Incomplete strategy for Syria

Conflicting interests remain a major obstacle in the way of any possibility of a political settlement for the continuing Syrian tragedy.

Late last month, on July 24, Turkey announced that it was willing to join the war against Daesh. The Turkish government policy turnabout also included the decision to allow US planes to use airbases on Turkish territory, Incirlik and others, for their operations against Daesh.

That was an important development that observers believed would tip the balance against Daesh forces. 

Others linked it to the few other indications suggesting some kind of understanding among the concerned powers — Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United States, Qatar and others — to end the fighting and work out a reconciliation plan.

That made a lot of sense and it also generated hope. The big surprise, though, was when Turkish forces directed their fire against the Kurds: the PPK (the Kurdish Workers Party) and the YPG, the armed wing of the PYD (the Democratic Union Party), mainly operating in Syria.

These two Kurdish militias, in addition to the significant military role played by the peshmerga in northern Iraq late last year, were totally committed to combating Daesh fighters.

They managed not only to check their advances, but also recovered large swathes of territory from Daesh in Syria and Iraq.

So far, and since the war against Daesh had started, the Kurdish forces did their best. In Syria, they control a wide strip along the entire Syrian-Turkish border, on the Syrian side, except for a relatively small gap north of Aleppo, from Jarablus to Kiris.

It is this gap that Turkey seems keen not to allow the Kurds to expand into, for if they do, their control of the entire border would be complete.

According to a New York Times article (August 12, 2015) by Sarah Al Mukhtar and Tim Wallace, Kurdish fighters have been coordinating with the American military since last October.

“The YPG is perhaps America’s most effective ally in Syria against the Islamic State. But American officials, though they will broadly acknowledge that they are working with the YPG, take pains not to detail just how closely the forces are working together, given the group’s ties to the outlawed PKK,” Mukhtar and Wallace wrote.

Turkey’s help in the war against Daesh had been sought, and indeed expected, since Daesh’s threat became real. Many news reports, including this NYT’s, confirmed that Turkey was promised, in return for joining the war, American approval to establish a Daesh and Kurdish-free zone in Syria along the length of the Turkish border.

Although this Daesh-Kurdish free zone was also supposed to provide safe haven for the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, there is no question, neither is it a secret, that the main Turkish motive is to prevent the rise of an independent Kurdish state on that land. That explains, if partly, why the military priority for Turkey is to deal with the Kurds first, not the Kurds and Daesh at the same time.

The Syrian puzzle was hard to untangle right from the beginning. With time it is becoming more complex.

Here are some of the many conflicting external agendas.

Turkey has been clearly reluctant to weaken Daesh to deprive the Kurds and Bashar Assad’s regime of the resulting advantage.

Even after the July agreement with the US Turkey remains more focused on its Kurdish headache than on that of Daesh, and therefore any meaningful military contribution to defeat Daesh may clash with Turkey’s Kurdish concern. Hence, the renewed war against the PKK.

Moreover, Ankara remains adamant that any future settlement for Syria should not include Assad. But according to the NYT article, it was the American airstrikes in support of Kurdish fighters in north Syria that enabled them to control so much of the border territory.

Ironically, Turkey is now practically seeking American approval, if not help, to dislodge Kurdish forces from those very areas that American aerial support helped occupy in the first place in order to create the free zone.

For the US the order of priority — if any — is slightly different. 

There is no question that the Obama administration is serious about fighting Daesh, which continues to expand — its fighters in Libya just occupied the coastal town of Sirte — and to pose a significant threat to regional stability, even if that may end up helping the Damascus regime.

One cannot be clear, however, about America’s eagerness for the free zone on the Turkish border, about Washington’s position with respect to the latest Turkish onslaught on the PKK, or if the US would tolerate a political settlement in Syria even if not conditional upon Assad’s removal, first.

The fact that the US could only offer supporting air strikes to local ground troops in war zones explains some US hints commending the Kurdish military role in both Iraq and Syria. They may still need that role; therefore, another tactical conflict with Turkey.

Any other American ambiguity regarding Assad could be attributed to Washington’s congeniality vis-à-vis its Arab allies who insist that the removal of the current Syrian president should be a precondition for any settlement.

During his recent visit to Moscow, the Saudi foreign minister left no doubt that his country’s position regarding the exclusion of President Assad from any political arrangement remains the same; yet another possible disagreement on this very issue with Russia and Iran, although ambiguity in both Tehran and Moscow on this critical matter should not be ruled out.

The gap seems to be narrowing, with hints from these staunch Syrian allies that if the envisaged political settlement may not have to commence without Assad it may conclude without him, meaning that he may be part of the solution but not of the solution’s final outcome.

Well, here we are. Driven primarily by the growing danger of Daesh, the influential powers that hold the keys for a Syrian settlement seem to broadly agree on a political strategy emphasising the fundamental principle of protecting the Syrian state and its institutions from disintegration, but they remain, though partly, entrenched in conventional positions.

Let us hope progress continues even if cautiously, discretely and slowly.