On the Syrian Spiral of Complexity

On the Syrian Spiral of Complexity

By Sarah N. Stern

In the United States, people like easy, coherent definitions of “good guys” and ‘bad guys.” Unfortunately, in the Middle East, things aren’t so simple.  In 2012, we at the Endowment for Middle East Truth had sent a letter to then-President Barack Obama, addressing “wide scale humanitarian abuses.” We wrote our letter in the backdrop of the systematic and indiscriminate pummeling of entire cities, the arbitrary arrest, beatings and torture of men, women and children that the Assad regime arbitrarily viewed as dissidents, the closure of access to the international press, the imposture of blockades on entire regions,  and the denial of access to vital assistance such as hospitals and medical care to large populations.”

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed by the Assad regime, which is allied with both Russia and Iran. Over 5.4 million Syrians have become refugees, many of them have fled to Turkey, and from there into Europe. In August of 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “it is time for [Syrian President Bashar] Assad to get out of the way.” She further accused the Assad regime of “torturing opposition leaders, laying siege to unarmed civilians, including children,”  and relying on Iran.

However, on the other side is Hy ‘at Tarim al-Sham, HTS, which has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. HTS was formerly a part of the Syrian Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusrah. The group began with allegiance to Sunni insurgencies aligned with ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Now, Erdogan’s Turkey, and other Sunni states are beginning to align with the rebels.

We must remember that the evolution of the internal Syrian conflict began with a few innocent children who were arrested and tortured for spray-painting anti-government graffiti. The Assad government blackmailed the families to rape the wives in exchange for the children, leaving them with horrific choices.

The time to support the Syrian opposition was 12 and 13 years ago, but the Obama administration limited its response to diplomatic and economic isolation, freezing Syrian assets and petroleum imports. Then, our strategy of diplomacy and international pressure were overtaken by events on the ground in Syria and in the region. Regional Arab states, most notably Saudi Arabia and Qatar, began to arm elements of the Syrian opposition. Iran and Russia continued to provide weapons, training and military advisors for Assad’s security forces, to help them more efficiently conduct their bloody work. And many outside experts concluded that absent stronger U.S. involvement, the Assad regime was likely to survive.

In 2011, we came to the conclusion that the U.S. should support the Syrian opposition, with humanitarian aid, communications and electronic equipment, arms and military advisors.  We believe that the stationing of American troops on the ground at this juncture, however, is not in our national interest.

It certainly had then been in U.S. national interests for the brutal Assad regime to go. Syria’s support for international terrorism and its regional alliance with the Islamic Republic of Iran are primary factors in destabilizing the Middle East and threaten American interests and American allies in the region.

We had then written to President Obama that “it is also in the American interest for the U.S., and not other powers, such as  Qatar or Saudi Arabia, to take the lead in organizing and arming the Syrian resistance.  Bluntly, involvement by these nations can be expected to be to the advantage of Islamist and Salafi-Jihadist elements of the Syrian opposition, which are certain to be anti-American, anti-secular, and anti-democratic in nature.  Additionally it increases the probability that general opposition to Assad will devolve into sectarian and ethnic violence.” And that Only American involvement can provide support to the secular and democratic elements of the opposition” and” can insist on an opposition coalition which opposes sectarianism and which rejects ethnic and religious violence in favor of a national democratic resistance to Assad and which includes religious and ethnic minorities.”

We presciently added that “American leadership in support of the opposition in this manner cannot guarantee a peaceful, secular and democratic Syria.  However, a failure of American leadership and refusal to act, will certainly guarantee the defeat of Syrian secularists and democrats, either at the hands of Assad, or at the hands of Syrian Islamists.”

American has simply been distracted by other conflicts, and willfully blinded itself to the resurgence of Sunni Islamists.

All of the actions of the Obama administration proved insufficient in isolating Syria. And during the Trump administration, the hasty decision on October 6, 2019, to withdraw more than 2,000 US troops from northeastern Syria, where they had been working with the Kurdish dominated Syrian Defense Force (SDF), only further destabilized the region, causing the displacement of thousands of pro-US Kurds.

The Kurds, who have been extremely loyal to the United States, are also under tremendous siege. The SDF has put out a call for everyone who can help with their fight. If the rebels were to conquer more Kurdish territory, they may release the many ISIS members in Kurdish prisons.

Now Syria is a part of the United Nations General Assembly and sits on many crucial committees, such as the Security Council and the International Court of Justice.

In the Middle East, things are not neatly carved out into discrete binary chunks of good and evil, of black and white. Or, as the American Syrian diplomat, Hazem Alghabra puts it, “When has Israel seen a good guy here? This is why, unless the US or Israel is threatened directly, we should not be involved.”

The time to get involved has long elapsed.

Sarah N. Stern is Founder and President of the Endowment for Middle East Truth, EMET