPCW. Focusing on the effort to rid Syria of CW would help Washington determine exactly where it stands not only with the Assad regime, but also with Moscow. The sequencing of this strategy could unfold as follows:

Create diplomatic pressure around Resolution 2118 in terms of both CW destruction and the transitional governing body outlined by the Geneva Communique. The CW problem is the only Syrian issue on which there is clear Security Council agreement regarding the steps Assad must take, and the transition process outlined in the Geneva Communique has broad international acceptance. Emphasizing these two issues by focusing on compliance with Resolution 2118 would keep the regime on agenda and steer it away from attempting to justify its onslaught against civilians as a war on "terrorism." At the same time, the U.S. government should continue pushing on the current UN draft resolutions regarding humanitarian access and evacuation in response to the regime's recent uptick in violence and continued besieging of approximately 200,000 Syrians. Given the urgency of the matter, any such resolutions should have clear consequences in the event of noncompliance.
Build public pressure against the regime based on its delays in implementing 2118. By increasingly highlighting the Assad regime's recent barrage against the opposition, Washington can build pressure not only on Damascus, but also on Moscow, determining once and for all whether Russia will convince Assad to meet his commitments on CW and political transition. In addition, such an approach would prod Moscow on the humanitarian front.

A campaign of diplomatic and public pressure could also build opposition support for the United States following its nadir last year, when the Obama administration decided to delay punitive airstrikes after the regime reportedly used CW against civilians. This goodwill could in turn be used to obtain guarantees from rebel elements along the Qalamoun-Latakia route not to attack or commandeer CW convoys. Such an approach would cement the good impression made by Washington's strong diplomatic stand at the latest peace talks, particularly in keeping Iran away from the table unless it accepted the Geneva Communique.

REVISITING LIMITED DIRECT MILITARY FORCE

Thus far, the Assad regime has radically changed course only when confronted with the credible threat of U.S. military force last autumn. This is similar to Assad's shift in the face of Israeli military strikes against convoys attempting to transfer strategic weapons to Hezbollah. It is therefore important that Washington emphasize a point President Obama has already made: U.S. strikes on Syria were only delayed last year, not cancelled, while Washington explored the regime's willingness to deliver on its commitments under Resolution 2118. Taking this tack would not only instrumentalize the credible use of force and create pressure to move, it would also prepare the American public for the necessity of a limited strike in the increasingly likely event that Damascus misses the final June 30 deadline to eliminate its CW program.
This is not just a matter of American credibility being on the line: by escalating the violence, spurning real negotiations, and holding onto its chemical arsenal, the Assad regime has ensured that the Syria crisis will increasingly threaten the United States and its allies in Europe and the Middle East. The domestic political timing adds increased urgency: President Obama will likely face increased Republican criticism over his handling of a crisis to which there will be no easy answers any time soon, and such pressure is already emerging via tight congressional races that could end Democratic control of the Senate and, with it, the president's ability to govern assertively the next two years. At the same time, the relative economic and political cost of limited military intervention using offset assets (e.g., cruise missiles) is decreasing as Washington's financial and military commitments to curb humanitarian suffering in Syria grow. As the Syria crisis enters its fourth year next month, dealing effectively with the Assad regime's behavior now by pressing for implementation of Resolution 2118 -- and a potential new humanitarian resolution -- is the right move, both politically and morally.
Andrew J. Tabler is a senior fellow in The Washington Institute's Program on Arab Politics.

An Assertive Plan of Action for Syria

2014-02-12T17:07:00.000-05:00

Congressional Testimony

Andrew J. Tabler

House of Commons, Canada
February 12, 2014

Washington Institute senior fellow Andrew Tabler addressed the Canadian parliament's Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development regarding the current situation in Syria. The following are his prepared remarks and policy recommendations.

Mr. Chairman and Ranking Members:
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. Following the outbreak of the Syrian uprising in March 2011, I have had multiple opportunities to speak with members of Canada's government, diplomatic corps, intelligence services, and military either in Ottawa, at the Halifax Security Forum, or in Washington on what now can only be described as Syria's meltdown. While a long-term resident in Damascus, I also had extensive contact with Canadian diplomats concerned with the Middle East and national security issues. As much as I appreciated those meetings, the real reason I am speaking with you here today is that Canada has remained a stalwart ally of the United States in a rapidly changing world in which easy answers to foreign policy dilemmas are no more. And I believe more than ever that we are in this together.

A Corrosive Conflict with No End In Sight

The rapidly deteriorating situation in Syria now represents not only the biggest humanitarian crisis in a generation but also the most complex in terms of short- and long-term security challenges. The effort by President Bashar al-Assad's regime to shoot its way out of what started as peaceful protests demanding reform has set off a bloody civil war in which more than 130,000 people have been killed, between a third and a half of Syria's population of 23 million has been displaced, and what remains on paper as the Syrian Arab Republic has been divided into three complex entities in which terrorist organizations are not only present but ascendant in each area.
In the western part of Syria, the minority-dominated Assad regime is holding on not only through using the full lethality of its military arsenal, including poison gas and ballistic missiles, but also through the direct aid and coordination with U.S.-designated terrorist organizations. These include the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and a number of Shiite militias from as far away as Iraq and Afghanistan. In the majority Sunni-dominated center, al-Qaeda affiliates such as Jabhat al-Nusra (the Support Front) and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) have grown in response to the regime's slaughter, the presence of Iranian-backed forces, perceived international inaction to stop the slaughter, and, particularly, the U.S. decision to put off punitive strikes against the Assad regime for its assessed use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians. And last but not least, in Syria's northeast, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), dominates Kurdish areas.
The longer the war has gone on, the more bloody and sectarian it has become, particularly between Alawites and other minority factions that dominate the regime and Sunnis that dominate the opposition. Extensive Sunni-Kurdish tension and violence have grown as well, particularly in tandem with the growth of al-Qaeda factions in Syria's center and northeast. Syria's Christian population has very much been caught in the middle, fearful of extremist elements among the Syrian Sunni-dominated opposition all the while knowing that seeking security from the brutal Assad regime is not in keeping with its long-term interests in the Middle East, let alone the teachings of Jesus Christ. As a student of his words and the values they inspired, I share their concerns and fully appreciate their dilemma.

Spillover and the "Regionalization" of the Conflict

Sectarianism has grown with the help of each group's regional backers, with Shiite-dominated Iran supporting the Assad regime and Shiite-based forces on one side, and the Sunni Arab Gulf and North African countries standing on the side of the opposition. Assistance has included donations from governments as well as individuals in all of these countries, and the flow of assistance has been haphazard, which has helped fuel extremism on both sides. In many ways, the battle for the future of the Middle East between Iran and the Arab countries is being waged in the streets, mountains, and fields of Syria. But these are not the only regional interests at stake -- Turkey and the Kurds are also vying for power and influence in Syria. Globally, Russia continues to support the Assad regime with weapons, and the West supports moderate factions of the opposition overtly with nonlethal assistance and covertly with small weapons and training.
Las Vegas rules don't apply in Syria: what happens there doesn't stay there. Syria's primary importance to the West, as well as the Middle East region, remains its central geographic position in the regional security architecture -- that is, the Middle East's post-World War I boundaries. The Syrian war is now spilling west into Lebanon, which has seen multiple terrorist attacks in the last few months, and east into Iraq, where similar attacks are taking place. If the fighting in Syria continues apace and spreads south into Jordan, which hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees in and out of camps, and north into Turkey, the Syria crisis will directly threaten the security of key Canadian and U.S. allies, all the while eroding the current state boundaries in the Levant and the Middle East as a whole.

Assad's "Forced Solution" and the Possible Partition of Syria

Spillover into the West could happen directly as well. Recent reports citing U.S. intelligence sources indicate that some extreme Sunni factions in Syria could be planning attacks inside the United States and elsewhere in the West. Other reports indicate Iran, the Assad regime's ally and ostensible enemy of the Sunni extremist forces, could be supporting these elements as well. Others indicate the Assad regime is buying oil products from ISIS and refraining from targeting its forces, instead hitting more moderate rebels supported by Western countries -- a Machiavellian strategy that drives all sides to extremes. Syria is increasingly a Middle Eastern twilight zone: a place where none of the usual rules apply.
Making matters worse, efforts to foster a transition in Syria that would have a hope of reuniting the country remain dim. President Assad is now putting forward a forced solution masquerading as a reform plan centered on his "reelection" to a third term as president -- which he last won in 2007 by a laughable 97.62 percent of the vote. Given the level of Assad's brutality and the minority nature of his Alawite-dominated regime, not to mention the Assad regime's past manipulations of elections and referendums, this is a nonstarter for the Sunni-majority-dominated opposition. Since Assad's forces, even with Hezbollah and Iranian assistance, seem unable to reconquer and effectively hold all of what was the Syrian Arab Republic, implementation of Assad's plan would mean a prolonged de facto partition for the country. Such an outcome would perpetuate human misery, lawlessness, and havens for terrorist groups.

An Assertive Plan of Action

The days of easy foreign policy options in the Syria crisis are over. The matter is not just as simple as arming the rebels or reengaging with Assad, as the media often portrays it. But that does not mean the West is out of options. The war in Syria is likely to go on for years, and it is important that Canada and its allies explore multiple tracks to constrain, contain, and eventually bring the conflict to an end. I believe the best way to do so is by utilizing a more assertive, three-pronged approach, prioritized by tackling first threats first.
1. Rid Syria of chemical weapons and implement the Geneva Communique of 2012. Concern is growing in the U.S. government that the effort to destroy Syria's chemical stockpile "has seriously languished and stalled," not just because Syria is predictably behind schedule, but also because Damascus is now demanding its chemical weapons sites be "inactivated" instead of "physically destroyed" as outlined under the Convention for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. This development, especially following the regime's consolidation of control in the western half of Syria, indicates that the Assad regime is dragging its feet on fulfilling the country's obligations in order to achieve concessions from the United States and the London 11 countries concerning the formation of a transitional governing body in Syria.
In order to counter such pressure, the West should turn the tables on the Assad gambit and use Syria's compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention as leverage to gain Assad's compliance with a transition in Syria as outlined under the Geneva Communique of 2012. Fortunately for the United States and Canada, both Syria's compliance with the rules set out by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the Geneva Communique are enshrined in the same UN Security Council resolution -- 2118 -- which is enforceable by Chapter VII measures such as sanctions and the use of force following the passage of a subsequent Chapter VII resolution. In the likely event of a veto by Russia or China, the credible threat of additional sanctions and the use of force should be used to ensure Assad follows through on his obligations to give up Syria's chemical weapons arsenal. Successful follow through could also help foster a real long-term transition in Syria based on, but not limited to, the Geneva Communique.
2. Push humanitarian access and evacuation. The humanitarian situation in Syria is rapidly worsening, and the Assad regime continues to use starvation campaigns that violate not only the Geneva Conventions but international humanitarian law as well. Canada should therefore continue to support the current proposed Security Council resolution concerning humanitarian access in Syria (which also emphasizes implementation of the Geneva Communique).
3. Combat terrorism. Combating terrorism should occur on multiple levels, including a plan in conjunction with regional allies to back moderate opposition elements at the expense of extremists. But that is not going to be enough. Plans should also be developed using offset assets (e.g., missiles) and drones to hit all designated terrorist groups operating in Syria, no matter what side they are fighting on, that are deemed to be aiming at Canadian, U.S., or international targets.
Such an approach would contain and constrain Assad on the use of chemical weapons, the possibility of their leakage to non-state actors and terrorist groups, and the regime's use of starvation and siege as a form of warfare. It would also contain, alienate, and help eliminate terrorist groups operating in Syria among both the opposition and the constellation of forces helping to prop up Assad.
Doubtless, the priorities on this list will likely change multiple times before the Syria crisis is over. But the basic pillars for present and future courses of action are there. Thank you for consideration of this testimony, and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Who’s to blame for failed Syrian peace talks, and what’s next?

2014-02-05T09:34:00.001-05:00

PBS Newshour

January 31, 2014 at 6:25 PM EST

TRANSCRIPT

JEFFREY BROWN: And so with no deal achieved and without a firm agreement to meet again, what are the prospects for ending a civil war that has claimed an estimated 130,000 lives and displaced millions?
We turn again to Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oklahoma, and Andrew Tabler, a senior fellow in the Program on Arab politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Joshua Landis, let me start with you. What do you take from this first round of talks?
JOSHUA LANDIS, University of Oklahoma: Well, I think many people were expecting — were expecting that the United States would be willing to take half a loaf, that it would be willing to compromise to the point of not asking for regime change in Syria in order to get, perhaps, some access to starving people, to victims inside Syria, and perhaps the beginnings of a cease-fire, in order to alleviate the suffering of the Syrians and the big outflow of refugees that risks to bring down and trouble neighboring states.
But the U.S. stuck to its guns and said that there has to be regime change in Syria. As soon as the Assad regime sensed this and heard the opening speech, it began to take away offers of cease-fire access to humanitarian agencies. And the conversation became one of accusation, counteraccusation, very heated.
And we haven’t seen any progress. And we have seen stalling on chemical weapons. I think that the regime went to Geneva, I believe — the Syrian regime — believing that it could — that the United States was beginning to get worried about the jihadist problem and wouldn’t — would stake a deal somehow with the Assad regime. And that didn’t happen.
JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Andrew, what do you take from it? And the very fact of meeting, even symbolically, does that have any importance?
ANDREW TABLER, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy: Yes, it does. It got the diplomatic ball rolling.
Many people predicted that the opposition would collapse. That didn’t happen. They didn’t end up with getting access. And the reason why I think the U.S. stuck to its guns is because this conference was about transition. It was never going to be about — a conference about why the Assad regime should be doing what it’s obligated to do under international humanitarian law and the Geneva Convention.
Access of humanitarian goods and evacuation of civilians are required there. It’s about a transition. Russia is on board with that. And so, actually, at the end of the week, I think the opposition, it’s a tactical victory, at least in the short-term.
JEFFREY BROWN: But in addition to transition, there’s the humanitarian crisis going on. We mentioned Homs, for example. What is the holdup there with getting something?
ANDREW TABLER: The regime will not allow supplies through their lines into Homs.
Now, in Homs, the rebels there are actually more reliable. There is better command-and-control. The long siege there has pushed them together and they are also better connected with the Syrian National Coalition.
So, it was a golden opportunity. Unfortunately, it was missed. And we will have to see if the regime comes back to the negotiating table on February 10.
JEFFREY BROWN: Joshua Landis, do you — are things like humanitarian — the humanitarian crisis, was that on the table there? Did it make any headway?
JOSHUA LANDIS: It didn’t make any headway. It was on the able, but the regime is trying to make a deal. And it didn’t sense that there was a deal, and so it took its offer of aid off the table.
And we’re back to a war of attrition here. And I have talked to a number of people in Washington and Paris about this. And they feel that Assad is at his acme, his greatest, strongest point here, because he has had a number of successes militarily. The rebels are in chaos.
But they believe that with time the rebels will get a new command structure that they are getting together, they are going to get more help, and that the minority regime behind Assad, the Alawites, Christians, other minorities, are only about 20 percent of the Syrian population.
They can be attrited. And their young men will be killed off eventually, and that in a year’s time or perhaps even two, the balance of power will be very different and this regime will begin to collapse. And then the conversation will change.
JEFFREY BROWN: Andrew Tabler, what about the reports that Syria is so far behind on the timetable to give up its poison gas stocks?
ANDREW TABLER: Right. It has only handed over about 4 percent of initial shipment of 500 tons, but not only that. Syria is now refusing to physically destroy its chemical weapons facilities and said they wanted to make it inaccessible, meaning like lock up the front doors, weld it, which is easily reversed.
The U.S. has come out very strongly. And remember that the Geneva communique on which the talks had been going on be there, the only place that is enshrined inside the United Nations is in the U.N. Security Council 2118 that deals with the chemical weapons issue. So they’re actually linked in there.
And so I think now we’re going to be going back to the Security Council concerning chemical weapons and to the humanitarian access.
JEFFREY BROWN: Is this tied to what Joshua Landis was talking about, that Assad feeling himself still very powerful?
ANDREW TABLER: Assad feels very powerful, particularly in the Western part of the country.
But what is interesting is Assad, despite being so powerful, is saying, I’m not strong enough to allow these convoys of these chemical weapons and these chemical agents through the Qalamoun area out to the coast. He’s demanding more and more equipment, which is interesting. If he is so strong in the west, why demand so much equipment?
Actually, the international community believes they have provided sufficient equipment. So does the OPCW. And that led to the statements we have seen from the United States the last two days.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, so, Joshua Landis, do you expect the Syrian government to go back to the table on February 10? Are there some areas, even limited, where there might be some progress?
JOSHUA LANDIS: I don’t think they want to talk about regime change.
And, you know, the message from Geneva was, the most important thing is that Assad has to step down, we need regime changes here. Assad is not going to step down. And this is going to be done over his dead body. And that’s — that’s the — you know, this is what this civil war is about. And that is where we are once again.
He thought there was an opening for — that the West was falling out of love with the Syrian opposition, they’re worried about the jihadists, they’re willing to talk about Assad remaining. As you remember, the ex-head of CIA Hayden had said, well, maybe Assad is better than the opposition.
And Ryan Crocker, important ambassador and spokesperson for the State Department, now retired, had said the same thing roughly, that he expects Assad to win. So Assad I think had begun to feel that perhaps there was a changing mood in the West. He discovered in Geneva there is no change in the West. Kerry was very dramatic. This is about regime change. He said that Assad is the reason for the jihadists there, he is the magnet, and until he goes, jihadists will not go.
JEFFREY BROWN: OK.
JOSHUA LANDIS: And that was his assertion.
JEFFREY BROWN: All right, let me ask very briefly, Andrew, are you as pessimistic?
ANDREW TABLER: I’m pessimistic in terms of — for relieving the suffering on the ground. But I think it’s no mistake President Obama talked about Syria three times in the State of the Union speech. He talked about — surprisingly, about supporting the moderate rebels.
Dealing with extremism in Syria is not just as simple as flipping back the Assad regime. It has to involve working with the opposition as well, particularly the moderate parts of it that we can work with.
JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Andrew Tabler, Joshua Landis, thanks again.
JOSHUA LANDIS: Pleasure.

Conflict in Syria: Geneva II and the Road Ahead

2014-01-31T13:34:00.000-05:00

PolicyWatch 2202

Andrew J. Tabler, Jeffrey White, and Aaron Y. Zelin

January 29, 2014

On January 27, 2014, Andrew Tabler, Jeffrey White, and Aaron Zelin addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. Tabler is a senior fellow in the Institute's Program on Arab Politics and author of In the Lion's Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle with Syria. White is a Defense Fellow at the Institute and a former senior defense intelligence officer. Zelin is the Institute's Richard Borow Fellow and founder of the website Jihadology.net. The following is a rapporteur's summary of their remarks.

ANDREW TABLER

Last week's talks in Montreux were a tactical diplomatic victory for the Syrian opposition. While the regime's foreign minister Walid Mouallem had a tense exchange with UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, forcing the regime delegation to take a more conciliatory tone ahead of subsequent talks in Geneva, the opposition's tone was much more measured. Early signs show that the talks have also restored some credibility to the United States and the UN.
In terms of content, the regime focused overwhelmingly on its fight against "terrorism." Opposition leader Ahmed Jarba similarly addressed the "slaughter" and other atrocities occurring in his country, but he blamed the regime for the creation of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a major al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.
In Geneva, the parties have attempted to address the humanitarian situation in Homs, one of the hardest hit, most besieged areas. The opposition Syrian National Coalition has better relationships with armed groups in that area, and the militias themselves have better command-and-control there. The regime has agreed to allow humanitarian deliveries, which are enshrined under international humanitarian law, but only if armed fighters depart assisted areas. In terms of evacuating Syrians from besieged areas, the regime has agreed to let women and children exit but is demanding that all male evacuees give their names before leaving -- a nonstarter for all other parties.
The talks have reached an impasse on the issue of transferring power to a transitional government. The regime's negotiating team reportedly presented a "declaration of principles" that did not mention a power transfer, and the opposition summarily rejected it. The regime's untenable position at Geneva is essentially a forced settlement masquerading as a democratic process. President Bashar al-Assad maintains that the political mechanism for settling the crisis centers on this spring's presidential "election." Following the February 2012 constitutional referendum, presidential elections in Syria must now be multicandidate, multiparty contests. Yet candidates must still be approved by the Assad-appointed Supreme Constitutional Court. This fact, coupled with other manipulations, mean that Assad will assuredly win.
Regarding the controversy over Iran's attendance at the talks, the United States has wisely insisted that Tehran cannot participate until it accepts a central tenet of the 2012 Geneva Communique: the formation of a "transitional governing body" (TGB) with "full executive powers" that will create a "neutral environment in which a transition can take place." Yet Assad has rendered this provision meaningless by insisting that the TGB be formed "on the basis of mutual consent." This loophole has allowed Russia to permit Assad's inclusion in the TGB while claiming to remain committed to the communique. Assad is also unwilling to work with the Syrian National Coalition and other opposition groups, which he dismisses as proxies of regional and Western states. Moreover, anything decided during the Geneva process would need to be confirmed by a national referendum administered by the regime.
Going forward, the opposition and its international supporters should pursue a three-part strategy. First, they should focus on a transition that involves the departure of the regime's core, including members of the Assad and Makhlouf families (who have privileged relationships with the elite 4th Armored Division) and the shabbiha militias. Second, they should avoid a forced settlement centered on the reelection of Assad, whose term expires on July 7. And third, they should prevent the regime from dragging its feet on implementation of the chemical weapons deal. Assad knows his usefulness to Russia and the United States will significantly diminish after he turns over all of those weapons, so he will attempt to tie any progress in Geneva to the chemical schedule.

Download Tabler's Who's Who in the Assad Regime chart (PDF).

JEFFREY WHITE

The ongoing negotiations are another front in the struggle between the regime and the opposition. In the end, though, military events will have a much bigger impact on the conflict's course than the Geneva process.
After the talks, the war will likely go back to business as usual: a triangular conflict characterized by unfinished operations and a battlefield situation that favors the regime, albeit not decisively. Casualties will increase, including among foreign fighters and irregulars on both sides. And the rebels may lose ground in important areas such as Homs, the southern suburbs of Damascus, and the southern approaches to Aleppo.
Currently, the opposition is undergoing two contradictory internal processes -- in some cases rebel factions are fighting each other, while in other cases they have sought to consolidate their forces against the regime. It remains unclear which process will prevail. Either way, the regime does not feel militarily threatened enough to treat the current talks seriously. Knowing that it will continue to benefit from inter-rebel fighting, the regime prefers a slow victory or stalemate over negotiations. The regime also sees no connection between the opposition delegation in Geneva and the armed rebels on the ground. For their part, the rebels have little bargaining power other than threatening to continue the fight.
There are four potential scenarios for how the conflict will unfold after Geneva, listed in descending order of probability, with the first two being equally likely:

Hardening of the current stalemate. Neither side demonstrates an interest in serious negotiations, preferring to continue the war of attrition in the hope of gaining a better bargaining position.
The regime continues to weaken the rebels. With the opposition increasingly divided, the regime becomes even less interested in negotiations over time, opting instead to slowly inflict attrition on the rebels.
The regime's success accelerates. Assad is only interested in discussing terms of surrender, and the rebels are divided over whether to capitulate or fight to the bitter end.
Rebels regain momentum. Battlefield gains by rebel forces increase the prospect for real negotiations with the regime, but the opposition remains divided.

To be sure, the creation of the Islamic Front umbrella group has improved the opposition's use of military resources. Yet the regime still holds the advantage in linking political and diplomatic strategy to military operations, and its position will likely improve in the short term. To remain effective, the rebels will have to resolve their internal divisions, limit their loss of territorial and strategic positions, better coordinate their use of military resources, and prevent the regime from exploiting mistrust among their ranks.
Despite reluctance in U.S. policymaking circles, tipping the military balance in the rebels' favor would require increased military assistance beyond guns and ammunition. Intelligence sharing, medical assistance, and battlefield expertise could also help the more moderate rebel factions in their fight against the al-Qaeda affiliate ISIS. At the same time, the international community could move negotiations forward by putting diplomatic and economic pressure on the regime's indispensable allies, Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia. This includes exposing the details of their financial and military support to the regime. Such an approach would test the willingness of these allies to up the ante. In any case, the current military situation in Syria means that Geneva is not where one should look to size up the country's future.

AARON ZELIN

The Islamic Front's number-one goal is toppling the Assad regime, including its military and security institutions. Accordingly, six of the seven rebel groups within the IF signed a joint statement in late October that declared settlement talks a "conspiracy" and warned that any rebel participants would be tried for treason. And on January 20, the IF and Jaish al-Mujahedin issued a joint statement further rejecting the Geneva process.
Even so, some have argued that the United States and the West should back the IF because it is fighting ISIS. Yet it would be imprudent for Washington to work with the IF given its actions and statements thus far. For example, Hassan Aboud -- the head of the IF's political bureau and leader of its most extremist faction, Ahrar al-Sham -- has said that there is no contradiction between the interests of the United States and Iran. More important, an August Human Rights Watch report concluded that the hostage taking, killings, and other systemic abuses committed by rebel forces against civilians in the Latakia area "rise to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity." The organization specifically implicated Ahrar al-Sham as a major player in these abuses. In addition, Zahran Aloush, the IF's military commander and head of Jaish al-Islam, has said that "the mujahedin...will wash the filth of the Rafida [derogatory term for Shiites] from the Levant, they will wash it forever." If the United States backs the IF and the regime is defeated, certain rebel factions could launch a campaign of genocide against Assad's Alawite Shiite constituents.
The group's core ideology also pits it against U.S. interests. The IF's charter calls for an Islamic state and the implementation of sharia -- the group is squarely against human legislation, believing that all laws come from God rather than civil government. IF leader Abu Issa al-Sheikh has stated that there is no place for secularism in Syria, while Aloush has ruled out democracy as an acceptable form of government.
The IF presents a military liability for Washington as well. Its role in fighting ISIS has overshadowed the fact that it hosts foreign fighters from the Netherlands, Turkey, Egypt, Kuwait, Russia, and Uzbekistan, among other countries. Even more alarming is the connection between senior Ahrar al-Sham figure Abu Khalid al-Suri and al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. As Zawahiri's emissary in Syria, Suri has been a mediator in dealings between ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra (JN), another al-Qaeda affiliate.
The ongoing fighting between IF units and ISIS is a lot more complex than commonly reported. While IF groups have been portrayed as fighting jihadists, they are in reality responding to specific abuses perpetrated by ISIS. Many within the jihadist camp have framed the IF-ISIS clashes as mere fitna (discord) to be resolved through mediation, potentially with JN as a broker. Meanwhile, ISIS has branded the opposition Syrian Military Council and its civilian arm as its real enemy, declaring that its war is not against the IF, but rather against Jamal Marouf, the leader of the nationalist Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF).
ISIS has also been able to recover from the recent surprise offensive by the SRF, Jaish al-Mujahedin, and the IF, in part because some IF battalions have refused to fight the group. Additionally, the two sides have signed several agreements, including one handing the city of Saraqeb over to JN and the SRF. As a result, ISIS has not only recaptured its lost clout, it has also retaken Jarabulus, Manbij, and al-Bab. In addition, it has secured pledges of loyalty from a number of tribes and former IF battalions since the fighting started.
Yet even as Ahrar al-Sham has toned down its clashes with ISIS, other IF groups are less keen on mending relations. Jaish al-Islam leader Aloush has consistently been anti-ISIS, calling it an agent of the Iranian government. Liwa al-Tawhid and Suqur al-Sham have made similar calls for finishing the job against ISIS. Thus, more inter-rebel fighting should be expected, though ISIS will remain a player whether it is ostracized or not.
This rapporteur's summary was prepared by Adam Heffez.

Avoiding Assad's Forced Solution to the Syria Crisis

2014-01-21T13:41:00.000-05:00

PolicyWatch 2195

Andrew J. Tabler

Also available in

January 21, 2014

Given that Assad and his backers want to gut the transition process called for in the Geneva Communique, Washington should plan to take other steps in parallel to the Geneva process.

The UN retraction of Iran's invitation to this week's Syria peace talks in Montreux, Switzerland, does little if anything to change the Assad regime's approach to those talks. President Bashar al-Assad's statements in recent days indicate that he and his backers are attempting to pressure the United States and the rest of the "London 11" countries supporting the opposition at the conference -- Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. In particular, Damascus hopes to change the framework of the talks from arranging a genuine transition to accepting a forced settlement centered on Assad's upcoming "reelection" for a third seven-year term, which will not take place for at least four months (his current term ends on July 7). Since little is likely to be accomplished at this week's talks, Washington should concentrate on steps the United States and its allies can take regardless of how the talks go, especially in terms of delivering humanitarian assistance to besieged areas and strengthening the moderate Syrian opposition through promotion of local elections.

ASSAD'S REMARKS INDICATE FORCED SOLUTION
In remarks made over the past few days -- first during a meeting with Russian politicians visiting Damascus, and then in an interview with Agence France Press (AFP) -- Assad reiterated the regime's longstanding mantra that it is fighting an international conspiracy waged by terrorist factions against Syria. More important, he outlined how the political mechanism for settling the crisis centers on his reelection.
On January 19, Russia's Interfax news agency reported that Assad had told a delegation of visiting Russian parliamentarians that the issue of him giving up power is "not up for discussion." Although the statement was later denied by Syrian state television, Assad told AFP the following day that the "chances of my [presidential] candidacy are significant," and "I must be at the forefront of those defending this country." He also noted that the process of measuring public opinion on his leadership would commence in "four months' time," when the election date will be announced.
Under the Assad family, Syrian elections have been regarded as among the most manipulated in the Arab world. During the last election in 2007, the Baath-dominated parliament rubberstamped Bashar's nomination as the sole candidate, and in the subsequent public referendum to confirm whether he should be president, he received a laughable 97.62 percent of the vote. In order to show devotion to Assad, many voters were forced to mark the "yes" column by pricking their finger and voting in blood.
Following changes to the constitution approved by referendum in February 2012, presidential elections in Syria must now be multicandidate, multiparty contests. Although this may sound like progress, the changes mean little for this year's election. For one thing, candidates must first be approved by the Supreme Constitutional Court, which is appointed by Assad. This fact, coupled with the ongoing state of war, the vast number of displaced citizens, and the heavy role of regime security services in regime-controlled areas, means that the chances of anyone other than Assad winning the next election are zero.
As for which factions Assad would be willing to work with in the future, he told AFP that he would only accept parties with a "national agenda" to help "govern the Syrian state," dismissing those in the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) and other opposition groups as proxies of regional and Western states participating in the plot against Syria. In his view, anything decided as part of the Geneva process or his own coalition-building efforts would also need to be confirmed by a national referendum run by the regime. Overall, Assad's account of how the next president will be selected and which "opposition parties" will be included is the basis of a forced solution to the Syria crisis masquerading as a democratic process.
LOOPHOLES IN GENEVA 1 COMMUNIQUE
The United States has insisted that Iran cannot attend this week's Syria talks until it accepts a central tenet of the Geneva Communique negotiated between Russian and American officials in June 2012. Section II, paragraph two of the communique states that a "key step" to "any settlement" of the Syria crisis is the formation of a "transitional governing body" (TGB) with "full executive powers" that will create a "neutral environment in which a transition can take place."
Yet Assad and his backers have interpreted this nominally tough provision in a way that guts it of any meaning, emphasizing the portion of Section II that reads, "[The TGB] could include members of the present government and the opposition and other groups...formed on the basis of mutual consent." This loophole has allowed Russia to permit, and the United States to resist, Assad's inclusion in the TGB while remaining committed to the Geneva Communique. Although Moscow and Washington have held up the mutual-consent clause as guaranteeing each side's "veto" over a settlement, the lack of specific wording as to which party represents the opposition means that the "present government" (i.e., the Assad regime) need only ally with part of the opposition to move toward a negotiated solution.
Given how these loopholes tactically and strategically benefit the Syrian regime and its supporters in Moscow and Beijing, it remains unclear why Iran backtracked on Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif's verbal commitments to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in support of the Geneva Communique as a basis for settlement. Perhaps Tehran is concerned that if it accepts the communique, Washington would then highlight the other reason why Iran's presence at the Syria talks is inappropriate -- namely, that it is the only country in the region to have deployed forces on the ground in Syria, most notably personnel from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Qods Force, who have been advising and supporting the Assad regime. Zarif and Syrian foreign minister Walid Mouallem's recent collective visits to Moscow indicate that Tehran's diplomatic maneuver was a coordinated attempt to change the framework of the Geneva Communique and test American mettle regarding a forced settlement.
Whatever the case, the attempt to include Iran in the talks should come as no surprise -- for months, UN Special Representative for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi has privately and publicly lobbied Western and Arab countries to allow Iran into the Geneva process. While Secretary of State John Kerry has said that Tehran could play some role in settling the Syria crisis, it is unrealistic to expect Iran's leaders to be a positive force when they refuse to acknowledge the international responsibility to help with transition. Tehran has instead clung to the fiction that such decisions are best left to the Syrian people, even as it dispatches Iranian forces to Syria, sends arms to the Assad regime in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, and orchestrates the presence of thousands of pro-regime fighters in Syria.

AVOIDING TRAPS ON THE LONG DIPLOMATIC ROAD AHEAD

The mechanism for channeling the Syrian people's aspirations toward a settlement that ends the war will not be an election under Assad's rule. Washington and its allies must not indulge Assad's fantasy that his phony election process can yield a "political solution" that will reunite Syria and avoid protracted partition and likely spillover that would threaten regional stability. If the regime and its backers continue to insist on that as the only path, the United States should focus on a mix of short- and long-term tactical and strategic steps -- both at the negotiating table and after -- to improve the chances of a workable settlement.
At the Montreux talks, Washington should emphasize unconditional limited ceasefires for the provision of humanitarian aid to besieged areas. Thus far, the regime has proposed that rebels evacuate areas where aid is to be distributed and hand them over to regime control -- in other words, if the opposition chooses to give up, the regime will graciously accept the offer. A strong U.S. stance calling not for surrender, but for true ceasefires that allow the provision of aid, would strengthen the opposition factions attending Geneva II in the eyes of fellow Syrians desperate for food and medical care. This should be accompanied by increased U.S. humanitarian support for opposition-controlled areas via nonregime channels; to date, the vast bulk of U.S. aid has gone through regime-linked institutions.
Washington should also encourage local elections in rebel-controlled areas to help the opposition choose a clear set of leaders and consolidate its ranks. As outlined above, the loopholes inherent in the Geneva Communique give Assad room to force a political settlement on his terms. The only way for the opposition to avoid that trap is to make sure the party sitting across the negotiating table from the regime is authoritative, insofar as it represents a majority of those opposed to Assad.
Andrew J. Tabler is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute and author of In the Lion's Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle with Syria.

Syria's Collapse: And How Washington Can Stop It - Foreign Affairs July/August 2013

2013-06-14T14:02:00.000-04:00

June 14, 2013

ESSAY

Syria's Collapse

And How Washington Can Stop It

By Andrew J. Tabler

June 14, 2013

Article Summary and Author Biography

A Free Syrian Army fighter takes cover during clashes with the Syrian Army in central Aleppo, 2012. (Goran Tomasevic / Courtesy Reuters)

Syria is melting down. The ruling regime’s attempt to shoot its way out of the largest uprising it has ever faced has killed over 80,000 people and displaced roughly half of Syria’s population of 22 million. If the current monthly death tolls of around 6,000 keep up, Syria will by August hit a grim milestone: 100,000 killed, a number that it took almost twice as long to reach in Bosnia in the early 1990s. This a full two years after U.S. President Barack Obama pronounced that President Bashar al-Assad needed to “step aside.”

Comparisons to the Balkans do not suffice to describe the crisis in Syria, however. The real danger is that the country could soon end up looking more like Somalia, where a bloody two-decade-long civil war has torn apart the state and created a sanctuary for criminals and terrorists. Syria has already effectively fractured into three barely contiguous areas. In each, U.S.-designated terrorist organizations are now ascendant. The regime still holds sway in western Syria, the part of the country dominated by the Alawite minority, to which the Assad family belongs; and fighters from Hezbollah, a Shiite Islamist group backed by Iran, regularly cross the increasingly meaningless Lebanese border to join Assad’s forces there. Meanwhile, a heavily Sunni Arab north-central region has come under the control of a diverse assortment of armed opposition groups. These include Jabhat al-Nusra (also known as the al-Nusra Front), an al Qaeda affiliate, which recently hoisted its black flag over Syria’s largest dam on the Euphrates. In the Kurdish north, a local offshoot of the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has fought a long guerrilla war against the Turkish government, operates freely.

Look closer, and the picture gets worse. The conflict, whose daily death toll is now above those at the height of the Iraq war, in 2007, is rapidly spilling over into neighboring countries. The Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan has become that country’s fourth-largest city (population: 180,000), stretching the Hashemite kingdom’s resources and threatening the stability of its northern provinces. Lebanese Sunnis and Shiites, no strangers to sectarian tensions, are fighting each other across the Bekaa Valley in Syria, and Syria-related altercations occasionally break out within Lebanon. The fact that Lebanon, a country where Palestinian refugee camps are synonymous with misery and militancy, is even contemplating building camps for Syrian refugees is itself a sign of how bad things have gotten. And lest it be unclear how this affects the United States, al Qaeda in Iraq, a terrorist organization that Washington sacrificed an enormous amount of blood and money trying to defeat, has found a welcome home in Syria, announcing in April that it was joining forces with Jabhat al-Nusra to form the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

The fact that the Assad regime has reportedly dipped into its stockpile of chemical weapons -- the region’s largest -- has moved the crisis up several spots on the White House’s list of urgent problems. Although public opinion polls suggest that Americans are wary of intervention, avoiding the problem looks less and less feasible, as the situation in Syria shifts from a mostly contained humanitarian catastrophe to a strategic disaster for the United States and its regional allies. A country in a region that is home to 65 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves and 40 percent of its natural gas is on the verge of becoming a lawless haven for terrorists where dangerous weapons are on the loose.

Like it or not, the question the Obama administration now faces is not whether to do more to help resolve the conflict but when, how, and at what cost. Las Vegas rules do not apply to Syria: what happens there will not stay there. The massive refugee crisis and the threat that dangerous weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists -- jihadists and Kurdish separatists alike -- directly threaten the security of Washington’s allies in Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Turkey. The meltdown of the Syrian state is empowering terrorist groups and could ultimately give them the freedom to plan international attacks, as the chaos of Afghanistan in the 1990s did for al Qaeda. As complex as the Syrian crisis has become, one thing is clear: the longer it lasts, the greater the threat it poses and the harder it becomes for the United States to do anything about it.

To stop Syria’s meltdown and contain its mushrooming threats, the United States needs a new approach, one that starts with a partial military intervention aimed at pushing all sides to the negotiating table. The only way Washington can resolve the crisis is by working with the people “within Syria,” as the Obama administration refers to the domestic opposition, instead of without them, that is, at the UN Security Council.

THE COST OF INACTION

The White House’s approach to the Syrian crisis so far has been top-down, relying on diplomacy to get Assad out of the way and create the space for a peaceful transition to democracy. But simply pushing the sides to reach a viable political settlement has become less and less likely to succeed. International diplomatic mediation has failed mostly because Washington and Moscow disagree about what the transition should look like. Whereas the Americans demand that Assad and his cronies must leave Syria, Russia insists that he, or at least the regime, stay in place. To this end, Moscow has vetoed three Security Council resolutions on Syria that were sponsored by the United States or its allies and watered down or stymied countless others. Although the two countries recently announced plans to hold an international conference to deal with the crisis, the chances that it will bear fruit are exceeding low given the ambiguity over what the end result of any negotiations among the warring parties would be, the lack of urgency on the part of both the regime and the opposition to come to a power-sharing agreement, and Moscow’s and Washington’s inability to bring the sides to the table.

In the meantime, Washington has sought Damascus’ diplomatic isolation; imposed a raft of oil, trade, and financial sanctions targeting the regime; helped organize a number of hopelessly divided and exiled political opposition groups into the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces; reached out to civilian activists in Syria; and offered $760 million in humanitarian assistance to Syrian civilians. Fearing that American weapons could find their way into the hands of extremists, the United States has more or less ignored the armed opposition, which effectively replaced the civilian activists at the vanguard of the effort to topple Assad more than a year and a half ago and already controls large swaths of territory in the country. Washington’s hesitation has led many armed groups to seek support elsewhere -- including from private Salafi and jihadist funders in Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

The Obama administration has sent a trickle of nonlethal assistance, such as medicine and nearly expired ready-to-eat meals, to the rebel Supreme Military Council, an armed partner of the National Coalition. But this paltry aid will neither force the downfall of the regime nor earn Washington the loyalty of the opposition. Although the White House announced in April, with great fanfare, that it would send bulletproof vests and night-vision goggles to certain vetted armed groups, it appears that this will be too little, too late to win over most of those fighting to oust Assad. Each week, protesters in certain areas regularly berate the United States, and Obama in particular, for doing little for the Syrians in their hour of need. One such demonstration, in Kafr Nabl last April, featured a protest banner asking Obama whether he needed a third term to decide what to do about Syria, and if so, if any Syrians would still be alive then. Since those now aiming shots at the regime will soon call the shots where regime forces give way, Washington should take their growing resentment seriously.

The one thing that Obama has indicated might lead the United States to step in militarily, of course, is Assad’s use of chemical weapons. But even here, Washington has vacillated, betraying a deep aversion to getting involved. Obama’s redline on chemical weapons has shifted over time. At first, it included any “movement or use” of such weapons. Then, last November, it narrowed to include only their use, after U.S. intelligence detected that the regime had loaded sarin gas into bombs. Then, in late April, the administration seemed to suggest it would act only to stop the “systematic use” of chemical weapons and only when their use could be verified beyond a shadow of a doubt (a tall order, given that Washington cannot itself directly gather the samples needed for such certainty).

The U.S. government says it wants to force Assad from power and check the rise of the extremists in the opposition. But its current approach is furthering neither objective. If Washington keeps pursuing a UN-mediated settlement with Russia while allowing the conflict to deteriorate, Moscow will lose its ability to bring the regime to the table for talks on a real transition of power. As the bitter sectarian war continues, the regime’s supporters and the Alawites will have more reasons to fear one day living under Sunni rule and will see a carved-out ministate as preferable to a political settlement -- and thus resist any negotiations. Meanwhile, the United States will have lost whatever diplomatic leverage it might once have had over the opposition forces, who increasingly feel that the Americans abandoned them in their hour of need.

A BETTER WAY FORWARD

Neither the war-weary American public nor the Syrian opposition wants to see a full-scale U.S. land invasion to topple Assad and install a U.S.-backed government; both fear that a massive intervention would mean a repeat of Iraq. But that doesn’t mean the United States lacks options. Washington should pursue a measured but assertive course, one aimed at preventing Assad from freely using his most lethal weapons, establishing safe areas for civilians on Syria’s borders, and supporting vetted elements of the armed and civilian opposition with weapons, intelligence, humanitarian aid, and reconstruction assistance. The end goal (as opposed to the starting point, as the Obama administration now favors) should be negotiations, led by the UN or another party, that lead to the departure of Assad and his entourage and the reunification of the country. If the United States wants a Syria that is united, stable, and eventually more democratic -- and perhaps no longer allied with Iran -- this is the least bad way to get there.

The United States should start by deterring the regime from using its most lethal tools, namely surface-to-surface missiles and chemical weapons. Such deterrence will require taking out the bombs filled with sarin gas that, according to The New York Times, were placed last year “near or on” Syrian air bases. Destroying those bombs would allow Washington to signal to Assad that preparing to use his advanced weapons will carry a cost. This would likely reduce the death toll and give Syrian civilians caught up in the fighting fewer reasons to flee their homes, thus helping stem the refugee crisis. If Assad nonetheless decided to up the ante, Washington should launch pinpoint air, missile, or, possibly, drone strikes to destroy or render useless his remaining stockpiles of chemical weapons and the missiles that could deliver them. (Of course, the U.S. military would have to take extra care to avoid harming civilians with nearby chemical explosions.) Should the U.S. military fail to locate or destroy Assad’s most dangerous weapons, or deem it too risky to try, it could instead hit Syrian command-and-control facilities.

Second, to protect Syrians in opposition-controlled territory from attacks by the regime’s Scud missiles and fixed-wing aircraft, the United States should establish 50- to 80-mile-deep safe areas within Syria along its borders with Jordan and Turkey. Critics of intervention often cast the idea of creating a no-fly zone in Syria as too risky for the U.S. pilots and planes that would be involved. But a limited approach focused on border regions would be less perilous, since the regime’s planes and missiles could be shot down using Patriot missile batteries based in Jordan and Turkey or by aircraft flying there. And the safe areas would still allow civilians to take shelter from Assad’s onslaught, keep refugees from flooding into neighboring countries, and enable the international community to funnel in humanitarian aid on a scale that local nongovernmental organizations cannot match.
Carving out these safe areas would also necessitate U.S. air or missile strikes on nearby artillery -- Assad’s tool of choice for killing civilians and a possible method of delivering chemical weapons -- and air defense systems. But these, too, could be conducted from over the border.

To be sure, the United States could not protect the safe areas from ground assaults by Assad’s forces. But by eliminating the threat of death from above, whether from missiles or aircraft, a remote no-fly zone could give the rebels in these areas a fighting chance and the space they needed to safeguard civilians on the ground. Similarly, this over-the-border approach would not be as effective in preventing civilian casualties as sending U.S. aircraft over Syria, but it would carry substantially fewer risks of U.S. planes being shot down by Syrian antiaircraft batteries. If the conflict markedly worsened or the regime began using its chemical weapons wholesale against the opposition, Washington would also be able to expand the safe areas toward the center of the country and create a larger no-fly zone. But both the limited, remote option and an expanded no-fly zone could be constrained by the introduction of sophisticated Russian S-300 antiaircraft missile systems, which reportedly could be operational in Syria as early as August -- another reminder of the costs of waiting.

Third, Washington needs to work directly with opposition forces on the ground in Syria (as opposed to just those outside it) to push back the government’s forces, deliver humanitarian assistance, and, most important, check the growing influence of Islamic extremists. This should include the provision of arms to vetted armed groups on a trial-and-error basis, with Washington monitoring how the battalions use the intelligence, supplies, and arms they receive. The initial aid should be funneled through non-Salafi figures in the Supreme Military Council, such as Colonel Abdul-Jabbar Akidi, head of Aleppo’s Revolutionary Military Council and of the armaments committee of the Supreme Military Council’s Northern Front. (It was through Akidi that the United States recently channeled its nonlethal assistance, including the bulletproof vests.) At the same time, Washington should encourage members of the National Coalition to enter liberated areas and work together with the armed groups and local councils to build a new viable political leadership on the ground based on local elections.

None of this work would require American boots on the ground in an offensive capacity, but it could involve Americans wearing other types of footwear. The United States should immediately establish secure offices in southern Turkey and northern Jordan as centers devoted to working with the Syrian opposition, adding to the discussions that are currently taking place between Washington and some rebels via Skype and through periodic visits of U.S. officials to the border. As soon as their safety can be reasonably well assured, U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers should be sent into the safe areas that the United States has established in Syria, with protection, to meet directly with civilian and armed opposition members, activists, and relief workers. Establishing close relationships with players in Syria would free the United States from having to work through Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, which have in the past directed assistance into the wrong hands; Saudi-purchased Croatian arms, for example, were seen earlier this year in the possession of Jabhat al-Nusra. A more direct approach would, admittedly, put some American lives at risk, so every possible security precaution would need to be taken to avoid an attack along the lines of the 2012 assault in Benghazi that killed Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

Still, establishing a presence on the ground would be worth the risks, allowing the United States to work directly with Syrian armed groups to contain the Assad regime and ultimately influence the character of the opposition. One way to exert such influence would be to condition assistance on the opposition groups’ political orientations and their respect for civilian leadership and human rights. The United States should also try to influence Syrian politics on the local level to prevent the total collapse of governance in rebel-held territories. Once the opposition fully liberates an area, Washington should require elections to select a civilian leadership. This process would help avoid chaos as the regime crumbles and expose local attitudes and sympathies, allowing U.S. officials to assess the influence of various extremist groups.

Those who oppose increasing U.S. aid to the opposition tend to point to its uglier elements, particularly to fighters affiliated with al Qaeda. But only by getting involved can the United States shape the opposition and support its moderate forces. Although anti-Americanism is growing among the rebels, there is still time for a ground-up strategy to win back their trust. This could be achieved through backing the more liberal, secular, and nationalist battalions and isolating -- and possibly launching drone strikes against -- those extremist forces that refuse to accept civilian authority during the transition.

With U.S. help, there are good reasons to believe that moderates within the opposition can prevail. At its core, the Syrian revolution is a nationalist one. Of the three main currents in the opposition -- secularists, moderate Islamists (including those in the Muslim Brotherhood), and Salafists -- the first two are more nationalist in orientation; their goals are more political than religious, and their agendas do not extend beyond Syria. Several Salafi and extremist groups, such as Jabhat al-Nusra, have transnational goals, such as the creation of an Islamic state or caliphate beyond Syria’s current borders. The main reason such groups have come to play such a big role in the opposition is that the anti-Assad forces have had to turn to the Gulf states for weapons and money -- and the sources there have favored the Salafists, which according to some estimates account for up to a quarter of all the opposition fighters. The United States could earn the influence it seeks by providing intelligence, military training, and weapons of its own.

Another factor that will likely check the influence of radicals in the opposition is the diversity of Syria’s Sunni community and the country’s historic tolerance of minorities. Syria’s Sunnis, who make up the majority of the opposition, have long identified with their region or tribe rather than their religion. Whereas Salafists have been able to win some support in the religiously conservative northwest, Damascene Sunnis are more moderate, in keeping with their city’s mercantile culture. In the south and the east, affiliations with large families and tribes, even those that stretch into Iraq, tend to matter the most. What this means is that religiously motivated atrocities against minorities throughout Syria are not inevitable and that the Sunnis will need to learn to work with one another as much as with non-Sunnis. To be sure, the prominent role of the Alawites in the regime’s campaign could lead to retribution in areas where Assad’s forces retreat. But so far, there have been remarkably few cases of opposition forces killing minority civilians en masse. A more active United States could help keep it this way, including by insisting that the opposition follow certain rules of conduct in order to receive U.S. assistance.

Finally, after stepping up its involvement, Washington should seek talks between the regime and moderate opposition forces, sponsored by either the UN or, given the UN’s poor track record, another party, such as Switzerland or Norway. The timing of such talks, which would need to come on the heels of a cease-fire, would largely be dependent on the course of the war and on when Russia and the United States could arrive at a common vision for the transition and an understanding of how to get to that point. Only by raising the costs of diplomatic intransigence for both the Syrian government and Russia, with a clear show of U.S. support for the opposition, is Washington likely to persuade the Kremlin to play a constructive role in the conflict’s endgame. By tipping the balance on the ground toward the opposition, Washington could convince the regime -- or at least its patrons in Moscow -- that the conflict will not end by force alone. What is more, such increased U.S. support for the opposition would give the Americans more leverage to bring the rebels to the negotiating table.

At first, any talks would have to focus on getting Assad, his security chiefs, and his top generals to step down and leave the country. The ultimate goal would be the reunification of the country within a democratic and decentralized structure that recognized regional differences. Ideally, Syria’s current division into 14 provinces would be maintained. But in areas of the country that are less ethnically homogeneous, such as the province of Homs, the provinces might have to be split along the lines of manatiq (counties) or nahawi (townships). Despite such changes, maintaining the provinces as the building blocks of a democratic system would emphasize regionalism over sectarian identities, encouraging all Syrians to work together toward regional and, eventually, national reconciliation.

Solidifying this order would require Washington to get Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey to cut off support to their clients in Syria, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi groups, in favor of local and regional elected representatives. These countries will no doubt be tempted to continue backing their preferred political fronts in Syria, but Washington should push them to recognize that this approach has failed to bring about Assad’s downfall and has allowed for the proliferation of dangerous nonstate actors. The United States now has an opportunity to play the role that these countries have asked it to play from day one of the crisis: to lead a coalition to get rid of the Assad regime and take Syria out of Iran’s orbit. In return, Washington should make clear that it expects their cooperation.

STOPPING THE BLEEDING

Taking these steps would help Washington constrain Assad’s behavior, address a pressing humanitarian crisis, shape the fragmented Syrian opposition, and keep the conflict from spilling out of Syria’s borders. It would also give the United States an opportunity to prevent the division of Syria -- a short-term inevitability -- from becoming a permanent reality. Keeping Syria whole is necessary to prevent its dangerous weapons and its problems, which will no doubt persist for some time, from affecting neighboring countries. A prolonged sectarian civil war risks becoming a broader proxy fight between Iran and the Sunni powers, which would devastate the region as a whole.

Much of what Washington envisages in Syria may not go according to plan. American bullets could find their way into Salafi Kalashnikovs, and American radios could fall into the hands of those preaching hatred. Violence and massacres could delay or prevent elections in some areas. And the conflict could remain a stalemate for years to come, with no side gaining the decisive upper hand. The United States’ commitment to any one facet of this plan should not be open ended, and Washington will need to continually evaluate how well it is meeting its objectives.

Despite the many risks, it is important that the United States continue to help parts of the Syrian opposition on the ground take power -- and not attempt to give power to those in exile who promise much but can in fact deliver little. Given the degree of Syria’s meltdown and the country’s strategic importance, standing idly by is the worst option. Establishing a stronger relationship with the opposition is what will best allow the United States to shape an outcome among the warring parties that suits its interests and those of its allies and provides a better future for the Syrian people.

Andrew J. Tabler is a Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of In the Lion’s Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington’s Battle With Syria. Follow him on Twitter @Andrewtabler.

Syria's Meltdown Requires a U.S.-Led Response

2013-03-25T14:37:00.000-04:00

PolicyWatch 2054

Andrew J. Tabler

Also available in

March 22, 2013

As Syria heads toward a meltdown spilling over its borders -- with loss of control over strategic weapons, accelerated refugee flows, spreading extremism, and Sunni-Shiite clashes -- only engaging with those doing the fighting will give Washington much influence over events.

Two years after it began as a protest movement, the Syrian uprising has long since turned into a full-blown armed insurrection, with Sunni Arab rebel battalions fighting the Alawite regime while Kurdish factions show mixed hostility to both. Given the lack of a visible political solution, the reported use of chemical agents, the increasing spillover to and from neighboring countries, and the growing belief that Syria may already be a failed state, Washington must take a leading role in decisively dealing with the disease -- namely, the Assad regime's brutal assault on its citizens -- not just the humanitarian symptoms.

SYRIA'S MELTDOWN

The news from Syria is grimmer than ever, with over 70,000 people killed and over 130,000 either missing or held prisoner. The core of the conflict remains internal: Bashar al-Assad's attempt to shoot, bomb, missile, and perhaps even gas the population into submission. Unlike the 1979-1982 uprising, however, Syria's demographics are now much more skewed against the regime: in the ten years following the February 1982 Hama massacre, Syrians largely stayed home and procreated, making them one of the twenty fastest-growing populations on earth. Those born during that period constitute the majority of the forces currently fighting the regime.
Moreover, in the absence of major Western support, Salafist and other Islamist extremists from the Persian Gulf, North Africa, and neighboring countries have come to the opposition's aid, causing more Syrians to side with their cause. As a result, the rebels have only been able to grind down the regime, not eliminate it, in a war that is increasingly eating down into the sectarian nature of Syrian society, destroying the country, and creating a haven for Sunni and Shiite terrorist groups, perhaps for years to come. No political solution is in sight, especially given U.S. and Russian differences over what "transition" means. Even if Moscow and Washington did agree on how to pursue such a solution, Russia could not deliver the regime, nor could the United States deliver the entire opposition. In short, there seems nothing to prevent Syria's complete meltdown in the coming months.

SPILLING OUT, SPILLING IN

One of the reasons why containing the conflict may no longer be possible is because its effects are increasingly spilling over Syria's borders in both directions. The most worrisome effects include the following:
Strategic weapons transfer and loss of control. The Assad regime holds arguably the region's largest stockpile of chemical weapons, some of which it may have used this week. These and other strategic weapons (e.g., Scuds and other surface-to-surface missiles) are scattered around scores of sites, and the regime is desperate to keep them out of the hands of its adversaries. This has raised concerns that Assad may be tempted to transfer advanced weapons to his Hezbollah allies in Lebanon; in fact, Israel attacked a regime convoy near Damascus last month for reportedly attempting just such a transfer.
Given recent territorial losses, however, the regime might lose control of its stockpiles before it is able to move or destroy them. In that scenario, extremists could obtain untold numbers of chemical or other strategic weapons, whether for use against regime forces, transfer to militants in the Golan Heights, or transfer to neighboring states for use in global jihad operations.
Refugee crisis. The UN has registered over 1.1 million refugees in the countries bordering Syria, but that figure only begins to tell the story. Individual estimates from each country are much higher, and the millions of displaced persons languishing without aid inside Syria may soon cross the border if more regime forces pull back to defend Damascus. In the Houran region, for example, the average rate of refugees crossing the border is already around 3,000 per day, and the only thing keeping that number from increasing is the presence of regular and irregular regime patrols that fire on those attempting to pass.
Meanwhile, Jordanian border forces have returned fire on occasion, leading to a few deaths. If Assad's forces pull back further, aid agencies estimate that some 15,000-20,000 refugees per day could flow into the kingdom. Even at the current rate, Jordan will have some 770,000 Syrian refugees by June.
Spreading extremism. In addition to humanitarian issues, the refugees are bringing with them the various political problems currently enflaming Syrian communities, most notably the rise of extremist ideologies from the Gulf and North Africa. This could destabilize areas with large numbers of refugees, particularly northern Jordan, Turkey's Hatay and Kilis provinces, and portions of Lebanon. To endanger the region's security architecture, especially around Israel, extremist groups only need certain areas of a state to fail, not the entire country. Such areas could then be used as staging grounds for attacks against Israel, and as havens for operations inside Syria, whether before or after Assad falls.
Cross-border Sunni-Shiite fighting. In Lebanon's north Beqa region, Shiite Hezbollah militants are openly operating across the border against Syrian Sunni groups fighting the Assad regime south of al-Qusayr. This includes targeting rebel positions with rocket fire from Lebanon. Yet residents of the nearby Lebanese Sunni village of Arsal are helping the Syrian rebels repel these Hezbollah operations, causing considerable tension at home; for example, at least two Lebanese army soldiers were recently murdered after fellow troops killed Free Syrian Army supporter Khaled Hmayed.
At stake in such clashes is control of the mixed Sunni-Shiite area lying west and south of the Syrian city of Homs, which a rump Assad statelet would need to be contiguous with Lebanon's Hezbollah-controlled Beqa Valley. The fighting has exacerbated existing tensions caused by daily Syrian regime shelling of Lebanese border areas along the Nahr al-Kibar river valley, resulting in considerable sectarian strife from Wadi Khaled westward toward the Akkar district and Tripoli. Such activities could set off full-scale Sunni-Shiite conflict in Lebanon and draw in each side's regional patrons.

WORKING FROM THE GROUND UP

This week's reports of possible chemical weapons use in Syria imply that direct military intervention against the Assad regime is now in the mix. Yet even that measure alone will not change the country's overall trajectory toward disintegration. The best way for the United States to avert a meltdown and, ultimately, contain the crisis is to lead a coalition to end the Assad regime from the ground up, not simply deal with the symptoms of the conflict. Assad has not "stepped aside," and a "peaceful, democratic, and secular" Syria is not going to evolve anytime soon. Syria is now more violent than Iraq, where the United States had thousand of troops and assets to help shape the outcome. Simply engaging the opposition coalition in exile and relying on Qatar or Saudi Arabia to arm the rebels via the Supreme Military Council is insufficient.
Syrians, like all people, cannot follow what they do not understand; therefore, it will take a lot more than U.S. intelligence vetting of armed groups to shape a post-Assad outcome that aligns with U.S. interests. The best way for Washington to influence the composition and mindset of the armed rebels is to directly engage with vetted units fighting on the ground. This includes encouraging their integration into either the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SOC) or a successor organization that can boast greater representation of groups inside the country.
Andrew J. Tabler is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute and author of In the Lion's Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle with Syria.

Implications of Possible Chemical Weapons Use in Syria

2013-03-25T10:23:00.000-04:00

PolicyWatch 2051

Michael Herzog, Michael Knights, Andrew J. Tabler, and Jeffrey White

Also available in

March 21, 2013

The Syrian regime has good reasons to both use chemical weapons and disguise what it has done. Having pegged out a firm stance on such weapons, Washington should respond vigorously with defensive measures while the investigation of reported use proceeds.

Claims that chemical weapons (CW) were used in Syria Tuesday center on two reported incidents. The first, claimed by the regime, was at Khan al-Asal in the northern Aleppo province; at least 25 people died (reportedly including 16 regime troops), and more than 110 were injured. The regime claims a rocket or missile with a chemical agent hit a government-controlled area. The second incident, claimed by the opposition, was in the town of Ataibah east of Damascus; it included "fierce shelling with chemical rockets" containing an agent that induced "suffocating and nausea cases" as well as "headache, vomiting, and hysteria cases." The two episodes occurred hundreds of miles apart.
According to Syrian information minister Omran al-Zoubi, the missile or rocket that struck Khan al-Asal came from Qatar or another Arab League country, a claim that may be possible to verify or refute through intelligence sources. He stated that those responsible "must be held accountable -- a king or a prince, a president or a minister." The Syrian regime has asked the UN to investigate. For their part, the military office of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SOC) and other groups denied that they have the ability to deploy such weapons and instead blamed the regime, claiming it missed its original target of a police academy taken by the rebels.
Resolving the uncertainty about these incidents could take some time, but simple logic can shed some light in the meantime. First, the rebels are not known to have any CW capability. Second, it seems highly unlikely that they would use CW against a town (Ataibah) that they controlled in one of the centers of resistance in the Damascus area (East Ghouta). It also seems unlikely that the regime and the rebels would have conducted nearly simultaneous CW attacks. In short, context, capability, and motivation all point to the regime, and in this case the simplest answer is likely the best one.
These incidents are not the first alleged CW attacks in Syria. Opposition members still claim that the regime used Agent 15, a hallucinogen, against rebel forces on December 23 -- an accusation that has not been substantiated or completely rejected by the U.S. government. They also believe that the regime is now using second-tier chemical agents (i.e., weapons that are less lethal than sarin, mustard, and VX gases) to strike fear into the opposition and overall civilian population. This is in keeping with their claims that the regime has begun using artillery and surface-to-surface missiles at will.

WHAT ARE THE RULES ABOUT CW?

The March 19 episodes illustrate that CW use is not necessarily a black-or-white situation, and that skillful regime moves could exploit ambiguities. Syria is not a signatory of the Chemical Weapons Convention, under which states pledge to refrain from use of CW. It is a signatory to the 1925 Geneva Protocol on CW, however. That document holds that the regime cannot use CW unless it is first attacked with CW, a provision that seems applicable to internal conflict as well as declared wars. Thus, if the rebels used CW first, the regime would be free under international law to respond in kind. This issue could become important if Syrian friends such as Russia insist that no UN Security Council action be taken until there is convincing evidence that the regime used CW before the rebels did.
Another complicated issue is precisely defining what constitutes a chemical weapon. UN General Assembly Resolution 2603 (XXIV) of December 16, 1969, defined chemical warfare agents as "chemical substances, whether gaseous, liquid or solid, which might be employed because of their direct toxic effects on man, animals and plants." Despite that sweeping language, there are many types of weapons with a somewhat ambiguous status. Although riot-control agents such as CS gas (a.k.a. tear gas) are generally accepted as being nonlethal, some have challenged this classification and called for these agents to be recognized as CW. Incendiary-type weapons such as napalm and phosphorus are not classified as CW agents because their destructive power is primarily thermal. Smoke-producing obscurant rounds are also not viewed as CW.
Many past incidents in the Middle East have tested the boundaries of CW. For instance, al-Qaeda in Iraq has employed several truck bombs filled with chlorine, a readily available agent often used in industry (e.g., water treatment facilities). And in 1991, facing internal rebellions, the Iraqi regime used helicopters to drop sarin-filled bombs (obviously CW) to little effect. After a senior CW officer complained about the failure of the initial helicopter sorties, however, the military dropped up to 200 large aerial bombs with tear gas on rebel targets near Karbala and Najaf.

MILITARY UTILITY OF CW

Given all the risks and complications associated with the use of chemical weapons, why would the Syrian regime employ them? Part of the answer lies in the difficulties that regime forces are facing at this stage of the war. Increasingly well-armed and capable rebel forces are enjoying more success in both offensive and defensive actions. As a result, the regime has suffered recent setbacks in Raqqa, Aleppo, Deir al-Zour, Homs, Quneitra, Deraa, and Rif Damascus. It has lost positions and urban areas to advancing rebel forces and has been unable to make any significant gains of its own. Its increasing use of surface-to-surface missiles and growing reliance on irregular forces have not redressed the situation. The regime's pattern throughout the war has been to escalate its use of violence -- to go ever deeper into its arsenal in order to crush the rebellion. It is now reaching the end of what it can do, and chemical weapons are the last resort.
Chemical weapons also have tactical military utility. Assuming the units employing them are adequately trained and equipped, CW can be used defensively against rebel forces laying siege to regime installations, or offensively against rebels defending important urban areas and positions. Rebel units are currently laying siege to or assaulting a number of important installations (e.g., airfields, army depots). The regime's standard tactics and weapons have often failed to save such facilities, so using CW could help defend them. Similarly, the rebels' growing antitank capabilities have raised the toll of regime attempts to retake lost positions, so using CW to soften these targets makes sense from a military standpoint. Indeed, Tuesday's reported chemical attack on the Rif Damascus town of Ataibah may have been a case of offensive use.
Of course, chemical weapons are not a silver bullet that ensures success. Much depends on the capabilities of the troops using them. But the regime does not have good military options left -- nothing it has tried so far has worked consistently, and the rebels have only become stronger, both generally and tactically.

THE ISRAELI ANGLE

According to Israeli government sources, chemical agents were indeed used in Syria, most likely by the regime, though the type of agents employed remains unclear. Although the risks inherent in Syria's civil war were already high on the agenda of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's discussions with President Obama this week, these new reports highlighted Israel's concerns about the dangerous fallout from its crumbling neighbor.
From Israel's perspective, Bashar al-Assad's readiness to use CW and cross a U.S. redline, if confirmed, is in keeping with his previous decision to cross an Israeli redline by providing strategic weapons to Hezbollah (a move that reportedly spurred an Israeli airstrike in Syria in February). In other words, as the situation in Syria deteriorates, Assad is becoming an increasingly dangerous actor. Above all, Israel is concerned that the tumult could enable hostile elements (e.g., jihadists in Syria or Hezbollah in Lebanon) to acquire weapons from the Assad regime's huge strategic stockpile, whether chemical or conventional.
In Wednesday's joint press conference with Netanyahu following a lengthy meeting in Jerusalem, President Obama seemed to respond to these Israeli concerns and expectations by warning the Assad regime against "the use of chemical weapons or their transfer to terrorists." To Israeli ears, the latter addition implies U.S. backing should Israel feel compelled to once again halt the transfer of strategic weapons from Syria to Lebanon.

U.S. POLICY IMPLICATIONS

The Assad regime may wish to test the firmness of U.S. redlines on CW use, and creating ambiguity about whether such weapons were used and by whom is an excellent way to do so. Employing second-tier agents or falsely claiming that the rebels are using CW could help Damascus confuse the issue and condition the international community to a growing role for CW in the war. If Washington does not respond vigorously, the regime might feel emboldened to expand its use of such weapons, including more-lethal agents.
Meanwhile, opposition members are becoming increasingly resentful of the United States for not responding to the regime's growing use of strategic weapons. They are also troubled by the stories that the White House leaked to the New York Times outlining the regime's loading of CW into bombs in or near airfields. These reports, combined with the Obama administration's refusal to arm the rebels, have led to growing resentment of Washington -- a sentiment harvested by increasingly influential extremist groups in Syria.
More broadly, one can assume that the new Israeli government will regard any chemical challenge from Syria as a test of whether Washington will deliver on firm statements. That is, if the United States will not enforce its stated redline on the Assad regime, can it be trusted to back up its commitments on Iran?
Given the strategic stakes of Tuesday's reported CW use, Washington should take the following steps:

Determine what happened. Given the past controversy over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, neither the international community nor the American people will uncritically accept U.S. intelligence assessments of CW use in Syria. Respected international bodies should therefore be asked to weigh in, perhaps by examining and interviewing victims to determine what agents may have been used against them. The International Committee of the Red Cross is one obvious agency to call upon, given its historical role in investigating claims of CW use by Iraq in the 1990s and Egypt in the 1960s, among others. The Assad regime's calls for an investigation provide an opportunity that should be seized -- the UN Security Council should give investigators the authority to look into whatever reports of CW use they deem worthy of checking out.

Defend the Syrian people. NATO and the United States could deploy Patriot missile batteries in Turkey to defend northern Syria (including Idlib, Aleppo, and Raqqa) against missile attack. It could also provide Patriots with an antiaircraft capability. Such actions would fall under the rubric of defending civilian populations and could reduce the regime's ability to use missile and air forces generally, not just for CW attacks. In addition, NATO may not require proof of CW use to deploy these defensive measures. Yet this approach would not be a comprehensive answer to the CW threat either; in particular, it would not address the regime's use of field artillery.

Prepare "consequences management." In light of Tuesday's incidents, Washington and its allies should begin preparing for the consequences of large-scale CW use, such as stockpiling defensive clothing for distribution inside Syria and beefing up the capabilities of hospitals in surrounding areas to handle victims. If the regime's strategy is to scare the Syrian people, the international response should be to reassure them.

Plan for worst-case military options. Given the president's firm statements about the unacceptability of CW use, Washington should accelerate military planning for potential strikes against the regime's chemical arsenal. The practical problems would be many. It is highly unlikely that the United States and regional states could identify all CW locations, much less seize or secure them. Yet many such locations could be identified and, if necessary, neutralized one way or another. If the administration clearly indicated its determination to act -- alone and from the sea if necessary -- the prospect of regional cooperation would be much greater than if it simply consulted with other governments about the problem in general terms. For example, Aegis cruisers could be used to provide additional defense capabilities, which would have the merit of showing that the United States can act on its own if its partners are still debating what to do.

Furthermore, Washington could warn that if CW use is confirmed, the United States would strike both the forces involved in the attacks and Syria's military command-and-control (as distinct from the political leadership) if necessary to prevent further use. Such strikes could be conducted from the air without much difficulty. Although this approach might not directly halt additional CW attacks, it would eventually devastate the regime's entire war effort, making clear to Assad that the use of chemical weapons will bring down his regime.

Brig. Gen. Michael Herzog, IDF (Ret.), is The Washington Institute's Milton Fine international fellow and a former participant in Israel's peace negotiations with Syria. Michael Knights is a Boston-based Lafer fellow with the Institute. Andrew J. Tabler is a senior fellow at the Institute. Jeffrey White is a defense fellow at the Institute and a former senior defense intelligence officer.

SHOULD THE U.S. AND ITS ALLIES INTERVENE MILITARILY IN SYRIA?

2013-02-01T12:57:00.000-05:00

ANDREW TABLER
SENIOR FELLOW, PROGRAM ON ARAB
POLITICS, WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR
NEAR EAST POLICY; AUTHOR, IN THE
LION’S DEN: AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT
OF WASHINGTON’S BATTLE WITH SYRIA

WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, FEBRUARY 2013

“You break it, you buy it” may have proven true for
the United States in Iraq, but great powers are
often forced to help clean up conflicts they did
not cause but that threaten their interests. If Washington continues
its “light footprint” policy of non-intervention in Syria, the
American people will likely have to foot the bill for a more expensive
cleanup of the spillover of the Syria conflict into neighboring
states and the overall battle against international terrorism.

Every indicator of the conflict between the Alawite-dominated
Assad regime and the largely Sunni opposition has taken a
dramatic turn for the worse, with upwards of 65,000 killed,
30,000 missing and up to 3 million Syrians internally displaced
during one of the worst Syrian winters in two decades. The
Assad regime shows no sign of ending the slaughter anytime
soon, increasingly deploying artillery, combat aircraft and most
recently surface-to-surface missiles against the opposition. Reports
quoting high-ranking U.S. government officials say the
Assad regime has already loaded chemical weapons into
bombs near or on regime airfields for possible deployment.

Signs are growing of a sectarian proxy war as well, with
the Islamic Republic of Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah backing
their fellow Shia at the Assad regime’s core and Qatar, Saudi
Arabia and Turkey backing their Sunni brethren in the opposition.
Al Qaeda affiliates, as well as jihadists, are now among
the opposition’s best-armed factions.

The Obama administration has refrained from directly intervening
or supporting Syria’s increasingly armed opposition,
based on an argument that neither would make the situation
better. But allowing the conflict to continue and simply offering
humanitarian and project assistance treats merely the
symptoms while failing to shape a political settlement that
would help cure the disease: a brutal Assad regime that was
unable to reform trying to shoot one of the youngest populations
in the Middle East into submission.

The Obama administration spent its first two years encouraging
a treaty between the Assad regime and Israel that
would take Damascus out of Iran’s orbit and isolate its ally
Hezbollah. While the method proved wrong, the strategic
goals of containing Iranian influence in the region and keeping
it from obtaining a nuclear weapon remain as valid as
ever. Helping the Syrian opposition push Assad and his
regime aside more quickly would help the United States and
its allies achieve those objectives.

A Syria Strategy for Obama

2013-01-17T12:19:00.000-05:00

A Syria Strategy for Obama

By Andrew Tabler

Jan 17 2013, 7:26 AM ET

Three bold steps to hasten the end of Assad's regime.

Residents look at buildings damaged by the forces of President al-Assad in Daraya on January 16, 2013. (Reuters)

This post is part of "Obama and the Middle East: Act Two," a series produced with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on U.S. foreign policy in the president's second term. See our full coverage here.
The Assad regime's brutal suppression of the Syrian uprising has spurred a humanitarian disaster, with the United Nations now estimating over 60,000 killed and 3 million displaced. Syrians are now dying of starvation and exposure as food and medical supplies run desperately short. The regime continues to escalate its attacks with the use of artillery, combat aircraft, and, most recently, SCUD and reportedly Fatah 110 missiles against the armed and civilian opposition. The Obama administration has repeatedly voiced its concern that the Assad regime is considering using its chemical weapons stockpile, which includes sarin nerve gas and mustard gas, against its domestic opponents. The U.S. government reportedly even investigated the possible use of a chemical agent last month in Homs. At the same time, Washington has refused to fulfill the opposition's request for more and better weapons that would help it end the regime's onslaught, sowing anti-American sentiment that is being increasingly harvested by Islamic extremists and al-Qaeda affiliates. There is now a real danger that Assad regime's chemical weapons could fall into the hands of militants sworn to destroy the United States and its regional allies.

With U.S. elections now settled, the Obama administration is less constrained by domestic U.S. politics and should now take bold steps to hasten the end of Assad's regime. The fight to take down the regime and its supporters may continue for some time, and divisions between opposition groups means the struggle for what replaces it may be conflict-ridden as well. Even as the war continues, Washington should take steps to ease human suffering and place itself in a better position to secure chemical weapons from use in Syria and elsewhere.
First, Washington should use patriot missile batteries in an offensive capacity against regime aircraft - and deploy them defensively against SCUD and Fatah 110 missiles targeting opposition-dominated areas along Syria's borders with Turkey and Jordan. A package of the patriot missiles recently deployed to southern Turkey augmented with an anti-aircraft capability, for example, could be used to carve out a 50-mile air exclusion zone from the Turkish border city of Kilis to Aleppo, Syria's largest city. This would help the opposition create vital "safe areas" where civilians could be secure in an organized fashion free from regime airstrikes as the war against Assad continues.
As an important ancillary benefit, such safe areas would provide a vital place for the exile-dominated National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SOC) to politically organize and provide assistance directly to Syrian civilians. If properly defended, diplomats, officials, and aid representatives from the international community could work side by side with Syrians to help alleviate suffering and build a viable government for post-Assad Syria. When fully "liberated" areas under opposition control expand beyond the border regions to Syria's interior, the United States and its allies could follow up with targeted air and missile strikes against Assad regime forces armed with chemical weapons or poised to carry out further mass atrocities.
Second, Washington should provide a package of intelligence-sharing, military training, and other security assistance to mainstream nationalist, non-extremist groups that have been vetted by Western countries, both to increase their military capabilities and in exchange for any chemical weapons captured from the regime's stockpiles. The package should be comprehensive enough to allow participant groups to more rapidly defeat the Assad regime's forces and more effectively secure chemical weapons. Groups receiving assistance would be required to allow U.S. and allied special forces to collect and secure captured stockpiles of chemical weapons.
Third, Washington and its allies should provide local communities supporting mainstream groups that cooperate with Washington's program to secure chemical weapons with a larger civil assistance program. Large swaths of Syrian urban and rural areas have been ravaged by war, and the task of providing services and rebuilding basic infrastructure will be extensive. Such a civil assistance program, if part of an overall strategy, would create a positive incentive for civilian communities to pressure armed groups operating in their areas to comply with the program in the short and medium term. This same system of incentives could also be leveraged to disincentivize ethnic cleansing.
Such an integrated plan would help alleviate the suffering of Syrians, reverse Washington's rapidly declining support among the opposition, and provide real inducements to armed groups that will soon take over large swaths -- if not the entirety -- of Syrian territory to hand over any captured chemical weapons to the United States and its allies. Washington's efforts could be combined with those of Russia, Assad's chief international patron, as well as China, to pressure the Assad regime or any Alawite-dominated rump regime to secure what remains of the regime's stockpile. This approach would not only help keep chemical weapons from being used in the struggle for Syria, but against its neighbors and the West. It would also create incentives for armed and civilian groups in Syria to cooperate and assume the responsibility that goes along with governing a post-Assad Syria.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/01/a-syria-strategy-for-obama/267273/

Fallout from the Fall of Taftanaz

2013-01-17T12:10:00.000-05:00

PolicyWatch 2015

Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Fallout from the Fall of Taftanaz

Andrew J. Tabler, Jeffrey White, and Aaron Y. Zelin

January 14, 2013

The latest rebel success, while significant in battlefield terms, has empowered extremist forces and further highlighted Washington's insufficient support for Syria's mainstream opposition.

On January 11, in yet another sign that the Assad regime is increasingly giving way, an assortment of Islamist/jihadist fighters captured the Taftanaz airbase in Syria. While good news for achieving Washington's seventeen-month-old (and counting) goal of forcing Bashar al-Assad to "step aside," the capture of the base and its weapons stockpile by groups opposed to U.S. interests comes at the expense of the mainline opposition Supreme Military Council (SMC), an armed affiliate of the U.S.-supported National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SOC). To accelerate Assad's departure and dilute the political and military impact of the Islamists, Washington and its allies will need to boost support for the SMC and other mainline nationalist groups while removing obstructions to urgent humanitarian aid amid an unusually harsh winter.

MILITARY IMPLICATIONS

Taftanaz was an important victory for the opposition and a clear defeat for the regime. The rebels succeeded because they were able to concentrate adequate forces, coordinate their actions, bring heavy weapons to bear, and sustain the siege for months under regime air attack. This indicates an improvement in their performance, at least for the units involved. It also repeats rebel successes in taking defended regime positions elsewhere in the country, including Aleppo province, Deir al-Zour, and the Damascus countryside.
The victory brought some important direct gains for the rebels:

They destroyed or captured fifteen to twenty helicopters at the airfield. Most of these were Mi-8/17 utility helicopters, some of which had been equipped with rocket pods for an attack role. This represents approximately 20 percent of the regime's prewar active inventory of a much-relied-upon type of aircraft.
They captured additional heavy weapons and large quantities of ammunition. Coupled with the freeing up of rebel forces, the equipment gains should boost the opposition's ability to assault other regime positions in the north and perhaps bring them under their control sooner. The battle will also be a huge boost for rebel morale, showing they can take even a major defended position.
The regime was unable to prevent loss of the base, one of several such failures in the past few months. Damascus did not appear to make any serious attempt to reinforce the airfield or relieve the siege. The number of troops involved in the defense seemed relatively small, and they largely relied on heavy weapons and air power -- a regime pattern. In addition, at least some of the defenders were irregular soldiers from the pro-Assad "popular committees," not regular combat troops; some reports even indicate that officers were evacuated by air before the base fell.

WHO FOUGHT AND WHAT IT MEANS

Three rebel factions took part in the fight: Jabhat al-Nusra (JN), the Syrian Islamic Front (SIF), and the Syrian Liberation Front (SLF). All three are outside the structure of the SMC, a grouping of provincial military council leaders and battalion (katiba) and brigade (liwa) commanders formed in December. The council's purpose is to unite Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions, implement command and control, funnel SOC support to armed units, and keep weapons out of the hands of extremists.
Jabhat al-Nusra, an independent faction that is not part of the FSA, is a global jihadist group that follows al-Qaeda's worldview. According to the State Department's December announcement designating it as a terrorist organization, JN was established as a branch of al-Qaeda in Iraq nearly a year ago. Over the past few months, it has gained prominence as one of the country's best fighting forces, conducting more than 600 suicide bombings, assassinations, improvised explosive device attacks, and strikes on regime checkpoints and security/military buildings, in addition to regular battlefield action. Although JN is capable of attacking most parts of Syria, the majority of its operations have occurred in Aleppo and Idlib, and to a lesser extent Damascus and Deir al-Zour. The group's ultimate goal is to establish an Islamic state in the entire Levant as a starting point to reestablishing the Caliphate.
The Syrian Islamic Front is a conglomeration of eleven "brigades" outside the FSA. Formed last December, it lacks JN's coherent structure. Ideologically, the SIF can best be described as a collection of locally focused jihadists with no known connections to al-Qaeda. Three of the brigades took part in the Taftanaz battle: Kataib Ahrar al-Sham (the SIF's leading unit), Jamaat al-Taliah al-Islamiyah, and Harakat al-Fajr al-Islamiyah. Like JN, the SIF's goal is to establish an Islamic state based on Salafi interpretations of Islam, but only within Syria proper. The video announcing the group's creation indicates that its funding comes from the Qatar Charity Organization and Turkey's Humanitarian Relief Fund (IHH), which supports U.S.-designated terrorist groups such as Hamas.
The Syrian Liberation Front is another grouping of so-called brigades outside the FSA, founded last September. The smallest faction involved in the Taftanaz operation was Liwa Dawoud, one of the eight battalions within Suqur al-Sham, a leading SLF brigade. Ideologically similar to the SIF, the SLF hopes to establish an Islamic state in Syria; its members are a mix of Muslim Brotherhood-type Islamists and Salafists who are less radical than those in the SIF and JN. The SLF is believed to receive funding from the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and wealthy Persian Gulf donors.
Given their demonstrated fighting prowess, these Islamist forces have earned much respect from Syrians. Unlike some FSA groups, which have increasingly been accused of corruption in places such as Aleppo, JN, the SIF, and the SLF are viewed as fair brokers that do not take advantage of the downtrodden. Unless something changes, Islamists are likely to play a significant role in northern Syria following the regime's departure.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE WAR

For the rebels, the airbase capture indicates that major regime positions in the provinces are vulnerable. But it also suggests that better-defended areas -- such as Damascus and environs, where regime forces are relatively dense and well supported -- will remain a serious challenge.
In addition, the battle raises questions about the regime's strategy of maintaining some military presence, in every province. Although this approach allows Assad to maintain the image that he has not lost any province, it is costing the regime a good deal of personnel and equipment while providing the rebels with better arms and ammunition. Currently, several other northern airfields are under attack; if the rebels can overcome their organizational limitations and capture those bases as well, it would be a still greater, even strategic, defeat for the regime.

RECOMMENDATIONS

In war, no single success or failure should be given too much emphasis, especially in its immediate aftermath. Furthermore, gains in one part of Syria do not necessarily indicate progress elsewhere in this far-flung and complex conflict. Nevertheless, the capture of Taftanaz is yet another sign that the regime is losing control throughout much of the country.
At the same time, victories by Islamist/jihadist groups would seem to come at the expense of the mainline nationalist armed groups represented by the SMC, a coalition that Washington has regular contact with despite withholding direct support. The Islamists are now battled tested, better armed, and receiving support from Syrians who are fighting the regime while suffering the worst winter in twenty years.
To temper Islamist gains and better influence Syria's political and military future post-Assad, Washington should encourage its allies to arm SMC units in order to boost their fighting capacity. It should also provide vital intelligence and logistical support to help SMC forces displace the regime more quickly and establish areas where civilian SOC members can work with local and revolutionary councils on providing vital humanitarian assistance and local governance. Finally, Washington should cut the legal and bureaucratic red tape impeding the provision of U.S. assistance outside official channels, since a majority of aid is currently distributed via the regime-dominated Syrian Arab Red Crescent to areas under regime control.
Andrew J. Tabler is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute and author of In the Lion's Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle with Syria. Jeffrey White is a defense fellow at the Institute and a former senior defense intelligence officer. Aaron Y. Zelin is the Institute's Richard Borow fellow.

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