Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s proposal to engage with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad marks a potential shift in a decade-long rift.

Istanbul (Special to Informed Comment; Featured) – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently said “there is no reason” not to pursue normalization of diplomatic ties with Syria, and he said that he does not rule out a possible meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Erdoğan added that Turkey had no intention of interfering in Syria’s internal affairs.

Erdoğan was responding to a question about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s recent comments. In late June, Assad expressed openness to restoring ties between Turkey and Syria.

The United Arab Emirates took the lead in restoring diplomatic relations with Syria in 2018, and last year Syria was readmitted to the Arab League. Saudi Arabia has also announced steps to reopen its embassy in Damascus.

As a quid pro quo for rapprochement, Ankara wants Damascus to take action against Syrian Kurdish groups that Turkey alleges are affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which the US also considers a terrorist group. Meanwhile, the Assad government has consistently demanded the withdrawal of Turkish forces from northern Syria and an end to Turkey’s support for rebel factions as a prerequisite for restoring relations.

Protests in Syria and Turkey

Just as Erdoğan signaled a possible rapprochement with Syria, protests erupted in rebel-held territory in northwestern Syria against the reopening of the Abu al-Zandin crossing near Al Bab city. The crossing connects rebel-held areas with Syrian government-held territories, and the protesters rejected the Turkish-Russian agreement to reopen the crossing.

Armed protesters, Turkish forces clash in north Syria • FRANCE 24 English Video

Then anti-Syrian protests broke out in Kayseri after a Syrian man was arrested for allegedly sexually abusing a minor. During the riots, angry mobs set vehicles and Syrian-run shops on fire. The riots spread to various cities in Turkey, with a 17-year-old Syrian boy being stabbed to death in Serik, Antalya.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced that the police had detained 474 people involved in attacks targeting the Syrian community.

The unrest occurred amidst a recent increase in criticism of the government’s migration policies. According to UNHCR, Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees worldwide, most of them from war-torn Syria, and a recent Ipsos survey found that 77% of respondents in Turkey support closing the country’s doors to refugees, compared to a global average of 44%.

The riots in Turkey, coupled with Erdoğan’s conciliatory statements about Assad, fueled anti-Turkish protests in rebel-held northern Syria. The BBC reported that in Afrin, at least four people were killed in an exchange of fire between Turkish troops and armed protesters.

Syrian protesters attacked Turkish military vehicles, government buildings controlled by Turkey, and burned Turkish flags. According to AFP, some armed protesters also targeted Turkish trucks and military posts. They attempted to storm crossing points, resulting in clashes with Turkish border guards.

A border official stated that the Bab al-Hawa and Bab al-Salam border crossings and other smaller crossings were “closed until further notice.” It was reported that seven people were killed in the protests, which escalated into clashes.

Similar protests had occurred in rebel-held territory in Northwestern Syria in August 2022, following Turkey’s then-Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu’s call for reconciliation between the Syrian opposition and the Assad government.

Will the reconciliation efforts continue despite the unrest?

Pro-government media in Turkey accused different sides of the violent anti-Turkish protests. While Yeni Şafak (New Dawn) accused the Syrian fundamentalist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Sabah (Morning) claimed the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was responsible. Both HTS and PKK are designated as terrorist organizations by Turkey, the European Union, and the United States.

On Tuesday last week, President Erdoğan labeled the anti-Syrian protestors provocateurs. “Neither we nor our Syrian brothers will fall into this trap. I want to say that we will not bow to vandalism and racism. Just as we know how to break the filthy hands that reach for our flag, we also know how to break the hands that reach for the oppressed who have taken refuge in our country,” Erdoğan said.

He also signaled that the normalization attempts would continue, stating: “We don’t desire anybody’s land. The territorial integrity of Syria is a priority for Turkey, because we want a strong Syria, not one where terrorist organizations run rampant. To achieve this, we will not hesitate to meet with whomever it is necessary. Turkey is not a state that abandons its friends and will not become one.”

Erdoğan then traveled to Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. During the SCO summit, Erdoğan met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, al-Asad’s main patron. After their meeting, Erdoğan emphasized the importance of ending instability, including the unresolved aftermath of the Syrian Civil War, and stated that Turkey is ready to cooperate in finding a solution.

Before the Syrian Civil War strained Turkish-Syrian relations, President Erdoğan of Turkey and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria had notably close personal ties. Their relationship extended beyond diplomatic meetings and included personal interactions such as joint family vacations or attending football matches.

After the outbreak of the civil war in 2011, Turkey began to support Syrian opposition groups seeking to overthrow al-Assad’s regime. Diplomatic relations between Ankara and Damascus were severed in 2012.

The decision was a recognition that the Baath government of Bashar al-Assad had won the civil war, albeit with help from Iran, Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite militias, and the Russian Aerospace Forces. Although al-Assad has a great deal of blood on his hands, so do many Arab League member governments, so squeamishness about a poor human rights situation was never the issue here.

The London-based Al-`Arab reports that the move was led by Saudi Arabia and garnered support from Egypt, Iraq and Jordan. Although this newspaper says that the decision was made possible by a softening of the US position against Syria, I don’t see any evidence of it. Rather, I would say this initiative was undertaken in defiance of Washington.

This newspaper is right to underline, however, that this development is one result of the March 10 agreement in Beijing by Saudi Arabia and Iran to restore diplomatic relations and turn down the level of tension between the two. Iran’s backing for al-Assad and Riyadh’s for the Salafi “Army of Islam” had helped polarize the region. Now, Saudi Arabia is seeking its own, new, relationship with Damascus and no longer insists that it break with Iran. It is no accident that pro-Iran Iraq was one of the brokers of this deal.

Al-Assad’s fragile victory has left the country a basket case, a situation exacerbated by Turkish military intervention both against Syria’s Kurds and in favor of its remaining fundamentalist forces (in Idlib Province).

The foreign ministers who readmitted Syria spoke specifically of wanting to forestall any threats to Syria’s national sovereignty.

They also spoke of an Arab League role in resolving the Syrian crisis, which has left the country split into three zones: The majority of the country, ruled by al-Assad; the Kurdish northeast, which is currently autonomous; and Idlib Province, where rebels of a fundamentalist cast have gathered as refugees (among hundreds of thousands of displaced noncombatants who perhaps are not so ideological despite having taken a stand against al-Assad).

The United States protested the move and rejected it. Washington has imposed strict Caesar Act sanctions on Syria, which critics maintain are interfering with rebuilding the country and harming ordinary people more than they do the government.

The decision will be formally ratified at the full Arab League summit in Riyadh at the end of May, which a Syrian delegation is expected to attend.

Algeria had stood by al-Assad all through the Civil War. Among states that broke off relations, the move to rehabilitate al-Assad was begun by the United Arab Emirates, led by Mohammad Bin Zayed, who restored diplomatic relations and opened an embassy in Damascus in 2018. Tunisia, under dictator Qais Saied, recently followed suit. Saudi Arabia is said to be on the verge of restoring diplomatic ties with Syria, as well.

Sunday’s decision had been opposed by Qatar, Kuwait and Morocco. They, however, were too few to block the League’s decision. Morocco has no love for the Syrian rebels, who gradually turned to forms of Muslim fundamentalism, some close to al-Qaeda but most rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood. Morocco does, however, entertain deep suspicions of Syria’s ally, Iran, and as a conservative Muslim monarchy does not think well of Baathist socialism. Kuwait and Qatar both supported the 2011 youth revolt and went on supporting the rebels once the revolution turned into a Civil War. Both countries are concerned about the fate of the four million people bottled up in Idlib Province, who had supported the overthrow of the government. Qatar says it will decline to restore diplomatic relations with Damascus until some key issues are resolved. This is likely a reference to the fate of the Qatar-backed groups in Idlib.

At the time of Damascus’ suspension, the Arab Spring governments were influential. Egypt, Tunisia and Libya all had interim governments after youth street protests had overthrown their dictators, and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh was just three months from stepping down in favor of a national referendum on his vice president becoming president. These new governments sided with Syria’s protesters. There was an odd conjunction of these Arab Spring transitional states and some of the Gulf monarchies, which deeply disliked al-Assad’s strong alliance with Iran and his government’s intolerance of Sunni fundamentalism. Thus, Saudi Arabia wanted al-Assad gone as much as Tunisia or Egypt did.

Now, the Arab Spring is a dim memory. Dictatorships have returned in the countries that saw youth revolts. Al-Assad and his corrupt, genocidal government is not going away. Henry Kissinger said that diplomacy is a game that is played with the pieces on the board. Now it transpires that the Arab League states, too, are Realists.

( Middle East Monitor) – Pivotal moments in history rarely present themselves, but when they do, that is exactly what they turn out to be. The power dynamics of an entire region can be altered, the interests of governments can be shifted, and the geopolitical arena can be at least partially dominated by former underdogs.

That is the kind of opportunity history is presenting to the Syrian opposition groups, which have all but gone dormant in the face of almost a decade of Russian battering. Now, amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine which was launched over three months ago and has no end date in sight, the Syrian rebel groups finally have a chance to continue their struggle against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

While the numbers are disputed, it is estimated that Moscow has so far lost over 30,000 troops in its invasion of Ukraine. Those losses are few in the hordes of hundreds of thousands that Russia has – as has often been the case in its history – sent against its foes. There are reports that the Kremlin has largely sent its conscripts to the frontline as cannon-fodder while keeping its best forces and tactics in reserve.

Whatever the truth of such reports, it is difficult to deny that Russian forces are being tied up in Ukraine, compelling it to withdraw military forces and mercenaries from its operations in Syria and Libya. Some reports put the numbers of withdrawals in the thousands, and others only in the hundreds. Regardless of the scale, a withdrawal has been taking place.

Division amongst rebels

One of the main issues to be considered and contended when assessing the possibility of Syrian opposition forces launching a renewed offensive against the Assad regime is the division amongst the rebel groups. The Syrian revolution is far from the golden days it enjoyed ten years ago, when the Free Syrian Army (FSA) was growing in strength and numbers, and was garnering support from much of the international community.

Now, the revolutionary groups have split up into numerous factions and movements of their own – some Islamist, some nationalist and secularist, some backed by the US or Turkiye, and some ethnocentric such as the Kurdish militias. To add to that division, the world is no longer focused on or captivated by the conflict in Syria, and has largely left it behind with little international support for a renewed opposition offensive.

As it stands, the most capable and powerful factions which are able to launch an offensive against the Assad regime are the Islamist rebel groups in north-western Syria, of which the chief amongst them is Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaeda affiliate which has broken off links with the movement. Over the past few years, HTS has been dominating the province of Idlib and its power politics, serving as the armed forces with the ‘Salvation Government’ as a civilian front.

Is Assad ruining Syria’s economy? – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

With years of sustained combat experience against Syrian regime forces in southern Idlib and the Jabal Zawiya mountain and surrounding areas, HTS has at least some capabilities to successfully launch attacks against regime positions. Its possession of long-range heavy weaponry also boosts those capabilities.

Despite its reported military prowess, however, HTS has been and continues to be busying itself with suppressing rival factions in north-west Syria, making many sceptical of whether it would even set its sights on taking on Syrian forces. The group and its leadership claim that such efforts are for the long-term goal of uniting the Syrian opposition in the region under one umbrella, yet its poor performance against the regime and its allies’ offensive in 2020 – which saw the opposition lose huge swathes of land and key towns to Assad – also puts into question either its ability to defend territory or its sincerity in making it a priority.

Assad or the Kurds?

The Syrian National Army (SNA), the FSA’s descendent which governs other parts of north-west and northern Syria and which is backed by Turkiye, also seems to have dropped any aims to relaunch any attacks against Assad regime positions. Instead, it is refocusing its efforts on preparing to join Turkiye in its own planned operation against the Kurdish militias in northern and north-east Syria.

That is largely due to the backing given to the SNA and other proxies by Ankara, but is also due to the fact that the Kurdish groups control areas directly surrounding SNA territories, making it in their own interests to support such an operation. The question the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition groups must grapple with, then, is whether the Kurds or Assad are the greater threat.

It seems increasingly likely that the Fath al-Mubeen (Clear Victory) operations room – meant to represent a united front of opposition groups ready for combat against the Syrian military – established predominantly by HTS and Ahrar al-Sham, an affiliation of the SNA, will not become operational any time soon.

There is still, of course, the Turkish and Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement struck in March 2020 which officially obstructs an offensive by Assad’s forces and Russia against the Syrian rebel groups, and vice versa. Anyone with any awareness of the situation in north-west Syria practically since the agreement was struck, however, knows that it has been violated countless times – primarily by the regime and Moscow – and exists in name only.

The idea of utilising the opportunity brought by the Russian tie-down in Ukraine has, in fact, not been entirely neglected by some segments of the Syrian opposition. In the March edition of the monthly Balagh magazine – written and published in north-west Syria by anti-HTS figures and clerics – it acknowledged that the “Russian enemy is stuck in a tough [war of] attrition which has led it to withdraw its soldiers from many places and deploy them to the Ukrainian campaign, and it has transferred from Syria to Ukraine its best officers who have gained battle experience in Syria.”

The editorial lamented that “despite the extensive attrition and the embarrassment of the Russians, the situation [i.e. the rebel leadership] in Syria…behaves like a pot plant. The functionary leaders who were forced into the revolution are satisfied with the role of spectator and make do with a variety of exclamations.”

It accused those leaders from HTS and the SNA of having taken “control of the resources of the Syrian revolution”, and called them “nothing but slaves who function in accordance with the dictates of their masters and not in the interests of the jihad and the revolution.”

The editorial further condemned the leadership for inter-factional fighting and oppressive policies over the people they govern instead of taking advantage of the war in Ukraine. It “makes itself hated by the community of fighters; imposes a siege on the poor people in the region; conducts a complete census of the people in the area, collects information about them, their pasts and their activities and all these details stream smoothly into all the security apparatuses”.

Such a leadership, it concluded, “is likely to bring about the downfall of the territories as they have fallen in the past, for the history of its military failures which brought about the loss of the territories is known and familiar.”

If Syrian rebel groups were eventually to form an offensive against the Assad regime while Russia is distracted in Ukraine, there would still be considerable risks to reckon with. Firstly, Moscow still has a military presence – albeit probably limited – and some of its fighter jets are still stationed at the Khmeimim air base near Latakia.

There is also the presence of Iranian forces and militias to contend with, which many analysts predict could result in Iran’s ascendency in Syria amid the Russian withdrawal. Furthermore, there are no guarantees that Turkiye will back or adequately defend the Syrian opposition if they conduct their own operation against regime positions as happened two years ago – and even that was mainly due to Syrian forces killing Turkish troops.

Such realities will ensure that any rebel offensive in Syria would still encounter significant obstructions, but currently the Russians – by far the greatest factor which set the opposition back over the years – are tied down elsewhere, providing the “revolution” with a rare opportunity.

Muhammad Hussein is an International Politics graduate and political analyst on Middle Eastern affairs, primarily focusing on the regions of the Gulf, Iran, Syria and Turkey, as well as their relation to Western foreign policy.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Today instead of writing about the war dead, I’d like to consider the plight of the 900 U.S. troops in Syria. They should not be there, and their presence is a mixed bag when it comes to U.S. national security, especially in view of the new Cold War between Russia and the United States and their proxy war in Ukraine. As with eastern Ukraine, Syria is crawling with Russian troops and air force planes.

Whatever the US troops are accomplishing in eastern Syria is not worth it, especially since their mission seems poorly or illegally defined since the days of Trump. This is a powder keg, given the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. President Biden said that he did not want US troops in Ukraine because if they came into conflict with Russian troops, that would be WW III. Well, the same consideration should lead him to get out of Syria, which is a Russian sphere of influence now.

After what happened in Afghanistan when the US left, Biden may be reluctant to pull US forces out of Syria. But the two situations are not similar. Russia and Iran have already shown that they will go to great lengths to keep Bashar al-Assad in power. There were no outside powers willing and able to prop up Ghani in Afghanistan. Besides, the real danger is in staying in Syria without a clear mission, cheek by jowl with Russia and Iran, not in leaving it.

The basis on which the Obama administration sent troops into eastern Syria was self-defense. The ISIL terrorist organization had formed a mini-state in eastern Syria and northern Iraq and had hit NATO allies like France as well as using the internet to encourage stochastic or random terrorism against the United States.

The Syrian Kurdish militia, the Peoples Protection Units or YPG, provided the infantry to defeat ISIL and take its capital, Raqqa. The YPG captured Raqqa on October 17, 2017, receiving US air support, and having some US troops embedded among them.

So there is no longer any self-defense justification for US troops to be in Syria. In the meantime, the government of Bashar al-Assad, backed by the Russian Aerospace Forces and Shiite militias from Lebanon and Iraq, along with a small contingent of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, defeated most of the rebel forces that had challenged the regime, most of the Sunni Arabs of a fundamentalist bent. They are now holed up in the northern, rural Idlib Province, along with some 3 million residents and internally displaced persons.

The Syrian government, which is gradually regaining its sovereignty and recognition, has said that it wants the US troops out. Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal al-Miqdad says the US troop presence is “illegal,” and has called on the Syrian Kurds to stop cooperating with Washington, saying that the US will have to leave sooner or later.

In mid-October of 2019, Trump abruptly ordered US troops out of Syria and gave Turkey’s president Tayyip Erdogan a green lignt to invade the regions of the Syrian Kurds, who had been US allies against ISIL. Most US troops were pulled out, to the dismay and fury of their erstwhile Kurdish allies, who felt abandoned and betrayed. Their tanks headed for Iraqi, festooned with rotten eggplants and tomatoes cast at them by angry Kurdish villagers, who soon thereafter had to run away from Erdogan’s invading forces.

Someone in the White House, however, manipulated Trump into keeping a few hundred US troops in southeastern Syria at Deir al-Zor around some of Syria’s oil fields, the oil from which was then going to the Kurds and not to the Damascus government. The staffers told Trump, who always had a thing about stealing other people’s oil, that he should keep those US troops there to siphon off Syrian oil, and Trump was persuaded. In the end a scheme for an American company to exploit Syria’s oil fell through, which is just as well, since that would have been a war crime.

Whatever you think of the Obama administration’s self-defense argument, it at least had some merit and ISIL was a dangerous statelet that roiled the world for a few years.

The current charge of the 900 remaining US troops seems awfully vague, and one fears they might actually be there to make sure the petroleum in Deir al-Zor goes to the Kurds rather than to the Damascus government. This mission is problematic in international law and weird because the US has thrown the Syrian Kurds anyway to the Turkish wolves.

The US troops at the Green Village Base near the al-Omar oil field, one of Syria’s largest, have recently come under rocket fire from Shiite militias, as Jared Szuba explains at Al-Monitor. These ongoing attacks will not stop.

Erdogan is making noises about another invasion of Syria, to establish a 20-mile deep security zone between the YPG Kurds and Turkey’s border, inside northern Syria. The Biden administration has warned Erdogan not to do it, but it is hard to see how Washington could stop it. Since the US is facilitating the transfer to the Syrian Kurds of the oil of the al-Omar field, Ankara sees them as an enemy, even though the US and Turkey are supposedly NATO allies. Erdogan is using his position in NATO to block the accession of Sweden and Finland until they agree to declare the YPG a terrorist organization. The US, which has long been allied with the YPG, has declined to so designate them, of course. The US does view the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), based in southeastern Turkey and in Qandil in Iraq, as a terrorist organization, but sees the YPG as a separate group rather than as a branch of the PKK.

There is more bad news. Alarmed at Erdogan’s invasion plans, Russia, for which Syria is a major military theater of operations and client state, sent surveillance helicopters and fighter jets to Qamishli airport in eastern Syria to observe the Turkish border. US troops are deployed near Qamishli, according to the pan-Arab daily al-Sharq al-Awsat (The Middle East).

It is nervous-making to have 900 US troops in the midst of the ongoing Syrian maelstrom, with continual possibilities for war to break out if they get caught in the crossfire in some dispute among the various players in Syria, with the behemoth being Vladimir Putin’s Russian army and air force.

I agree that it doesn’t add anything significant to our analysis to resort to the old “evil madman” propaganda. What I would like to suggest is that Putin’s vast miscalculation in invading Ukraine is likely rooted in part in his experience in Syria.

It should be remembered that Putin had a significant success in Syria, where he was able to put down a widespread insurgency with a brutal deployment of air power in support of Syrian Arab Army ground infantry and artillery, and Shiite militiamen. The victory likely shaped his view of Ukraine.

Putin may have come to understand that he won in part because the rebels in Syria were a demographic minority, with the pro-regime secular-minded Sunni Arabs joining Alawis, Christians, Druze, Twelver Shiites and leftist Kurds to amount to some 65 percent of the population. The regime could also draw on the resources of the Shiite majority in neighboring Iraq and the Shiite plurality in Lebanon. Both of the latter were sponsored by Shiite Iran, which wanted Syria to stay under the thumb of the one-party Baath state of Bashar al-Assad and to remain a land bridge for Tehran to the Levant.

Putin also bought into the notion that the 2011 Arab Spring was a set of CIA color revolutions. As someone who wrote a whole book on the Arab youth movements, I strenuously object to this characterization. Thanks to Wikileaks, we have seen the cables of the US ambassador in Egypt at that time, and it is quite clear that he did not believe the youth had a prayer of overthrowing the government, nor was that an outcome the US had any reason to hope for (Hosni Mubarak was a loyal client). You could say Syria was a different matter, but then you have to have a theory for why some of the 2011 youth revolts were genuine while others were a CIA plot. Better to stop imagining that the US intelligence field officers are so all-powerful.

Putin saw the 2014 Maidan Revolution in Ukraine as similar to the Syrian insurgency, as representing a radical right wing minority backed by the CIA for a color revolution, whereas a broad silent majority of pro-Russian Ukrainians had been subjugated by the Zelensky government. He saw the US-backed Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi Jihadis and the Ukrainian ultra-nationalists in the Stepan Bandera tradition as the same phenomenon emanating from Washington.

Again, that Barack Obama was the font of right wing European nativism just seems to me a daft proposition. In fact, Putin himself seems to have a track record in promoting the far right, as with his ties to Marine LePen in France.

Moreover, despite the existence of a small ultranationalist fringe in Ukraine, most Ukrainians avoided the temptations of extremism, whereas the Syria opposition, left bereft by a liberal West that declined to support them significantly in 2011, turned to Gulf money and moved to the Muslim far right under the influence of Saudi and other backers. Although I don’t think Obama was behind the 2011 youth revolt, he did get drawn in to supporting the right-wing religious militias later on. For reasons I’ll never understand, the US funneled billions to the Muslim Brotherhood militias through Saudi Arabia, which developed the Army of Islam Salafi Jihadi organization in the Damascus suburbs.

Anyway, just as taking east Aleppo and protecting Homs and Latakia had been enough to quash the minority insurgents in Syria, Putin thought that a quick, brutal seizure of Kyiv would be enough to put paid to what he thought of as the Ukraine insurgents.

The situation in Ukraine, however, was quite different from that in Syria. The minorities and secular-minded Sunni Arabs in Syria created a majority that deeply feared the Muslim Brotherhood militias that formed the backbone of the insurgency, and the minorities and urban Sunnis were terrified by the rise of ISIL. They may not have liked the Baath very much (the Kurds did not) but they hated the fundamentalist and radical religious groups more.

Opinion polling showed that only thirteen percent of Ukrainians thought a Russian invasion to keep Ukraine out of NATO’s hands would be justified.

Putin appears to have been unable to appreciate the realities of Ukrainian ethnogenesis — the way in which a Ukrainian national consciousness had grown up through history– and to have seen them as temporarily alienated Russians whom he could recover by dismantling the Potemkin Village of the Zelensky government.

If Putin was misled by his relative Syrian success, he wouldn’t have been the first such leader. The George W. Bush administration appears to have been misled by the apparent ease with which they overthrew the Taliban in a rural, politically fluid Afghanistan, thinking that they could apply the same techniques to a heavily urban, industrialized and literate (i.e. socially mobilized) Iraq.

Putin’s Ukraine war was poor history, poor sociology, and poor military strategy. It may have been based on a false Syrian analogy. It wasn’t insane, or at least it needn’t be mainly explained by resorting to that trope. And if we did want to engage in that sort of analysis, we ought to look into what was wrong with W., as well.

The hasty and badly organised US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August prompted fears among Washington’s other allies about the durability of US friendship. Kurdish troops in northeastern Syria, facing multi-pronged opposition from Islamic State fighters as well as the Assad regime and the prospect of Turkish incursion, have felt particularly vulnerable.

So recent meetings between senior US officials and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which resulted in a pledge by US president, Joe Biden, that the US would not abandon them have gone a long way to allaying those fears.

There are about 35 million ethnic Kurds living in Kurdistan, an area comprising parts of northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey and western Iran. At various times groups in different parts of this area have pressed for independent statehood, but on the whole the majority – at present, at least – are relatively content to occupy autonomous regions. In Syria this is the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) otherwise known as Rojava.

US involvement in Syria and military support for the Kurdish-led forces has paid significant dividends for both sides. Supported by around 2,000 US troops on the ground and an air campaign, the SDF has proved to be an most effective buffer against Islamic State in Syria and played a decisive role in ending its territorial control in March 2019.

But there has been an ever-present fear that the US will pull out, leaving them at the mercy of their enemies. This fear was stoked in October 2019 when former president Donald Trump ordered US troops to withdraw from the region, effectively giving the green light to a Turkish invasion and capture of a large area of AANES territory. In the event, Russia brokered an agreement between Turkey and SDF. Turkey got a safe zone along the border and SDF agreed to withdraw 20 miles south of the border. The US, meanwhile, maintained enough of a military force to continue supporting the Kurds’ efforts to stabilise the region. But the possibility of an abrupt US withdrawal has been shaping Kurdish actions ever since.

The election of Joe Biden in November 2020 raised the hopes that the US would adopt a steadier approach in its dealings with the Kurds in Syria. And it seems that, on appearances at least, the US is willing to do so.

Meetings between US state department officials and the SDF leadership in August and September 2021 ended with the US emphasising its “commitment to the campaign against ISIS and stability in the region” and assuring the SDF that “there will be no changes in Syria” in the aftermath of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

What’s in it for America

The US military support and security umbrella it provides may have been a critical factor behind the Kurds’ success, but safeguarding Kurdish gains is not the reason behind the Biden administration’s decision. There are several other factors at play. Firstly, the threat posed by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria continues, despite the group’s loss of its territorial control. Iraq’s short and medium-term security and stability remains a key US priority and an abrupt withdrawal from Syria would aid the resurgence of IS in Iraq.

The US military presence in Syria is also needed to curb Iran’s influence in both Iraq and Syria and address the security concerns many US allies – particularly Israel – in the region feel as a result.

The continuation of the US military support and financial aid is crucial to the region’s stability and could act as a springboard for accommodating Kurdish rights and the inclusion of the AANES into Syria if political pluralism and a decentralised governance model is accepted.

AANES’s prospects are closely tied to its inclusion in the UN-led peace process for ending the civil war in Syria. So far, its efforts have not managed a seat at the table. A more concrete commitment from the US in the form of political support for the inclusion of AANES representatives at the UN peace talks could change the situation in its favour.

Thwarting Turkey’s plan

But AANES has more urgent concerns. Turkey continues to threaten, seeing the SDF as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrillas that it has been battling in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan since 1984. Turkey invaded the Kurdish-controlled regions of Syria in 2018 and 2019, and small-scale attacks by Turkey and Turkish-backed Syrian groups on the rural areas of AANES territory continue daily, as do the human rights violations committed against the Kurdish civilians in the areas under the control of the Turkish-backed Syrian groups. On August 19, drone attacks by Turkey killed three SDF commanders and two fighters.

Eliminating the influence of the SDF in Syria remains a key objective for the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. But the US presence, and its commitment to the region’s stability, will act as a deterrent against a new large-scale Turkish military operation. Previous Turkish attacks in the AANES territory were made with Russia’s tacit support and encouragement, something which is thought less likely to be granted now the US has clearly stated its support for the SDF. And US troops on the ground in eastern Syria will also deter the Assad regime from destabilising AANES in a bid to take its territory back under full control.

US military support means Turkey’s attempts to label the SDF as “terrorists” are less likely to succeed. Erdoğan has used Turkey’s military operations against the Kurds in Syria as a sop to his strongly nationalist base – and he has repeatedly used western support for the Kurds as an example of the west’s antipathy towards Turkey.

With the likelihood of a Turkish military operation lessened, Erdoğan’s ability to please nationalists with an easy victory against the Kurds is less likely. Erdoğan retains a firm grip on power in Turkey, but there are reports that Turkey’s opposition parties are working with Kurdish groups. If a united opposition can inflict defeat on Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party in the next election in 2023, then this would be one more step towards a peaceful future for the Kurds.

Cengiz Gunes, Associate Lecturer, Faculty of Social Science, The Open University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This syndicated article does not necessarily represent the views of Informed Comment.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

UN Human Rights Council: “Syria: The conflict is getting worse, says the UN commission of inquiry”

I don’t remember Donald Trump flying one Kurd to safety. He let Turkey slaughter them. They were our allies that served side by side with our troops. Where is the outrage from the Fox Russian Propaganda Machine??? Biden has safely evacuated over 79,000 Afghans. Let’s take score!

— Richard N. Ojeda, II (@Ojeda4America) August 24, 2021

Amid the terminal amnesia of the U.S. media, it is refreshing to see someone remember the circumstances under which Trump pulled out of Syria, as a comparison to Biden’s Afghanistan. Let us just review that situation.

The so-called Islamic State group in Iraq, ISI, had developed in reaction against the US occupation of that country. It was part of the al-Qaeda affiliate, “al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia,” but began styling itself a “state” because it developed the ambition to be more than a terrorist organization, seeking to take and hold territory under the nose of the Americans in Sunni Arab strongholds that resisted the rule of the Shiite-dominated Baghdad government. ISI didn’t have a lot of success in the zeroes of this century.

In 2011, when the Syrian revolution broke out, the government of Baathist strongman Bashar al-Assad decided to repress it with military force. Assad with his sniping and tank barrages maneuvered the youth revolutionaries into picking up a gun to fight back, so that he could brand them violent Sunni fundamentalist terrorists and keep the loyalty of the urban middle classes and the religious minorities.

Amid the fighting, ISI came over from northern Iraq into Syria, attracted by the collapse of the Baath government and army in some parts of the country. It declared itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or ISIL. It meant all of geographic Greater Syria, including Lebanon, Jordan and Israel-Palestine. It split in 2013 because ISIL was behaving in an opportunistic way, shooting fellow fundamentalist guerrillas in the back and poaching on their territory. Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri kicked them out of al-Qaeda. ISIL predominated in eastern Syria, taking Raqqa province and making Raqqa city its capital. The rest of al-Qaeda,including Jabhat al-Nusra (The Support Front), predominated in northwest Syria where their remnants still are.

The US foolishly thought that ISIL would be a useful lever against Assad, and didn’t interfere with it. In 2014 it used its east Syria power base to come across and take 40% of Iraq, launching a phony “caliphate” and declaring war on the West, using social media to encourage attacks on Paris and in the U.S.

The Obama administration finally understood the danger of the organization and mobilized to fight it. Obama did not want to put war-fighting troops on the ground but offered training and logistical and air support. In this model, you need troops on the ground willing to fight. They were easy to find in Iraq, where the Kurds and Shiites were angry about ISIL massacres of their members and both the Iraqi national army (which at first collapsed and had to be rebuilt by the US) and Iraqi Shiite militias allied with Qasem Soleimani’s Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps swung into action against ISIL.

In Syria, Obama couldn’t initially find anyone to fight ISIL. The Sunni Arab fighters wanted to defeat Assad way more than they wanted to go against what were sometimes battlefield allies. The Saudis and other allies likewise wouldn’t take on ISIL. Turkey wanted to fight the Kurds and did not prioritize the struggle against ISIL– in fact it was pouring arms and ammunition into the ranks of the Sunni rebels, some of which probably reached ISIL, and Ankara did not seem to care.

So Obama could ineffectually bomb ISIL in Raqqa until the cows came home to no good effect. You can’t defeat a guerrilla movement from the air.

Then Obama and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter bit the bullet and enlisted Syria’s Kurds in the struggle against ISIL. ISIL hates Kurds, who tend to reject its brand of brutal fundamentalism, and had massacred them. The Syrian Kurds had their own militia, the People’s Protection Units or Yekîneyên Parastina Gel (YPG), the paramilitary of the Democratic Union Party.

The DUP and the YPG had once been communists, but after the fall of the Soviet Union they adopted a cooperativist form of socialism thought up by Brooklyn intellectual Murray Bookchin. The YPG still wore a red star on their uniform in memory of their communist past. So they were strange bedfellows for the Neoliberal, capitalist U.S.

The US added some local Arab tribes to the YPG and called it the Syrian Democratic Forces, but it was basically the YPG.

With US air support and 2,000 embedded US special operations personnel, the Syrian Kurds defeated ISIL, taking Raqqa by mid-October of 2017.

Turkey was furious about the US alliance with the Syrian Kurds, viewing them as terrorists and as a branch of the violent Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrilla movement against which Turkey’s military fought a dirty war from the 1970s forward.

The US does not view the YPG as at all like the PKK, making a distinction between the Syrian Kurdish Bookchinists and the Turkey-based PKK.

Turkey was fearful that the Syrian Kurds would use their US alliance to arm themselves even better and to consolidate a Kurdish mini-state across northern Syria right on the Turkish border, from which they could spread socialism and Kurdish separatism. There isn’t, however, good evidence of Syrian Kurdish terrorism against Turkey.

In fall of 2019, Donald Trump spoke to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and agreed to withdraw US troops from Syria and to allow Turkey to invade the Kurdish regions of northern Syria.

Why Trump did this is still not known, though he once admitted that his Istanbul hotel gave the Turkish government leverage over him.

Trump abruptly pulled out the 2,000 US troops, sending most of them to Iraq but keeping a couple hundred in southeast Syria “for the oil.”

And he stood by as the Turkish military invaded the Kurdish regions of northern Syria, displacing thousands of Kurds. These people who lost their homes were the very ones who had supplied the young men to fight alongside the US and defeat ISIL.

ISIL prisoners being guarded by the Syrian Democratic Forces and the US troops sometimes were able to stage escapes in the chaos. There was a danger of ISIL reasserting itself.

Trump evacuated no Kurdish allies at all, as Mr. Ojeda pointed out. He left them to face the Turkish invasion, or the Syrian Arab Army of Assad, or the continued small ISIL terrorist cells. All this was after they had been the only allies on the ground the US could find to polish off ISIL.

Trump had not warned his allies or even Secretary of Defense James Mattis what he was planning to do, and Mattis resigned over it.

In contrast, Biden had announced a year before when he was campaigning for president that he would get out of Afghanistan, and the peace treaty Trump concluded with the Taliban and Trump’s reduction of US forces to only 2500 in any case left Biden no choice but to get out. Unlike Trump, Biden arranged for the evacuation of 117,000 Afghan allies of the US.

Both withdrawals were chaotic and posed security challenges. But to see pro-Trump Republican politicians grandstanding and calling for Biden’s resignation or even impeachment is a bit rich. None of them wants to remember what their guy did to the Syrian Kurds or the condition in which he left eastern Syria and its ISIL cells.

This was only 2 years ago. It isn’t ancient history. What’s with the amnesia?

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Bonus Video:

PBS NewsHour from 2019: “‘Trump betrayed us’: Fleeing Kurds condemn U.S. decision to leave Syria”

According to government sources, the former opposition that controlled Deraa until 2018 attacked Syrian military at the end of July and captured at least 25 troops. In 2018, the Russia-backed Syrian Arab Army (SAA) had taken control of the governorate, striking a symbolic blow to the uprising born there in 2011. As a result of the militia strike, the Syrian Arab Army blocked off the area and called on the militants to surrender and raise the Syrian flag over the Al-Omari Mosque in the town of Bosra near the country’s border with Jordan. Reports suggest that Russian attempts to establish a ceasefire failed, and the SAA forces started shelling Deraa al-Balad.

It is worth noting that fierce clashes broke out just days after Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. However, incidents in the south of Syria started occurring a couple of years ago. For instance, there were reports suggesting that an explosive device detonated on the route of a convoy of the Russian military police in Deraa province in November 2020. Also, another explosion hit Deraa this year on May 26, which is when Syria held controversial presidential election. Ever since, situation in the Deraa governorate has been very tense.

From the Kremlin’s perspective, Deraa remains an area of secondary importance for the Russian military operating in the Middle Eastern country. One of Moscow’s primary goals in Syria is to modernize the northeastern port of Tartus, which is Russia’s only door opened to the Mediterranean. It is believed, however, that one of Russia’s priorities in southern Syria is to limit the Iranian influence, and at the same time to find a solution to the growing outbreaks of protest.

Back in June it became obvious that situation in Deraa is critical and that local economy is on the verge of collapse. According to reports, the region was faced with shortage in medicines, fuel, bread and drinking water, as well as power outages. Indeed, a weak economy, endemic corruption and restrictions on smuggling on the border with Jordan have caused discontent among former rebels.

Damascus, on the other hand, appears to see the situation in the south from the purely political perspective, and keeps using the old repressive tools.

“The efforts of the armed forces of the Syrian Arab Republic have stabilized the situation in Deraa”, said Counter Admiral Vadim Kulit, deputy chief of the Russian Center for Reconciliation of the Opposing Parties in Syria.

But economic circumstances in the region are unlikely to improve any time soon, which means that tensions in the “birthplace of the Syrian revolution” are expected to grow. There are even fears that full-scale hostilities in Deraa will eventually resume.

Unlike most other Syrian regions that were recaptured by the Syrian Arab Army in 2018, and where anti-government fighters mostly have been evacuated to the northern Idlib Province, in Daara, under a Russia-brokered deal, they were allowed to stay and take part in the “reconciliation process”. According to the deal, they had to hand over heavy weaponry to the SAA, but not small arms. Moreover, the Russians and the former rebels agreed that all detainees must be released, oppositionists and dissidents could freely return to their homes, and young people would not be conscripted into SAA units fighting in Idlib.

However, on June 24, Syrian government forces began to impose their siege on the neighborhoods of Deraa al-Balad after the residents reportedly refused to hand over small individual weapons and automatic machine guns to the SAA and the Russian military police. It is worth remembering that in June 2020 the Russian military opened a center in Deraa, allegedly in order to receive information from the locals about their relatives who are being held detained by the Syrian authorities. Still, some locals are skeptical regarding the Russian ambitions in the province.

“The Russian military received lists of detainees two years ago, but nothing has changed, and the opening of the center is just an excuse to increase the Russian presence in the region, says local lawyer Adnan Masalmeh.

Colonel Fateh Hasun, one of the commanders of the Syrian opposition, reportedly told the Russian newspaper Kommersant that Moscow failed to fulfill its obligations to the people of Deraa.

“This is not a deception, but simply a Russian retreat before the regime and Iran. Let this serve as a warning to those who consider Russia a guarantor of the peace process”, said Hasun.

The Kremlin, for its part, opposed the SAA operation in Deraa, but Damascus conducted it nevertheless, although an influential Russian military officer, Alexander Zorin, reportedly warned Syrian authorities that Moscow would not provide air support to the Syrian army in case of a large-scale offensive in the former opposition stronghold.

Given that Deraa has largely boycotted the recent presidential election, the Assad government sees the former rebels as “terrorists who thwarted a reconciliation deal”. Thus, it is entirely possible that, sooner or later, the SAA will attempt to crush the opposition forces in the south once and for all, with or without Russian help.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Al Jazeera English: “Heavy clashes grip southern Syria’s Deraa province, monitor says”

( Middle East Monitor ) – Syrian intellectuals and activists from across political and intellectual spheres are busy searching for a way out of the disastrous situation their country has reached after ten years of violent conflict. The issue is not straightforward, and the exit is unclear, with everyone trying to feel their way out in the dark without achieving a result. This is especially true since the Syrians’ ability to influence their country’s future is continuously diminishing with the established foreign presence within it, and with the regime and opposition’s supporters on the brink of collapse.

There should not be a major disagreement among Syrians regarding the fact that, since the second year of its revolution, their country has become a battlefield for regional and international powers that do not consider the Syrians’ interests or their fate. This must be acknowledged as a first step towards getting out of the impasse, as Iran did not rush to help the regime. Instead, Iran found in the conflict an opportunity to complete the building of its regional arc of influence, especially with the US leaving Iraq in 2011. When it lost hope, given the intensification of the conflict in Syria, its interests were limited to controlling the corridor on the ground and establishing parallel authorities, securing its access to its ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah.

In Iran’s opinion, Syria is nothing but a line of defence or a battlefield through which it prevents the battle from moving to Tehran, Qom and Isfahan. It is therefore not concerned with its destruction and division, neither the annihilation of its people, the supporters of the regime or the opposition. It makes no difference to them, as long as the conflict remains far from its territory. The Arab Gulf states were never interested in helping the revolution reach a democratic system that would fulfil the Syrians’ aspirations for a free and decent life. Rather, they found in Syria a battleground to exhaust Iran and break the arc of its influence that threatens the Gulf after the collapse of Iraq. The same applies to Russia, Turkey, the US, Europe, and others, all of whom aspire to achieve their interests in a country of strategic importance, and not leave it to the others.

READ: Denmark says Syria is safe for return of refugees

As a result, five foreign armies and their affiliates are present on Syrian soil today. Threatening the unity of Syria and its political entity, there is the emergence of a US approach to recognise the Kurdish administration in the areas east of the Euphrates. There is also the presence of a Turkish approach to establish a canton in the opposition-controlled areas in the northwest of the country, and a safe zone in the areas controlled by the Syrian National Army factions in the north. Added to this is the Iranian desperation to keep the corridor connecting Al-Bukamal and the Lebanese border. Meanwhile, the Russians and Israelis agreed on a buffer zone in the south that prevents the Iranian presence on the borders and Russian control of the Syrian coast with its ports, giving Syria a share of the oil in the eastern Mediterranean and its gas.

Syrians have spent the last ten years of the conflict on their vision of Syria and its future. Now that the existence of Syria itself is threatened, it has become imperative to rise to the level of danger posed to it. The regime bears the responsibility more than others in this regard, as it remains in a better position to take initiative and achieve a solution that allows the Syrians to rally around a rescue formula, away from foreign agendas and narrow interests. As for the stubbornness and continued claims of victory, this will only lead to the complete collapse of the country that the regime insists on ruling. Can this be considered a victory when about 40 per cent of Syrian land, including its wealth, is not under its control? What kind of victory is this, when the regime is unable to feed the Syrians under its rule, let alone provide them with services? What about the militias and mercenaries that are prevalent in Syria? As for the opposition, it is asked to be courageous and start adopting a discourse that may not appeal to its audience. Real leadership is not always about telling the people what they want to hear, but rather sometimes telling them what they don’t want to hear. The opposition must announce, at this stage, rejection of the policy of starving Syrians in the areas controlled by the regime, just as the regime’s policy of starving Syrians in the areas that the opposition controlled was rejected. We must also, in practice and not only in theory, put into action the slogan of “The Syrian people are one” that was launched on the first day of the revolution.

It remains for us to acknowledge the existence of many fundamental points of agreement between the regime and the opposition, which could form the basis of a real dialogue heading towards a solution. The most important of these points is the agreement on the unity of the Syrian territories, the rejection of any separatist approaches, the affirmation of Syria’s sovereignty and independence, the departure of all foreign forces, including armies and militias from Syria, and the refusal to convert Syria into a land of jihad or a battlefield for anyone. Additional points include rejecting the policies of the axis and agreeing that the Golan Heights is an occupied land over which there is no compromise. If we cannot build on these points, the regime will bear historical responsibility for the collapse and disintegration of the country. If the opposition does not respond, we will, as expressed by the legend Aisha Al-Hurra: “Weep like a woman for a kingdom you could not defend as a man.”

Translated from Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, 3 March, 2021.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

TRT World: “Turkey, Russia and Iran begin talks on Syria in Sochi”