Confusion in Syria

One of the great rules in life - be careful of what you wish for.

Disclaimer: At the beginning of the century, my company advised the Syrian Embassy in London on Bashar Al-Assad’s Visit to London in 2002 and worked in close and friendly co-operation with the Foreign Office. I was also one of the founding members of the British-Syrian Society which tended to a reformist stance within existing arrangements. We also acted on particular closed end projects as advisers to Asma Al-Assad and, much later, another member of the family with a more oppositional stance. However, we largely withdrew on ethical grounds from further involvement in Syrian affairs when the Civil War began and because our many Syrian friends fell on either side of the divide caused by that conflict. My position always was and will be that the internal affairs in crisis of any nation are the business solely of its own population and that the interests of a people are never served by foreign intervention designed to overthrow a nation state’s regime. This all gives us some understanding of Syria that most people do not have but our advice was always centred on objectivity of perspective (much to the consternation at times of some Syrian officials) and it remains so to today. At some stage in the future we will do a full memoire of our time working with this particular regime and other case studies of engagement in various other international and other affairs but now is not the time. What follows are the usual cold, clinical observations that you have come to expect of me.

The sheer suddenness of the collapse of the Assad regime has taken everyone by surprise including the backers of the ‘rebels’ who may be embarrassed by the results despite their public rhetoric. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is merely a reshaped Al-Qaeda, persuaded, like the Taliban in their more recent determination to retain humanitarian and other funding, to moderate their public face in order to (in HTS’ case) acquire Western-linked weapons and financing. The Turks are the prime backers of recent activity although they have their own proxies. They are more interested in building capacity for ‘dealing with’ the Syrian Kurds. Undoubtedly Washington (CIA and State) were knowledgeable and supportive in order to secure their own bases.

If (as has been reported) the Iranians were aware of the expected assault, warned Assad and lost significant faith in the President when he ignored those warnings, then it is scarcely likely that US and so Western intelligence had no prior knowledge of something that they had so deep an interest in. The US bases are, in fact, primarily directed at ISIS and for intelligence operations with barely 900 military but considerable technological muscle power. Now, the Americans are faced with backing a new regime that has some serious historic public relations problems and may or may not face continued armed opposition regardless of the reality that Assad has gone and the Syrian state administrative structure (including the military apparently) has accepted the incoming government. If it does not face further armed opposition, HTS (the primary rebel force) will still need substantial reconstruction funds and other support while undoubtedly being a political agent that demands policies closer to the reformed Muslim Brotherhood at best and Sharia-inspired policies along Taliban lines at worst.

The excitable Western MSM pleasure at the fall of the undoubtedly dodgy Assad regime seems to have forgotten the chaos in Iraq and Libya after the fall of their own ‘dodgy’ dictators and the costly consequences. It is one thing to capture the major cities and have Sunni Muslims out on the streets but another to deal with all the other armed interests in the region (not only Kurds but Alawites, Christians, ISIS and Hezbollah), each of whom has its backers and enemies amongst regional powers. The ‘shock’ seems to have brought Turkey, Qatar (influential through funding), Iran and Russia into dialogue because they may all see what the US has not: we are at the beginning of a process that requires some degree of co-operative management between regional powers. Moscow giving sanctuary to Assad and his family usefully takes one key disruptive piece off the chess board. While Russia has moved its key naval and other assets out of danger, it seems to have secured both the Tartus Naval Base and Hmeimim Air Base for the moment through a deal with the new regime. Either an orderly withdrawal or a negotiated maintained presence remain possible.

There is so much complexity here and so much is unknown (and so much is subject to media manipulation and psychological operations) that little can be said that is entirely certain at this stage and even less can be reasonably predicted. What is probable is that HTS is a very ‘tamed’ version of Islamism at first sight, happy to connive in Western-managed PR operations to show an intent to diversity and inclusion. Perhaps its Leader Al-Julani believes in what he has become as de facto Head of State but we note six problems emerging immediately:

• he still has to secure uniformity of rule in a divided nation which is under attack from a foreign power (Israel, see below);

• his supporters have either been ‘bought’ (that is, their Islamism was cover for greed rather than, as in the case of ISIS, a matter of ideological commitment and will be hungry for plunder and bribes) or many of them really are Islamist and are biding their time before imposing whatever ideological values they believe in on Christians, Alawaites and Muslim women and liberals;

• his success in feeding his supporters and reconstructing the nation depends on significant funds from overseas just as Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard have reiterated their intent not to get involved in the internal affairs of other nations and as Musk and others are maintaining their position of massive cost-cutting especially in the foreign aid budget;

• he may have captured the Syrian State from the top by means of an assault on the historic model of Arab Muslim blitzkrieg but advisers have clearly sought to contain him (if information received is correct) with a Government made up of liberal modernisers and intellectuals from overseas who are said to be despised by those who have actually fought the regime on the ground;

• he is in a difficult position in terms of Syrian national feeling because he is perceived to have come to power as proxy of the ‘Ottomans’ (Turkey) and to be (so far) uninterested in the fight for Palestinian self-determination: his arrival has seen the complete destruction by Israel from the air of Syrian national military capacity so that the Russians stand as the only major advanced military force capable of defending the regime (especially if the US under Trump withdraws from the scene after January 20th);

• the usual chaos of ‘liberation’ has released not only moderate liberal intellectuals from prisons but also hardened Islamists and organised crime figures who are now let loose on an unstable and anarchic situation and, while Muslim exiles are pouring home from the refugee camps, they will be coming up against over a decade of Christians and others fearful of what happens next and who may become another and different flow outwards or into more obviously Christian areas (the effects of this on Europe are for another time).

There is a domestic US political aspect to this. It is widely understood that an operation was planned for March. This may explain in part Syrian Government lack of readiness for the assault (although it is equally true that the military appears to have crumbled quickly on exhaustion and collapsing morale). Iranian warnings being ignored (see above) may have been the result of a Syrian misjudgement about timing and a wrong belief that there was nothing to worry about because Trump would veto any plans from the US side. Similarly, Assad was being welcomed back into the Sunni Arab fold. An assumption that these welcoming states (Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iraq) were ultimately if indirectly creatures of the West may have led to a false calculation that the Arab states had sufficient influence to halt any destabilising operation. This showed an enormous ignorance (not uncommon in Arab circles) of decision-making at the heart of the empire.

Bringing the operation forward by five months (if true) would have to be linked to the implicit threat from the new Trump administration that it would withdraw entirely from its bases in the region. This would be a nightmare for the carefully calculated plans and connections of State and CIA, unravelling two decades of carefully constructed oversight of the central zone between Turkey, Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraq itself and Syria. This was centred on control of oil resources (including sanctions-busting), regional organised crime and Islamist terrorist groups as well as providing an intelligence and special operations centre for any future interventions in the region to maintain US hegemony.

Trump, who has remained relatively silent in recent weeks, nevertheless made a strong statement saying that Syria was none of America’s business. This is not a surprise. He has been consistent in his determination (backed up by his second term disruptors) to shift to a harder position on peace through strength (to use Tulsi Gabbard’s formulation). The Washington ‘old guard have rather suddenly realised that he may be very serious and that the ‘deep State’ on which they depend is close to being gutted and transformed after January 20th. This means that it has only a matter of weeks both to line up Congressional and bureaucratic resistance to revolutionary transformation at home to moderate the new regime and to ensure that as many of its special projects [support for Ukraine and NATO, seizure of Georgia as Western satellite and a Middle Eastern presence] as possible are as difficult to unravel for Trump as humanly feasible. Trump has recently repeated his position that the US may abandon NATO although we believe this to be a negotiating position to drive increased European funding of the alliance, including purchases of American armament.

In the case of Syria, this implies an interesting problem for the ‘war hawks’ currently in power in Washington – probable promises of significant financial aid and other support for an HTS regime which may not have expected to have seized Damascus may not actually appear after January 20^th. And we all know what happened when the US cut its aid off from Bin Laden after the Afghan War although conditions are certainly different now. What is more likely is that someone will have to fill the gap and whoever fills the gap will gain influence. Turkish and Gulf investment looks likely to be at the top of the list. The Europeans will do their usual thing of supplying humanitarian aid in insufficient amounts and sitting on their high moral horse while doing so (Starmer is already first out of the traps on this one). But the question becomes who will fill a gap if Trump fails to fill it and if private Western investors do not like the risk profile (as is likely). China?

If Western ‘war hawks’ were surprised by the suddenness of their own support for the HTS assault, it is probable that they had hoped that it would tie down Russian troops and other assets and force Russia into a costly war on two fronts. Things have gone rather wrong from that perspective. The presence of Ukrainian ‘advisers’ on the rebel side suggests that part of the motivation was, indeed, to ease pressure on Kiev. Instead, the Russians (typically) acted rationally. They calculated that the Syrian army would not fight (the Iranians seem to have made a similar calculation) and that the regime was on its death bed from exhaustion and corruption. They let it die in order to have a voice in the next stage of regional management. This seems to have worked. The message is clear – Russia’s priority is Ukraine and not empire (although the West Africans may note this to Russia’s disadvantage). Nothing will deflect Russia (or Iran) from their core concerns with their immediate national security. It is interesting that Hamas has been quick to recognise the new Syrian regime in that context.

Meanwhile, we have different reactions from all the other players in the game to muddy the waters. The British, poodle-like as ever, have suddenly forgotten that HTS is one of their proscribed terrorist organisations (as it remains in the US) and have ‘welcomed’ events. The Biden Administration looks stunned at its own victory but quickly claimed it as ‘legacy’ to set against the Afghan imbroglio (no doubt hoping that it is Trump who screws up after January 20^th). The Europeans (France is supposed to be the player here but is wholly distracted at home and is being rapidly displaced by China as primary trading partner in the Gulf) are cyphers but are becoming fearful of migration implications which are as yet unknown.

Israel’s position quickly became unambiguous. Its operations started with an air strike on chemical weapons capacity in order to stop it falling into the hands of one or other of the current contesting parties. Whether Syria actually ever used these weapons is unclear – the probability on the evidence is that the alleged use was ‘false flag’ - but they do exist and they are dangerous in the wrong hands. This was a chance to destroy the Syrian national ability to wage war on Israel (or incidentally the rebels in acounter coup). A ruthless programme of degradation of Syrian military, naval and air assets with some selective assassination was taking place place.

At the time of writing, we are getting reports not only of Israel extending its ‘buffer zone’ further into Syrian national territory but getting within 20km of Damascus itself. For all its faults, Syria had presented a form of disorganised stability for Israel, with Syria unable to recover the Golan Heights which was always the defining concern of Syrian Arab nationalism. This alone presents an interesting problem for the incoming regime. Turkey is pro-Palestinian but the West is pro-Israel. The Arab states are rhetorically pro-Palestinian though totally ineffective in their support for Palestine. The only actively pro-Palestinian regime in the region other than Iran has been overthrown. Now Israel has ignored international law (which is now as meaningless in practice as it was in the 1930s) for the umpteenth time and made the incoming regime look alternately complicit or weak.

This new disruption also stretches Israel, which is probably winning its wars but possibly losing its peace because of the costs involved. Jordan and Lebanon sit nervously on the side lines, hoping the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire holds although Syrian Hezbollah assets may now be in a position to direct their attention to Israel again. How this Palestinian aspect of the case plays out is going to be one of the most interesting of many unpredictable forces in play.

The apparent winner in all this is a possibly surprised but happy Erdogan of Turkey, the ‘Sultan’. Even this is more complicated than it may appear. Certainly his drone and other logistical support made all this possible (although it is hard to see how the result could have been what it became without some technical US support in addition as well as the collapse of morale within the regime). HTS now inherit the national Syrian suspicion of the Ottomans that exists amongst all Arab nationalists, but especially in Syria where Western journalists, not always the sharpest tools in the box, seem not to understand that Syrian democratic liberalism is the weakest element in the chain of ideologies contesting the country. Arab and Syrian nationalism could revive against both ‘Ottoman’ informal domination and the threat (especially to women, Christians and mountain Alawites) of Muslim-centred administrative, legal and political arrangements. In addition, the core concern of Turkey (the Kurds) remains. Latest reports indicate that pro-Turkish proxies are moving against previously pro-regime Kurds in what could be an existential death struggle for the latter. Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan will not be happy with the turn of events which threatens a revival of instability on their side of the Syrian border.

Then there is the Iran-Hezbollah complex which appears to have followed the Russian path of withdrawing from direct conflict and leaving the regime to its fate, relying perhaps on a diplomatic solution to try to bring into being a Syrian settlement that can ‘neutralise’ the country and take it out of the proxy war between major powers. Iran economically almost certainly wants to stop spending on overseas commitments. While Western liberals seem determined to appropriate Syria for the West, the interests of the Syrian people are probably for a swift ending of the internal war and an independent quasi-democratic settlement that takes it out of the vortex of regional conflict and makes arrangements for respect for minority rights. Since the regional and superpowers all have their clients in the country, this implies that they can have a role in agreeing such a settlement diplomatically (albeit one that squares their conflicting national interests). Turkey appears to be leading on a strategy of ‘inclusion’ backed by other regional powers but with an obvious caveat of crushing any Kurdish nationalist resistance on the way.

The positive view of things is that we will see a long drawn out process by which HTS is forced to demonstrate its moderation and will slowly exert authority over the country from Damascus with the effective support of the regional powers with regional (Gulf and other) funds rewarding good behaviour as each milestone is achieved. HTS has a lot to prove not to Biden and the Europeans (who are abandoning any pretence to non-negotiation with proscribed organisations) but to their new subject populations. Defeated elements need to be reassured not only that they will not be massacred in their beds one day but that their minority ethnic communities’ rights will be respected. The West has not always been good at this as we have seen from its silence over Russian cultural rights within Ukraine and the Baltics. This is now a crisis to watch with hope more than optimism.

One thing is clear – the entire edifice of the war on terror has crumbled. There is an inherited complex of proscriptions and judgements against non-state and proxy political actors that is now an embarrassment. Everyone agrees that ISIS is a problem but everyone is also engaged in trying to unravel the designations of HTS either for pragmatic reasons or because this proxy actor turns out to be sponsored by a NATO member. Both Hamas and Hezbollah may have been degraded but they are actually being treated with respect by everyone except Israel as players in the game with whom there must be dialogue if progress is to be achieved. Proscription in these cases increasingly looks like a bankrupt political rather than a moral manouevre. We have been through all this with Sinn Fein (now a respected political party) in the UK. The game now is taming armed dissidence into constitutional forms (with HTS being the type case for the current period).