Middle East Briefing
The world knows now about the partnership proposed by the Obama administration to President Vladimir Putin’s government to “deepen military cooperation between the two countries against some terrorists in exchange for Russia getting the Assad regime to stop bombing U.S.-supported rebels” as the Washington Post phrased it on June 30.
The crux of the deal is to lift US-Russian cooperation “to unprecedented level”. “In exchange, the Russians would agree to pressure the Assad regime to stop bombing certain Syrian rebel groups the United States does not consider terrorists. The United States would not give Russia the exact locations of these groups, under the proposal, but would specify geographic zones that would be safe from the Assad regime’s aerial assaults,” the Post said.
Let us see first how the advocates of the deal saw and promoted its impact.
A typical advocate of the deal would say the following:
The US wants Assad to respect the ceasefire deal. It wants to eliminate the threat of al-Qaeda. Solving the Syrian crisis will take time. So, for the time being let us focus on reducing violence and confronting Jihadist terrorism in coordination with all who share these objectives with us. Furthermore, for a political solution to move forward, we have to secure Russia’s cooperation.
In all these assertions, we find very clear signs of an administration moving from one failure to the next, and even willing to bind the next administration to this utter failure.
The nature of any deal reflects the relative weight of its signatories. Looking through the appearance and wording of an agreement tells us what kind of leverage each of its parties has. In previous deals, namely the ceasefire arrangement, and according to US officials in the White House and State Department, the Russians and Assad violated their own commitment not to bomb US supported groups and non-terrorist opposition fighters repeatedly and systematically.
Should we ask now what has changed that may compel Moscow and Assad to respect any new deal? How could President Obama and his aides be sure that presidents Putin and Assad will not use any new agreement, as they did with previous ones, in service of their own agendas, and not that shared with the US?
Let us, moreover, suppose that the Russians and the Syrian regime will violate the new agreement. What would the US administration do? Well, President Obama did nothing when they both violated the Cessation of Hostilities (CoH) agreement. Should we presume then that the real objective of the deal goes beyond any naïve expectation that they both will respect it this time?
President Obama is compelling his successor to remain within the circle of strategic failure that he has imposed on Washington policies in the Middle East since the beginning of the so-called Arab Spring.
Not only that, the president is helping Assad continue his bloody and oppressive policies, giving up on promoting American values under the pretext of defending them, and rendering a helping hand to Putin’s global game-plan. And this is how:
– Assad always wanted to turn the conflict into a black and white picture in which his forces fight the bad guys (the terrorists of ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra – JAN). JAN fought ISIL fiercely. Over a year and half ago, some Arab countries pressured the group to commit to not waging any terrorist act outside of Syria, and it has not. The group is working closely with other non-terrorist groups against the regime and against ISIL simultaneously. And using the air force to bomb it without hitting non-terrorist organizations as well is just about impossible.
Let us imagine a typical Syrian opposition fighter who hates religious extremism, yet he is an avowed Muslim, and dreaming of a country free of oppression and fear. He finds JAN fighters helping him in his battle against Assad. He sees US planes bombing him, his group, and JAN. What does anyone expect that fighter, who is a very common type in Syria now, to do? Fight JAN? Or fight the Americans?
President Obama turned the US, in one single stroke, to an enemy of the Syrian people and its dream of freedom.
Furthermore, the reward for this shameful retreat will be more failure. The reason for that is that no air force can settle such conflicts alone. ISIL could not have been forced to retreat without the long resistance of the rest of Syria’s opposition groups to its expansion in the last three years. ISIL has killed more opposition fighters than it has Assad soldiers.
The “new” agreement, which is not as new as the Washington Post made it seem, will certainly lead to an additional blurring of the lines separating JAN and the rest of the Syrian opposition. It is the best service ever rendered to JAN. And for free!
And how could that minimize civilian casualties? How could planes tell the difference, say in Idlib or Aleppo, between civilians, JAN, Free Syrian Army or any other non-terrorist group? And did Washington “strategists” think of the way civilians and other opposition groups will look now at those who cooperate with the Kremlin, the White House, and Assad? By repositioning the US as a member in the Putin-led alliance in Syria, president Obama crossed all lines of self-inflicted humiliation and is redrawing the map in Syria and the role of the US. All this under the pretext of fighting al-Qaeda? This acceptable pretext hides the total chaos in the policy-making circles in Washington. Are not all these fiascos enough? Fighting JAN requires a sophisticated approach through which the US widens the space between the group and its environment, rather than eliminating it.
Furthermore, it is Putin now who should be named the “Decider-in-Chief”. He forced the US to effectively say that they follow his game-plan: All opposition groups are terrorists and Assad should remain. For the moment the US planes target JAN, which means others will be hit as well, we will be faced with the opposition transforming into one big ball of anger against all four allies: Russia, the US, Assad, and Iran.
The right approach may have been a little too complicated for the likes of Ben Rhodes to grasp. The US must create and expand a “Middle Zone” – the zone in which neither ISIL-JAN nor Assad exist. Such an approach requires patience, strategic vision, and measured steps. Instead, we have seen a chain of mistakes culminating in a move that will definitely expand the scope of extremism. We cannot now be sure that the divisions in the overall body of the opposition will remain readable or clear any longer. Obama has made the final move to force all parts of the opposition to stand together regardless of their differences on terrorism or extremism.
Obama wasted this opportunity back in 2012-2013. Now, it is the Syrian people who have to pay the price of a president trying to limit his mistakes by making more mistakes and to reduce his losses by laying the ground for more losses. Only politicians and armature strategists fix their errors not by admitting them, for they have no ethics or deep intellect, but by doubling down to protect their ego and popular image.
The US has officially moved to the camp of the Decider-in-Chief and one of the worst dictators of modern times: Bashar al-Assad.
The quadruple alliance, US, Russia, Assad, and Iran, will ultimately lose in Syria. We have no doubt about this. We also have no doubt that the Obama years will be shown as the ultimate betrayal of the cause of freedom in Syria, where the people are punished because they revolted against a dictator peacefully, and have ended up killed by their own regime, the Russians, the Iranians, and now the president of the United States.