Syria: Moving on from the Saddam’s-statue-is-falling moment

The famous toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad two decades ago (2003) became an instant media iconic moment. It was staged by the US forces with an allied local group. It’s a moment worth remembering – as a caution against triumphalism.

It was a successful moment for US information operations. A moment that lasted approximately one day. The very next day, mass looting in Baghdad started, which compounded the problem the Cheney-Bush Administration set themselves up for by not preparing adequately for situation just like that.

Zvi Bar’el recalls that event in the context of the immediate aftermath of Bashar al-Assad’s hasty departure to Russia:

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani, who on Sunday abandoned his nom de guerre and returned to his real name, Ahmed Hussein al-Shar'a, has ordered his fighters [grouped in the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham {HTS}] not to harm government buildings and to protect public property. He also said they should refrain from taking revenge against the Assad regime's security forces and the civilians who collaborated with him, mainly members of the Alawite community. However, it appears that his control over his fighters' rage and the desire to settle scores is limited.

Historical analogies are dangerous to make and are prone to error. But it is impossible not to recall the difficult images accompanying the early days of the 2003 assault on Iraq. Masses of people broke into government ministries, hundreds of Ba'ath party members were killed in revenge by gangs and ordinary civilians, the national museum was looted and a crime wave exploded even before the establishment of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Libya produced atrocities of its own with the ouster and murder of Muammar Gadhafi. Murderous power struggles broke out between tribes and families that developed into political and military conflicts that have continued to thwart the establishment of a unified and functioning state. In Syria, all the ingredients for a similar recipe exist. [my emphasis] (1)

Bar’el explains that Assad throwing in the towel in this situation is not a case of a widely-based opposition movement fighting the government to a stalemate or ousting them in a military campaign. Assad’s government basically just fell apart, from what we can see now. Al-Julani/Al-Shar'a headed a collection of opposition forces in the northwestern province of Idlib and functioned as a governing entity there.

Nevertheless, ruling over a province is not the same as running a complex and divided country weighed down by heavy baggage from the past.

That baggage is not only that of a regime that slaughtered more than half a million of its own citizens and turned around 11 million people into refugees and displaced persons, but also conflicts between different population groups – Alawites versus Sunnis, Kurds versus Alawites, and elites versus the masses and city dwellers who were stripped of their property. Severe rivalries also developed between civilian opposition groups, such as that between al-Julani's government and the "interim government" of the coalition of opposition forces. Another rivalry exists between them and the autonomous Kurdish government established in the northern part of the country. [my emphasis]

And external actors play a big role, as well. The US has provided backing and protection for Kurdish forces, which in practice have offered a more democratic-leaning option than the Islamist groups have. Agence France-Presse reports:

In 2012, government forces withdrew from Kurdish-majority areas in Syria’s north and east, paving the way for Kurds to consolidate control.

They established a semi-autonomous administration there and have gradually expanded territorial control as US-backed Kurdish-led fighters battled IS, dislodging the extremists from their last scraps of Syrian territory in 2019.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), formed in 2015, are considered the Kurds’ de facto army. The forces are an alliance of fighters including Kurds, Syriac Christians and Arab Muslim factions.

The SDF holds around a quarter of Syrian territory, and is considered the second most powerful military force after the army. It controls most of Raqqa province including the city, a former IS [Islamic State] stronghold, half of neighbouring Deir ez-Zur, and part of Aleppo province. It also controls Hasakeh province in the north-east, though Syrian government forces are also present there including in the cities of Hasakeh and Qamishli.

US-led coalition forces, which entered Syria in 2014 to fight IS, have set up bases in the Al-Omar oilfield, the country’s largest, as well as the Conoco gas field – both in Kurdish-controlled territory. US personnel are also stationed in Kurdish-controlled Hasakeh and Raqqa provinces. (2)

The US also has a distinct record of betraying the Kurds, particularly those in Iraq. But pragmatic interest has also resulted in cooperation and support, as well. The Kurds, largely situated in Syria, Iraq, and NATO member Türkiye, and also in Iran, have never been able to establish an actual state of their own, although in both Iraq and Syria in recent years, they have enjoyed some degree of autonomy.

It's worth noting that some of the democratic left have celebrated the Kurdish enclave from which the SDF operation as a model of a successful democratic movement, the “Rohava revolution.” (3)

But the Turkish government is highly suspicious of anything that looks like a potential base for a Kurdish national state to develop. Since Türkiye is an important NATO member, that significantly constrains the available options for the US in relation to the Kurds in Syria and elsewhere. There are also like three million or more Syrian refugees in Türkiye, so the Turkish government is likely to be eager to declare “mission accomplished” in northeastern Syria so that they can convince or compel many of those refugees to return to Syria. The UN Refugee Agency reported in March that although only around 5% of those refugees live in refugee camps, “living outside refugee camps does not necessarily mean success or stability. More than 70 percent of Syrian refugees are living in poverty, with limited access to basic services, education or job opportunities and few prospects of returning home.” (4)

The same article notes the huge toll the chronic civil unrest since 2011 has taken on Syrians: “Thirteen years later, the conflict is ongoing with Syrians continuing to pay the price—more than 16.7 million people in Syria are in need of humanitarian assistance, accounting for 70 percent of the population.”

Türkiye has been actively backing the Syrian rebel group calling itself the Syrian National Army (SNA). The SNA has cooperated at times with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). But that cooperation was scarcely a marriage made in Heaven:

The HTS has its origins in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the United Nations. But the group said in recent years it cut ties with al-Qaida, and experts say HTS has sought to remake itself in recent years by focusing on promoting civilian government in their territory as well as military action. (5)

Politico EU lists the Kurds as likely losers from the current situation, although its direction at this point is not at all clear:

Bashar Assad largely left Syria’s Kurds to their own devices in northeast Syria, where they enjoyed semi-autonomy. Whether a new regime in Damascus, if it is Islamist-dominated, will give the Kurds the same leeway is doubtful — especially as it will owe Erdoğan. It largely depends, of course, on how Syria develops politically. But the Syrian rebel offensive has also seen territorial gains by Turkish-backed Islamists against the U.S.-backed Kurdish militant group, YPG, which has lost control of some towns and villages in the eastern Aleppo countryside.

Syria’s Kurds will hardly be reassured by a Donald Trump social media post on Sunday to the effect that Syria is a mess. “THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” the post said. During his first term as U.S. president, Trump wanted to withdraw all U.S. special forces troops in northeastern Syria, where they have been fighting Islamic State jihadists alongside the Kurds. The Pentagon persuaded him to keep some deployed in the area; there are an estimated 900 still in the country. [my emphasis] (6)

Joe Biden should actually tell Trump to shut the hell up with pronouncements like until he actually becomes President. But Biden won’t tell him that, and Trump will blunder ahead in his usual fashion, unable to distinguish diplomatic strategy from publicity stunts.

And, yes, you read that correctly: the US actually fought in alliance with a genuinely leftwing movement in that instance. Politics is politics.

FRANCE 24 has this current report on the Syrian situation. (7)

At one point, it features a professional speaker and “geopolitical expert” Marco Vincenzino, playing rhetorical footsie with Trump’s isolationist perspective, which Vincenzino prefers to describe as “greater self-interest” or Realpolitik. Using the German “Realpolitik” in English is generally meant to indicate a deep and sophisticated understanding of international relations. How it came to have that connotation is anybody’s guess. Geopolitical Expert Vincenzino even uses the favorite isolationist trope of George Washington’s Farewell Address.

Notes:

(1) Bar’el, Zvi (2024): In the Rubble Left Behind by Assad, Anyone With Weapons Will Try to Decide Syria's Future. Haaretz 12/08/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/syria/2024-12-08/ty-article/.premium/in-the-rubble-left-behind-by-assad-anyone-with-weapons-will-try-to-decide-syrias-future/00000193-a7ef-d6c1-a5fb-f7ef49250000?gift=d56db1e366934082bc8ff450ab0dfebb> (Accessed: 2024-09-12).

(2) Agence France-Presse (2024): Who controls what territory in Syria? The Guardian 12/03/2024. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/03/who-controls-what-territory-in-syria> (Accessed: 2024-09-12).

(3) Broomfield, Matt (2023): Rojava’s Improvised Revolution. Truthdig 10/09/2023. <https://www.truthdig.com/articles/rojavas-improvised-revolution/> (Accessed: 2024-09-12).

De Jong, Alex (2016): The Rojava Project. Jacobin 11/30/2016. <https://jacobin.com/2016/11/rojava-syria-kurds-ypg-pkk-ocalan-turkey> (Accessed: 2024-09-12).

(4) Syria Refugee Crisis Explained. UNHCR 03/13/2024. <https://www.unrefugees.org/news/syria-refugee-crisis-explained/#WheredoSyrianrefugeeslive?DoallSyrianrefugeesliveinrefugeecamps?> (Accessed: 2024-09-12).

(5) Euronews/AP (2024).Syrian opposition fighters overthrow Assad: What comes next? Euronews 08/12/2024. <https://www.euronews.com/2024/12/08/opposition-fighters-drive-syrian-leader-from-the-country-who-are-they-and-what-comes-next> (Accessed: 2024-09-12).

(6) Dettmer, Jamie (2024): Assad’s downfall — the winners and losers. Politico EU 12/08/2024. <https://www.politico.eu/article/bashar-assad-syria-downfall-the-winners-and-losers/> (Accessed: 2024-09-12).

(7) 'International community must be very careful: Events on ground being driven by Syrians themselves'. FRANCE 24 English 12/08/2024. <https://youtu.be/Vic4utJ1jzg?si=FSSInIfxUHO4mN34> (Accessed: 2024-09-12).