بواسطة Ola Rifai | نوفمبر 3, 2018 | Roundtables
A chronological examination of developments during the seven years of the Syrian uprising denotes several turning points. Each of them has crucial role in the unfolding Syrian drama, and more importantly each one of them seems to lead to the other and henceforth direct the conflict.
As we all know, the Syrian uprising has its roots in a peaceful movement that demanded social justice, and yet, it rapidly morphed into armed struggle for power between various actors. The uprising is characterized by deep divisions between all anti-Assad factions such as: rural / urban, secular / Islamist, and new generation / old generation. More importantly, there are deep divisions among regional and international powers which seem to overlap all turning points and add complexity to an already complicated picture.
In this context, there are six turning points that can be counted as critical in defining todays’ Syria:
The first one is the militarization of the uprising by late July 2011, which turned a civil movement into an armed struggle for power between various actors. This was mainly due to the regime rhetoric in utilizing hard power (al-hal al-‘amny ; al-hal al ‘askary—security and military solutions) to eliminate its opponents. However, unsurprisingly, state and non-state actors found a golden opportunity in supplying funds and arms to different militias that eventually would serve their interests. Saudi Arabia and Qatar were among the first states which funded militias. Turkey and the United States were to follow.
This indeed has led to the second turning point, which is the sectarianization of the uprising. The Syrian regime played with sectarian fire by pitting Alawite-dominated forces against Sunni-dominated rebels, and thus, portrayed the conflict as sectarian fight, and sectarian actions by the regime forces and the security dilemma certainly played vital roles in this. Moreover, non-state actors, Shi‘a militias on the ground, and the Sunni political entrepreneurs in some Gulf States manipulated sectarian identities for their ends.
Consequently, this polarization of sectarian identities triggered the third turning point which is the radicalization of the conflict with the establishment of Jabhaet al-Nusra—al-Nusra Front (NF) in January 2012. Since NF is a paramilitary organization with links to al-Qa‘ida, it forced the West and some Syrians to perceive the uprising as a fight against “terrorism.” In the truth, there are myriads of actors and factors responsible for the creation of NF: violence, sectarian manipulation by state and non-state actors, and the hesitant policies by the West in how to address the uprising–which had now turned into a bloody conflict. In addition, Turkey, while aiming to contain the Kurdish threat, empowered NF by turning a blind eye to jihadists infiltrating through its southern borders.
The strategy of no strategy by Western officials added chaos to an already chaotic conflict leading to the forth turning point, which is the chemical attack on eastern Ghouta. On 21 August 2013 Syrian forces launched sarin gas—a deadly chemical weapon—into the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta killing more than 1400 including civilians. Since the early days of the uprising, President Barak Obama declared chemical weapons as a “red line” and warned of a military retaliation if they were used by the Syrian regime. Well, the retaliation was limited to condemnation in a press release. No military response took place. The red line was crossed, and the rules of the game were tested. Several chemical attacks were reported later.
As a result, many rebels were provoked to join radical groups and, furthermore, it created a lethal vacuum which President Vladimir Putin has happily filled, and has been able to draw the rules of the game. This is the fifth turning point. In late September 2015 Russian forces intervened on the ground in Syrian changing the political and military equation as it radically swung the pendulum towards the Assad regime. Throughout the three years of his intervention, President Putin proved himself as de facto most powerful actor in today’s Syria, and moreover, in the future Syria.
The sixth and last turning point—for the meantime—is the Sochi Deal that prevented a looming deadly assault on Idlib—the last standing haven for rebels. On 17 September 2018 President Erdogan and his new good friend President Putin signed an agreement to create a fifteen-to-twenty-kilometer demilitarized zone in the province of Idlib which would see the removal of heavy weapons and the Jihadists of Tahrir al-Sham (formerly known as NF). The deal prevented a military hegemony by the Assad regime and more importantly guaranteed the deployment of Turkish forces in northern Syria. The Sochi deal demonstrated that Russian interests do not parallel those of Assad, and that alliances shift with the structure of power. The Sochi deal draws the borders of the so-called zones of influence, and empowers the actors who will draw the road to a post-conflict Syria. Whether this deal is going to catalyze a seventh turning point is yet to be seen.
As explained in the above account, these six turning points played critical role in the fate of the uprising. Each one seems to catalyze another. Nevertheless, the most critical turning point in Syria and the life of Syrians was on 15 March 2011, when dozens of brave youth protested in the heart of Damascus chanting for freedom. It might take too many turning points in order to get back to this very first one.
[Other roundtable submissions can be found here]
بواسطة عامر فياض | أكتوبر 31, 2018 | Roundtables, غير مصنف
رغم التعديلات التي أجراها مجلس الشعب على بعض مواده، بقي القانون ٣١، الناظم لعمل وزارة الأوقاف، كابوساً مرعباً للعديد من السوريين، فمعظم تلك التعديلات وصِفت بأنها “لغوية ولفظية، شكلية وسطحية” لم تحدث فرقاً نوعياً في جوهره، ليبقى مثيراً للجدل حول آلية وطبيعة تطبيقه وما يخبئ في عمقه، إذ رأى فيه البعض نهجاً دينياً يسعى إلى “سَعوَدة” و”أفغنة” سورية.
المحامي وليد يرى أن هذا القانون “يمنح وزارة الأوقاف صلاحيات وغطاءً قانونياً للتدخل في كل ما يتعلق بالمجتمع، ويسمح لها ببسط نفوذها على معظم مناحي الحياة، ما يجعلها أقرب إلى دويلة مستقلة، تمتلك مؤسساتها الخاصة وقرارها المستقل وتتمتع بأجهزتها الإدارية والمالية.” فالقانون لا يكتفي بـ[إحداث مديريات للأوقاف في المحافظات] (المادة ٩٠)، إنما يخول الوزير ومجلس الأوقاف المركزي [إحداث شعب وقفية ملحقة بمديريات الأوقاف، وذلك للإشراف على أماكن العبادة ومتابعة العقارات الوقفية، تتمتع بالشخصية الاعتبارية والاستقلال المالي] بحسب المادة ٩٤. هذا يعني أن الوزارة “أوجدت لها منابر فكرية في كل مكان، عبر شبكة من المؤسسات الإيديولوجية، التي ستنتشر في معظم المدن والبلديات، قد تحاكي تجربة شُعَب حزب البعث التي توغلت في كل مفاصل المجتمع، كما أن هذا الأمر قد يجعل بعض الأديان والطوائف الأخرى تحذو حذو نظيرتها الإسلامية وتسعى لتشكيل مديرياتها وشعبها ولجانها الخاصة، أي مزيد من المؤسسات الدينية” بحسب المحامي وليد.
وفي السياق ذاته تقول المادة ٩٧ [ تُشكَّل بقرار من الوزير بناءً على اقتراح مدير الأوقاف لجان تُسمَّى “لجان الأوقاف” ملحقة بمديريات الأوقاف، تتولى الإشراف على حسن سير الشعائر الدينيَّة في نطاق عملها، ومتابعة عقارات الأوقاف والمحافظة عليها، والإبلاغ عن التعديَّات والتجاوزات عليها]. وأثارت هذه المادة الجدل الأكبر عند منتقدي القانون إذ وصف البعض تلك اللجان بـ”جماعة الأمر بالمعروف والنهي عن المنكر.” وهنا يتساءل المحامي وليد: “هل تحتاج بعض العقارات الوقفية التي يحميها الناس فطرياً ويرونها أماكن مقدسة إلى لجان للأوقاف؟” مضيفاً “ما هي طبيعة عمل تلك اللجان في المناطق ذات الاعتدال الديني والتنوع الطائفي؟ هل ستقوم بمنع المشروبات الكحولية والتدخين، ومراقبة غير الصائمين ومن لا يذهبون إلى الجامع، والتدخل في طبيعة اللباس، خاصة عند النساء؟”
وتحظى أيضاً الوزارة بامتيازات خاصة، فبحسب المادة ٦٥ [تعفى العقارات الوقفية في جميع معاملاتها من الضرائب والرسوم كافَّة أياً كان نوعها، وتُعفى من تقديم الكفالات والتأمينات والسلف بأنواعها]. كما يمكن للوزارة وفقاً للمادة الثانية: [التنسيق مع وزارتي الإعلام والثقافة للإشراف على البرامج الخاصة بالعمل الديني في وسائل الإعلام كافةً، وكذلك المطبوعات الدينية].. أما الامتياز الأكبر فهو ما جاء في المادة ٨٦: [لمجلس الأوقاف المركزي أن يؤسس شركات تجارية مملوكة له من نوع شركات الأموال، تعمل وفق أحكام قانون التجارة والشركات والقانون المدني، للإستثمار وإدارة الأوقاف].
هذا الامتياز برأي المحامية نوال “قد يفتح باباً لفرص العمل، يضطر الباحثين عنها إلى الإذعان لسلطة الدين ليعملوا في تلك الشركات، التي يمكنها استخدام سلطة المال لتحقيق أهداف ومآرب خاصة.” وتضيف نوال “بدلاً من تفعيل دور المجتمع المدني نرى القانون ينحيه جانباً، ليفعّل النشاط المجتمعي الديني، ما قد يؤثر على شكل وطبيعة ذلك المجتمع ويوجد شرخاً وانقساماً في بيئته ويؤسلم هويته المجتمعية” وعن ذلك تعطي مثالاً من بعض ما جاء في المادة الثانية: [تأسيس المبرَّات ودور رعاية الأيتام والمستوصفات والمشافي والمنشآت والمؤسسات والمراكز الخيرية والاجتماعية والاقتصادية التي تحقق أهداف الوزارة] وتتساءل “ماذا يعنى قيام المؤسسات الدينية على حساب المدنية؟ وما الهدف من إقامة مشاف ودور أيتام دينية؟ هل ستكون معنية فقط بالمؤمنين المنتمين إلى دين محدد؟” وتضيف المحامية نوال أن القانون لم يشر لطبيعة عمل تلك المؤسسات والمنشآت والمراكز والشركات، “التي قد تكون ذات طابع احتكاري وإيديولوجي، وتسعى إلى الانفراد بالعمل المجتمعي عبر وضع يدها على معظم مرافق المجتمع” بحسب تعبيرها.
القانون والعلوم الشرعية
وتنص الفقرة هـ من المادة الثانية من هذا القانون على [تطوير التعليم الشرعي في جميع مراحله، وإحداث المدارس والمعاهد الشرعية الإسلامية وتنظيم شؤونها وإدارتها وذلك بهدف إعداد نخبة من علماء الدين المتمكنين من أدوات الخطاب الديني، يقدمون البديل عن التطرف والأفكار المنحرفة والتكفيرية]، وعن هذا الفقرة ترد الدكتورة الجامعية غادة بقولها “المؤمن الحقيقي لا يحتاج إلى المدارس والمعاهد الشرعية ليتقرب من الله، ألا يكفي عدد المؤسسات التعليمية الشرعية والجوامع الموجودة في البلاد؟ لا ننسى أن التطرف جاء من بعض خريجي تلك المؤسسات.”
وتؤكد د.غادة أن “ما ذكر في الفقرة يقوي لغة الخطاب الديني على حساب اللغة الوطنية الجامعة، فالتصدي للتطرف والأفكار التكفيرية لا يأتي من خلال علماء الدين ومنابرهم، بل من خلال القانون وعلوم الأخلاق ونشر الوعي والأفكار المدنية التي تساوي بين الجميع، وأيضاً عبر تطوير الجامعات والمراكز العلمية، وعبر تربية الأجيال الصاعدة على ثقافة المواطنة والاعتدال والقيم المجتمعية المعاصرة لا على ثقافة التدين”. ويحظى (المجلس العلمي الفقهي) وفقاً للقانون المذكور، بدور اجتماعي فاعل ذي سلطة مؤثرة في المجتمع، فيما لا يوجد أي دور مشابه للنخب والمرجعيات الثقافية والعلمية في أي قانون.
ويولي القانون المدارس الشرعية أهمية كبيرة، ويساويها مع المدارس التعليمية الحكومية فالمادة٣٩ تقول: [يكون لكل مدرسة شرعية إسلامية موازنة خاصة تصدر بقرار من مجلس الأوقاف المركزي]. ووفقاً للمادة ٤٣ [تُعدُّ شهادتا الإعدادية الشرعية والثانويَّة الشرعيَّة مُعادلتين لشهادتي التعليم الأساسي والثانويَّة العامة “الفرع الأدبي” ويتمتَّع حائزوها بالامتيازات والحقوق ذاتها التي يتمتَّع بها حائزو الشهادات التي تمنحها وزارة التربية].
وحول ما سبق تتساءل د.غادة “هل يحتاج الطالب إلى كل تلك السنوات الدراسية لتحصيل العلوم الشرعية؟ ألا يكفي فرض مادة التربية الإسلامية على جميع الصفوف ووجود كليات الشريعة؟ وألا يكفي ارتياد المساجد ومعاهد تحفيظ القرآن أو النشوء في أسرة متدينة لكي يتعلم أصول الدين؟ أليس من الأفضل استخدام ميزانية المدارس الشرعية لدعم المؤسسة التعليمية الحكومية؟”
وفي السياق ذاته يتيح القانون للمدارس الشرعية استقطاب الطلاب من المدارس التعليمية الحكومية، إذ [يجوز انتقال الطلاب بين الصفوف المتماثلة في مراحل التعليم الأساسي والثانوي العام والشرعي] وفقاً للمادة ٤٤، وهو أمرٌ قد يزيد من نسبة إقبال الطلاب على تلك المدارس نتيجة التسهيلات والمغريات المقدمة لهم.
ويرى المُدرس مازن أن هذا الأمر “أشبه بزواجٍ بين المؤسسة التعليمية والدينية” وهو ينطبق على المعلمين أيضاً، فبحسب المادة 47: [يستفيد العاملون والمدرسون في المدارس الشرعية من جميع الامتيازات والحقوق والتعويضات التي يتمتع بها نظراؤهم في وزارة التربية] لذا قد يلتحق المدرسون التربويون بالمدارس الشرعية كي يحصلوا على دخلٍ إضافي، خاصة أن دخلهم الحكومي يكاد لا يذكر.
بواسطة Salon Syria Team | أكتوبر 31, 2018 | Roundtables, غير مصنف
أثار قانون ”ديني“ وافق عليه مجلس الشعب السوري جدلاً واسعاً في الأوساط السورية ورأى فيه البعض أنه يهدف إلى ”أفغنة“ أو ”سعودة“ سوريا وذلك بسبب الصلاحيات الواسعة التي يمنحها القانون لوزارة الأوقاف. وكي نلقي الضوء على القانون والجدل الذي أثاره في الساحة السورية الافتراضية طلبنا من بعض الكتاب والصحفيين والباحثين السوريين مناقشة القانون وانعكاساته واستطلاع آراء السوريين حوله، وفيما يلي ننشر المادة الأولى التي وردتنا:
–القانون٣١، وزارة أوقافٍ أم وزارات..؟
عامر فياض
–السجال السوري حول القانون ٣١
عمّار ديّوب
–مرسوم الأوقاف رقم ١٦: سجالات حامية بين المؤيدين والمعارضي
سامر محمد إسماعيل
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]
