بواسطة Salon Syria Reports | أكتوبر 25, 2018 | News, غير مصنف
وصف الصحافي الياباني جومباي ياسودا الذي خطف في سوريا قبل أكثر من ثلاث سنوات وأفرج عنه هذا الأسبوع سنوات أسره ب”الجحيم”، ذلك قبل أن يستقل الطائرة التي ستقله الى اليابان.
وقال ياسودا “كان ذلك جحيما” في لقاء أجرته معه قناة تلفزيونية يابانية، مشيرا الى أن معاناته “لم تكن فقط على الصعيد الجسدي ولكن الذهني. كنا اقول لنفسي كل يوم (لن يتم الافراج عني اليوم) واصبحت أفقد السيطرة على نفسي يوما بعد يوم”. وبدت ملامح هذا الصحافي المستقل (44 عام) متعبة لكنه كانت مرتاحا ومتوترا في آن. وقال: “لم اتحدث اليابانية منذ 40 شهرا واجد صعوبة في استحضار كلماتي”.
وأضاف ياسودا “أنا سعيد بعودتي إلى اليابان ولكنني في نفس الوقت، ليس لدي أدنى فكرة عما سيحدث الآن وكيف يجب أن أتصرف، لا أعلم بماذا أفكر” قبل أن يعتذر عن “المتاعب” التي تسبب بها. وتعرض رهائن يابانيون سابقون للإهانة لدى عودتهم الى بلادهم من قبل مواطنيهم الذين اتهموهم بعدم اتخاذ الحيطة.
وكشف في لقاء تلفزيوني آخر عن ظروف احتجازه، موضحا بأنه لم يتمكن من الاستحمام لمدة ثمانية أشهر كما أجبر على البقاء بلا حراك لساعات طويلة.
خطف جومباي ياسودا في يونيو (حزيران) 2015، وظهر في تسجيل فيديو بثته جماعة جهادية مسلحة الصيف الماضي يحذّر من أنّه في وضع سيء. وفي أغسطس (اب) الفائت، نشرت جماعة جهادية شريطَي فيديو يتشابهان في طريقة التصوير لرجُلَين محتجزين في سوريا أحدهما الياباني ياسودا والآخر الإيطالي أليساندرو ساندريني. وكان المحتجزان راكعين ويرتديان لباسًا برتقاليًا، ويقف وراء كلّ منهما رجلان مسلّحان.
وفُقد أثر الرهينة الياباني في سوريا منتصف العام 2015. وفي مارس (آذار) 2016، أعلنت الحكومة اليابانية أنها تدقق في شريط فيديو منشور على الإنترنت، بينما ذكرت وسائل إعلام يابانية أن هذا الصحافي محتجز لدى جبهة النصرة المرتبطة بتنظيم القاعدة. لكن هيئة تحرير الشام، التي تقودها جبهة النصرة السابقة نفت في بيان الثلاثاء أي تورط في الأمر. وفي 2015 قام متشددون من تنظيم “داعش” بقطع رأس المراسل الحربي الياباني كينجي غوتو وصديقه هارونا يوكاوا في سوريا.
وكالات
بواسطة Salon Syria Team | أكتوبر 25, 2018 | Roundtables, غير مصنف
Salon Syria, a platform dedicated to cultivating a space for wide-ranging views on Syria, its past, and future, is proud to publish the first of its English language roundtables. These roundtables consciously solicit contributions of Syrians and Syria experts from different perspectives and backgrounds.
In this ongoing roundtable (we are happy to continue reviewing submissions), authors responded to our call to comment on critical turning points in the Syrian uprising. What started as a largely non-violent uprising has become a major humanitarian disaster and geopolitical crises. Along the way the conflict has gone through numerous stages and transformations. As we reflect on seven years of an ongoing and brutal conflict, what can we identify as the most crucial developments that have altered its course? What forces, factors, and actors created those turning points? What were their implications on the nature of what was taking place. What if any, do these turning points imply about how we should understand the conflict’s reality today and options for the future? The authors in this roundtable offer us a variety of thoughts that enrich our understanding of Syria’s difficult past years.
Should you wish to submit your own analysis of turning points, in either Arabic or English, please email us at info@salonsyria.com
Participants:
Samer Abboud
Josephine Lippincott – Syria Turning Points: The International and the Local
Aron Lund – Syria Turning Points: External Leverage and Its Limits
Nikolaos van Dam
Joel Veldkamp – Syria Turning Points: The United States and Syria’s Armed Uprising
Ola Rifai – Six turning points on the Syrian uprising
بواسطة Samer Abboud | أكتوبر 25, 2018 | Roundtables, غير مصنف
In recent weeks, observers of the Syrian conflict have shifted their attention to a presumptive attack on Idlib governorate by Russian and regime-aligned forces. The front- and back-stage negotiations happening between Syria’s tripartite suzerains Russia, Turkey, and Iran about the fate of Idlib have paralleled speculation about the future of Syrian reconstruction and the role that outside powers can play therein. These are radically different preoccupations than those of 2014, when the military situation on the ground lent itself to much more divergent paths than where we find ourselves today.
Between 2013 and 2015, most of us considered the Syrian conflict to be mired in a military and political stalemate. The military landscape fragmented and while most armed actors were strong enough to fight, they were not strong enough to seize, hold, and govern territory for extended periods. Territorial control was fluid and violence quickly metastasized as drivers of conflict expanded. The need for armed groups to materially reproduce incentivized violence to secure material resources, thus expanding the conflict’s war economies. Inter-armed group fighting proliferated and there were no longer clear distinctions between regime and rebel forces, as Kurdish, ISIS, jihadist, Free Syrian Army (FSA), and other groups emerged in the enabling conditions of conflict after which they often ended up fighting each other. The military stalemate was fueled by external interventions supporting all the armed actors. Increasingly, the conflict became internationalized, yet political efforts on the international stage through the United Nations to halt the violence were similarly mired in stalemate as the external intervening actors were committed to a military solution which came at the expense of serious political negotiations.
The Russian military intervention that began in September 2015 represents the beginning of the end of the stalemate as it has moved the conflict beyond stalemate and toward what I have called elsewhere an “authoritarian peace”. While accelerating Syria’s humanitarian catastrophe, the Russian intervention has paradoxically made politics possible. On the one hand, the military landscape fundamentally changed after September 2015 as more territory came under Russian and regime-aligned forces’ control, altering the dynamics of the conflict. On the other hand, these changing military realities made possible a Russian designed and led peace process, the Astana process, that peripheralized the United Nations and Western states that were politically committed to the United Nations-led Geneva process.
Why was the Russian military intervention so successful in breaking the stalemate? First, the intervention suffocated the ability of armed groups to materially and socially reproduce. The military attacks suffocated supply routes, first focusing on major highways and trade routes, then moving into more concentrated areas of rebel control. This coincided with destructive, indiscriminate attacks against areas of large armed group presence. Syrian territories were demarcated and attacked by Russian aerial and ground attacks that severely depleted armed groups and affected their recruitment and reproductive possibilities. But this did not occur throughout the country, simultaneously. Instead, the intervention began in pockets of territory and spread slowly to other areas of the country. Second, the intensity of the Russian intervention tilted the military balance in favor of the regime-aligned forces in immeasurable and, barring a similar intervention from another state, irreversible ways.
Third, the intervention accelerated existing models of local resolution in Syria while creating the conditions for new innovations to make “peace” and cleanse areas of civilian and armed elements. Local truces in Syria began early in the conflict as ways for armed groups to negotiate mobility, transfers, and trade between areas under competing control. They have today evolved into truces between regime and non-regime forces that represent the military strength of the former, and which effectively sanction the displacement of entire populations. The negotiations for these truces tend to follow a similar pattern that reflects the new military realities. They are not negotiated but mostly imposed. In all cases after 2015, the truces led to the disarmament (save for their pistols) and movement of armed fighters to Idlib. Civilians were often also forced out of their homes in these truces. For years now, then, these truces have concentrated Syria’s armed fighters into Idlib which today is the last major area outside of regime-aligned forces control. The other innovation emerged through the Astana process in the form of the de-escalation zones. These are zones of agreed upon truce. Non-regime forces are expected to maintain a position of non-violence in them. However, Russian and regime-aligned forces reserve the right to exercise violence against anyone or any community deemed recalcitrant thus deciding who is in and out of the de-escalation zone terms. These zones remain nominally peaceful for some, but that peace is underpinned by the continued presence and threat of violence by Russia and regime-aligned forces. Finally, these changing military realities created the conditions of possibility for a political process that brought together the conflict’s main external parties – Russia, Iran, and Turkey – into tripartite negotiation to manage the conflict at the expense of other intervening actors, such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Western countries. The Astana process does not represent consensus among the international actors, but rather a mechanism to negotiate and determine Syria’s future. No such forum existed prior to the Russian intervention in 2015.
Any understanding of how the military and political stalemate was broken should not be confused for support of that process. Indeed, what the post-2015 trajectory of the conflict demonstrates is that the Syrian conflict is sufficiently internationalized to be out of the hands of Syrians themselves to decide their fate. As the conflict evolved after 2015 many more lives were lost, and the humanitarian catastrophe only intensified. The Astana talks may have made a political process and vision possible, but these have been largely unproductive in engaging, let alone addressing, many of the concerns Syrians have today. Nevertheless, as we shift our gaze from Syria’s past to its immediate future, a future in which Idlib and reconstruction are on the minds of most observers, we see that the Russian intervention in 2015 and its aftermath substantively altered the trajectory of the conflict, broke the military and political stalemate, and provided the foundations for the emergence of an authoritarian peace in Syria.
[Other roundtable submissions can be found here]
بواسطة Aron Lund | أكتوبر 25, 2018 | Roundtables, غير مصنف
Looking back at seven years of Syrian civil war, it is striking how many pivotal moments have been the result of foreign intervention and external meddling.
That is not to say events since 2011 have played out according to a foreign script. Portraying Syria’s civil war as a process masterminded by foreigners would be unfair to Syrians – and, given the state of Syria, probably also to the foreigners. In reality, although many outside powers have tried to rearrange the Syrian battlefield, most of their grand ambitions have sunk without rescue into Syria’s swamp of competing factions.
But although local realities have fixed the conflict’s terms and frustrated many meddling outsiders, Syrians have had little power over their fate. Once it was clear that President Bashar al-Assad would not bend to the demands of his opponents and that those opponents had waded so far into the struggle that they could no longer see a way back, events began to unfold according to their own infernal logic.
In that spiral of state breakdown and social polarization, what one side felt to be a desperate act of survival would be perceived by the other as unconscionable escalation and met in kind. The structural makeup of the warring sides largely determined their behavior from 2011 onward, with many little situational upsets and gambles but few big-picture surprises – except for those that came from outside Syria’s borders.
In retrospect, some such interventions stand out as especially important. Most have of course been thoroughly dissected.
For example, the 2013 chemical weapons crisis has gained near-mythical significance in both Syrian and US politics, becoming a strange sort of shibboleth. But though the events of that summer and autumn were undeniably important, it is hard to shake the impression that President Barack Obama’s decision to settle for a Russian-inspired deal instead of firing missiles into Syria did more to disperse the fog of politics from existing circumstances than to break new ground.
Had Obama opted to pull the trigger anyway, for a one-off display of overwhelming dominance, Assad’s regime would likely have received one more disfiguring scar, the conflict would have taken a few extra spins, and the question of Syria’s chemical weapons program would have lingered as an equal or greater problem than it is today.
But there is little reason to assume that the conflict’s fundamentals would have evolved along radically different paths. Given the way the regime worked and the opposition did not, Obama had no credible path to victory on terms compatible with US politics – he knew it, and was trapped by that understanding.
In some sense, the 2013 crisis was like Assad’s December 2016 retaking of eastern Aleppo: a devastating turning point for the opposition and its backers, but also, ultimately, an unsurprising outcome of the war’s configuration at that moment.
Less obvious, but no less important, were the roads not taken.
In June 2012, the late Kofi Annan, who at the time served as a joint envoy of the UN secretary-general and the Arab League, summoned a group of major international players to sign off on basic principles for a peaceful solution in Syria. What came out of the Geneva I meeting could not have ended the war – the actual plan was idealistic claptrap. But if a UN-guided framework for international talks had been brought forward with appropriate caution and a stringent focus on more achievable goals – like trying to limit civilian suffering, preventing regional spillover, and hashing out mutually acceptable red lines – Annan’s gambit might have succeeded in routinizing conflict management habits more effective than the angry shouting matches that were to follow.
A display of early diplomatic pragmatism and collaboration on second-order issues might have spared Syrians some of the heartbreak that followed. Or maybe the opportunity would have been squandered by clashing agendas and over-ambitious diplomats.
We will never know, because Russian-US collaboration instantly broke down in a clutter of irreconcilable statements, partly, it seems, due to the strains on the White House in election season. Not until 2015 were Syria’s main foreign actors brought into the same room again, in very different circumstances: then, as a result of the reality-check provided by a Russian military intervention.
Unlike the United States, Russia did have a stand-alone partner that it could work with on the ground toward an end state that would be ugly but acceptable to Moscow. That combination allowed for the deployment of untrammeled military power in Assad’s favor, which made all the difference.
The Russian intervention in September 2015 became one of the Syrian war’s decisive turning points. Ever since President Vladimir Putin’s air force went to work against the rebellion, it has slowly and brutally transformed the battlefield.
The intervention also wrought changes on the regional and international stage. Being browbeaten by Russia was what finally forced Turkey to shift its position, in mid-2016, to seek some form of understanding with Assad’s allies. That, too, was a game changer.
History writes itself in a terrible hand, which can take time to decipher. But it seems clear that Syria is now in a new and different phase of the war, which looks to be an endgame of sorts. Barring a regional war or a dramatic upset inside the Syrian, Russian, or Iranian regimes, all of which are structurally unsound in their own ways, the battle for Damascus is over: Assad has won.
What is left is a mostly Russian-piloted contest over Syria’s economic future and independence, including the refugee crisis and the fate of three remaining border enclaves: the US-controlled areas in Tanf and the northeast, and the Turkish-run northwest. Will these areas revert to central government control, or stay propped up by external patronage in a frozen conflict? Again, foreigners will call the shots.
[Other roundtable submissions can be found here]
بواسطة Nikolaos van Dam | أكتوبر 25, 2018 | Roundtables, غير مصنف
Describing critical turning points in the Syrian Conflict, implies giving a very concise survey of some of its most important developments. Of course, there are many more critical turning points than can be described in this short article.
At the beginning of the Syrian Revolution (March 2011), the wall of silence and fear was broken for the first time among large sections of the Syrian population, as they rose and demonstrated massively against the Syrian regime. It was a miracle that the demonstrations generally remained so peaceful for a relatively long time, when taking into consideration the severe repression and atrocities committed by the regime against the peaceful demonstrators. Concurrently with the peaceful demonstrations, however, there was already armed anti-regime violence during the early stages of the revolution, probably committed from the ‘side lines’ by radical Islamists and others.
Many officers and soldiers started to defect, and constituted military opposition groups, first small, but later on a larger scale, big enough to threaten the regime.
By June 2011 violence and counterviolence had increased to such an extent that any peaceful discussions and dialogue between regime and opposition
had become extremely difficult. At this point, the Syrian Revolution had already, to some extent, become overshadowed by radical Islamists. They saw the so-called Arab Spring developments in the region as an excellent opportunity to present themselves as viable alternatives in their efforts to spread the rule of Islam, and many wanted to settle accounts with the regime that earlier had severely suppressed them.
The solidarity visits of US ambassador Robert Ford and his French counterpart Eric Chevallier to the opposition movement in Hama in July 2011, meant the end of the possibility for the United States and France or other countries to play any role as mediator in the conflict. Their visits rather created false hopes among the opposition that essential Western support was forthcoming – but in the end it turned out not to be given as had been expected or suggested.
US President Obama’s demand that President al-Asad should step aside, created an almost irreversible momentum. Many other countries followed suit and demanded the same, without having the intention, will, or capacity to militarily force al-Asad and his regime to do so. Most countries which had turned against the regime, claimed they wanted a political solution. In reality, however, these countries only wanted to consider a solution which implied regime change. It was unrealistic, however, to expect the regime to be prepared to voluntarily give up its own position, and for President Bashar al-Asad to be willing to sign his own death warrant. Various countries created false expectations among the Syrian opposition groups that military intervention was forthcoming, which it was not.
By way of an alternative, the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others, started to supply huge quantities of financial and military aid to the military opposition groups, but their support was channelled to their respective favourites. Their lack of efficient coordination caused their help to be insufficient to help the opposition in winning the war. Their success in endangering the regime’s military position triggered a large-scale Russian military intervention in September 2015 and onwards, on top of the military support of Iran and Lebanese Hizballah, who all wanted to protect their strategic ally to stay in power. All this, strengthened Russia’s position considerably.
The Geneva Communiqué, adopted on 30 June 2012 by the Action Group for Syria, and endorsed by the permanent members of the UN Security Council, became a cornerstone for any future negotiations between the Syrian regime and the opposition. The Geneva Communiqué described a number of principles and guidelines for a Syrian-led transition. One of the most important guidelines dealt with a political transition that should be made possible through the establishment of a transitional governing body which was to establish a neutral environment in which the transition could take place. The transitional governing body was to exercise full executive powers. It could include members of the Syrian government, the opposition and ‘other groups’ and was to be formed on the basis of mutual consent. Although the Geneva Communiqué did not mention anything about the role of the Syrian president, the position of Bashar al-Asad became a principal point of dispute. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested that President al-Asad could not take part in such a transitional governing body, whereas Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denied this. The Syrian opposition, in general, strongly rejected any role for President al-Asad in the ‘transitional period’. For the Syrian regime itself it was President al-Asad who was to decide on such issues, not the opposition, nor foreign countries. The fixation on the departure of al-Asad constituted a serious obstacle in finding a solution to the conflict, the more so as he was in power in most of the country.
A great number of countries officially recognized the Syrian Opposition Coalition. They supported its demand that there was not to be any future role for Syrian President Bashar al-Asad and his supporters with blood on their hands, and that they had to be brought before justice. Most Western and Arab countries supported these demands, without providing the means to implement them. Thereby these demands became little more than declaratory policies, because no real will existed for any direct Western and Arab military intervention in Syria. Such intervention was even officially rejected in the United States and the United Kingdom after parliamentary discussions. The direct foreign military threat against the regime was thereby eliminated.
The war in Syria clearly developed into a war by proxy, with various countries (particularly the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar) interfering in the internal affairs of Syria by supporting different armed and other opposition groups. Russia and Iran wanted to militarily maintain their strategic interests in Syria and did not want to lose their Syrian ally.
After the expansion of the Islamic State (IS) from Iraq into Syria in 2013, attention to the fight against the Syrian regime shifted to the fight against IS. Because of the IS terrorist threats in Western countries this came to be viewed with greater priority. The support for the direct struggle against the regime thereby gradually diminished.
As a result, the opposition felt abandoned and betrayed by Western countries, but was left with few, if any, alternatives. With Western countries providing the opposition with insufficient support, the chances for Russia and Iran to get the upper hand increased. The Russian military intervention that started in September 2015 made the prospects for the opposition even worse. Providing more intensive foreign support to the military opposition forces led to an intensification and prolongation of the war, but not enough for a defeat of the regime.
The ability to achieve peace in Syria does not only depend on the Syrians themselves, but also on the various countries involved in the war by proxy, and whether or not they are prepared to give priority to ending the Syrian conflict above their rival regional ambitions. Such a turning point has not yet been reached, and the prospects for real peace in Syria are still far away, even if the Syrian regime would militarily win the war.
[Other roundtable submissions can be found here.]
بواسطة Josephine Lippincott | أكتوبر 25, 2018 | Roundtables, غير مصنف
The Syrian conflict has witnessed seven years of overwhelming violence and death. An endless cycle of confrontation and ceasefire, punctuated by repeated aborted negotiation attempts, have all further complicated and prolonged what we have come to understand as the Syrian Civil War. Every aspect of the conflict, becomes either embroiled in discussion or debate, results in no action, or adds to the hardships faced by the Syrian population. Throughout the conflict, scholars and experts have debated the idea of turning points or critical junctures.
When examining the idea of critical turning points, it is imperative that we consider events not just at the macro-level. What cannot be overemphasized is the fact that each of these turning points, while changing the broader trajectory of the conflict, also had very real, life-altering consequences for local communities. Through merging the idea of the local into the discussion of the macro, we gain a better understanding of the reality of some of the critical junctures within the Syrian conflict.
While there are many potential turning points, I identify three critical turning points in the Syrian conflict. They are as follows: the militarization of the Syrian uprising in early 2011, Obama’s failure to uphold his red-line declaration in 2013, and the 2015 commencement of Russian military intervention. Each of these situations altered the trajectory of the conflict dramatically, not just on a macro-level, but for local communities.
The militarization of the peaceful protests that began in March 2011 transformed the Syrian uprising into a bloody, violent full-scale military conflict. When the protests began in March 2011, Syrians across the country raised their voices in protest against the repression and tyranny of the Assad regime. In response, the government forces employed violence, cracking down on protesters. These events would escalate into more violence from the regime as well as the protesters. This initial event would usher the uprising in a direction that would leave a mark on Syrian history forever. The militarization of the opposition changed Syria from a country facing civil unrest to a country ensnared in conflict. Moreover, the escalating level of violence led to the formation of various opposition groups. These groups would develop different identities, sponsors, and alliances; resulting in a myriad of armed groups which would subsequently fractionalize the opposition and result in further fighting and violence. From this point on, the Syrian uprising had transformed into a civil war.
The escalation from protests to conflict altered the way the international community viewed Syria, but more importantly, it changed and disrupted the lives of Syrians. The militarization of the conflict would lead to the regime tightening its grasp on state services, leading to access challenges for Syrians. The fighting across the Syrian geography would disrupt daily life, prevent children from attending school, create financial problems for families, or lead Syrians to flee their homeland. These disruptions in daily life would be further exacerbated when the international system began to intervene and to strengthen certain parts of the armed opposition.
The second turning point was the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons and President Obama’s subsequent failure to uphold his red-line declaration in 2013. In August 2013, Assad and his forces used Sarine gas near Damascus, killing more than fourteen hundred civilians. The US intelligence assessment asserted that the regime used chemical weapons as a method to push Syrian opposition forces back from rebel-held territory when government forces were unable. With the failure of President Obama and the United States to provide any actionable response, the Assad regime became even less fearful of any foreign intervention. The regime action and the US inaction altered the geopolitics surrounding the Syria conflict. Given the lack of direct military action or an escalation in support to rebel groups by the United States, other countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia also began to disengage. The stalled support created a feeling of abandonment within the armed opposition. The lack of intensified engagement by the United States, prompted bolder action by the Assad regime, Iran, and eventually Russia. However, beyond the macro-level implications, this event also had large ramifications for the Syrian population. The chemical weapons attack signaled that Syrians’ fears would not be limited to airstrikes or gunfire, but would have to also include weapons such as sarine gas.
The third critical turning point that altered the conflict on both the macro and micro level was Russian military intervention. In September 2015, Russia launched airstrikes that were reported to target ISIS, however US intelligence reports argued that the airstrikes targeted key Assad opponents, including US-backed units. On an international level, the Russian-intervention altered the geopolitical dynamics. The Russian intervention solidified the alliance between Assad, Iran, and Russia, but also further demonstrated the lack of heightened support by Western actors. Moreover, as a result of this inaction, it became even more apparent to opposition groups and the Syrian population that they could not expect help or aid from the United States or other western countries. Rather, it would be the Russians who would ultimately guide how the Syrian conflict would unfold and negotiations for the conflict’s termination. Russian actions under the intervention have attempted to restrict the number of Russian casualties, but has led to higher civilian casualties due to less discriminate military tactics. The attempt to restrict Russian casualties raises the level of violence and the number of threats for Syrians. Now they must prepare for a bombing or chemical weapon attack from their own government, as well as attacks from a world superpower.
Following these events and so many other daily tragedies, the Syrian population has remained isolated from the international community. These three critical turning points have contributed to further deterioration of daily life for Syrians and altered geo-politics in the region. While the Assad regime has escalated its attacks through chemical weapons, international powers have delineated new rules and retained new spheres of influence. The failure of US engagement in the conflict, both militarily and diplomatically, along with the Russian-Syrian alliance has allowed for Russia, Iran, and Syria to largely control the results of the Syrian conflict. With the United States continuing its inaction to implement change or alter the status quo, other countries have also taken a less direct approach. As a result, the Syrian conflict continues as the Syrian population faces even more hardship.
[Other roundtable submissions can be found here.]
