321 - Giving the New Syria a Chance to Perform Well

Ahmad al-Sharaa, who engineered and masterfully led Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to victory in Syria and now seeks to reconstruct and normalize his 23 million sized pivotal state, says that his country is "war-weary," and hardly wants or needs "new confrontations." He claims to be focused on diplomatic solutions to Israeli bombings, putting down any resurgence in the eastern part of the country by the Islamic State, and moderating contests for power between the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDA) and the Turkish promoted Syrian National Army (SNA).

"The priority at this stage," he declares, "is reconstruction and stability, not being drawn into disputes that could lead to further destruction." Russia's hold on a naval base and an airfield on Syria's Mediterranean coast would be "reevaluated" in a way "that serves common interests." So would almost all other bilateral relationships, but al-Sharaa has already received a British delegation despite HTS still being formally regarded as a "terrorist" organization.

Schools and universities are being restarted immediately. His soldiers and those belonging to other rebel groups are going, he says, to be integrated into a single Syrian army and central command.

There has been no mention, despite HTS' sometime affiliation first with the Islamic State and later with al-Qaeda, of any introduction of sharia law rather than European civil law. Al-Sharra apparently welcomes the practice by Christians, Druze, and even Shiites of their own religious forms of worship. In other words, thus far there is no attempt to turn the new Syria into an Islamist fundamentalist state. Al-Sharaa says that the new state would “not interfere in personal freedoms in a deep way.”

Given HTS' decade long governance of the Idlib province in northwestern Syria, this beginning even-handedness of HTS and al-Sharaa does not necessarily mean that Syria, recovering from fifty-three years of despotism, the last thirteen brutal and vicious, with torture and perhaps 500,000 people murdered, will become a democracy. An authoritarian state is more likely, especially one that is led almost singlehandedly by al-Sharaa and a few well-placed cronies. In Idlib, HTS started governing rather strictly, and even enforced Islamist morality strictures, but its rule became more pragmatic over time. Schools and assemblies were segregated by gender.

Yet pragmatism, with Islamist overtones, could drive the first months of HTS' control of Syria. Foreigners could help to accelerate such tendencies, especially if HTS takes a tough line against the remnants of the Islamic State and, when strongly encouraged, instructs the Russians to go home.

What Washington, Tel Aviv, and Ankara mostly want is for Syria to become a Middle Eastern state that holds no political prisoners, welcomes refugees back from their places of exile, ceases to permit Iranian military and financial resources to transit its territory to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and gives no facilities to Putin's Russian military mafia.

Both the Biden and Trump administrations need to welcome al-Sharaa's angels of a better nature in order to enhance our own security priorities in the region. Israel has pummeled Syria with more than 450 airstrikes, destroying equipment, chemical weapons, tanks, aircraft, and naval ships that could fall into the hands of an anti-Israeli successor to the al-Assad regime. Israel has sought to keep all materiel of war out of the hands of the Islamic State, which still has pockets of territory in eastern Syria, and to prevent HTS from arming itself against Israel.

Fortunately, al-Sharaa so far has not wielded verbal cudgels against Israel. He seems fully to understand that Syria needs to be rebuilt. He also appears to be appealing for global assistance in re-creating a Syrian state that works. We should begin to assist. Indeed, this is the precise moment to begin to play a major role in the re-birth of what could become a beacon of light in the Middle East.

Washington would be foolish to permit Turkey, HTS' main patron in Idlib, to exercise a decisive role in what becomes of Syria. That would mean making sure that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's antagonism to everything Kurdish does not lead to an all-out combat between the SNA, a Turkish proxy, and the SDA, an American-supported force. Erdogan is sure that the SDA is closely allied to the Kurdistan Worker's Party (KWP), the Kurdish separatists within Turkey. But Washington can control the SDA and can make sure that it cannot assist the KWP within or against Turkey.

Washington, and HTS, also need the SDA to continue to reduce the dangerous role of the Islamic State in eastern Syria from its remaining bases near the border with Iraq. The SDA guards encampments containing 10,000 Islamic State prisoners. Al-Sharaa needs to find a way to absorb or deal with those prisoners before he can think of helping Turkey marginalize the SDA.

Additionally, Washington may be able to help al-Sharaa gradually reduce his reliance on Turkey and assist him in establishing a new Syria that is plural more than just Arab and Muslim. That would enable the Kurdish population in northeastern Syria to contribute to a new nation in addition to defending what they now insist is part of their ancient homeland. Since they have no other, and since Kurds are the world's most numerous people without a state or a homeland, it is understandable that Kurds in Syria, like those in Iraq, have sought for at least a century, and certainly in recent years, to carve out of Iraq and Syria a space in which their culture, language, and version of Islam can be respected. There are about 3 million Kurds in Syria, 8 million in Iraq, 11 million harassed in northwestern Iran, and up to 20 million in eastern Turkey (where they are persecuted and marginalized).

A major goal of the West in the wake of Syria's potential rebirth would be to help the countries of the fertile crescent establish an enduring home for Kurds. That may not mean a new state, but it could mean an autonomous region in Syria corresponding to the one that the U. S. carved out of Iraq after the 2003 invasion of that country. Joining those two zones need not occur, especially since Iran is not going to permit its Kurds to secede and Turkey will hardly do so either. But the more the U. S. and al-Sharaa can recognize the claims of Kurds to some running room and autonomy within Syria, the better. Doing so will demonstrate HTS' good sense and its refusal to pick unneeded fights.

I'll be back in this space early in the New Year. Meanwhile, happy holidays to all. May your coming days be rewarding; the next few months, even years, are going to be very upsetting, annoying. So, enjoy these last few days before the troubles begin.