Middle East Briefing
We may as well send Ambassador James Jeffrey’s advice, which was written to VP Joe Biden, to Secretary Kerry. Jeffrey wrote in May 2: “Given Obama’s inherent antipathy toward Iraq, and the chronic disorganization of administration policy elsewhere, the White House has been lucky to have Biden as the adult in the room. But as any parent knows, it’s a tough lot cleaning up after the kids”.
As Biden in the Iraq’s file, Kerry has his share of mistakes. Yet, the Secretary of State is moving in a narrow alley defined by Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes and Denis McDonough. He is trying, as hard as humanely possible, to do something with nothing in his hands. He quietly proposed a safe zone to save lives in Aleppo but was immediately hit by a public rejection from the White House. Suzan Rice is determined to hand a victory in Syria to Assad and Putin. And indeed, it will be tough to clean after the kids.
As the Washington Post told us May 2 “The United States and Russia are studying possible ways to separate rival forces in Syria, delineating potential “safe zones” for opposition fighters”. Yet, the same day White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest had this to say: “The president does not believe at this point that safe zones are a practical alternative to what currently is happening in Syria,” Earnest stated.
And indeed, the real issue is President Obama’s. The President has difficulty hiding his antipathy towards Syria, and towards Iraq, and towards the Middle East. The region was not nice to the President. It placed his administration and his own strategic views under relentless tests which exposed all the bubbles and the holes that Kerry is left to navigate through. In every twist of the road, the President had to find other culprits than himself. At times it was the Arabs or the Turks. In other occasions it was the Europeans or the Russians. Anybody but his White House. A history of ideological inclinations does not disappear in a moment without traces. Ideologies, even traces of it, proved always to have a damaging effect on strategic thinking. The way to avoid that effect is to subject such complex crisis to a vigorous debate. But the debate in the White House is between a narrow circle of ideologues.
The apathy of President Obama to the Middle East is mutual. But the painful result of this absurd disorganization of the administration’s policies in the region is shown now in the tragedy of Aleppo where hundreds of civilians die every day.
There will be no safe zone in Syria, instead, the US and Russia will establish a joint ceasefire monitoring committee in Geneva. Would that lay the foundation for joint military operations to enforce the ceasefire?
In any case, it is clear now that the place is left to the Russians to run as they please. Instead of going to Damascus, which is supposedly the side that caused the ongoing humanitarian tragedy in Aleppo, the UN envoy Staffan De Mistura announced in a conference with Secretary John Kerry in Geneva May 2 that he would be heading to Russia instead.
“I’m going to Moscow, and the message will be exactly the same. I hope really that the message that we gave at the Security Council the other day, a feeling (inaudible) the U.S. and Russia and the special team that we have, which is called the International Support Group, will be reinvigorating what has been a major accomplishment”, de Mistura said.
Kerry commented briefly. “This is the moment to try to make certain that what everybody has signed up to is in fact being delivered, being lived up to, without hypocrisy and without variation. And that’s what we’re working for, and I’m hopeful that over the course of the next day or so greater clarity will be available as to exactly what progress has been made”, Kerry said.
“If Assad does not adhere to this, there will clearly be repercussions, and one of them may be the total destruction of the ceasefire and then go back to war,” Kerry told reporters a day after emergency meetings in Geneva. Yet, this brings back bad memories about the red line of President Obama. Better that Kerry avoids such promises so long as he is not backed by the White House.
Here we know that the address to talk to about the tragedy in Aleppo is the Kremlin. We also know that both De Mistura and Kerry “hope” that Russia would pressure Assad to stop his human hunting sport. But hope based on what? What is there to make any of the two believe that Russia would do anything to force its serial killer ally to abandon his blood addiction? Humanitarian reasons? With Putin? Since when?
But the blame should be placed right here: in Washington. President Obama should really be ashamed of himself and his team, some of whom were bragging just the other day about the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P). Those R2P characters have to find a place to hide. Hospitals are bombed, children are killed, and cities are leveled to ground.
But the funny part is that Damascus announced the same day when De Mistura was saying that he will be heading to Moscow that Russian air force will resume its military operations all over Syria if the ceasefire officially ends. According to Syria’s government officials, as quoted by newswires May 1 “the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the continuation of their countrywide air campaign after the conclusion of the ceasefire”. Russia’s Defense Ministry did not deny or confirm the report.
It is the same cycle repeating itself over and over again. An agreement followed by Assad breaking it, followed by Putin denying that his forces encouraged the breach, followed by the US hoping something or warning someone, then getting back to Lavrov to work a new arrangement which would soon be broken by Assad and his Iranian militias, to start over once again.
Isn’t it clear that there is something wrong in this approach? Don’t we know that Assad is a small time thug? Now, we know through an investigation conducted by Sky News Stuart Ramsey that Assad did in fact arrange with ISIL the whole episode of giving Palmyra to the terrorist group then “recapturing” it to make him appear as the savior of human heritage and to cover up for his favorable hobby of killing his own people.
Russia-Assad-Iran strategy is crystal clear: Regain control over the “meaningful Syria”-roughly the West of the country, then accept the deployment of international “peace keepers” on the separation line between the East and West of Syria. We are certain the issue of peace keepers will be raised once Aleppo, Idlib, the Rif of Hama and Hums, the Ghota and as much as possible of the areas around Damascus would be tightly under the control of Assad forces and his allies: Iranian militias and Russian.
We explained the general lines of this strategy in previous stories in Middle East Briefing along last year. The East of Syria would be left to the opposition and its backers with the mission of defeating ISIL. At the proper moment, talks would resume to reunify the country or, in other words, to combine a strong comfortable Assad in the west and his opponent in the east after using them to rid the world of the problem of ISIL. But the response of the Syrian opposition, according to their current debate on the ground, is to focus mainly on killing Russian military personnel active in Syria.
There is no credible signs that the Obama administration is opposed to the hopefully short partition scenario. But why killing civilians and bombing hospitals? Why the administration hypocrisy has to break all records at the expense of children and families?
Yes, the US can stop the massacre. Few manpads in and around Aleppo would stop Assad planes from throw
ing their barrel bombs. A safe zone can help. Delivering aid under protection of US Air Force is possible. Many avenues could have been explored. Instead, when civilians in Aleppo flee death to Turkey, Turkish border guards shoot them. And if they reach Turkey safe and move on to Europe, they are faced with total rejection. Where would those people go? The only road opened is the one to the other world.
Shame on all of us.