Ten years after protesters in an obscure Syrian town demonstrated for change, a direct challenge to the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, half a million Syrians dead and a 100,000 missing, finally the West is accepting the legitimacy of the regime and its leader.

It started with the Gulf Arabs, who have decided that Assad is worth more as an ally – both as a useful expert on defying the odds and suppressing an entire uprising but also for his Midas touch with the Russians who GCC leaders might have to turn to one day, if a new Arab Spring sweeps across the Peninsular.

But then inevitably Joe Biden, whose approach to the Middle East is to have as little to do with it as possible in preference for a foreign policy agenda focussing on China, is following through with this initiative to bring Assad in from the cold once and for all. Intense lobbying in recent month by, in particular the UAE and Saudi Arabia in Washington have paid off and we are witnessing the first tentative steps towards a normalisation of relations with the Syrian leader.

You might have missed the signs as they were not seized upon by western media. The lifting of sanctions against a businessman associated with Assad, followed just recently by allowing Syria to facilitate a gas and electricity to Lebanon – from Egypt, via Jordan and Syria – in what has been called “energy diplomacy” – are clear indications that Biden is prepared to cut Assad some slack where there are obvious benefits to U.S. interests in the region.

It would be hard to imagine that two key decisions in the regime’s favour – Interpol allowing Syria arrest warrant rights and for the WHO to give Syria a seat on its executive board – were not given the tacit approval of the Biden administration. Given that Interpol now is obliged to arrest anyone of the thousands of Syrian dissidents living around the world, or that Assad’s Syria today is a country of people starving while billions of dollars of drugs are being manufactured there, the shift is significant.

Pragmatism seems to be kicking in. The West has lost its own proxy war against the Syrian dictator and there is a general feeling now of working more with Assad and cutting our losses. The war is over, except for Idlib province where Russia fights Turkey-backed extremists and perhaps ten years later the general public who vote in western leaders have educated themselves and learnt a few of the nuances of the ten year battle to overthrow Assad, dressed up as a war against terror; these days, there are pockets of online pundits in both America and the UK who understand that Assad’s forces were allies in fact with the West, in their war against Al Qaeda and its affiliates – a nuanced detail regularly over looked or not even understood by MSM in America.

But what could Biden gain by signalling this shift and stopping short of going the full nine yards himself and lifting all sanctions? Or rather, is it more what he won’t lose?

Lebanon’s meltdown, which saw just this week a total blackout of electricity, is part of it. As Iran wasted no time sending fuel to this tiny country which in recent months has undergone massive shortages and long lines at the pumps, Biden does not want to be the U.S. president whose tenure in office is tarnished by letting Lebanon fall into the abyss and become a full-on Iranian colony, to join Syria, Iraq and Yemen as a fully signed up member of the axis of resistance to U.S. hegemony.

Yet it was a perceived threat to America’s hegemony which assisted the Muslim Brotherhood attempted overthrow of Assad in the first place, which is where this all started. Assad himself must be delighted with how history has done a full circle on him. Despite a country with a destroyed economy and people on the brink of starvation, politically perhaps at his lowest point, he has to only look to the future to see where all this is heading. In recent days, King Abdullah of Jordan made some headlines for having a secret overseas stash of a mere hundred million dollars (small change compared to his Gulf neighbours). He also telephoned President Assad, a man who he had defamed quite spectacularly before and wooed him, talking of the “brotherly” countries and signalling to the Syrian leader that he was ready to welcome him back as a friend and a neighbour. And so, with Syria almost certainly destined to be reinstated at the mother of all talk-lunch-sleep shops, otherwise known as the Arab League, it is probably only a matter of time before Biden moves up a notch the sanctions relief, hoping that this new Syria strategy will give him leverage with the Iranians at the negotiating table in Vienna over the so-called Iran Deal. This is the real story, in reality. Biden badly needs to stop sinking in the Iranian quagmire and showing some peripheral support for Syria is expected to earn him some points. It’s as though we’ve gone back to 2007 with Nancy Pelosi and her “let’s use Assad to control people we don’t normally talk to” approach which almost got the Syrian president “buddy” status in Washington. Almost.

GCC countries have so much to learn from Assad on how to survive an uprising and how to stay in power. But what he can really teach them is how to handle Moscow

In early June, the world was rocked by news from the Middle East that Gulf Arab leaders are now moving even further to becoming a full-on ally of Syrian leader Bashir al-Assad. Now, all countries have their embassies re-opened in Damascus with Saudi Arabia being the last to jump on the bandwagon and the new position of these GCC states is to go beyond merely bringing him in from the cold but to embrace him. Soon, we will see Syria reinstated in the Arab League, an institution largely known around the world as an Arab elite talk shop which only makes the headlines when its members have a very good lunch and often nod off in the afternoon during the speeches.

On the face of it, the move is pragmatic, even erudite. Assad is the ultimate survivor who has fought and won a counterrevolution against the very people – the Muslim Brotherhood – which most (not all) GCC states hate vehemently.

Yet there is some irony now with those same Gulf Arab countries using their influence in Washington to try and convince Joe Biden’s administration that it is time to lift sanctions against Syria. Indeed, it is the Biden touch which has pushed Saudi Arabia, UAE and others towards this extreme measure of “if you can’t beat them, join them.” America may “be back” for most of the world, but for the Middle East the only thing it is “back” to, is Obama’s “soft power” touch in the region.

And what this translates to for the elite of these wobbly states, is forget about the U.S. ever helping us with another Arab Spring revolution.

With Trump, they may have believed that he would do his best to keep them in power. With Biden, they know this is impossible and that they are truly alone.

And this is where Assad comes in.

While it is absolutely true that the GCC states will want to exchange info and intel with Assad about his own experiences fighting an uprising, which will also extend to the darker side of autocratic governance like new torture techniques, Assad would be very useful as a conduit to deal with a new, stronger threat from Iran, which, again, the GCC states don’t believe the U.S. will help them with.

A stronger Iran, run by a hardliner president, calls for extreme measures and these Gulf Arab countries are hedging their bets that if they can use Assad as a communicator and backchannel negotiator, then this could be useful in calming tensions while appealing to his pan-Arabism. In fact, the idea is nothing new. In 2007, the EU and the U.S. wanted to use Assad to communicate with Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranians in exactly the same way.

Yet there is more to it than meets the eye.

The jewel in the crown for GCC countries to restore their relations with Assad is Russia. In September 2015, when Moscow intervened in the Syria war, Assad clung on to power by the Russian air force arriving in Syria. This game changer is the main reason why Assad is still in power today as without Putin’s help, Syria today would be run by Islamic extremists and would almost certainly not be one country.

And so to be close to Assad means being even closer to Russia. In fact, some Gulf Arab leaders had already started talking to Russia about arms deals in what is becoming an increasingly difficult relation to sustain with the U.S. under Joe Biden. It is unclear how far those talks went although they did stir the wrath of Washington which complained the moment the news went out. Biden wants to crack the whip in the Middle East on human rights, reigning in authoritarian leaders like MbS, Sisi and perhaps even MbZ, but also wants those same countries to keep their loyalty to U.S. arms makers.

Perhaps in those talks Putin’s top advisors mentioned that striking huge deals on jets and tanks, for example, would have to come with some guarantees about those weapons not being used on Moscow’s allies. Of course, no GCC state would ever use a jet, wherever it is made, to bomb Iran. That is unthinkable. But they might consider bombing Iran’s allies and proxies in the region.

Most likely the move to get closer to Assad is to appease Russia before a new deal is signed off. If these same GCC countries can agree not to use Russian weapons to arm proxies which fight Assad, Hezbollah, Iranian militias in Iraq or the Houthis, then the new relationship with Assad is a win-win for them. Throw into the bargain that it would also alienate Qatar, who would certainly not sign up to a Russia arms deal and is still very much a supporter of the opposition in Syria, and the Saudis and Emiratis are laughing all the way to the bank. Yet Qatar may prove to be a pivotal player in the endgame. If GCC countries go ahead with arms purchasing – with the tacit agreement from Moscow that its forces will keep them in power come any uprising – it may well be Qatar, which has one of the largest U.S. military bases in the world, will be more warmly welcomed in Washington.

Irish peace activist Dr Declan Hayes explains what’s at stake in Syria’s forthcoming presidential election this month. He predicts incumbent President Bashar al-Assad will win re-election from having strong popular support because the Syrian people view this defiance as their best way to repel the American-led NATO covert war on their nation. The covert war for regime change has been defeated in the battlefield by the Syrian Arab Army and its allies, principally Russia. Peace prevails in much of Syria. However, as Hayes explains, the United States and the foreign enemies of Syria are stepping up economic warfare through sanctions and the looting of resources. The objective is to “keep Syria off balance”. The hostile Western agenda towards Syria fits into a bigger geopolitical picture of the U.S. and its allies trying to destabilize Iran, Russia and China. As Hayes points out, the Syrian people are well aware that they must persist in defying Western aggression if they are to avoid the total collapse inflicted on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya by the Americans and their accomplices.

Declan Hayes observing the 2014 presidential election in Homs

Declan Hayes is a retired British university lecturer. He has travelled to Syria many times during the decade of war where he documented the reality of the Western covert terrorist aggression, contradicting the Western media narrative that sought to demonize the Syrian government while lionizing illegally armed militants as “pro-democracy activists”. He was the only Western observer present when the Syrian Arab Army liberated the ancient Christian city of Maaloula from NATO-backed militants in April 2014. Hayes has facilitated visits to Ireland by Syrian religious leaders who have explained at public meetings what the real nature of the war is about, and how Western governments have tried to foment sectarian divisions among the Syrian population. Hayes has also organized direct humanitarian aid from Ireland to communities in Syria providing life-saving medical operations for countless children. For his endeavors, he has been labelled in the British corporate media as an “Assad apologist”, a “dangerous extremist” and a “Putin apologist”. Labels which he considers to be “medals of honor”.

Interview

Question: The Syrian Arab Republic is holding presidential elections on May 26 with two candidates now officially declared who are contesting the re-election bid by incumbent President Bashar Hafez al-Assad. Who are these two challengers and what are their main policy differences with President Assad?

Declan Hayes: Aligned against President Assad are former deputy cabinet minister Abdullah Salloum Abdullah, and Mahmoud Ahmad Mar’ai, neither of whom have the support of the ruling Ba’ath Party, which is embedded in Syrian civil society and which the Western powers had no great problem with prior to the start of the ongoing crisis, which will be the election’s focus. It is the policies of the Ba’ath Party regarding the crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic which will determine the election’s outcome.

As regards the spurious charge that Syria is a one-party state, so too has the American state of Illinois since the days of Al Capone but the NATO military alliance is not bombing them.

Syria is, in fact, a multi-party state. The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), which was thoroughly repressed in 1955-56, allied itself with the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Lebanese Communist Party. Over 12,000 of the Eagles of the Whirlwind, the SSNP’s armed branch, have fought alongside the Syrian Arab Army against Islamic State (ISIS) and NATO’s other “jihadi” proxies. They, therefore, do have a formidable political presence. Like other legitimate opposition parties, being patriots, they prefer to save their country rather than sell it off piecemeal to NATO’s carpetbaggers.

Hayes witnessed the liberation of Maaloula by the Syrian Army in April 2014 from NATO-backed militants

Question: Western governments and media disparage Syria’s elections as not being “free or fair”. How do Syrian citizens view their nation’s elections?

Declan Hayes: Because Western governments and media have a habit of disparaging elections they disagree with, whether they be in Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Iran, Gaza, Lebanon or Syria, they have no credibility in such matters. And Syria’s people are well aware of the Western hypocrisy.

Question: President Assad appears to retain strong popular support. Is that support due to the Syrian people viewing him as a courageous and principled leader during the last 10 years of war?

Declan Hayes: I was an observer at the 2014 presidential election and I was amazed to see voters lining up at 6am in Damascus to vote. Later that day, I was in the old city of Homs, which had only been recently liberated from the terrorists, who had the BBC’s Paul Conroy and the late Marie Colvin whitewashing their war crimes, which included the ritual execution of Dutch Jesuit priest Frans van der Lugt only days before the Syrian Arab Army liberated it. Despite the city being little more than a pile of rubble, Homs’ network of civil society groups was firmly behind their liberators, the Syrian Arab Army and Bashar al-Assad, the candidate who best exemplifies their defiance, and their desire to live in peace and in freedom. In 2014, Assad won with over 88 percent of the national vote.

Although the Syrians have suffered unspeakably as a result of NATO’s criminal sanctions and the unjust war NATO continues to wage against them, they have no choice but to back their president and their army until they regain their freedom from NATO and its satellites.

NATO’s favored candidates are but concoctions, as they were in Iraq and as they are in Bolivia and Venezuela, puppets and charlatans at best, dangerous war criminals at worst.

Question: Western governments accuse Assad as being a “war criminal” who has waged a civil war against opposition groups thereby bringing disaster to Syria. By contrast, the Syrian government maintains that the nation has been subjected to foreign aggression led by the United States and other Western powers who deployed terrorist proxies for the criminal objective of regime change. How do most Syrian people explain the catastrophe that has engulfed their country over the past decade? Do they share the view that the disaster has been fomented by foreign-backed aggression?

Declan Hayes: To see how ludicrous such charges are against President Assad, one need just recall that The Economist magazine branded Asma, his wife, as a warlord. Even if we forget for a moment that Asma Assad is a woman and therefore that she cannot be a lord, the charge against Syria’s First Lady helps show how ludicrous all such charges are. Irish independent European parliamentarians Mick Wallace and Clare Daly raised the suicide bombing of children in Idlib and the suicide bombing of kindergartens in Homs in the Irish Parliament – war crimes instigated and committed by Irish passport holders – and the Irish government and its EU overseers refused to act. These foreign British, Irish, French and American jihadists have been exposed time and again and, instead of being called to account, they are lauded in the British, Irish, French and American Parliaments, whose members are not concerned with war crimes but with securing their share of the spoils. The Western colonialist rape of the Fertile Belt (Lebanon to Iran) is no different from the 19th-century Western colonialist rape of Africa.

The Syrian people know all of this. They have heard the testimonies of the six million internally displaced and of their own relatives who have served in the Syrian Army. They have spoken to the maimed and the gang-raped, the victims whom the West silences because the truth does not fit the Western narrative. Though they know the West is responsible, they can do little more than vote for Assad and, therefore, for their defenders, the men and women of the Syrian Army.

Question: How bad are the socio-economic conditions in Syria? There are worrying reports of shortages of food, fuel and electrical power.

Declan Hayes: Things are dire. Electricity supply is often down to an hour a day. Food is scarce as the Israelis and Americans are attacking merchant shipping relieving the siege of Syria’s civilians. A Yankee dollar currently gets you 1,300 Syrian pounds compared with 350 only three years ago. The financial crash is because NATO’s economic terror campaign has destroyed not only Syria but the banks in Lebanon, where most Syrian reserves were stored. Syrians are barely hanging on as the West and their aid agencies starve them out, steal their resources and deny them medicines and Covid-19 vaccines.

Question: Do most Syrian citizens see the economic hardships being a result of Western sanctions? Has the general deprivation made Syrians more defiant towards external interference in their country?

Declan Hayes: There is no question that NATO is totally to blame for the destruction in Syria like they are to blame for the destruction in Libya and Iraq. Syrians have the choice of standing behind their army or seeing their country fall to the same type of slave trading flotsam NATO helped install in Libya. It is, as they say, a no-brainer.

Question: How is the security situation in most parts of Syria now? There are reports of sporadic terror attacks. Do most Syrians feel the war is over?

Declan Hayes: The Syrian Army and their allies won the war, not least because the war was a lie and a fabrication from its very beginning. This can be evidenced by the peace now prevailing in Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, and other cities, towns and villages across Syria. Idlib in the northwest would also be at peace, save for the malign intervention of the USA and Turkey. The spates of ISIS-style terrorism in the Syrian desert is a direct result of the USA’s collusion with ISIS to ensure Syria stays off balance.

Question: The Western governments and media portray the Syrian Arab Army as a repressive tool of the “Assad regime”. How do Syrian people view the role of the army during the past 10 years of war?

Declan Hayes: The Syrian Arab Army are the saviors of Syria. They have been so preoccupied fighting the more than 500,000 foreign terrorists NATO sent into Syria that they have had no time to oppress anybody in real or even in virtual time. The idea is as ludicrous as claiming the British Army oppressed London during World War Two.

Question: How do Syrians view the role of Russia and its military intervention to support the Syrian state?

Declan Hayes: All Syrians know that Russia saved Syria from suffering the same American fate as Libya and Iraq. Though some Syrians might favor Russia over Iran, or vice versa, such issues could be important if Syria was allowed to live in peace and free from NATO’s constant attacks. The hope has to be that Assad’s re-election will bring that day nearer.

Question: There are credible reports of U.S. military forces running truck convoys of stolen oil and wheat into Iraq from the eastern part of Syria where the Americans occupy. What is the purpose of this contraband? Do Syrian people view it as brazen imperialist theft?

Declan Hayes: This is, as former U.S. President Donald Trump candidly admitted regarding Syrian oil, not only brazen imperialist criminal theft but it is a continuation of how Turkey looted all the Syrian lands that their terrorist proxies controlled. Not only did Turk-backed militants steal entire factories in Aleppo but they uprooted and stole train tracks and, as I saw in the Armenian town of Kassab, they even stole children’s toys and the copper handles of the doors. The Armenians had to sell the cars they fled in to pay for beds to sleep in and chairs to sit on. The Americans are simply streamlining and legitimizing such looting.

Question: Former British ambassador to Syria Peter Ford in a recent interview for this site condemned the Western sanctions as “economic warfare”. He said they were as harsh as those imposed on Iraq before the U.S. and Britain finally launched a war on Iraq in 2003. How is the morale among the Syrian people and are there concerns that the Western powers might try to launch an all-out war since its covert terrorist-proxy war has failed to achieve regime change?

Declan Hayes: Because the Syrian Army and its gallant allies held the line, there will be no all-out war. Rather, there will be a continuation of low-intensity operations, along the lines that the notorious British SAS “godfather” General Sir Frank Kitson formulated in his covert war doctrine. Coupled with that will be increasing incitement of Russophobia, Shiaphobia and Sinophobia to weaken the resolve of Syria’s allies not only along the Fertile Belt (Lebanon to Iran) but in Southern Russia and Western China as well.

This week marks the 10th anniversary since the United States and its NATO allies launched a devastating covert war of aggression for regime change in Syria. Ten years on, the Arab nation is struggling with war reconstruction, a struggle made all the more onerous because of economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union.

Syria and allied forces from Russia, Iran, Iraq and Lebanon’s Hezbollah won the war, defeating legions of mercenary terrorist fighters who were armed and infiltrated into Syria by NATO. Nearly half a million Syrians were killed and half the pre-war population of 23 million was displaced.

But tragically the war is not over yet. It has moved to new hybrid phase of economic warfare in the form of Western sanctions and blockade on Syria.

The barbarity of Western sanctions on Syria have necessitated the cover of distractive media narratives.

This explains the sensation of British media reports that Asma al-Assad, the wife of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is being investigating by London’s Metropolitan police for war crimes. Asma (45) was born in London, was educated there and holds British nationality. Although she has Syrian heritage.

Now British authorities are mulling stripping her of nationality and seeking her extradition over charges that she aided and abetted war crimes, including preposterously, the use of chemical weapons against civilians. There is practically no chance of a prosecution, but that’s not the British aim. Rather it is all about smearing the Syrian leadership and distracting the world’s attention from the real issues: which are the criminality of NATO’s war on Syria and the ongoing economic warfare to destroy the nation into submission.

Irish peace activist and author Declan Hayes who has travelled extensively in Syria during the past decade commented: “Britain’s legally ludicrous accusations against Asma al-Assad have a number of objectives in mind. They are there to delegitimize Syria’s 2021 presidential elections; they are there to scare expatriate Syrians and British humanitarians; they are there to deflect from NATO’s well documented war crimes; and they are there to deflect from the mercenary collusion of a cast of media, political and NGO characters in NATO’s war crimes in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen.”

Asma married Bashar in 2000. Before the war erupted in March 2011, she was eulogized in Western media as the “desert rose” owing to her feminine beauty and quietly spoken graceful persona. The daughter of a cardiologist and having had a career in investment banking before she become Syria’s First Lady, Asma al-Assad later showed herself to be no wilting flower. She refused to leave Damascus and go into comfortable exile with her children when the war was raging.

She remained loyally by her husband’s side and took on the role of consoling the nation, often visiting families of slain soldiers and civilian victims of NATO’s terror gangs.

No doubt the stress resulted in Asma suffering from breast cancer for which she was successfully treated in 2018.

President Assad and his wife stood by the Syrian nation when the jaws of defeat were looming during the early years of the war. When Russia intervened in support of its historic ally in October 2015, the tide of the war turned decisively against the NATO plan for regime change. Assad was singled out for regime change because of his anti-imperialist position against the U.S., Britain, France and Israel. His alliance with Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah put a target on his back for destruction, as former French foreign minister Roland Dumas disclosed. Dumas revealed that the British government had war plans on Syria two years before the violence erupted in March 2011. In this context, the so-called “uprising” was a carefully orchestrated false flag.

The mysterious shootings of police and protesters in the southern city of Daraa – which served to smear the Assad government internationally – were the same modus operandi used by NATO covert forces which carried out the sniper murders in Kiev’s Maidan Square triggering the February 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine.

Western media headlines this week marking the 10th anniversary since the beginning of NATO’s war on Syria have been ghoulish and nauseating.

There is a sense of gloating over the misery and hunger that the nation is facing.

A headline in Associated Press labels Syria as the “Republic of Queues”, reporting almost gleefully on how civilians are struggling with food and fuel shortages.

Nowhere in the media coverage is there a mention of how the American CIA and Britain’s MI6 ran Operation Timber Sycamore to arm and direct mercenaries to terrorize Syrians. Absurdly, Western media still claim that Syria’s war rose out of “pro-democracy uprisings” which were crushed by a “ruthless Assad regime”.

Barely acknowledged too is the fact that the United States, Britain and the European Union are strangling a war-torn nation with barbaric sanctions preventing reconstruction. The criminality of economic terrorism is the corollary of a failed criminal covert war of aggression.

The abominable reality of Western policy towards Syria has to be covered up. Threatening Syria’s First Lady – a national heroine – with prosecution for war crimes is NATO powers reaching into the gutter.

I am a recipient of regular, usual weekly, emails from the Department of the Treasury providing an “Update to OFAC’s list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) and Blocked Persons.” OFAC is the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which is tasked with both identifying and managing the financial punishments meted out to those individuals and groups that have been sanctioned by the United States government. A recent update, on November 10^th, included “Non-Proliferation Designations; Iran-related Designations.” There were ten items on the list, names of Chinese and Iranian individuals and companies. Those who are “Specially Designated” on the list are subject to having their assets blocked if located in the United States and are also not allowed to engage in any financial transactions that go through U.S. banking channels. As many international banks respect U.S. Treasury “designations” lest they themselves be subjected to secondary sanctions that often means in effect that the individual or group cannot move money in a large part of the global financial marketplace.

The complete SDN list is hundreds of pages long. The Treasury Department defines and justifies OFAC’s mission “As part of its enforcement efforts, OFAC publishes a list of individuals and companies owned or controlled by, or acting for or on behalf of, targeted countries. It also lists individuals, groups, and entities, such as terrorists and narcotics traffickers designated under programs that are not country-specific. Collectively, such individuals and companies are called ‘Specially Designated Nationals’ or ‘SDNs.’ Their assets are blocked and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from dealing with them.”

In reality, of course, OFAC’s sanctions are highly political. They are clearly a form of economic warfare, particularly when entire sectors of a nation’s economy are blocked or a part of a government itself is listed as has been the case with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Force. Wave after wave of “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran have made it difficult for the country to sell its only major marketable resource, oil, and it has been locked out of most normal financial networks, making it difficult or even impossible to buy food and medicines.

In many cases sanctions have no practical effect but are rather intended to send a message. There have been new sanctions directed against Moscow and Russian government officials have been sanctioned due to their alleged involvement in activities that the United States does not approve of. The sanctions are imposed even though those “specially designated” have no assets in the U.S. and do not engage in any international financial transactions that could be blocked or disrupted. In those cases, the federal government is sending a message to whomever has been sanctioned to warn them that they are being watched and their behavior has become a matter of record. It is basically a form of intimidation.

Whether sanctions actually work is debatable. The example of Cuba, which was sanctioned by the U.S. for nearly sixty years, would suggest not. Some would argue that on the contrary countries with totalitarian regimes would actually improve their behavior if their citizens could travel freely and welcome visitors, providing evidence that foreigners do not pose a threat justifying a police state.

Within the United States government, it is largely accepted that the most powerful advocate of the sanctions regime is Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, who has been the driving force behind recent sanctions directed against both China and Iran. If that is so he might well be challenged on one of the most bizarre and basically pointless applications of sanctions in recent years, targeting Asma the wife of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as well as her family that lives in London and are British citizens. Per Pompeo’s statement on the new sanctions “The Department of State today is imposing sanctions on Asma al-Assad, the wife of Bashar al-Assad, for impeding efforts to promote a political resolution of the Syrian conflict pursuant to Section 2(a)(i)(D) of Executive Order 13894… Asma al-Assad has spearheaded efforts on behalf of the regime to consolidate economic and political power, including by using her so-called charities and civil society organizations.”

But the real kicker is Pompeo’s condemnation of Asma, of Syrian origin but English born and raised, is how he involves her family. Her father-in-law Fawaz is a renowned cardiologist at Cromwell Hospital in South Kensington who was educated in England and has lived there for decades. “In addition, we are sanctioning several members of Asma al-Assad’s immediate family, including Fawaz Akhras, Sahar Otri Akhras, Firas al Akhras, and Eyad Akhras as per Section 2(a)(ii) of EO 13894. The Assad and Akhras families have accumulated their ill-gotten riches at the expense of the Syrian people through their control over an extensive, illicit network with links in Europe, the Gulf, and elsewhere.”

Inevitably, no evidence is provided to support any of the allegations about Asma al-Assad and her English family. Asma’s charities are for real in her war-torn country and she is highly respected and admired by those who know her and are not influenced by U.S. and Israeli propaganda.

In reality, the United States has been trying hard to overthrow the Syrian government since 2004 when the Syria Accountability Act was passed. Much of the heat in Congress behind the passage of the act was generated by the Israel Lobby, which wanted to weaken the regime and reduce its ability to represent a viable military force possibly capable of regaining the occupied Golan Heights. Be that as it may, the United States has been hostile to the country’s government and has frequently called for regime change. To bring that about, the U.S. supported al-Qaeda linked terrorist groups operating against Damascus and American soldiers continue to occupy Syrian oil fields in the southeast portion of the country. The Syrians have also been subjected to waves of sanctions that have done grave damage to their economy. American and Israeli concerns have sometimes been linked to the presence of Damascus’ allies Hezbollah and Iran, both of whom have military units based inside Syria, but the simple fact is that neither Iranians nor Lebanese in any way threaten the vastly superior American and Israeli forces present in the region.

One has to ask why, given the realpolitik playing out in the Middle East, Washington and Pompeo feel compelled to go after Asma al-Assad and her family, apparently to include absurdly blaming relatives living for many years outside of Syria for fueling the war. More sanctions, by all means. More grief and suffering and more people around the world wondering what exactly the United States is doing.

During many meetings I had with members of the opposition in several countries several years ago, they kept insisting that the first and central objective of their “Revolution”, was the downfall of President Al-Assad. This was a precondition for the start of the political process to establish a transitional governing body in line with Security Council Resolution 2254; under no condition, they insisted, would they negotiate with President Al-Assad.

That was then; today, the opposition has been reduced to a minority component of a Constitutional Committee to draft a constitution for Syria which amounts to an admission by the opposition and the regional and international powers who supported them, of the end of their presumed “Revolution”. It is also an admission of the legitimacy of the present Syrian constitution and the 2014 election of President Al-Assad, whose downfall they insisted on for years and now with whose representatives they will negotiate to draft a constitution; an anathema for the opposition and their sponsors. In fairness, it should also be noted that the willingness of the Syrian government to be part of the Constitution Committee and negotiate with the opposition is legitimizing the opposition which the government previously considered a terrorist threat.

Presently, a contentious issue between the Syrian authorities and the opposition revolves around whether the Committee shall draft a new constitution or rewrite the 2012 constitution. The 2012 constitution includes 157 articles, the majority of which should, rationally, be acceptable to the opposition. A minority of articles are contentious; of the most contentious and possibly insurmountable articles, the following stand out, starting with the least contentious ones:

1. Article 1. Syria and Syrians national identity. “The Syrian Arab Republic…” and “People of the Syrian Arab Republic are part of the Arab Nation.” Some groups of the Syrian secterian and ethnic mosaic, particularly ethnic, would object to identify Syria and Syrians as Arab.
2. Article 3. Religion in the constitution. “The President has to be part of the Muslim faith” and “Islamic jurisprudence doctrine is a primary source of legislation.” Here also some groups would object to involve religion in the constitution.
3. Articles 91-116. Distribution of executive powers, in which extensive executive powers are granted to the president. Some groups will note that this would be normal if the Syrian political system was Presidential. But the Syrian political system is Parliamentary in which the executive powers ought to be, by and large, delegated to the Prime Minister while the presidential powers would typically be mostly ceremonial.
4. Articles 88 and 155. Two term presidential service and retroactive limitation. Article 88 states, “The President may be re-elected for another single term.” Article 155 states “The provisions of Article /88/ of this constitution shall come into effect as of the next Presidential elections.” Thus, the constitution’s retroactive article permits President Al-Assad to be nominated in the next presidential elections in 2021. The government component will insist on including a provision in the new constitution similar to Article 155 of the present constitution which clearly means President Al-Assad is eligible for nomination in the 2021 presidential elections. Conversely, the opposition would most likely insist on including a retroactive two presidential terms article which will effectively prevent President Al-Assad from nomination in the next presidential elections; a potential deadlock!

For both the government and the opposition, the extensive presidential powers and President Al-Assad’s nomination in the next presidential elections in 2021, amongst others, are the crux of the matter, the carpenter’s knot, as the Arabs would say; an irresistible force colliding with an immovable object. In view of the adoption of the 75% majority voting rule, giving each component a veto power, either of these two issues, could sabotage drafting a new constitution, and rendering the attempt at a peaceful resolution of the Syrian crisis null and void and back to square one, which the government probably would not mind.

The government is united with clear sequential peace process steps leading to where it wants to get. The first step is adopting a new constitution, after which other steps follow. Conversely, the opposition is plagued by many ills including disunity, disorganization, mismanagement, rivalries, etc. It is not united on a clear sequential peace process steps: Is the first step adopting a new constitution or establishing a transitional governing authority? Time is on the side of the government and it will use rules of procedures to delay the drafting of a constitution. The Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem has made it clear that there is no rush in drafting a constitution.

Finally, the government and the opposition are aware of the power disparity between them, which brings to mind Thucydides dictum “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” However, the ultimate question and determining factor is: will the influentials see to it that a new constitution is drafted and the peace process moves on to the next step?

Doug BANDOW

When Syria tragically collapsed into brutal civil war in 2011, Americans had two contending reactions. One was to stay the hell out since there was little they could do other than offer aid to relieve suffering. The other was to intervene big time in order to transform the Middle East.

Naturally, the president, leading congressional Republicans and Democrats, and virtually the entire foreign policy community chose the second option. Never mind American interests, public opinion, fiscal responsibility, practical capabilities, and common sense. It was Washington’s job to reorder the world. What could possibly go wrong?

Without seeking congressional approval, the Obama administration embarked on a multi-faceted campaign: oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who had not attacked or threatened America; find, train, and empower moderate insurgents to create a liberal democracy in Syria; use radical extremists, such as al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra, against really radical extremists, such as the Islamic State; expel Iranian forces, even though they represented a government with far more at stake in the conflict than America and had been welcomed by Damascus; convince Moscow, a Cold War ally of Syria, to advance Washington’s agenda; employ Syrian Kurds to act as America’s shock troops against ISIS; persuade Turkey, which profited greatly from the illicit ISIS oil trade, to combat the Islamic State; pacify Turkey while arming Syrian Kurds, which Ankara viewed as an existential threat; and occupy sovereign Syrian territory until the foregoing objectives had been achieved.

It was the plan of a madman—or an arrogant, officious, ignorant social engineer with no understanding of human nature, the Middle East, or America. Predictably, the result was almost complete failure. The Islamic State was at least defeated, but it was also opposed by Syria, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Israel, Russia, European governments, the Gulf States, and America. Just some of those countries could have done the job, yet they had little need to contribute much once Washington had taken responsibility.

In spite of all that, today, Assad is still in power, and aided by the Iranians and Russians. There were never many moderates and democrats, and they never had much chance of winning. Most of the insurgents, radical and more radical, are gone, courtesy the Syrian military, other than around the city of Idlib. Ankara has occupied and ethnically cleansed Kurdish territory in northern Syria and is preparing to seize more borderlands containing Kurds.

Until recently, around 1,000 American military personnel had been left in Syria, stationed among Kurdish forces that occupy around a third of Syrian territory. The occupying Americans’ job, explained Washington policymakers, was unchanged: oust Assad, bring democracy to Syria, get rid of the Iranians, bring sense to the Russians, and, until Sunday anyway, stop the Turks from harming the Kurds. Washington’s ambitions remained ever fantastic even as after its means shrank to near nothingness.

Moreover, the mission remains entirely illegal, without congressional or international warrant. On his own authority, the president entered a foreign war, occupied a foreign country, dismembered a foreign nation, established a foreign security commitment, and threatened war against a foreign government along with its long-time foreign allies. This is the sort of behavior that the British king engaged in, which the nation’s founders sought to curb by placing the power to declare war in congressional hands.

Of course, there remains much to criticize about the president’s decision to move U.S. forces away from the border and presumably exit entirely. Even when he does the right thing, he usually does so for the wrong reason and in the wrong way. Still, his previous efforts to end U.S. participation in Afghanistan and Syria generated frenzied opposition from the war hawks who dominate Congress and even his own staff. Again and again he gave in to those prophesying doom if the smallest deployment anywhere was curtailed to the slightest degree. Perhaps the only way he can set policy is by acting without warning, essentially by fait accompli.

None of the arguments for remaining in Syria are serious, let alone persuasive. Wishing for a different result does not a viable alternative make. By means more foul than fair, Assad has won: no minuscule American military presence is going to oust him, force him to hold fair elections, or make him send home the Iranians and Russians who sustained him. Even a vastly expanded American commitment wouldn’t achieve what eight years of civil war failed to do. And there is no popular or political will for such an effort.

The U.S. military is not the only force standing between Americans and a globe-spanning ISIS empire. Every Middle Eastern country is threatened by the Islamic State, and each of them has a greater interest than the U.S. in ensuring that the group does not again metastasize. Indeed, an expanded Syrian military presence in areas occupied but not populated by Kurds—currently opposed by Washington—would create an important barrier to an Islamic State revival.

The greatest outrage against the president’s decision is over his leaving the Kurdish autonomous region of Rojava vulnerable to Turkish attack. Yet the Kurds had good reason for battling the Islamic State, which threatened them as well. Washington did not force them to act and provided them with aid, arms, and protection. Nothing entitled the Kurds to a permanent American security guarantee, especially protection from neighboring Turkey, an American ally.

Moreover, the Kurds had little reason to believe in America’s sponsorship. In the 1970s, Washington worked with Iran’s Shah to use them against Iraq, before abandoning them. In 2017, Kurdistan held an ill-advised independence referendum, and the Trump administration unhesitatingly backed Baghdad—which closed the airspace over Erbil and forcibly reclaimed non-Kurdish areas, including Kirkuk and nearby oil fields.

Nor should anyone confuse a potential Kurdish homeland with liberal, democratic, and moderate values. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in Turkey, is no friend of the West. Kurdistan is a family-run state. The Syrian Kurdish movement is neo-Marxist and linked to the PKK. The U.S. can, and should, have sympathy for the Kurdish people and work with their authorities when appropriate. But Washington should act without starry-eyed illusions. Ankara’s concerns are overblown and its treatment of the Kurds at home and abroad has been outrageously brutish, but neither do Kurdish politicians win medals for humanitarianism.

As for issues of credibility, it is far worse to needlessly risk lives and resources to fight an unnecessary and foolish war than to walk away from a bad promise or deal. No one will judge America’s willingness to defend against existential threats by its willingness to sustain a marginal wartime commitment that generates few benefits. Virtually all great powers put their own peoples and interests first, as assorted American allies and friends have learned to their detriment over the years.

More important, but lost in the analysis, is the fact that Turkey, a member of America’s premier military alliance and treaty ally of almost 68 years, has a higher claim to credibility than the Kurds. Discomfort with Ankara notwithstanding—a good case can be made for expelling the Islamist, repressive Erdogan regime from NATO—as of today, Turkey remains an alliance member in good standing and Washington remains committed to that government’s defense. If the U.S. won’t prioritize Ankara’s security claims, what nation can rely on Washington? If credibility is the issue, then Turkey wins any dispute with the Kurds.

Perhaps the most dangerous attitude in Washington is the certainty that today’s policymakers can succeed where yesterday’s policymakers failed. Consider Uncle Sam’s disastrous record in foreign civil wars. Ronald Reagan’s greatest mistake was taking the U.S. into the Lebanese Civil War, with its more than a score of contending factions. Americans are still fighting in Afghanistan, 18 years after joining an internecine conflict that had begun years before.

The U.S. and Europe intervened in Libya’s civil war, and after eight years of combat and chaos, featuring the rise of ISIS and the murders of Egyptian Copts, fighting continues. More than four years of American backing for Saudi and Emirati depredations in Yemen have yielded tens of thousand of civilian casualties, horrendous famines and epidemics, and increasing attacks on the Saudi homeland, with no end in sight.

Then there is Syria. As that conflict raged, Samantha Power, one of the chief advocates of promiscuous military intervention, complained that war supporters were being held accountable for their previous blunders, especially in Iraq: “I think there is too much of, ‘Oh, look, this is what intervention has wrought’…one has to be careful about overdrawing lessons.” How unfair: destroy a nation, in the process empowering Islamist radicals and terrorists, wrecking minority religious communities, and triggering conflict that kills hundreds of thousands, and people are less inclined to listen to you. Is there no justice?

Imagine what American foreign policy might look like if officials were judged on the results of their actions. Who in power today could withstand scrutiny? Whatever would they do in Washington?

These are the people who are most upset over President Trump’s apparent decision to bring home U.S. forces from Syria. He should ignore the carping. He promised to stop the endless wars. Syria would be a good place to start putting America and Americans first.

theamericanconservative.com

Damascus is large and busy, as befits Syria’s capital. The city hosts the nation’s elite and is filled with government buildings and security forces. President Bashar al-Assad’s image adorns virtually every street. There is no doubt who is in charge.

But drive just a few minutes, and you enter a neighborhood only recently recovered after bitter fighting. Wrecked buildings stand as silent sentinels amid a sea of rubble. The carnage of seven years of horrid civil war reached even Damascus.

At long last, the conflict is winding down. Assad has won, and Washington has lost. However, the war’s impact will linger for years, perhaps decades. I just spent a week in the war-ravaged state (at my organization’s expense). America’s approach has been a disastrous failure.

Like Lebanon decades ago, the Syria conflict was an unusually complicated civil war. The fighting was brutal all around, with multiple warring forces to blame for an estimated half-million deaths. Indeed, past casualty breakdowns, admittedly of unknown accuracy, reported more combat than civilian deaths and more government than insurgent deaths.

Assad survived because he had—and still has—serious, even fervent support. He receives strong backing from his fellow Alawites, a minority sect and Shia offshoot. They commonly display pictures of him and speak of his humanitarian virtues. Other religious minorities, such as Christians, also tend to support his government. They saw the U.S.-inspired revolution in Iraq and didn’t like the ending. After all, even an American occupation didn’t prevent sectarian cleansing and slaughter, and many of the survivors fled to Syria.

Moreover, there is some broader acquiescence if not support for the regime. The military has sustained itself, despite suffering significant casualties, which required employing conscription beyond minority communities. Posters picturing dead soldiers adorn signs and buildings in the communities I visited. Far from hiding its losses, the regime appears to use them to forge a common identity. Assad’s backers cannot be wished aside, as Washington seemed to do. Furthermore, since defeat would have guaranteed their destruction, they fought ferociously.

The United States is mistakenly fixated on Assad. Of course, he was no friend of America, but if he lost, someone else would win. Washington should have focused on the “compared to what” question. Was American involvement likely to lead to a better result? The Iraq debacle demonstrated how America could make the situation far worse.

The Assad government is a dictatorship, but it is authoritarian, not totalitarian, and secular, not religious. Syrian society is striking—it looks and feels remarkably modern. There are religious conservatives, of course, but the Assads, father and son, like Saddam Hussein, created a diverse and secular public square in which most Americans would feel comfortable.

Of course, Washington wanted a truly liberal, democratic Syria. That was a worthy objective, but none of the armed factions was likely to deliver such a future. Even the so-called moderates may have been less than what they seemed. For instance, some Assad supporters contended that some early peaceful demonstrations emphasized sectarianism, with some crowds shouting, “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave!”

In any case, the so-called Free Syrian Army proved to be a weak reed. In one program Washington spent a half-billion dollars on training fifty-four fighters, most of whom were quickly captured or killed. Radicals have also admitted posing as “moderates” to collect U.S. cash and weapons. U.S.-supported groups seemed to lose most of their battles and end up surrendering, along with their U.S.-supplied weapons, to more radical forces.

The alternative was a variety of extremists, including Jabhat al-Nusra, which Washington backed, and the Islamic State, which the United States opposed. Additionally, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf State allies poured billions of dollars into various murderous jihadist factions. Moreover, Turkey—focused on ousting Assad—allowed ISIS to transit Turkish territory and sell captured oil.

Did the Obama administration really believe that Syrians and Americans would benefit if any of these groups gained control? American support for Jabhat al-Nusra was particularly bizarre since it was affiliated with Al Qaeda which, if anyone forgot, staged the 9/11 attacks.

However, in a multisided conflict, American backing for the FSA ultimately empowered the radicals. The Assad government was the strongest force battling ISIS and other extremists. The FSA could only weaken Damascus, not actually take and maintain power. At least, absent strong and sustained American combat support, which was politically impossible.

U.S. policy was not just hopeless but inconsistent and even confused. The Obama administration sought to oust Assad and defeat ISIS, even though the former battled the latter. By aiding the FSA and fighting ISIS, Washington created an incentive for Damascus to concentrate on the former and ignore the latter. The United States opposed other radical jihadist groups despite allying with Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar—all of which supported the very same extremists while abandoning the fight against ISIS. Washington also sought to work with both Turkey, which prioritized curbing Kurdish autonomy, and the Kurds, who were prepared to cooperate with Damascus to achieve that autonomy.

Washington also railed against Iran and Russia for assisting Syria’s government, even though Assad requested it. Yet, while complaining about that assistance, Washington flouted international law to intervene against Damascus and claimed the right to determine Syria’s future. Indeed, American forces still illegally occupy Syrian land in hopes of forcing Assad from power.

The Trump administration’s wartime objectives have turned into pure fantasy. No combination of insurgents threatens Assad. At the start of the war, Damascus suburbs were in flames, bombs were exploding in the capital, new opposition groups were arising, and the Syrian army was over-stretched. At the time, few observers imagined Assad regaining control over most of his country. However, today the regime has mostly defeated all of its opponents. Damascus residents are largely optimistic about the future.

Nor is there is any effective pressure on Syria to democratize. The moderate insurgents always appeared to be a mystical unicorn which the West expected to materialize magically. They were vital to giving the opposition international legitimacy but never appeared to be serious rivals for power. Currently, only Islamist extremists and the Kurds remain. For instance, dominant in Idlib province is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Al Qaeda affiliate backed by Turkey.

The Assad government is threatening to open an offensive against Idlib. This has prompted Moscow and Ankara to reach a demilitarization agreement for Idlib, but Syria insists it is merely a temporary expedient to limit casualties. In northern Syria, American forces back Kurdish militias, which control around a third of the country. Meanwhile, Washington hopes to pressure the Assad regime to agree to its own dissolution by denying it oil along with population and territory.

However, the regime is more secure than at any point since 2011. The Trump administration has no authority to invade, occupy, and dismantle a foreign nation, for whatever reason. Moreover, Washington’s failure to protect Syrian Kurds from Turkish attack has encouraged Kurdish discussions with Damascus—the two sides had largely avoided fighting even as civil war spread—over a long-term modus vivendi. Restored Syrian control over the region and especially border might alleviate Turkish fears over an independent Kurdish state.

Nor can Washington force Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia from Syria. They long were allied with Damascus, and they have far more at stake than America in Syria’s future. Their role is significant and transparent: I drove by Hmeimim airbase shared by Moscow near the coast. While I was at a roadside stand two trucks emptied armed Russians who purchased snacks. Pictures of Assad with Vladimir Putin and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah are common. In Damascus, I also walked by a mosque which was identified as catering to Hezbollah.

Washington should bring its forces home. Neither Iraq nor Syria has threatened America. The designation of Damascus, which never staged a terrorist attack against American targets, as a state sponsor of terrorism was political, reflecting Syria’s support for such groups as Hamas, which is a quasi-state hostile to Israel. But since 1973, Syria has lived in a cold peace with Israel, and that won’t change. Overall, Damascus is much weaker than before the civil war and will have to focus on reconstruction.

In any case, President Donald Trump has no warrant to occupy Syria without congressional approval and has no purpose which justifies congressional assent. Washington’s plan to deny aid to areas under government control is equally dubious. There are reasonable arguments for America to keep its money at home, but not for discriminating against those subject to the Assad regime. But the idea that withholding American aid dollars will foster unrest and even revolt is fanciful.

The Syrian civil war has been a great tragedy. Hopefully, the long-term result will be a more liberal, democratic state. However, nothing justifies continued U.S. military involvement. America’s attempt at coercive social engineering never was realistic. The Trump administration should end Washington’s latest Middle Eastern misadventure.

nationalinterest.org