Ramachandra Babu/©Gulf News
This week marks the sixth anniversary of the Syria war, which started on March 15 back in 2011. Complicating the conflict while prolonging it as well have been a handful of outside players and mercenaries that entered the Syrian battlefield, starting with Iran and Hezbollah in 2012, running through Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) in 2014, followed by Russia in late 2015, and more recently, American ground troops that marched into Syria with their military Stryker vehicles across the increasingly porous Syrian-Iraq border in mid-March 2017, taking the conflict to an entirely new level.
The Syrian stage is more of a giant chessboard contested by regional and international players drawing up a new Middle East, rather than simply a power struggle between the Syrian government and its opponents, as it was when it all started back in March 2011.
The US troops were conventional — 200 Marines and 75th Regiment Army Rangers, an elite force used in the past for hit-and-run special operations in Kabul, Baghdad and Mosul.
They have tentatively been deployed in the strategic city of Manbij, 30km west of the Euphrates and come with a multifaceted agenda, to prepare for what seems to be a major US offensive on the city of Al Raqqa, the self-proclaimed capital of Daesh, and to make sure that Manbij remains both Daesh-free and Turkish-free, so as not to antagonise US-backed militias on the battlefield, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Established two years ago under Barack Obama, the SDF fighters are still on the American payroll despite a strongly-worded threat delivered last week by CIA officials based in southern Turkey to various rebel groups, freezing US aide and threatening to call it quits completely by the end of the month if they don’t unite under one military command — a task that is practically impossible — given the extent of divisions in rebel ranks, between moderates on one side and others affiliated with Jabhat Fatah Al Sham, formerly known as Jabhat Al Nusra, the Al Qaida branch in Syria.
For years, the Americans have been trying to distance Syrian rebels from Jabhat Fatah Al Sham, a difficult task because many view it as the most effective all-Syrian fighting force inflicting heavy damage on government forces, unlike Daesh, which is packed with foreign fighters and is on the international community’s black list.
The only exception to this ultimatum was the SDF, whose forces rumbled into Manbij last August, purging it completely from Daesh, only to start delivering the city to government troops this March, thanks to a deal hammered out between the Kurdish command and the Russian military.
Different stakeholders
The recent military developments mean different things to various stakeholders in the Syria war. For the Syrian regime, it speaks of a major threshold in the Syrian north, with joint approval from the Russians and Americans. The loss of Manbij forces President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to downsize his idea of a buffer zone, agreed upon last summer with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. It was supposed to only include the border cities of Jarablus and Azaz, and the inland one of Al Bab, 46km north-east of Aleppo, all presently under Turkish control.
Erdogan did not stop there, however, advancing on Manbij and vowing to incorporate Al Raqqa as well — simultaneously infuriating both the Russians and Americans. Both wanted the honours of re-taking Al Raqqa from Daesh and were not willing to give its liberation — being the jewel of the crown of the war on terror — to Erdogan. He desperately needed such a zone, 5,000 square kilometres in size, in order to break Kurdish ambitions of statehood on his border and provide clean ground for the relocation of more than two million Syrian refugees who have been residing in Turkey since 2011.
If this formula sees the light, Iran would get nothing more than “pockets” in Syria, namely the Damascus-Beirut Highway, which is a vital lifeline for Hezbollah, along with Shiite shrines in Damascus, and the entire Kalamoon district west of Damascus, which is adjacent to Lebanon and has been firmly held by Hezbollah for five years now. This is the limit of their share of the Syrian cake — they cannot bite off more territory, due to the lack of a Shiite majority willing to carry arms, and die for their cause, as the case in Lebanon and Iraq.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim warned that his country’s relationship with the US could be “seriously damaged” if the Americans continued to support the SDF in Manbij, which has been their most reliable American partner on the battlefield.
The US has no intention of severing this relationship — far from it, last February the Trump administration met some of their military needs and will be relying heavily on them in the battle to liberate Al Raqqa, but will never allow the Kurds to rule it. According to sources in the Trump administration, the new US president has three priorities in Syria: empowering the Kurds east of the Euphrates River, who he sees as vital in the war on Daesh; eradicating Daesh; and expelling Iran and Hezbollah from Syria — something easier said than done given the regime’s reliance on them since 2012.
The term “east of the Euphrates” is generally being referred to as the Kurdish canton of Syria once the guns go silent, carved out with strong US backing, while Russia would ostensibly get what’s “west of the Euphrates,” and all of Syria’s other major cities; Homs, Hama, Aleppo and Damascus.
Not all of the territory east of the Euphrates will fall under control of the Kurds, especially not Al Raqqa, which lies on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, or oil-rich Deir ez Zour, another city that Trump will want to be liberated soon from Daesh. The Kurdish canton will be limited to fully Kurdish cities like Al Malkieh, Al Hassakeh, and Al Qamishly.
Commenting on how the armed opposition fits on the chessboard, Hassan Hassan, a senior fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, told Gulf News: “The rebels are in a very tight spot, literally. The most committed of their backers [are] completely or almost completely out of the picture. Turkey’s priorities have changed over the past half year. As a consequence of Turkey’s rapprochement with Russia in Syria, Qatar’s hands are tied. The Qataris are no longer able to back the groups they backed before in the same way. The regime’s sponsors increasingly dictate the rules of the game, which also means countries like Turkey and the United States have to deal with Moscow. Damascus is also set to benefit from the rise of Daesh and Al Qaida.”
While Pentagon officers handle the details of forthcoming battles, outlining who gets what in the Syrian patchwork, the State Department has been remarkably silent over Syria, including Secretary Rex Tillerson, who even skipped the UN-mandated peace talks in Geneva last week — the first time it has happened since their launch in early 2014.
They were aggressively pursued by his predecessor John Kerry, but collapsed last April, namely because neither Moscow nor Tehran were willing to discuss the fate and future of President Bashar Al Assad, a crucial point that Saudi Arabia, France, and until recently, the United States have all been pushing for.
Uncharacteristic silence
Tillerson has been mute on the Syrian president and his country’s position over the political transition, and so has the entire Trump White House. In Moscow, Tehran and Damascus, this is being read as a visible US retreat and an outsourcing of the ‘Syria File’, at least in its political component, to Vladimir Putin.
The Russians are still committed to the talks, holding two rounds of Switzerland negotiations this month, attended in light of low-level US participation and by Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov. They insist on jump-starting a transition process — not from regime rule to opposition rule but to a power-sharing formula that leads to a new constitution, new parliament, and new presidential elections, where Al Assad would get to run for another two terms.
In their recently authored constitution, the Russians suggested diluting some of his legislative powers, but said that the president will get to run for two terms as of the next election, which is supposed to take place in 2021. They have also agreed to give ten seats out of a 30-member cabinet seats to the Moscow-backed Syrian opposition, rather than the Saudi-funded High Negotiations Committee (HNC) and have been talking business, not with civilian politicians but with militias of the Syrian north who command a powerful base within Syria.
All sides will return to the negotiating table on March 23 to discuss proposed charter, and expect the process to last throughout what remains of the year. They expect it to see the light before the end of 2017.
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian historian and former Carnegie scholar. He is also author of Under the Black Flag: At the frontier of the New Jihad.
