Syrian war: Ever-changing, confusing
If you’re not confused by the Syrian civil war, you don’t understand it. This week, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis said that the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad heeded a stern U.S. warning of swift and powerful retribution and called off a planned chemical air attack. The Russian government protested the American warning and Assad denied there was any chemical attack in the making. So far, same old, same old.
But then again, at the end of the day, who are we to believe? In this case, I think we can safely rely on U.S. intelligence and the warnings of Defense Secretary Mattis. Whatever the misgivings of President Donald Trump, the U.S. has a superb intelligence system. What we do with that intelligence is another matter, a pathway that Trump seems to find difficult to follow.
The Syrian civil war, which started with protests in 2011 and then escalated, has become the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster. It has taken the lives of some 500,000 Syrian civilians and rendered homeless millions more, hundreds of thousands of whom have fled to Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Europe with others fleeing as far as the United States. These are the people President Trump calls a threat to our national security. The Canadians, who see much the same intelligence as we do, seem to think otherwise, and are welcoming them with open arms, a policy that does not sit too well with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
In the meantime, the war in Syria rages on, with the forces of Assad, backed strongly by the Russians, slowly but decisively gaining the upper hand. This is not the outcome foreseen by President Barack Obama when we first got involved in the conflict. Obama hesitated over getting deeply involved in Syria. That hesitation, when he refused to defend the red line he had drawn in the desert by carrying out extensive airstrikes against the Assad regime, cost us, our allies and the Syrian people dearly. We are still paying for that mistake.
Let me suggest that perhaps an important reason for Obama’s refusal to act was that only a day or so earlier, the British House of Commons had voted against the United Kingdom’s further involvement in Syria, so deep was British revulsion against the Iraq War, handing the government of Prime Minister David Cameron the biggest foreign policy defeat for any British government in some 200 years. That vote may have given Obama second thoughts. Without British help, the U.S. would be acting alone.
On the other hand, though the war in Syria does not go well for the anti-Assad rebel forces, the war against the Islamic State militants in both Iraq and Syria is going surprisingly well. This week, Baghdad finally claimed victory in Mosul, Iraq’s second-biggest city. Iraqi armed forces have fought in the streets of Mosul since the beginning of the year. Only with the capture of the ruins of the historic Great Mosque of al Nuri did the government announce victory. Even so, the sounds of gunfire could be heard close by, so that victory remains shaky. Still, it was a shot in the arm for Iraqi armed forces, as the al Nuri Mosque was where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed the caliphate just three years ago. It became his only public appearance as the Islamic State leader.
Perhaps the most surprising development, however, has been the encirclement of the Syrian city of Raqqa in western Syria, the capital of the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate. The Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, say they have sealed off the city’s escape routes to the south. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, based in London, says the last route out of the city has now been cut off.
Islamic State militants seized the city in 2014 and established its capital there. The Syrian Democratic Forces have been advancing on the city since November, and launched an offensive on June 6 to take it over. It is believed that some 100,000 civilians are trapped in the city by the fighting. It is not certain what the Russians or Syrian government forces are prepared to do, as a takeover by the Syrian Democratic Forces forces does not work in Assad’s favor. Once again, the situation in Syria remains ever-changing — no wonder it’s so confusing.
Bill Stewart writes about current affairs from Santa Fe. He is a former U.S. Foreign Service officer and worked as a correspondent for Time magazine.
T