US president-elect Donald Trump said Syria is neither the US’ friend nor its fight. However, it is the fight of the US’ friends and, no less important, its enemies. What happens there would have an enormous impact on the future course of the Middle East and the US’ interests in it.
That is not a black-and-white issue. Fundamentally, Trump is right about not wanting to get involved in Syria and clearly both of his predecessors — outgoing President Joe Biden and former president Barack Obama — believed the same. That is why they limited direct US involvement in preventing Syria’s takeover by the Islamic State. In the not-too-distant future, the remaining 900 or so troops the US has on the ground would surely go, too.
Yet that limited investment is for now needed more than ever to ensure two things: that the Islamic State does not rise from its defeat amid the chaos, and that Iran and its proxies do not turn the Baghdad-Damascus road into a highway for the resupply of Hezbollah and the destabilization of Jordan and Israel. There are critical interests at stake for these US allies that Washington can ill afford to ignore. The same goes for Turkey.
However, let us start with Israel. Within hours of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s flight from Damascus, Israeli troops moved into the Golan Heights buffer zone and started bombing the abandoned assets of the Syrian armed forces, from its navy to its chemical weapons stores. That was a sensible precaution to ensure those arms and positions cannot be turned against the Jewish state by any of the wide array of militias — some jihadist and all hostile — that now populate post-Assad Syria.
On their own, though, Israel’s maneuvers cannot bring long-term security. Indeed, if continued, they must eventually provoke a response. The air strikes were opportunistic, but to consolidate gains they need a policy that ensures no other hostile power — Syrian or external — fills the void left by the fall of al-Assad.
As Ami Ayalon, a former head of Israel’s navy and Shin Bet intelligence service, said in a webcast on Wednesday, that is not something Israel can do alone. The effort to create a stable neighbor with a stake in keeping the peace has to be led and financed by others.
“There is a great opportunity ahead of us,” Ayalon said, adding that after more than a decade of civil war, 500,000 deaths and mass dispersal, there is enormous thirst for the resources that only the combined Arab world can bring Syrians with Turkey’s cooperation.
The Saudis and Emiratis have an interest in making that work, to ensure Iran does not find its way back into Syria amid chaos and factionalism. Lebanon, a near failed state, needs the more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees it hosts to go home. Turkey has at least twice that number and an equally strong domestic political incentive to return them home.
There is jubilation in Turkey at the prospect now, but that would backfire painfully if chaos resumes in Syria and the refugees cannot return, veteran Turkish foreign policy analyst Soli Ozel told me.
Success would require a reconstruction program that Turkey is well placed to facilitate, but cannot afford to bankroll. Europe should want to help with that, so its Syrian refugees can go home, too. Rationally, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist militia that has taken charge in Damascus should want to cooperate, for reasons of political survival if nothing else. They know al-Assad’s army melted away before them largely because the former dictator and his Russian and Iranian sponsors had failed to rebuild any kind of economy more than six years after essentially winning the country’s civil war.
Yet what is rational does not necessarily happen. That is especially true in a country as riven by sectarian and ethnic divides as Syria, and where the driving force is a designated Islamist terrorist organization, no matter how moderated its message. Meanwhile, Turkey is no longer the friend it once was to Israel, but a vocal critic.
The US cannot and should not “lead” in Syria, but it does have a valuable convening power that it should use. That includes negotiating an agreement that satisfies Turkey’s desire to secure its borders against Kurdish fighters it sees as terrorists, without leading to a rout that penalizes these loyal US allies and empties Islamic State of Iraq and Syria jails. In the same way, the US would likely be needed to mediate between Turkey and Israel.
There are indications that is happening. The Biden administration this week threatened Syria’s Kurds with withdrawal of US protection unless they gave up their fight to hold onto Manbij, a mainly Arab city in northern Syria that Kurdish-led forces took from the Islamic State in 2016. The US brokered the handover to Syria’s interim government with Turkey.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was not the architect of al-Assad’s fall, but he now owns the Syrian problem, for better and worse. If he cannot achieve his goals with help from Europe and Saudi Arabia, he would probably have to rely on Qatari money and deal with whichever external powers engage — including Russia and Iran.
The path to success is narrow, but it is surely worth the attempt. The alternative future for Syria is not neutral or benign; it is that of a failed state that fragments along ethno-sectarian lines, becoming a battleground for outside powers and a petri dish for global jihadism.
Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He was previously Istanbul bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.
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