A US-Israeli masterclass in how to discourage change in Syria
By James M. Dorsey
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US and Israeli responses to President Bashar al-Assad’s fall
offer a masterclass on how to discourage change in Syria.
Rather than test and encourage Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa,
aka Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, US and Israeli actions seem designed to box him in
and potentially set him up for failure.
Mr. Al-Sharaa is no run-of-the-mill rebel. He is a former Al
Qaeda and Islamic State operative with a $10 million US bounty on his head. A
deeply religious figure, Mr. Al-Sharaa insists he disavowed jihadism when he
split with the jihadist militants in 2016.
His track record since then has been chequered but suggests
his claim has merit, even though question marks remain.
US and United Nations officials have noted that Mr.
Al-Sharaa has said all the “right
things” regarding inclusivity, minority rights, Iran, Hezbollah, and
transitional justice but want to see actions follow words.
Setting a date for elections and laying out how Syria will
go about drafting and approving a new constitution in line with United Nations
Security Council Resolution 2254 would go some way in that direction. Adopted
in 2015 the resolution provides a road map for political transition in Syria.
Mr. All-Sharaa argued this week that Syria was not
ready for elections because it was still mired in turmoil with millions of
Syrians internally displaced or in exile. Instead, the Syrian leader and other
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham officials have spoken about the
need for a technocratic government that would reform institutions.
Even so, Mr. Al-Sharaa’s statements to date and initial
administrative moves were enough for US officials to enter into direct
contact with Hayat Tahrir despite it being a US-designated terrorist group.
It was also enough to spark
debate in Washington on whether to take the group off the US terrorism
list.
Credit: The
New Arab
However, it was not
enough for the US Congress to lift the harshest sanctions imposed on Syria,
one of the world’s most sanctioned countries, introduced initially to isolate
the Al-Assad regime. Instead, Congress extended the sanctions, which would have
expired on December 20, hours before the rebels overthrew Mr. Al-Assad.
The Congress vote puts the ball in outgoing US President Joe
Biden’s court. Mr. Biden has the authority to waive many of the sanctions.
Congressmen Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, and
Pennsylvania Democrat Brendan Boyle urged the Biden administration to
suspend sectoral sanctions and sanctions related to reconstruction while
maintaining sanctions on former Al-Assad regime officials.
US
Congressmen Wilson and Boyle’s letter. Source: X
Messrs. Wilson and Boyle argued, “A deliberate and phased
approach is required to unwind sanctions and export controls against Syria.”
Lifting the sanctions would be a gesture that allows Mr.
Al-Sharaa to move ahead with the rebuilding and rehabilitation of what Syria’s
newly appointed information minister, Mohammad al-Omar, described on Al Jazeera
as a war-ravaged, “completely destroyed economy” that needs to be “rebuilt…from
scratch.”
Even so, saying the “right things” also failed to persuade
the United States to pressure Israel to limit its massive bombing campaign.
The intensity of the campaign suggests Israel’s goals go far
beyond depriving post-Assad Syria of whatever weapons of mass destruction,
particularly chemical weapons, it may have inherited from the deposed
president.
Rather than pursuing objectives targeting precise Israeli
security concerns, such as ensuring Syria no longer serves as a conduit for
weapons and funding to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militia, and
Palestinian insurgents in the occupied West Bank, Israel appears determined to
militarily emasculate the new Syria.
The Israeli military said it had destroyed
80 per cent of its Syrian counterpart in hundreds of sorties in the
past week in what one security official described as “one of the largest
attack operations in the history of the (Israeli) Air Force.”
Classified
Al-Assad regime documents. Credit Newlines
Classified
Al-Assad regime documents leaked on social media after the president’s
toppling suggest that Israeli military operations prior to the rebel takeover
were calibrated to ensure the Syrian military had what it needed to keep a
weakened Mr. Al-Assad in power.
In other words, Israel did not want to emasculate Mr.
Al-Assad in the way it is emasculating Mr. Al-Sharaa.
The problem is emasculation is hardly a way to make friends,
particularly if Israel and Mr. Al Sharaa’s new Syrian administration more
likely than not have a common interest in addressing Israeli security concerns
as they relate to Iran and its non-state allies, who were together with Russia,
Mr. Al-Assad’s principal backers.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz asserted that unspecified
“recent
developments in Syria are increasing the intensity of the threat - despite
the moderate appearance that the rebel leaders claim to present."
Meanwhile, Israeli officials said Jordan was acting as a
communication channel between Israel and Hayat Tahrir. The communications focused
in part on preventing
Iran-backed groups from smuggling weapons via Jordan to Palestinian militants
in the occupied West Bank.
Israel’s failure to pursue less destructive ways of
addressing its concerns amounts to a refusal to pick up on Mr. Al-Sharaa’s
initial messages, including statements
that Syria is war-weary, does not want a conflict with Israel, and has ended
Iran’s use of Syria as a funnel for weapons and other supplies to Hezbollah and
others.
In that vein, former Israeli foreign ministry director
general Alon Liel noted that Israeli officials refuse to acknowledge the
significance of Mr. Al-Sharaa and his rebel group referencing Israel by its
name as opposed to the Al-Assad regime’s labelling of the Jewish state as “the
enemy” or “the Zionist entity.”
Israel also failed to note that Mr. Al-Sharaa, in stunning
remarks for a Syrian leader, justified
Israel’s targeting of Iranian and Hezbollah facilities in Syria during Mr.
Al-Assad’s reign, arguing that the rebel takeover had eliminated the Iranian
threat.
Emasculating Syria militarily, coupled with Israel’s planned
expansion of settlements in the Golan Heights, suggests Israel realises
that its US-backed 1981 annexation of the territory, conquered from Syria
during the 1967 Middle East war, precludes the possibility of a normalisation
of relations between the two countries.
So does Israel’s
occupation of additional Syrian territory, including areas operated by rebel
groups supported by Israel during the civil war. Areas occupied by Israel
since Mr. Al-Assad’s fall include territory
in the Quneitra governorate and the Yarmouk Basin in Deraa, close to the
Golan Heights and the Jordanian border.
Israeli military correspondents reported that local officials were collecting weapons
in their villages and handing them to Israeli forces. That does not by
definition mean that locals welcome the Israeli presence.
Based on recent
interviews with locals, scholar and analyst Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi warned
that Israeli operations were erasing goodwill Israel had garnered during the
civil war when it enabled them to create a buffer zone to keep Iranian and
Hezbollah operatives away from the Golan Heights and provided medical services.
All in all, Israeli troops reportedly advanced 10 kilometres
from the Golan Heights further into Syria and are at Tel Hadar, 20 kilometres from
Damascus.
Credit:
Haaretz
Israel has a history of failing to turn military victories
into political successes. Syria threatens to confirm the rule.
Similarly, the Biden administration’s refusal to reign in
Israel amounts to a self-defeating attempt to bite off the nose to spite the
face.
With Middle Eastern states condemning
Israeli operations in Syria and calling for support of Mr. Al-Sharaa’s
government, US backing for Israeli actions in Syria and maintenance of
sanctions risks destabilising rather than stabilising the country and the
region.
Destabilisation could potentially involve Syria’s
fragmentation with Kurds in the north seeking to carve out an autonomous
existence of their own, despite recent advances by Turkish-backed forces, and
Alawites, the Shiite Muslim sect from which the Al-Assads hail, following a
similar course with possible Russian and Iranian support.
That can hardly be the purpose of the exercise.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an
Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and
podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.
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