The complexity, importance and implications of the latest events in Syria deserve careful consideration. Imperialist governments, the experts at their service and the major media outlets at their service present it as a “surprise” victory of the jihadist forces over the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
The media refer to “the motley and controversial rebel coalition, led by the extremist group Hayat Tarim al Sham - former affiliate of Al Qaeda in Syria - and the “Syrian National Army”, to achieve an orderly transition of power and, above all, restore the unity of a Syria divided for 13 years by the civil war. This “rebel coalition” is made up, according to CNN, of the different Islamist, democratic and autonomist movements united in the opposition.” (see below “The game begins now, BBC)
The story of the plan of US imperialism to intervene in Syria through such a “rebel coalition”, of its application to defeat Assad and impose a regime in its service, as well as what is currently being said about the plans of the new Syrian government, in its broad outline, correspond to what is written in the article: An army to defeat Assad. How to turn the Syrian opposition into a real fighting force By Kenneth M. Pollack, September/October 2014 http://www.foreignaffairs.com/
What is not mentioned in the article is about the moment in which the plan would move to its final part and how it was going to be presented, also missing is how it intends to continue it. On this, there are some questions that are being given and that indicate the direction in which the imperialists and lackeys are moving in this counterrevolutionary war against the national liberation movement of the MOA. As can be seen, they are targeting Iran. We quote a press release:
“On Sunday, after arriving triumphantly in Damascus, the leader of the militia group that has been crucial to overthrowing Al Assad, Abu Mohammed Al Jolani, launched a precise dart at Tehran from the mythical mosque of the Umayyads:
"This new triumph, my brothers, marks a new chapter in the history of the region, a history fraught with danger (which left) Syria as a playground for Iranian ambitions, spreading sectarianism, stoking corruption" (BBC, today).
But let us not be clouded in our vision, whatever the femicides of the Yankee imperialists and their lackeys are, they are ultimately doomed to failure, they will not be able to impose their “pax americana” on the region, the struggle of these nations with immense sacrifice and heroism will ultimately make the imperialist plans fail, the guerrilla war of national resistance throughout the MoA will jump from place to place, from province to province, from country to country until the whole prairie is set on fire and imperialism and the reactionaries will be reduced to black ashes and the masses will conquer a bright future.
A summary of the latest events:
- Things appear as if the forces of Hayat Tarim al Sham had suddenly been activated and decided to advance from their refuge in the city of Idilib, counting on the support of the Erdogan government and the intervention of the armed forces of the Turkish State, at the service of imperialism, mainly Yankee, incorporated as such in NATO. These jihadist forces had advanced in a lightning march from city to city until they occupied the capital of Syria (Damascus) and seized power by displacing the regime of Bashar al-Assad and his Baath party.
- Presenting the role of the military intervention of the genocidal armed forces of Turkey as if it were simply the execution of the plans of the Turkish State, its government and armed forces to extend its regional power to Syria and solve once and for all the threat of a large area of the bordering territory of both countries dominated by a Kurdish government, whose armed forces have the protection of Yankee imperialism. But, here there is a fact to take into account and it is, where are these forces being pushed by the Turkish genocidaires and where are the Yankee imperialists facilitating their retreat? How the Yankees use these contradictions in the region, that is, in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran.
- Regime change in Syria, overthrown by a “rebel coalition” with direct intervention by NATO forces formed by the Turkish Army, not only as a supporting force.
- Broad military campaign of US imperialism and the Zionists of Israel with the support of their lackeys in the region against the Palestinian nation (Gaza and the West Bank), against the armed national liberation movements in the region and against the countries of Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iran and partly against Iraq.
- Military counter-campaign of the armed resistance of the national liberation movement of the MOA with the axis of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran, which has achieved great victories by defeating the imperialist-Zionist genocidal plan of capitulation and persisting in the armed struggle of national resistance in Palestine and Lebanon.
- Political and military displacement of Russian imperialism from Syria. Which expresses a change of forces and more collusion between US imperialism and Russian imperialism. Look at the situation in Syria and Iran in relation to Ukraine. Thus, there is greater collusion in the imperialist struggle for the oppressed nations for greater struggle, thus developing the contradiction between the imperialists, the spoils in dispute are the oppressed nations.
- Isolation of Iran with respect to Syria, its traditional ally, both politically and militarily of Iran.
- Breaking of the continuity of the logistic and movement line of the "Axis of Resistance" affecting the communication of the armed resistance movement in Lebanon (Hezbollah) and in Palestine. A problem that the armed national resistance movement of the "Axis of Resistance" will have to solve with more developed guerrilla warfare.
- Simultaneously, continuing with the imperialist-Zionist military campaign, Israel has carried out more than 400 air strikes against Syria to destroy weapons, that is to say its military capacity which has been destroyed by 70 to 80% according to Zionist sources and has invaded several kilometers of Syrian territory on the other side of the demilitarized line that separated them, advancing in the direction of the capital Damascus. All this under the pretext of warding off a future jihadist threat.
- The territorial integrity of the country must be maintained and the security of the people, says the agreement of the Security Council of two days ago, let us remember that in this highest body of the UN there are the five permanent members with veto power: the USA, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France.
- As far as we know, the military and political representatives of the new jihadist government have not spoken out in defense of the sovereignty of the country. Despite the fact that they have made many statements about rights, freedoms, democracy and market economy in order to please "the West."
ANNEX 1:
"The game starts
now": what are the different rebel groups that want power in Syria after
the fall of the Al Assad regime
The mood in Damascus was jubilant this Sunday.
Author,Lyse Doucet
Author's title,BBC News, from Doha
December 9, 2024
"They came here worried about the Islamists."
That was how one source described the mood of Arab foreign ministers who flew to Doha on Saturday afternoon for urgent talks aimed at avoiding a collapse into chaos and bloodshed in Damascus.
Within hours, the powerful Islamist group that fueled the rebels' rise to power reported it had arrived in the centre of the Syrian capital.
The leader of Hayat Tahrir al Shams (HTS), Abu Mohammed al Jawlani, triumphantly announced "the capture of Damascus."
He is now using his real name, Ahmed al Sharaa, instead of his nom de guerre as a sign of having suddenly acquired a more prominent role at the national level.
He will surely play a decisive role in defining Syria's new order after this sudden and surprising end to half a century of repressive rule by the Al Assad family.
But the leader of an organisation banned by the UN and Western governments is not the only key player in Syria's changing landscape.
.
"The game starts now"
"History is not yet written," warns Marie Forestier, senior adviser on Syria at the European Institute of Peace.
She and other informed observers attending the Doha Forum — a high-level meeting held each year in the Qatari capital — note that it was another rebel group, recently named the Southern Operations Room and working with people living in the city, that stormed the capital.
The ranks of this force are dominated by fighters from the former Free Syrian Army (FSA), which worked closely with Western powers at the start of the 2011 Syrian uprising.
"The game starts now," says Forestier of the start of this momentous new chapter, marked by an explosion of celebration in the streets but also by critical questions about what will emerge next.
As the Islamist group HTS advanced with astonishing speed, facing little resistance, there was a flood of rebel forces in other regions of Syria, as well as a surge of local armed groups eager to play a role in their regions.
“The fight against the Assad regime was the glue that held this de facto coalition together,” says Thomas Juneau, a Middle East expert at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa in Canada, who is also based in Doha.
“Now that Assad has fled, continuing unity among the groups that overthrew him will be a challenge,” he says.
The groups include an umbrella alliance of Turkish militias known as the Syrian National Army, which, like HTS, held sway in a corner of northwestern Syria. In the northeast, Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) groups, mainly Kurdish, have also gained ground and will be determined to hold on to their gains.
But HTS’s ambitious, high-profile leader has grabbed the spotlight. His rhetoric and record are now under scrutiny by Syrians as well as in neighbouring capitals and far beyond.
The commander, whose militia first emerged as an al-Qaeda affiliate, broke ranks with the jihadist group in 2016 and has been trying to burnish his image ever since.
For years he has sent conciliatory messages abroad and is now reassuring Syria’s many minority communities that they have nothing to worry about.”
ANNEX 2:
An Army to Defeat Assad
How to Turn Syria's Opposition Into a Real
Fighting Force
By Kenneth
M. Pollack
From our
September/October 2014 Issuehttp://www.foreignaffairs.com/
Syrian
refugees wave the Syrian opposition flag during a demonstration in Amman, Jordan,
October 2013. (Muhammad Hamed / Courtesy Reuters)
An Army to Defeat Assad38 min 27 secs
Syria is a
hard one. The arguments against the United States’ taking a more active role in
ending the vicious three-year-old conflict there are almost perfectly balanced
by those in favor of intervening, especially in the aftermath of the painful
experiences of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The cons begin with the simple
fact that the United States has no interests in Syria itself. Syria is not an
oil producer, a major U.S. trade partner, or even a democracy.
Worse
still, intercommunal civil wars such as Syria’s tend to end in one of two ways:
with a victory by one side, followed by a horrific slaughter of its adversaries,
or with a massive intervention by a third party to halt the fighting and forge
a power-sharing deal. Rarely do such wars reach a resolution on their own
through a peaceful, negotiated settlement, and even when they do, it is
typically only after many years of bloodshed. All of this suggests that the
kind of quick, clean diplomatic solution many Americans favor will be next to
impossible to achieve in Syria.
Nevertheless,
the rationale for more decisive U.S. intervention is gaining ground. As of this
writing, the crisis in Syria had claimed more than 170,000 lives and spilled
over into every neighboring state. The havoc is embodied most dramatically in
the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, a Sunni jihadist organization
born of the remnants of al Qaeda in Iraq. After regrouping in Syria, ISIS
(which declared itself the Islamic State in late June) recently overran much of
northern Iraq and helped rekindle that country’s civil war. ISIS is now using
the areas it controls in Iraq and Syria to breed still more Islamist
extremists, some of whom have set their sights on Western targets. Meanwhile,
Syria’s conflict is also threatening to drag down its other neighbors --
particularly Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, where the influx of nearly three million
refugees is already straining government budgets and stoking social unrest.
After
resisting doing so for three years, the White House is now scrambling to expand
its role in the turmoil. In June, U.S. President Barack Obama requested $500
million from Congress to ramp up U.S. assistance to moderate members of the
Syrian opposition (such assistance has until recently been limited to a covert
training program in Jordan). Yet at every stage of the debate on Syria, the
administration has maintained that the only way to decisively ensure the demise
of the Assad regime is to deploy large numbers of ground troops.
Washington’s existing aid to the moderate
Syrian opposition is unlikely to break the stalemate.
But there is, in fact, a way that the United States
could get what it wants in Syria -- and, ultimately, in Iraq as well -- without
sending in U.S. forces: by building a new Syrian opposition army capable of
defeating both President Bashar al-Assad and the more militant Islamists. The
United States has pulled off similar operations before and could probably do so
again, and at far lower cost than what it has spent in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Considering the extent to which the Iraqi and Syrian civil wars have become
entwined, such a strategy would help secure U.S. interests throughout the
Middle East. Indeed, despite its drawbacks, it has become the best option for
the United States and the people of Syria and the region.
PICK YOUR
BATTLES
Given the
powerful arguments against a greater U.S. role in Syria, any proposal to step
up U.S. involvement has to meet four criteria. First, the strategy cannot
require sending U.S. troops into combat. Funds, advisers, and even air power
are all fair game -- but only insofar as they do not lead to American boots on the
ground. Second, any proposal must provide for the defeat of both the Assad
regime and the most radical Islamist militants, since both threaten U.S.
interests.
Third, the
policy should offer reasonable hope of a stable end state. Because spillover
from Syria’s civil war represents the foremost security concern, defeating the
regime while allowing the civil war to continue -- or even crushing both the
regime and the extremists while allowing other groups to fight on -- would
amount to a strategic failure. There are no certainties in warfare, but any
plan for greater U.S. involvement must at least increase the odds of
stabilizing Syria.
Finally,
the plan should have a reasonable chance of accomplishing what it sets out to
do. Washington must avoid far-fetched schemes with uncertain chances of
success, no matter how well they might fit its objectives in other ways. It
should also properly fund the strategy it does select. Announcing a new, more
ambitious Syria policy but failing to give it an adequate budget would be
self-defeating, convincing friend and foe alike that the United States lacks
the will to defend its interests.
Every proposal so far for greater U.S.
involvement in Syria has failed to satisfy at least one of these criteria. The
Obama administration’s new bid to expand training and equipment aid for the
moderate opposition is no exception. Over time, supplying advanced antiaircraft
and antitank weapons to the rebels, as Washington intends, would make victories
costlier for the Assad government. But even large quantities of such arms are
unlikely to break the stalemate. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the
1980s, for example, mujahideen fighters armed with U.S.-supplied Stinger
antiaircraft and Milan antitank missiles inflicted heavy losses on Soviet tanks
and helicopters but failed to score tactical battlefield gains. Moreover,
unlike the Soviet Union, which was fighting a war of choice in Afghanistan (and
could simply walk away), the Assad regime is waging a war for survival. Heavier
equipment losses are unlikely to force it to capitulate, especially if it
continues to win individual battles.
More problematic, the current strategy does not
ensure a stable end state. Providing weapons and limited training to the rebels
will simply improve their ability to kill. It will not unite them, create a
viable power-sharing arrangement among fractious ethnic and sectarian
communities, or build strong government institutions. These same shortfalls led to Afghanistan’s
unraveling once Soviet forces withdrew; the victorious mujahideen soon started
fighting one another, which eventually allowed them all to be crushed by the
Taliban.
ARMY STRONG
Studying past cases of American military
support suggests an alternative course: the United States could create a new
Syrian military with a conventional structure and doctrine, one capable of
defeating both the regime and the extremists. A decisive victory by this
U.S.-backed army would force all parties to the negotiating table and give the
United States the leverage to broker a power-sharing arrangement among the
competing factions. This outcome would create the most favorable conditions for
the emergence of a new Syrian state: one that is peaceful, pluralistic,
inclusive, and capable of governing the entire country.
To get there, the United States would have to
commit itself to building a new Syrian army that could end the war and help
establish stability when the fighting was over. The effort should carry the
resources and credibility of the United States behind it and must not have the
tentative and halfhearted support that has defined every prior U.S. initiative
in Syria since 2011. If
the rest of the world believes that Washington is determined to see its
strategy through, more countries will support its efforts and fewer will oppose
them. Success would therefore require more funding -- to train and equip the
new army’s soldiers -- and greater manpower, since much larger teams of U.S.
advisers would be needed to prepare the new force and guide it in combat
operations.
The
United States should create a new Syrian military—capable of defeating both the
regime and the extremists.
Recruiting Syrian army personnel would be the
first task. These men
and women could come from
any part of the country or its diaspora, as long as they were Syrian and
willing to fight in the new army. They would need to integrate themselves into a conventional military
structure and adopt its doctrine and rules of conduct. They would also have to be
willing to leave their existing militias and become reassigned to new units
without regard for religion, ethnicity, or geographic origin. Loyalty to the
new army and to the vision of a democratic postwar Syria for which it would
stand must supersede all other competing identities.
The strategy’s most critical aspect would be
its emphasis on long-term conventional training. The program would represent a major departure
from the assistance Washington is currently providing the opposition, which
involves a few weeks of coaching in weapons handling and small-unit tactics.
The new regimen, by contrast, should last at least a year, beginning with such
basic training and then progressing to logistics, medical support, and
specialized military skills. Along the way, U.S. advisers would organize the
soldiers into a standard army hierarchy. Individuals chosen for command
positions would receive additional instruction in leadership, advanced tactics,
combined-arms operations, and communications.
Because the existing Syrian opposition is hobbled
by extremism and a lack of professionalism, vetting all new personnel would be
crucial. History shows that the only effective way to do this is for the U.S.
advisers to work with the recruits on a daily basis. That would allow the
advisers to gradually weed out the inevitable bad seeds -- radicals, regime
agents, thugs, and felons -- and promote the good ones.
Since training the first cadre of fighters (a
task that the CIA would likely handle) would require security and freedom from
distraction, it would be best to start it outside Syria. Possible training
sites could include Jordan, where the United States is already providing some
aid to the rebels, and Turkey. Both countries have strongly lobbied Washington to widen its support
for the Syrian opposition. Yet both would probably demand compensation for
hosting big new base camps. Jordan already receives about $660 million in U.S.
aid per year, and in February 2014, the White House pledged an additional $1
billion in loan guarantees to help the country with its refugee burden.
Washington could offer to continue such aid in return for cooperation with its
new strategy.
In addition
to being trained and organized like a conventional military, the new force must
be equipped like one. Washington would need to provide the new army with heavy
weapons, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery, and
surface-to-air missiles -- vital tools for eliminating the regime’s current
advantage in firepower. The new army would also need logistical support,
communications equipment, transport, and medical gear to mount sustained
offensive and defensive operations against the regime.
THE ROAD TO
DAMASCUS
This new
Syrian army would eventually move into Syria, but only once it was strong
enough to conquer and hold territory. For that, it would need to reach a
critical threshold of both quantity and quality. It would be unwise to send the
new army into the maelstrom of Syria until it could field at least two or three
brigades, each composed of 1,000 to 2,000 soldiers. Yet more important, these
formations should go into battle only once they have developed the unit
cohesion, tactical skills, leadership, and logistical capabilities necessary to
beat the regime’s forces and any rival militias. And when it does cross into
Syria, the army should do so accompanied by a heavy complement of U.S.
advisers.
Even after
the force made its first significant territorial gains, it would have to keep
growing. Its ultimate task -- securing control of the entire country by crushing
all actors that challenge it -- would require several hundred thousand soldiers
to complete. But the launch of military operations would not have to wait until
the army could field that many fighters. Quite the contrary: it could still
recruit and train most of its soldiers after its first brigades made their
initial advance.
Once the soldiers began to secure Syrian
territory, their leaders would need to quickly restore law and order there.
That would mean allowing international humanitarian organizations to return to
areas that are currently off-limits and protecting their staff while they
deliver aid. It would also require the establishment of a functional,
egalitarian system of governance. The vast majority of Syrians want nothing to
do with either Assad’s tyranny or the fanaticism of his Islamist opponents. As
in every intercommunal civil war, the population is likely to rally behind any
group that can reinstate order. The new army should thus be ready from the
outset to meet people’s needs in every city and village it wins back, which
would also distinguish it from its rivals.
Once the
new army gained ground, the opposition’s leaders could formally declare
themselves to represent a new provisional government. The United States and its
allies could then extend diplomatic recognition to the movement, allowing the
U.S. Department of Defense to take over the tasks of training and advising the
new force -- which would now be the official military arm of Syria’s legitimate
new rulers.
The United States can end the Syrian civil war on its own terms—and
without committing ground troops.
Lessons from other countries demonstrate that
postwar governments are most durable when they grow from the bottom up. When they are imposed from the top
down, as was the case in Iraq in 2003, the outcomes can range from bad to
catastrophic. But allowing the new government to take shape organically in
Syria would take years. In
the meantime, areas controlled by the U.S.-backed army would require a
provisional authority -- ideally, a special representative of the UN
secretary-general who would retain sovereignty until a new government was
ready.
If history
is any guide, as the new force started to beat back both the regime and the
Islamist extremists, fairly administer its territory, and prove to the world
that the United States and its allies were determined to see it succeed,
growing numbers of Syrians should flock to its cause. This surge of public
support would generate more volunteers for the army and a groundswell of
momentum for the opposition movement, factors that have often proved decisive
in similar conflicts.
One of the most baleful legacies of protracted
civil wars is the difficulty of creating stable political systems once the
fighting ends. A stable peace in the wake of intercommunal strife requires a
pluralistic system with strong guarantees of minority rights. Such a system, in
turn, rests on an army that is strong, independent, and apolitical. Postwar
Syria would need this kind of military culture to reassure all its communities
that whoever holds power in Damascus would not once more turn the security
forces into agents of oppression. The best way to ensure that the army upheld
these principles would be to ingrain them in its institutional culture from the
very start, through the long-term process of military socialization.
Iraq offers
both a powerful example and a critical warning in this regard. On the one hand,
by 2009 the United States had succeeded there in building a military that, although
only modestly capable, was quite independent and apolitical. Just three years
earlier, the country’s security forces had been a discredited and inept
institution and a source of fear for most Iraqis. Similar to the Syrian
opposition today, the Iraqi army had been overrun by criminals, extremists,
militiamen, and incompetent, poorly equipped fighters. Yet a determined U.S.
program transformed the force, making it a welcomed, even sought after,
enforcer of stability across the country. In 2008, for example, mostly Sunni
army brigades were hailed as liberators by the Shiites of Basra when they drove
out the Shiite militia Jaish al-Mahdi. A key factor in this transformation was
rigorous training of the kind here proposed for Syria, which allowed U.S. advisers
to vet local personnel.
On the
other hand, a strong independent army often draws the suspicion of ruthless
local politicians who try to subvert or politicize it. That is precisely how
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki turned the Iraqi military back into a sectarian
militia after Washington disengaged. The resulting decline in skill and morale
explains why four Iraqi army divisions collapsed in the face of the ISIS
offensive in June, and why many Sunnis threw in their lots with ISIS against
Maliki. The lesson for Syria is that it’s not enough to merely bring a new army
into existence and help it win the war. If the United States wants to see the
country develop into a stable new polity, it will have to keep supporting and
shepherding the new Syrian military for some years thereafter, albeit at
declining levels of cost and manpower.
WINNING THE
PEACE
The biggest question about this ambitious
proposal, of course, is, can it work? Although wars are always unpredictable,
there is more than enough historical evidence to suggest that this approach is
entirely plausible -- and in fact better than any other option for intervention.
For
example, even though the United States eventually gave up on Vietnam, it did
enjoy considerable success rebuilding the South Vietnamese army from 1968 to
1972, after U.S. neglect and Vietnamese mismanagement had left it politicized,
corrupt, and inept. Although that force continued to face many problems, it
improved so much that it managed to halt the North’s invasion during the Easter
Offensive of 1972. South Vietnamese fighters did enjoy the backing of extensive
U.S. air power and legions of U.S. advisers, but four years earlier, few had
believed them capable of such a feat even with that kind of support.
Then there
is the dramatic transformation of the Croatian army that NATO achieved during
the 1992–95 Bosnian war, a conflict precipitated by ethnic and territorial
tensions triggered by the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The fledgling Croatian
force, which was supporting the Bosnian Croats against Serbian forces, had
started out hapless and incompetent in the opening months of the war. In three
years, the West’s provision of training and supplies, coupled with the
determination of the Croatian fighters, was enough to remake the army into an
efficient fighting machine able to mount a series of combined-arms campaigns
that forced Serbia to the negotiating table. (This example is particularly apt
for Syria because Serbia’s forces were far more formidable than Assad’s.)
Iraq’s history, meanwhile, illustrates both the ability of the United States to
build a relatively capable indigenous force in just a few years largely from
scratch and the perils of abandoning it to an immature political system.
In each of these cases, the factor that mattered
most was commitment on the part of Washington. Where and when the United States
has proved willing to make its strategy work -- in Vietnam, Bosnia, even Iraq
-- it has succeeded. But where it abandoned its commitments, its progress
rapidly came undone.
U.S. experience in Bosnia and Iraq also points
to an effective tactic for preventing a bloodbath after the new Syrian army
wins. In both those countries, the United States built up a force that was
clearly capable of defeating its rivals, but then Washington was able to
prevent it from taking that final step. The U.S.-backed groups fought well
enough to convince their enemies of the necessity to compromise on a
power-sharing arrangement. At the same time, U.S. pressure ensured that the
winners accepted something less than total victory.
Past
performance is no guarantee of future success, of course, and each historical
analogy differs from Syria in important ways. The South Vietnamese army’s
improved performance failed to forestall its collapse once it lost U.S. air
cover. Croatia in the early 1990s was a proto-state fighting another
proto-state, Serbia. And the Iraqi security force benefited from a massive U.S.
ground presence that went well beyond what the proposed plan envisions for
Syria.
The prospect that a new Syrian army could be
created from scratch and lack the power of a state behind it should give
policymakers pause, but these problems should not be deal breakers. The Northern Alliance (the group
that helped topple the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001) and the Libyan
opposition each managed to prevail with no Western support beyond advisers and
air power; they certainly never enjoyed the backing of a proto-state such as
Croatia. Of course, Assad’s troops are also more capable today than were either
the Taliban’s forces in Afghanistan or Muammar al-Qaddafi’s army in Libya. But strong as the Syrian
military may seem in a relative sense, it is hardly a juggernaut, having
performed miserably in every war since 1948 and having fought only marginally
better than the very lackluster opposition since 2012.
How long would it take to implement this plan? The history of similar operations
in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya indicates that the United States would
need one to two years to prepare the first few brigades. After their initial
foray into Syria, the growing army would likely need another one to three years
to defeat the regime’s forces and other rivals. That suggests a two- to
five-year campaign.
Once it
attained a peace deal, the new army would have to reorganize itself into a
traditional state security apparatus. It might have to further expand its ranks
in order to meet Syria’s long-term security needs, including the defeat of
residual terrorist elements. This stabilizing role would take years longer but
would be far less demanding than fighting the Assad regime, especially if the
United States kept up its support for Syria’s new institutions and its economic
and political reconstruction.
Critics
will inevitably argue that this road map for Syria is infeasible today, coming
too late to make a difference. Yet analogous arguments have proved wrong in the
past. In March 2005, for example, I gave a briefing on Iraq to a small group of
senior U.S. officials, presenting the strategy I had been advocating since
early 2004: a shift to true counterinsurgency operations, an effort to reach
out to the Sunni tribal leaders of western Iraq, the addition of thousands of
U.S. forces, and a bottom-up process of political reform to encourage power sharing.
My audience responded that although this plan might have worked in 2003 or even
2004, by 2005 Iraq was simply too far gone. Yet what I was prescribing was the
very strategy that General David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador
to Iraq, would employ two years later -- and that would turn the tide of the
conflict.
Likewise, there is no reason to believe that
it’s too late for Syria. The civil war there will not end anytime soon, despite
the fact that expanded Iranian and Russian assistance have allowed Assad
loyalists to make significant gains. The most probable scenario is that the
regime’s advances will prove limited and the resources flowing to the rebels
from their foreign backers will cause a stalemate. Syria will burn on, while U.S.
officials continue telling themselves that the time for action has passed.
Even if
Washington adopted this course of action, many more Syrian lives would be lost
before it could succeed. The only way to save those lives, however, would be to
deploy U.S. ground forces -- a proposal that, given the American public’s
sentiment, is a nonstarter. Barring boots on the ground, the approach described
here is the best chance to avoid hundreds of thousands of additional
casualties.
SUPPORT
FROM THE SKIES
Another key question is whether the plan would
require U.S. air power, since an air campaign would make this strategy far more
expensive in both financial and diplomatic terms. At least one case, the Bosnian war, suggests
that U.S. air support may prove unnecessary. During that conflict, it was a
Croatian (and Bosnian) ground assault, undertaken with barely any Western air
cover, that made the difference. Although NATO flew 3,515 sorties during the
conflict, none was in direct support of the Croatian forces, and most of the
targets were unrelated to the ground fighting. Moreover, the unclassified CIA
history of the war concluded that the NATO air strikes contributed only
modestly to securing Serbian acquiescence to the Dayton peace accords; Croatian
battlefield victories mattered far more.
Most of the other historical evidence, however,
indicates that U.S. air support would be needed. In Afghanistan in 2001 and Libya in 2011,
Western air power paved the way for the opposition victories. Looking further
back in time, even after the South Vietnamese army matured enough to operate
without U.S. ground support, it remained dependent on massive U.S. air
assistance -- albeit while battling a foe much tougher than the Assad regime.
Nevertheless,
the fact that the proposed strategy could require air power does not mean that
the American public will necessarily oppose it. Public opinion surveys in the
mid-1990s, during the Bosnian war, showed firm and consistent opposition to
U.S. intervention, even if undertaken multilaterally. Yet those same polls
reported considerably higher support for air operations. Likewise, few
Americans objected when the Obama administration contributed U.S. air forces to
the NATO air campaign in Libya in 2011.
Beyond air
power, two other variables would heavily influence the ultimate cost of the
strategy proposed here: how much Washington spent on the new Syrian army, and
whether it could convince its allies to shoulder a part of the burden. Given
the costs of similar past operations, one can reasonably expect the new
fighting force to require $1–$2 billion per year to build. The United States
would need to budget an additional $6–$20 billion per year for air support and
perhaps another $1.5–$3 billion per year for civilian aid.
Adding
these sums together yields a total operating budget of $3 billion annually for
two or three years at the lower end of the price scale. If an air campaign on
the scale of that in Bosnia, Afghanistan, or Libya were required, the annual
price would rise to roughly $9–$10 billion for as long as the fighting
continued. And if the United States were forced to provide twice as much air
power as it did in those earlier wars, the cost could reach $18–$22 billion per
year. Following a political settlement, Washington’s continued support for the
new government would probably require $1–$5 billion in civilian and security
assistance annually for up to a decade. By comparison, Afghanistan cost the
United States roughly $45 billion a year from 2001 to 2013, and Iraq, about
$100 billion a year from 2003 to 2011.
Of course, the numbers would come down
considerably if the United States won financial support from its allies in
Europe and the Middle East, especially the Persian Gulf states. For years, Gulf
leaders have insisted in private that they would fund most or all of such an
effort. And they have
paid for similar operations in the past. Saudi Arabia heavily supported the
covert U.S. campaign against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and, along with
Kuwait and other Gulf states, the U.S. operations during the Gulf War. Gulf
leaders also threw their weight behind the U.S. decision to intervene in Libya.
There is no question that
these states see the outcome of the Syrian conflict as vital to their
interests; they have already spent billions of dollars backing various Syrian
militias. So they would likely support the scheme outlined here -- although
Washington should gauge their interest before deciding whether to pursue it.
RAISING THE
BAR
If the
Obama administration does decide to build a Syrian army, it should do so with
its eyes open, for the strategy would entail some risk of escalation. Few, if
any, wars work exactly as planned without incurring unexpected costs, and some
turn out to be far more expensive, messy, and deadly than anticipated.
Afghanistan and Iraq are both cases in point, and they also demonstrate that a
country typically gets the worst outcome when it prepares for nothing but the
best. If the United States pursued the strategy proposed here, it would need to
be prepared to lose some American lives. U.S. pilots could be shot down and
U.S. advisers could be wounded, killed, or captured.
The Assad regime could also launch missile
strikes against U.S. allies in retaliation or mount terrorist attacks abroad.
Syria’s allies Iran and Hezbollah could respond as well, likely by attacking
U.S. advisers, just as they did U.S. troops in Iraq. The fear of Washington’s
counterattack could deter Tehran from staging a more direct assault but might
be insufficient to scare off Hezbollah, since the fall of the Assad regime
would imperil Hezbollah’s very existence. And no matter what country ultimately
hosted the new Syrian army during the early stages of its development, that
country would need guarantees that the United States would help defend it
against enemy retaliation.
Finally,
the new Syrian army could still lose the war. Given the limited capability of
Assad’s forces and the previous successes of Western air power in similar
circumstances, such a scenario seems unlikely, but it should not be ruled out.
The same goes for a slightly more realistic worry: that the opposition would
conquer the country but then fail to secure it. The new Syrian army would then
continue to face a grueling and destabilizing battle with extremists and
insurgents while struggling to establish law and order, a challenge that
undermined postwar governments in both Afghanistan and Libya.
In all
these scenarios, the pressure on the United States to escalate its involvement
would increase. The strategy outlined here is designed to minimize this risk,
but it cannot eliminate it. No one should embrace this approach without
recognizing that it could at some point confront Washington with the difficult
choice between doubling down and walking away.
THE COSTS
OF INACTION
Since the fall of Mosul in June 2014, the
Syrian and Iraqi civil wars have become entangled. Any strategy to deal with
one must also deal with the other. The region’s sectarian fault lines
complicate matters further. In Syria, the Sunni majority is in revolt; in Iraq,
the Sunni minority is. In both countries, the United States is seeking to
separate the moderate Sunni opposition from more radical groups, such as ISIS. But
only in Syria does it aim to depose a Shiite regime. In Iraq, Washington
hopes to remain on good terms with the Shiite-dominated government, even as it
insists that Baghdad enact immediate and far-reaching reforms.
The strategy proposed here would serve U.S.
interests in both countries. Although the contemplated new Syrian army should
be neutral, it would inevitably be dominated by Sunnis. Its victories over both
the Shiite-dominated Assad regime and the Islamist militants in Syria would
make it a model for Iraq’s moderate Sunni tribes. These groups would be key to
defeating ISIS, just as their support proved crucial for the U.S. troop surge
in Iraq in 2007–8. Decisive U.S. support for the Syrian offshoots of those
Iraqi tribes -- coupled with Washington’s commitment to build the kind of
inclusive, pluralistic, and equitable state in Syria that moderate Sunnis seek
in Iraq -- could help turn Sunnis across the region against ISIS and its ilk.
Events in Iraq have starkly demonstrated the costs of inaction. Whatever choice the United States makes, it should not make it in the mistaken belief that there is no plausible strategy for victory at an acceptable cost. The United States can end the Syrian civil war on its own terms and rebuild a stable Syria without committing ground troops. Doing so could take a great deal of time, effort, and resources. It will certainly take the will to try.