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On 8/13/18 10:55 AM, RKOB via Marxism wrote:
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As the article is behind a paywall, could you please forward it?
The Shape of Syria to Come
Aron Lund Monday, Aug. 13, 2018
After seven years of war in Syria, the endgame is here. All major
frontlines have been frozen by foreign intervention, and military action
now hinges on externally brokered political deals. The result could be a
de facto division of the country.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Russian-backed forces spent the past
two years taking out isolated rebel strongholds, like Eastern Aleppo and
Ghouta. Recently, they recaptured the area along the border with Jordan
and territory near the Golan Heights—but at that point, they ran out of
low-hanging fruit.
The sight of Russian diplomats shuttling between Israelis, Syrians,
Iranians and Americans to ease Assad’s return to the 1967 cease-fire
line in the Golan was a sign of things to come. Israel finally relented,
accepting a Russian-monitored restoration of the pre-2011 status quo,
but it’s not clear things will be as easy in the rest of Syria, where
the three remaining areas outside Assad’s control are shielded by
soldiers from NATO member states and wrapped up in complex diplomacy.
The smallest area still outside state control is Tanf. In this
55-kilometer bubble around a border crossing with Iraq, a few hundred
U.S. forces and allied Syrian rebels remain, ostensibly to hunt remnants
of the Islamic State.
Russia has agreed not to challenge the American presence at Tanf, but
what the United States wants to do with the place is unclear. Tanf has
lost most of its relevance as the fight against the Islamic State has
wound down, but a strong strand of thought in Washington wants the U.S.
military to hang on to this pocket of territory simply to spite
Damascus, Moscow and Tehran. As long as the White House can convince
itself that this is money well spent, for one strategic reason or
another, Tanf will remain outside central government control.
In northeastern Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, have set up
a semi-independent, socialist entity fighting the Islamic State, backed
by some 2,000 American soldiers. The SDF is made up of Kurds, Arabs and
Syriacs, but it is not-so-secretly controlled by the Kurdistan Workers’
Party, the PKK, an arch-foe of Turkey. Over the past few years, U.S.
envoys have struggled to dissuade the Turks—who are about as comfortable
with a PKK stronghold on their southern border as the United States was
with Soviet missiles in Cuba—from attacking.
The U.S. deployment doesn’t just keep the Turks out, it also prevents
Assad’s forces from entering SDF-controlled areas. But the fact that
U.S. President Donald Trump keeps saying he wants to bring the troops
home has spooked the SDF’s leaders. They have no air force, no armor, no
viable economy and no powerful friends apart from the United States.
Left alone, they couldn’t fend off Assad or Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan.
Of the two, however, they prefer Assad. Senior SDF representatives
recently visited Damascus to propose a system of decentralized rule in
Syria, integration of SDF units into the Syrian army, and an end to
anti-Kurdish discrimination by the government. Assad won’t accept
genuine power-sharing, but he may be willing to satisfy some of the
SDF’s less intrusive demands and fudge others, while offering protection
against Turkey. In return, the SDF would be asked to show America the
door and hand Assad the keys.
That sort of plot twist might seem like a good fit with Trump’s desire
to leave Syria, but U.S. policymakers are also wary of a jihadist
resurgence and unenthusiastic about public humiliation at the hands of
Damascus. Unless or until Trump says otherwise, some combination of
inertia and ideology is likely to keep the United States engaged in
northeastern Syria, making it off-limits to Assad.
Meanwhile, Syria’s northwest is dominated by Turkey, as part of the
joint Russian-Turkish-Iranian Astana Process that seeks to resolve or
freeze the conflict on terms favorable to those three nations. But
Turkey can’t operate safely in the northwest without Russian cooperation.
Seven years in, the Syrian war is no longer a struggle over Assad’s
future, but over the shape of the country he will continue to rule.
In the summer of 2016, Erdogan sent his army into the city of al-Bab
outside Aleppo, supporting a Syrian rebel coalition. Two years later,
Turkish forces seized the nearby Kurdish enclave of Afrin. Moscow
facilitated both interventions, allowing Erdogan to carve out a border
enclave as long as his rebel clients did not attack the Syrian
government. It’s a good deal for Russia, since it makes a key member of
NATO dependent on Moscow.
Assad seems less enthusiastic, having watched with dismay as al-Bab and
Afrin mutate into Turkish dependencies: Electricity is now wired in over
the border, Turkish is taught in schools, Ankara pays rebel salaries,
Turks oversee police and local administration, and public squares are
named after Erdogan instead of Assad.
South of Afrin in Idlib, the last remaining province in Syria outside of
the regime’s control, Turkish influence is more diluted. Erdogan has
been trying to change that, but Idlib is a hard nut to crack. The area
is larger than Afrin and al-Bab combined, and has absorbed hundreds of
thousands of displaced Syrians, many under so-called evacuation deals
that have transferred populations from besieged areas near Damascus,
Aleppo and other former rebel strongholds. U.N. officials warn that an
attack could trigger a mass exodus. Even so, the presence of
al-Qaida-inspired jihadists in Idlib is seen as unacceptable far outside
the pro-Assad camp.
Between October and May, some 1,300 Turkish soldiers built a dozen
outposts on the edges of the province, after Russia and Iran
green-lighted a plan hatched in Astana to freeze fighting between rebels
and the regime while Ankara tries to put more palatable, Turkey-friendly
Islamists in charge. For Erdogan, keeping Idlib calm is about preventing
a refugee crisis; Turkey already hosts 3.5 million Syrians. Fearing that
Assad is about to pivot north, Turkish officials are now signaling to
Moscow that attacking Idlib would cross a “red line” and violate the
terms of the Astana accord.
Moscow wants Idlib’s jihadists gone, especially after a string of drone
attacks on the nearby Russian air base, south of Latakia. But the
Russians also have strong incentives to uphold the Astana-brokered
status quo. They know Assad can survive without Idlib, Afrin or al-Bab,
and Russian diplomats see no pressing reason to end a stalemate where
both sides compete for Moscow’s favor. A large-scale offensive on Idlib
would be “out of the question,” Russia’s special envoy for Syria,
Alexander Lavrentyev, said on July 31, contradicting his Syrian counterpart.
These Turkish-Russian understandings put Assad in a tough spot. His army
would have trouble retaking Idlib without Russian support, and forcing
the Kremlin to pick sides would not necessarily work out in his favor.
Still, Russia might want to throw Assad a bone, and there’s a lot of
gray area between total reconquest and doing nothing. Russia could very
well support an attack on outlying areas like the strategically located
town of Jisr al-Shughour, south of the Turkish border, or others near
Aleppo. If the fallout seems manageable, that kind of limited offensive
could even be acceptable to Turkey, as the coming days may reveal.
With Syrian tanks rolling north and tensions mounting, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov is heading to Ankara this week. What he ends up
agreeing to with his Turkish counterpart will help determine many of
these outcomes in Syria. Some pieces of Idlib may be handed over to
Assad, but if Russia then decides to put its thumb on the scale in
Turkey’s favor, large parts of Syria’s northwest could be out of Assad’s
reach for the foreseeable future.
It wouldn’t be a clean end to the war, but does Moscow really need that?
From Moldova to South Ossetia and eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin has a
habit of letting messy situations linger to its advantage. As seen in
Cyprus, Turkey is also no stranger to the concept of endless interim
solutions.
Seven years in, the Syrian war is no longer a struggle over Assad’s
regime and his future, but over the shape of the country he will
continue to rule. The fate of the areas that still elude his control is
now in the hands of foreigners.
Aron Lund is a fellow at the Century Foundation. He is a Swedish writer
on Middle Eastern affairs and has written extensively on Syrian
politics. His work was supported by a research grant from the Harry
Frank Guggenheim Foundation. Between 2013 and 2016, he edited the site
Syria in Crisis for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
where he was a nonresident associate in 2016. He is also a fellow of the
Centre for Syrian Studies at St. Andrew’s University.
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