Why Assad Won

“Assad has won the war.”
— Jean-Yves Le Drian.

“Assad is going to remain in power, and the Russians are committed to that.”
— Robert Gates.

The pundits are furious. How dare Trump decide to pull US troops out of Syria? There it is, further proof of his idiocy. Another whimsical decision, made during a phone call with Erdogan without consulting The Experts.

Actually, Trump already said he wanted to pull out months ago, but was sabotaged by his minions who thought otherwise. And, far from whimsical (unlike many of his other moves and Tweets), the decision reflects a sober view of reality: the United States, and the Syrian opposition that it backed in the long civil war, cannot win in Syria. Sure, America may be able to keep 2,000 Marines stationed and supplied in the remote desert forever. But that won’t exterminate ISIS or change the outcome of the war. After 7 years of brutal slaughter, the winner is Bashar Al-Assad and his regime.

I.   Why Did the Rebellion Fail?

Back in 2015, things looked promising for the rebels. Territory controlled by the government was shrinking. The Syrian army was decimated and on the run. Damascus was under siege. The pundits eagerly awaited the Gaddafi moment: footage of Bashar and his family, barbecued alive in their hilltop palace. A Middle Eastern recipe for Carne Asada.

America and its allies, along with most Sunni regimes in the region, wanted Assad gone. However, nobody wanted to devote their own troops to the cause. After Iraq and two decades of Afghanistan, the idea of regime change accomplished with a land invasion (and the costly occupation that inevitably follows) had no domestic popular support. So, the Assad haters had to rely on dubious proxy forces to do the fighting. Never mind that many of the “freedom fighters” enjoyed beheading people, and sometimes even eating the heart of their defeated opponent on camera. As Barry Goldwater put it, “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice”!

Then the damn Russians came in and turned the tide, by giving Assad a modern air force. The pundits, Hillary Clinton among them, pleaded for a US-imposed “no-fly zone.” Never mind that Russia was there legally, invited by Syria’s government, and there was no UN authorization for any no-fly zone.

More importantly, a policy of shooting down Russian jets would not have ended well. Putin could retaliate by sinking a US aircraft carrier, firing missiles at a US base in Poland, or bombing Kiev. Escalation of direct military conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia is the only thing besides an asteroid that could end America’s existence.  There is even less popular support for this idea than for a land invasion. Obama wisely steered clear of such nonsense.

Once the land invasion and no-fly zone were off the table, and Assad had the Russian air force on his side while the rebels had no air force of their own, defeat for the rebels was only a matter of time. Assad’s army already had the advantage in armor and artillery. Rebels had little of either, and in any event could not use tanks effectively without air cover. The only question was whether Assad could muster enough manpower to recapture all lost territory.

The Syrian army was battered but still battle-worthy, and was reinforced with tens of thousands of pro-Iranian Shia volunteers and Russian weaponry. The army fought with heroic tenacity. The besieged air base at Kuweires held out for three years, outlasting ISIS and its waves of suicide bombers. So did Deir ez-Zor, cut off from the rest of government forces by hundreds of miles, supplied solely by air.

This highlights a key political factor. Assad is a tyrant (like most other Middle East leaders), but he retained the support of a large portion of his population and the army throughout the war. Various minorities, like the Alawites, the Shia and the Christians, were beneficiaries of the regime’s religious tolerance and feared the Islamic extremism of the rebels. If Assad lost, they could be toast. But the rebels also failed to turn the country’s Sunni majority decisively in their favor. Most of Assad’s soldiers are Sunni.

The rebels did not present any charismatic, unifying figure for Sunnis to rally behind. The émigré opposition was a sad collection of clowns who made fiery speeches in Geneva and squabbled among themselves. This fiasco is typical for US-supported dissident movements. American policy wonks fall in love with Western-educated elite expats, who speak good English and say the right things, but are out of touch with the country they claim to represent and have no support back home. Oh, the curse of Ahmed Chalabi and Garry Kasparov…

Back on the ground in Syria, things were no better. Huge chunks of Syrian land that fell outside Assad’s control failed to produce any credible alternative government. (Unless you are an ISIS supporter – more on that in a bit.) Can anyone name the governor of Idlib, or the governor of Rojava? The Idlib province is an Al Qaeda-dominated shit show. Dozens of rival armed groups control pockets of territory, execute anyone suspected of sympathy for Assad, and spend their free time fighting each other. The Rojava territory controlled by SDF, a US-backed concoction of mostly Kurdish YPG fighters diluted with a few token Sunni Arabs, also fails to impress. Raqqa lies in ruins, socialists run the economy, and local Arab tribes resent being ruled by Kurds, who use repressive methods to stifle dissent.

In sum, the rebellion could not articulate an attractive vision of post-Assad Syria. The key questions that US policy makers, and Beltway pundits, always refused to answer were: who would rule in Damascus after Assad is barbecued? How do you hold together a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society, which has just experienced a devastating civil war, without putting a new Assad in charge? What would happen to the millions of people who backed Assad?

A cynic might suggest that America didn’t care. The goal was never a democratic, flourishing Syria. (Deep inside, the pundits knew this was not achievable anyway.) The true goal was to destabilize, and hopefully dismember, another insubordinate nation-state, a la Iraq or Libya, by turning it into a bloody tribal free-for-all. To remove an Iranian ally, and a Russian naval base, from the global chessboard. To make the Middle East easier for America, and its ally Israel, to dominate. But as Oedipus (and the Iraqi precedent) would have warned anyone pursuing such goals, the end result now looks quite the opposite.  So the lack of “vision thing” turned out to be… kind of important.

Actually, there was one charismatic leader who emerged from the rebel ranks: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He had an ideology, all right. And a messianic vision to boot. But for most Syrians, his dream was a nightmare. Syria’s modern history is that of religious tolerance and secular government. If anything, the rise of ISIS as a viable alternative tipped the scales of war in favor of Assad. Faced with a risk of apocalyptic chaos, millions of Syrians rallied behind their dictator.

This is not a new phenomenon. Nations in peril often cling to a strongman, or to nationalism; otherwise they tend to fall apart or get conquered. Just like most Russians rallied behind Stalin, when Hitler was the other choice. Just like most Ukrainians, faced with a threat of separatism and Russian domination, continue supporting their oligarch leadership, even though the people despise their corruption and ineptitude. Just like most Iranians and Venezuelans recently rejected their protest movements, and thousands of Turks filled the streets of Ankara to save Erdogan during a coup attempt. Not because all these people love their rulers, but rather because they perceive the alternative to be worse.

It is hard to persuade people to cheer when their house is set on fire. Millions of Syrians who did not flee or rebel, and closed ranks behind Assad, concluded that their Syrian house was worth saving. Even with Assad still in charge.

II.   What Now?

“What now? Let me tell you what now… I’ma get medieval on your ass.”
— Marcellus Wallace, Pulp Fiction.

Assad will stay in power and is not going anywhere. Without massive outside support that includes air cover (which ain’t happening), the rebellion is incapable of any serious counter-offensive. ISIS will continue to wage guerilla war in the Euphrates River valley, and may even recapture a town or two. But it’s hard to see al-Baghadi launching a new march on Damascus across the desert as long as the Russian air force still owns the skies. In due course, the rebel enclave in Idlib will be mopped up, although Turkey and its proxies may cling to a narrow buffer zone near the Turkish border.

This leaves the question (intensely negotiated between Russia and Turkey in the last few days) of what happens to Rojava, the one-third of Syrian territory still covered by the American military umbrella. It remains unclear if Trump will be allowed by the “Deep State” to go through with US withdrawal, and America may try to hand over the vacated territory to Turkey and its proxies rather than the Syrian government. But any owner of that land who is not named Bashar al-Assad does not hold a winning hand, has little leverage, and will eventually need to face that fact.

It is not possible to build an alternative Syria around a Kurdish core. The Kurds are valiant fighters, but they are a landlocked minority hated by everyone else in their neighborhood. If all their neighbors imposed a blockade on Rojava, even America would be hard-pressed to stage another Berlin Airlift to keep supplying it. And oil wells are not very useful when you need to ship the oil through hostile territory to a buyer. The Kurds’ best bet is to cut an autonomy deal with Assad and hoist the Syrian flag back up, as they already started doing around Manbij last week. The alternative is to be overrun by Erdogan, who wants to crush them.

America is forced to choose between Turkey and the Kurds. It would be a disaster for America to lose Turkey, a NATO ally and a key player in the region. So, as usual, the Kurds’ destiny is to get hosed – now that they have fulfilled their US-assigned mission of breaking ISIS’ back.

There is even less utility in America retaining an isolated garrison in al Tanf, near the Jordanian and Iraqi borders. With no ISIS anywhere nearby, there is no legitimate mission left to justify occupying this piece of Syrian land. The real mission there, which has no legitimacy or even Congressional approval, was to disrupt a Tehran-Beirut land corridor. But weren’t we told that America’s “rules-based order” commands respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the right of each nation to choose its own alliances? Or does that only apply to countries that want to choose NATO?

Other regional supporters of the rebels have thrown in the towel. They are fed up with the futility of the war, its expense, and the millions of refugees it has produced. The United Arab Emirates reopened its embassy in Damascus last week. (Bahrain may soon follow suit.) A week earlier, Sudan’s president became the first Arab League leader to visit Damascus since the war began.

Let’s not get too cheerful for Assad.  His victory is a Pyrrhic one. Syria is a wreck that will cost billions of dollars to repair. But it’s been done before – in Lebanon after its 15-year civil war, and in Germany after World War II. A better analogy would be the Soviet Union in 1945: parts of the country were ruined, but other parts remained untouched by the war. The “useful Syria”, such as the coastal Latakia province, most of Damascus, and even parts of Aleppo, was largely spared from combat.

Where will new investments come from? Certainly not from the West. But the Chinese may show up if the price is right, and Russian oil companies have already cut some deals with Assad in anticipation of his oil wells being recovered. It’s possible that some wealthy Arab neighbors may chip in too, eager to wean Assad away from Iranian influence. Since sticks didn’t work, maybe carrots will.

For his part, Assad is not eager to be Iran’s – or anyone else’s – puppet. The Iranians have done their part to save him, but he doesn’t need them to stay once the situation is fully stabilized. The Hezbollah fighters would rather come home to Lebanon too. They only came to fight in Syria because they knew that, if Assad fell, their heads would be next on the ISIS chopping block.

The notion that Assad’s rule will crumble on its own, once the foreign powers leave, is a fantasy. First, the Russian air force contingent is not going anywhere and will help nip any rebel resurgence in the bud. Second, the Syrian people have had enough rebellion and war. A new rebellion, without massive outside support, would be doomed. The only reason the rebels carried on as long as they did was the continued supply of arms and cash from foreign powers interested in Assad’s demise. Those countries have now given up on this dream. (The fact that much of the weaponry ended up in the hands of ISIS, or Al Qaeda affiliates, didn’t help.) Finally, Assad will always remain at risk of assassination or internal military coup, just like any other dictator. But the end result would be another secular and totalitarian regime – just with a different face on the posters.

III.   The Scorecard.

“Welcome to the post-American Middle East.”
— Richard Haass.

As the Syrian war nears its conclusion, a few winners and losers stand out.

America and its globalist liberal ideology suffered a defeat, after a long streak of engineering successful regime changes. Tanks proved stronger than Facebook. Assad’s playbook has now been copied (with less violence) by Iran and Venezuela in suppressing domestic uprisings before they could pick up steam.

It’s unlikely that America will try something similar in the Middle East again soon. The Arab Spring, which it attempted to harness, has metastasized and became hijacked by a dangerous radical movement. The mythical “moderate opposition” does not exist in the region. Training a new cadre of bushy-bearded rebels would simply spawn a new ISIS chapter.

Worse than that, America’s positions in the Middle East now look weaker than before 2011. Iraq, the centerpiece of America’s strategy for remaking the neighborhood, is still reeling from the ISIS eruption and increasingly tilting towards Iran. A foolish attempt to carve out a separatist Kurdish state in the north failed spectacularly, thanks to a crackdown by Baghdad, treason among the Kurds themselves, and an assist from Tehran. The Kurds ended up with no independence, and lost Kirkuk and its oil fields. Another recent effort to stir up unrest in Basra around anti-Iranian slogans also backfired. Now, it’s possible that a new Iraqi government will ask US forces to leave the country. (Nice work, Brett McGurk!) And the US public, let alone the rest of the world, will have no stomach for another forcible US occupation of Iraq.

Just like Southeast Asia in the 1970’s, a chain reaction of falling dominoes is possible, with Islamic insurgencies substituted for Communist ones. Jordan seems the sickest antelope in the herd: a weak monarchy not blessed with oil and overwhelmed by Syrian refugees. If it implodes, this could become a direct menace to Israel, far more serious than a few Iranians camping out in Syria. Egypt, ruled by an Assad impersonator el-Sisi, is shaky too. Another military expedition to secure the Suez Canal, anyone?

Further down the road, Saudi Arabia (which also bet heavily against Assad and lost) is a bigger volcano waiting to erupt. America will likely focus its energy on preserving this crown jewel among its Gulf allies, but it could be another losing cause. With oil revenues in decline, an erratic prince in charge, an army that could not even defeat barefoot Houthis, a hostile Iran across the Gulf and millions of Shia at home, the kingdom could follow the fate of the Ottoman Empire. In the end, America’s role may be reduced to helping manage Riyadh’s collapse and retreating to its key military bases in Bahrain and Qatar, two smaller countries that have their own issues but may be easier to prop up.

As for winners? Aside from Assad, the biggest winner from the whole mess could be Turkey. After initially backing the rebellion, Erdogan changed his tune once he sensed that Assad was not going to lose. This made him a crucial player in the resolution of the Syrian conflict. His nemesis, the Kurds, are now on the run, and everyone is being nice to him. Putin is visiting, Trump is calling, and after new US sanctions the Iranians need Turkey as an economic and political go-between. Regardless of how the war is wrapped up, Ankara will continue to wield influence over a weakened Syria’s future, in Idlib and elsewhere.

Russia and Iran (and quietly behind the scenes, China) are also smiling. They called America’s bluff and prevailed. Cold War II has many innings left to play, but 2018 may be remembered as an inflection point when the tide clearly turned.

 

Vadim Mahmoudov
January 1, 2019