by
Gary Leupp
A week ago,
after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva, U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the two sides had made
progress on the matter of coordination and intelligence sharing in
the air war against al-Nusra (now re-dubbed Fatah al-Sham) and ISIL
in Syria.
Meanwhile
President Obama (at least since last December) has backed off on his
insistence—urgent in 2011, when he was advised by Hillary Clinton
as secretary of state—that Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad
surrender power. This demand has weakened over time as Assad has
stubbornly clung to power, as the (largely Sunni) national army has
performed unexpectedly well against U.S.-backed armed rebels, and as
Russia has belatedly intervened on behalf of the regime (or, as
Moscow sees it, the modern, secular Syrian state itself).
An
announcement is supposed to occur in “early August.” We’re
there now, but no announcement yet. Events in Aleppo may affect its
timing, or rule it out. The Syrian Arab Army has encircled Aleppo,
Syria’s largest city largely held by al-Nusra and its allies, and
is poised to close in. Last Tuesday the Syrian government announced
that it was providing safe passage for residents to leave the city,
and Russia announced specific plans to provide corridors both for
civilians wanting to leave and fighters willing to turn over their
arms.
U.S.
Ambassador to the UN Samantha Powers immediately pronounced the plan
“chilling” (because it “warns Syrians to leave E Aleppo &
entrust lives to gov that’s bombed & starved them”). That is
to say, Powers used the news of the immanent defeat of a long-time
al-Qaeda affiliate regarded by both the U.S. and Russia as terrorist,
as an opportunity to further trash Assad and Russia. (And she doesn’t
seem to recall this evacuation plan was precisely the strategy used
by the U.S. in Fallujah and elsewhere in its uninvited military
adventures.)
Powers rules
out the possibility that the national army might meet with a warm
welcome from the people of Aleppo, historically a Baath Party power
base. Kerry meanwhile intimates that this new development might
jeopardize planned cooperation in Syria against al-Nusra/Fatah
al-Sham and ISIL.
Mixed
Signals All Along
There are
mixed signals here. But there have been all along. During the George
W. Bush administration, neocon officials plotted the downfall of the
Assad regime. On the other hand, Secretary of State Colin Powell met
with Assad in 2003 and diplomatic relations were restored after 24
years in 2006.
Hillary
Clinton as of 2009 was praising Assad as a “reformer,” but in
2011 was ordering him out. In 2013 Obama was on the verge of a
massive missile assault on Syria, to punish Assad for supposedly
using sarin gas against his people (an unlikely prospect, since he
was winning the war through conventional means). But Lavrov told
Kerry that Russia believed that opposition forces were responsible.
By some reports Obama soon became persuaded that Turkish intelligence
in collusion with some opposition faction contrived a false flag
incident hoping to induce the U.S. to topple Assad.
Kerry
happened to mention at a press confidence that the U.S. would hold
off attacking if Syria would give up all its WMDs. Lavrov
immediately, deftly negotiated an arrangement for Syria to turn over
its chemical weapons to the UN, and at the last minute Obama
cancelled his planned attack.
But he did
deliver an accusatory speech in which he declared the Syrian
government responsible for the incident and reiterated: “I believe
in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being.” He just
altered the speech’s conclusion to suggest that the Syrian decision
to surrender its WMDs had changed the situation. He was still
committed to regime change.
The
Embarrassing U.S. Failure to Build a Syrian Proxy Force
Stepping
back a bit: in August 2011, when Obama and Clinton both demanded
Assad’s departure, and closed down the U.S. embassy in Damascus,
the opposition to Assad had been largely nonviolent. But armed
factions were, with U.S. encouragement, already taking shape, loosely
coordinating as something called the “Syrian Free Army.” They
included many pro-al-Qaeda elements who officially formed the
al-Nusra Front (Jabhat al-Nusra) in January 2012.
(The rule,
if you haven’t noticed, is: When the U.S. overthrows a secular
leader in the Middle East, or tries to, it creates a power void; it
creates promised lands of opportunity for vicious jihadis, whose
atrocities justify the redeployment of U.S. troops to the country
involved in order to “preserve regional stability” and so forth.
It is as though Washington is actively working to enrage, not only
your everyday Muslim anywhere in the world, but your everyday anyone
anywhere in the world, by its regime change bombing campaigns
rationalized by lies.)
Al-Nusra
gained widespread respect among the armed rebels in Syria in 2012.
The U.S. press gave slight attention to the fact that the “Free
Syrian Army” publicly justified and insisted upon its alliance with
this al-Qaeda chapter.
Currently
most factions (80% in one estimate) of the hundreds of Syrian Free
Army factions work with al-Nusra. They value its experience and
competence, even if they may dislike its puritanism in such matters
as tobacco smoking and personal appearance. U.S. officials have long
since realized that to topple Assad they need to—if not befriend
al-Nusra directly (repeat: al-Nusra/ Fatah al-Sham was until
yesterday an official al-Qaeda affiliate)—at least give their
(more) directly subsidized associates leave to mingle as needed, to
get the regime change job done.
By 2014,
with Assad still in charge and al-Nusra coming to dominate the
“opposition,” Obama asked Congress for money to fund a program
for U.S. personnel to train in Jordan some 15,000 armed rebels in
marksmanship, navigation and other skills. But as of September 2015,
as a sheepish-faced General Lloyd Austin, commander of U.S. Central
Command, told Congress, “We’re talking four or five” fighters
actually trained. In that same month, it was announced that about 70
fighters of “Division 30”—Syrians trained in Turkey, under the
“Syrian Trade and Equip” program, had upon entering Syria turned
over their weapons to al-Nusra.
Embarrassment
upon embarrassment, for the regime-changers!
The fact of
the matter is, the U.S. has found it difficult, after all that’s
happened in the region in this young century, to recruit Syrians
willing to work with them. Blinded by their Exceptionalism, U.S.
policy-makers can’t get it through their heads that U.S. actions in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya do not endear them to the peoples
of those countries. Quite the opposite.
Russian
Intervention; the U.S. Freaks Out
In this same
crucial month (of September 2015, as U.S. weakness in the region was
exposed), Russia became seriously involved in the Syrian conflict. It
had watched the spread of disorder and suffering throughout the
Middle East with alarm. (“Do you realize what you’ve done?”
Putin soon asked the U.S. and its allies, at the UNGA, in November
2015.) Now finally it moved.
Russia had
had a military pact with Syria since 1980, and operated its naval
base at Tartus (its only one in the Mediterranean, compared to the
U.S.’s nine ) since 1971. Moscow now announced a program of
bombing terrorists in cooperation with Syrian government forces.
Taken aback,
the U.S. could do little but note the obvious (that Russia was
supporting a president the U.S. had commanded to step down, accusing
him of crimes against his people) and complain that Russia wasn’t
really targeting terrorists, but the “moderate opposition.”
“Who are
you talking about?” the Russians responded politely. Lavrov
proposed that Washington and Moscow agree on a list of groups
considered “terrorist.” The U.S. concedes that a lot of the
groups it backs work closely with al-Nusra, justifying it publicly.
One of the U.S.-backed groups, Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki, posted a
video last month of smiling members beheading a 12-year-old
Palestinian boy accused of being a member of a pro-Assad group. The
State Department spokesman asked the group to investigate, and it
duly issued a statement terming the beheading a “mistake.”
The Russians
have demanded at the UN that the Ahrar al-Sham organization, backed
by Turkey and Saudi Arabia and closely aligned with what used to be
called al-Nusra, be classified as a terrorist organization. These
efforts have been stymied by the group’s supporters. The U.S. sees
Ahrar al-Sham as part of the “moderate opposition.”
While
disagreeing with the U.S. about who was a “terrorist” and who a
fighter for the “moderate opposition,” Russia while targeting
northwest Syria where the al-Nusra mix holds territory in a few weeks
did more damage to ISIL than the U.S.-led anti-ISIL coalition (formed
in December 2014) had done in nine months. (Indeed, one of the most
preposterous disinformation enterprises of the U.S. press is to
exaggerate U.S. “Coalition” successes against ISIL while
minimizing the Russian and Syrian.)
In
particular, Russian war planes destroyed thousands of Turkey-bound
oil tankers striking the caliphate at its economic base. (In the
process it also provided documentation, largely ignored by the U.S.
press, that Ergodan was profiting from this traffic.) In May 2016 the
Syrian army recaptured Palmyra with its architectural treasures from
ISIL, with Russian support.
Kerry’s
State Department was obliged to shift tactics. Here was Russia,
cautiously, effectively and legally, finally asserting its power in
its backyard (Aleppo is 720 miles from southern Russia, 5775 from
Washington D.C.), arguing that—while Moscow is not wedded to Assad—
it wants to preserve the Syrian state, which is represented by its
army, currently in a life-to-death struggle with terrorists. It was
receiving considerable international sympathy for its efforts. What
could Kerry do but respond positively to Lavrov’s proposal for
multiparty talks in Europe last year, to try to arrange a political
solution between the non-terrorist parties?
Diplomacy,
while Pounding the War Drums
A series of
meetings, involving a few Syrian factions, excluding many (such as
the Kurdish YPG, at the insistence of Turkey), the U.S., Russia (but
not Iran), produced a ceasefire agreement implemented from February
27, 2016. But it does not include ISIL and al-Nusra. Since it is
spatially embedded in the other organizations, Russian and Syrian
forces in attacking al-Nusra surely bomb fighters the U.S. (in its
manifest wisdom) deems “moderates.”
Gosh. Has
the U.S. ever done something like that?
The
ceasefire has generally held, between the “moderate opposition”
and the army. During this period of enforced relative passivity,
al-Nusra has reportedly used the opportunity to expand ties and amass
supplies, and as we’ve seen, it’s renamed itself to gain
respectability. It knows there are some in the U.S. power structure
advocating use of (as General Petraeus put it last year) “some
elements” in al-Nusra against ISIL. It’s losing the battle and no
doubt willing to cut various deals with others hostile to Assad.
The regime
and its Russian patrons have apparently decided to strike now, hard,
against al-Nusra in East Aleppo and reclaim the city. If they do so
it will be a turning point, although not the end of the Syrian
conflict. (The Kurdistan issue looms.)
Kerry like
Obama seems conflicted about what to do in Syria. He wants to topple
Assad, because the U.S. government has announced he must go, and once
such a proclamation is issued, it cannot (like a law of the Medes and
Persians) be retracted for fear of loss of face. But Kerry’s also
been (like Obama, who as you recall cluelessly called ISIL a “JV
team” in August 2014) shocked by the sudden rise of that horrid
outgrowth of the U.S. destruction of Iraq. It would be embarrassing
if ISIL takes Damascus and blows up all the ancient Christian sites.
Especially if Putin and tens of millions of Russian Orthodox
believers who feel akin to Syrian Orthodox Christians are standing
around saying, “I told you this would happen, if you keep focusing
so stupidly on Assad”).
So of course
U.S. leaders have to condemn, and to some extent wage war on, ISIL as
well as al-Nusra. The problem is how to pursue that objective while
simultaneously maintaining that Assad is the main problem, and
arguing that his very persistence in power strengthens the
terrorists. It doesn’t make any sense.
In fact, the
weakening of central state power encouraged by the U.S. since 1911
has allowed these groups to seize territory and advance their
positions, while the reclamation of state authority when it’s
happened has set back the bad guys. Or at least the worst guys.
The faction
in the State Department that never learns anything and is currently
demanding regime change is getting louder. The manifesto published by
the 51 State Department dissidents suggests too much attention has
been placed on countering ISIL. What we really need to do, they say,
is step up efforts to remove Assad. Despite the weird, unprecedented
nature of the dissidents’ memo leak, Kerry has pronounced himself
sympathetic. Meanwhile the recent statement from the “Center for a
New Security” headed by key Clinton aide and likely future
Secretary of Defense Michele Flournoy similarly promotes regime
change.
On July
29—the day that she secured the Democratic nomination in that
sickening display of USA! USA! jingoism—Clinton’s campaign stated
that she will “reset” U.S. Syrian policy as a top priority in
office, to focus on toppling Assad from power. (Surprise, surprise,
you fools who assumed she’d learned something from Libya.)
For all with
ears to hear—and have learned anything at all since 9/11 and the
inception of the era of constant wars, based on lies—the war-drums
are sounding. But as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews notes, “Americans
don’t care anything about foreign policy.”
One can only
hope that the crazies in Syria are rolled back by rational secular
forces before January, aided perhaps by welcome, coordinated foreign
air power, when the Queen of Chaos comes to the throne (if so she
does).
Because if
she gets her chance, she will be looking for excuses to bomb
Damascus.
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