December 16, 2024

SHARE |

Outside Powers Complicate Post-Assad Stabilization in Syria

Andrew Caballero Reynolds, Pool Photo via AP

Since the 2011 uprising in Syria, several major regional and global powers have intervened militarily in Syria to pursue exclusive agendas. The actions of the outside powers have often seemingly sidestepped concern about the human cost of the Assad regime’s insistence on retaining absolute power. As the outside stakeholders pursued their objectives, Syria evolved into a patchwork of territories controlled or influenced by their armed Syrian proxies. The decade-long conflicts that played out within Syria have hardened splits in Syrian society and now complicate the country’s efforts to unify and restore its full sovereignty in the aftermath of Assad’s collapse.

Untying the knot of conflicting outside interests in Syria has, at least on the surface, seemingly become simpler since Assad’s fall. With the extensive cooperation of the Assad regime, which Iranian intervention in 2013 had helped preserve, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Quds Force (IRGC-QF) had developed a significant military production and transshipment infrastructure in the country for the primary purpose of arming and empowering Lebanese Hezbollah. Iran has largely evacuated its assets in Syria since Assad’s fall, essentially eliminating the Islamic Republic as a significant player in Syria’s internal politics. Iran’s main regional ally, Lebanese Hezbollah, weakened by the post-October 7 conflict with Israel, was unable to help Assad stave off the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-led offensive that toppled Assad. Neither HTS nor any other major faction has welcomed a role for Hezbollah in post-Assad Syria.  HTS leaders have ordered militant Palestinian groups harbored by the Assad regime to end their operations and dismantle their bases inside Syria, clearly messaging that Syria is divorcing from Iranian or other Islamist-led broader ideological and political struggles against Israel.

The other major pro-Assad power, Russia, has redeployed its forces from eastern and central Syria and consolidated its contingent in the air and naval bases along the Mediterranean coast. Russia is negotiating with the emerging leadership of post-Assad Syria to retain those bases, but, even if the talks succeed, Russia will no longer play a major role in Syria’s internal politics. Russia’s main goal in trying to retain the uses of the naval base at Tartus and Khmeimim airfield in Latakia is to be able to continue to project power in the region and parts of Africa, and not to try to protect Assad loyalists.

The sidelining of Iran and Russia leaves three main powers still involved militarily in Syrian affairs – Türkiye, Israel, and the United States. The winnowing of outside interveners from six to three would seemingly advance the prospects for the post-Assad emerging leaders to unify and stabilize the country toward objectives shared by the Syrian people – disconnected from outside agendas. A Syrian-led and implemented transition process that “establishes credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance and sets a schedule and process for drafting a new constitution, and further expresses its support for free and fair elections, pursuant to the new constitution, to be held within 18 months” is the stated goal of UN Security Resolution 2254 of 2015.

Even though the remaining outside actors in Syria publicly support Resolution 2254, Türkiye, the U.S., and Israel have demonstrated the intent - and they clearly possess the strategic capabilities – to continue pursuing the national security objectives they’ve pursued since the civil war began. In so doing, however, the remaining outside powers are distracting their allies in Syria from the internal Syrian reconciliation that is essential to the country’s political, social, and economic reconstruction.

Türkiye, which has close ties to the dominant factions in post-Assad Syria, including HTS, appears intent on securing its southern border from Syrian Kurdish groups that Ankara asserts are linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the main Turkish Kurdish separatist group with a history of use of violence against the Turkish government. Preventing Syria’s Kurds from supporting anti-Türkiye operations has been Ankara’s primary goal throughout the Syrian civil war. Assad’s refusal to reconcile with his opposition - an outcome that might have reduced Ankara’s threat perceptions - was key to President Recep Tayyib Erdogan’s decision to “green light” the HTS-offensive that deposed Assad.

While engaging HTS leaders directly, including sending intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin for official meetings in Damascus last week, Ankara has backed its militia proxies in eastern Syria, primarily the Syrian National Army (SNA), to push the Kurd-dominated, U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) further from the Türkiye-Syria border. With Türkiye’s backing, the SNA has seized from the SDF the northern hub of Manbij and the eastern city of Deir Az-Zour. Seeking to de-conflict with Türkiye, which is a NATO partner, as well as to keep the SDF focused on containing ISIS, U.S. military leaders in eastern Syria reportedly urged the SDF to withdraw east of the Euphrates River.  On Thursday, SDF commander Mazloum Abdi stated: “We have reached a ceasefire agreement in Manbij via U.S. mediation,” adding, “Our goal is to reach a ceasefire across Syria and start a political process for the future of the country.”

Despite its setbacks at the hands of Turkish-backed forces, the SDF remains Washington’s key ally in eastern Syria, amid warnings from U.S. leaders that the political vacuum created by the Assad regime’s collapse establishes a permissive environment in which terrorist groups such as ISIS can flourish. The SDF’s difficulties have not only caused U.S. officials to escalate their diplomacy with Türkiye but also to proclaim that the 900 U.S. troops operating in northeast and eastern Syria would remain there to focus on efforts to counter ISIS. As the Assad regime fell, and perhaps anticipating the SDF’s battles with Türkiye-backed militias, U.S. Central Command conducted 75 airstrikes, including the use of B-52 bombers, against ISIS targets. A drawback to the continuation of U.S. military operations in Syria is its potential to inflame Syrian nationalist and Islamist leaders who reject U.S. impingement on Syrian sovereignty.

On the other hand, a component of the U.S. mission in Syria has been to contain Iranian and Iran-aligned militia influence. The decline of Iranian involvement in Syria is likely to embolden some officials in the incoming Trump Administration to argue there is no longer a need for U.S. forces in Syria. Still, neither current nor incoming Trump Administration officials and allies have given any indication they are willing to dismantle the U.S. sanctions architecture that was intended to pressure Assad to reform and compromise. U.S. senators of both parties say it is too soon to consider lifting sanctions on Syria because of uncertainty of the policies a successor regime will follow. Underlying the reluctance to ease sanctions are arguments HTS leaders have, in the past, been associated with Al Qaeda. One Trump ally, Senator Jim Risch, who will take over chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee when Congress reconvenes in January, told journalists: "We worked at it for a long, long time, and the job is done. The problem is, what comes next?" Yet, a U.S. refusal to ease sanctions will deprive Syra’s new leaders of the resources to begin rebuilding and meeting the needs of a population desperate for economic reform and stability. The sanctions will, at the very least, divert the wealthy Arab Gulf states from investing in or contributing to Syria’s reconstruction.

Looming equally large over post-Assad is Israel, whose Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has expressed doubts over whether Israel can build stable relations with an Islamist-oriented Syria. As do U.S. officials, Israeli leaders indicate the reduction of the Iranian and Iran-aligned threat emanating from Syria does not void the need for vigilance about the broad range of problems that might arise in the post-Assad period. Since rebel forces began to enter Damascus, Israel - no longer needing to coordinate its air operations in Syria with Moscow - has conducted nearly 500 air strikes against Syrian military targets, both conventional as well as those allegedly part of the Syrian chemical weapons program. Israel presented the strikes as a defensive move to prevent strategic weaponry from falling into the hands of potentially hostile forces in Syria.

Israel’s leadership also ordered the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to take over positions abandoned by the Syrian army in a UN-patrolled buffer zone that, since a 1974 agreement following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the IDF to "prepare to remain" in those positions throughout the winter, and the advance drew condemnation, including from the United Nations. The peacekeeping force, the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), said in a statement on Friday it had informed Israel it was in "violation of the 1974 disengagement agreement" between Syria and Israel that created the buffer zone. However, reflecting the degree to which both Israel and the U.S. perceive a potential threat from newly emerging political leaders in Syria, the United States on Thursday said the Israeli advance, as well as the strategic strikes on Syrian military assets, was consistent with Israel's right to self-defense.