Fourteen years after 9/11, the cycle of wars touched off by al-Qa’ida (and exacerbated by a string of failed Western responses) shows no sign of slowing. Syria is the latest to spill over.
Australians have focused, understandably, on Iraq because that’s where our troops are. But with Australia taking in 12,000 additional Syrian refugees, committing aircraft against Islamic State inside Syrian territory and participating in US drone strikes in Syria (via Australian air crew embedded in the 432nd Operations Group, out of Creech Air Force Base in Nevada) it’s worth getting up to speed on the present situation.
The first and most important thing to know about the Syrian war is that it’s a horrific human tragedy, even by the brutal standards of other recent wars.
Last week’s images of a still, small body face-down in the surf on a Turkish beach — three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, who drowned when his family’s rubber dinghy capsized as they fled to Greece — prompted a moral outcry and calls for increased humanitarian assistance.
The outrage is absolutely justified, but Syrians can be forgiven for expecting this latest flap to blow over as ineffectually as last year’s horror over Islamic State beheadings, 2013’s anguish over Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons, or Barack Obama’s 2011 assertion that “Assad must go”.
Assad remains in power, of course. His regime discreetly resumed using chemical weapons (according to UN investigators, in more than 15 documented attacks) once international scrutiny shifted last year. Islamic State continues to behead, crucify and enslave thousands in the network of cities it controls, which (as the map overleaf shows) now covers almost half of Syrian territory, and the group has used mustard and chlorine gas in recent attacks. Hundreds of Syrians, including toddlers such asAylan, have died trying to escape.
To date, more than 10,000 children have been killed, along with more than 200,000 adults. For comparison, this is almost twice as many, in just four years, as died in the 12 years since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, out of a population only two-thirds the size. (Syria has 22 million people against Iraq’s 33 million.) The humanitarian impact of such heavy losses, in such a short time, has been staggering.
Many of those killed were civilians hit by regime shelling of schools, hospitals and bread lines, dismembered by barrel bombs — 200-litre drums filled with explosives and scrap metal, dropped from helicopters, that make an eerie whooshing sound as they tumble in the air, shake the ground when they go off, and can destroy an entire apartment block — or slaughtered in raids by Iranian-backed shabiha paramilitaries.
An entire generation of Syrians, historically one of the best-educated, most politically and culturally sophisticated Arab populations, has missed out on the most basic education. Syria’s economy is in ruins, unemployment is through the roof, and half of all Syrians now rely on humanitarian assistance to survive.
Syria’s neighbours, including Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, are swamped with four million registered refugees (two million in Turkey alone) but this is just a small proportion of the total number of Syrians displaced, which could be as high as nine million. These countries are running short of resources and desperate families are fleeing in droves as another winter approaches — dozens, including newborn babies, froze to death in the snow-swept tented camps last year.
Even as the US announced this week that it would accept 10,000 Syrian refugees, and the EU agreed to resettle another 160,000 people, the flood of human misery across Europe’s eastern borders — a direct result of Western inaction on Syria during the past four years — showed no sign of ebbing.
Beyond its human impact, in strategic terms the Syrian war is the central front in a region-wide conflict that’s dragging in Turkey, Russia, several Arab countries, Israel and the US and its allies, including Australia. The conflict has become a war to contain an aggressive, expansionist power hellbent on upending the Middle East. But which power you think that is — Iran, Islamic State or the US — depends on where you sit. For Turks, the Sunni Arab states and Israel, the expansionist power that must be contained is Iran.
After finding themselves listed as part of the “axis of evil” in January 2002 (and after American officials and neoconservative pundits dropped a series of heavy hints that once Saddam Hussein fell the Iranians had best watch out lest they be next), leaders in Tehran watched as the US occupied Iraq to the west, then reinforced its presence in Afghanistan to the east, established bases to the north in central Asia, and deepened relationships with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to Iran’s south.
Understandably, Iranian leaders saw (and still see) the aggressive, expansionist power in the region as the US. Given this perception, they had every reason to acquire an insurance policy (in the form of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles) and to interfere with the US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, to keep the Americans off-balance and forestall any move against Iran.
They did so with great energy, accelerating their nuclear program, backing Shia militias and sending special operators and terrorists into Iraq. Once the Americans left in 2011, the Iranians expanded their influence with the Shia-supremacist government of Nouri al-Maliki and funded a string of militias that now compete with Maliki’s more moderate successor, Haider al-Abadi. They re-established relations with Hamas in the Palestinian territories, backed Houthi rebels in northern Yemen, posed as the protectors of Shia minorities in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, sent operatives into Somalia, funded Hezbollah in Lebanon and — most significantly — backed their Syrian client, Assad, with weapons, advisers, money and logistic support.
All this looked incredibly threatening from Tel Aviv, Riyadh and Ankara, and (for different reasons) Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey all see Iranian expansionism — and the violence and destabilisation that come with it — as an even greater danger than Islamic State. For Israel, this is an existential threat, a fact underlined this week when Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei claimed in a public speech that the “Zionist entity” would no longer exist within 25 years.
For their part, Arabian Gulf states such as Qatar seek to contain Iranian influence, and some leaders are even willing to countenance jihadists as long as they help contain the Shia threat. For many of these players, however horrible Islamic State may be (and, to be clear, these governments don’t approve of it by any means), the terrorist group is still the most effective force opposing Iranian expansionism. Until some other force takes its place, Islamic State — whose ideology is profoundly anti-Shi’ite and which opposes Iran even more than it hates the West — constitutes a bulwark against Iran.
For Turkey, the threat is primarily geopolitical, with Iran’s increasingly dominant role in Iraq and Syria representing an intolerable encroachment on what Ankara perceives as its sphere of influence, undermining its role in the region and encouraging separatism and unrest among local populations, not least the Kurds.
That’s why, until a few weeks ago, Turkey banned US aircraft from operating against Islamic State from its territory, refused to intervene against Islamic State unless it could also strike Assad’s positions and those of his Iranian-backed allies, and stood by as the Kurds fought Islamic State to the death in the Syrian-Turkish border town of Kobane. From last October until February, as the battle raged, Turkish troops and tanks sat on the open hills overlooking the town from across the border, watching passively as Kurdish troops fought Islamic State house-to-house. Kurdish forces in Kobane included supporters of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as well as alumni of a paramilitary group originally trained by the CIA in Iraqi Kurdistan. Even now, as Ankara has opened airbases at Incirlik and Diyarbakır to the coalition and begun conducting its own airstrikes against Islamic State, Turkish aircraft are also striking Kurdish positions in Syria and northern Iraq. And the Turks, like the Israelis, continue to oppose any accommodation with Assad or the Iranians.
For Americans and their allies, the aggressively expansionist entity, the principal adversary — thus the primary focus so far — is Islamic State, the group that has seized half of Syria and a third of Iraq, is exporting terrorism internationally, and has established external territories (wilayat) in Libya, Algeria, Egypt, the Caucasus, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Islamic State (as I argued in a Quarterly Essay earlier this year) grew in the vacuum of US withdrawal from Iraq but gained crucial impetus from the Syrian civil war. After being decimated in the Iraq war surge of 2007-10, the group sent a small team of experienced cadres — including the lethally effective former Baathist intelligence officer Haji Bakr — to rebuild in Syria, and here the group forged a capable military force that allowed it to break back into Iraq in late 2013.
Since then many US leaders, for understandable historical reasons, have treated Iraq as the primary theatre, arguing that Islamic State must first be defeated in Iraq and that country stabilised before any effort can succeed against Islamic State in Syria. But this calculus is changing for three reasons.
First, the campaign in Iraq is clearly failing. Islamic State captured Ramadi in May, is attacking Haditha and Baiji, is striking Baghdad and other cities at will, has adapted its tactics to the relatively low intensity of allied airpower being used against it, and still retains the big prize — Iraq’s second city, Mosul, which it seized in June last year and whose recapture the coalition has now quietly shelved as an immediate objective.
Second, the Syrian crisis has triggered massive refugee flows that are destabilising Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, and Islamic State offensives are seriously threatening the Assad regime’s heartland in Syria’s coastal strip, along the Alawite hills, and in the environs of Damascus.
The potential for a catastrophic collapse of Assad’s government, creating a vacuum into which Islamic State would surely step in, worried many observers through July and August, resulting in expanded US efforts — albeit off a laughably low base — to increase the pitifully small number of Syrian rebels being trained by the coalition, raise the tempo of allied airstrikes in Syria, and create a safe zone for civilians across a 290km stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border. Turkey’s entry into the war in late August (along with Australia’s commitment of airpower to Syria) fit with this enhanced response.
The third reason for increased US engagement in Syria is the Iranian nuclear agreement. Despite an enmity stretching back to 1979, some US leaders see the deal as an opportunity for rapprochement with Iran, bringing potential for collaboration on shared interests — primarily, defeating Islamic State and stabilising Syria and Iraq. A few Iranian leaders, notably President Hasan Rowhani and the politically influential Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, have hinted they feel the same way, though Khamenei has rejected any talks beyond Iran’s nuclear program.
Throughout the negotiations, US officials tell me, they avoided engaging Iranian delegates on the issue of Syria, lest this gave Iran greater leverage in the nuclear talks. (A less kind interpretation could be that Washington appeased Tehran, turning a blind eye to its support for Assad, in order to secure agreement on the nukes).
Whatever the reason, now that the deal is done we can expect a renewed push for a negotiated settlement in Syria, perhaps including discussion of a peace plan on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, which kicks off in New York next week. In that light, increased US efforts in Syria can be seen as part of a broader effort to contain Islamic State and give these diplomatic initiatives a chance to bear fruit.
A key player in any UN talks, and the other place where Islamic State expansionism has created serious concern, is the Kremlin. Russia has a big naval base in the Syrian city of Tartus — its only Mediterranean base and one of the few warm-water ports available to it worldwide — giving it strong geopolitical reasons to maintain its foothold. Moscow has backed the Syrian regime for more than a generation and Vladimir Putin is personally close to Assad.
Moscow perceives the rise of Islamic State, with its destabilising effect on the Caucasus and among Russia’s large Muslim population, as extremely dangerous. Chechens, Daghestanis, and Russian-speaking Circassians are fighting alongside the rebels, and the risk of these fighters returning to Russia is very real. At the same time, with Washington repeatedly telegraphing weakness and vacillation on Syria (remember Obama’s 2013 “red line” fiasco?), Moscow saw an opportunity to expand its influence and prop up its protege, with minimal risk of any meaningful US counter-move.
Thus, from the outset, Russia provided equipment, weapons and trainers to Assad, and Russian advisers helped the regime improve its tactics. Russia vetoed any UN resolution calling for armed intervention to protect civilians in Syria, in part because of its ties with Damascus but also because Russian leaders felt betrayed by the US over what happened in Libya in 2011 when, after gaining Russian support for a narrowly focused intervention to protect civilians, US leaders (notably then secretary of state Hillary Clinton) shifted the goalposts and instead expanded the mission to include the overthrow of Russian ally Muammar Gaddafi. After the Libyan experience, the Russians refused to countenance any such intervention in Syria.
As of early this month, according to sources in Lebanon and witness reports from Syria, the Russians are rapidly expanding their military presence, landing hundreds of armoured vehicles at the Tartus base and the port of Latakia in recent days, bringing in an enormous Condor cargo aircraft with supplies suitable for building a large forward operating base, and disembarking a contingent of several hundred naval infantry that includes many of the same capabilities (and perhaps some of the same specialist unconventional warfare troops) that were used in Russia’s seizure of Crimea early last year.
Russian advisers are deploying to Tartus and other locations, creating advisory posts and setting up logistical stockpiles for a potential military intervention, and Moscow has sought overflight approval from regional countries to let its aircraft operate in and around Syrian airspace. While the size and shape of Russia’s entry into the war remain unclear, many Syrians expect Russian warplanes (and possibly ground troops) to join the conflict in a direct combat role in days or weeks. Washington, predictably, has made complaining noises about this but done nothing concrete to prevent it, seemingly proving Putin’s thesis that opposing US interests is now essentially risk-free.
Against this background, on the ground in Syria many people to whom I have spoken feel a deep sense of frustration and abandonment by the international community.
They feel trapped between Assad’s regime — which to date has killed more people than Islamic State — and the jihadists, whose ideology couldn’t be more foreign to the average Syrian.
The night Islamic State captured the Syrian city of Palmyra in late May, a source emailed me with news from inside the city. “You are probably aware that regime forces destroyed the power and water facilities before leaving Palmyra and blocked and booby-trapped exit routes from the city, making it hard for people to leave.
“This created panic and anger. Army high-ups, well-armed allied militia, local officials and other regime cronies fled in convoys, leaving many local people who had been working and fighting with them stranded and in shock.
“A lot of cannon-fodder army conscripts were also abandoned to become easy prey for Islamic State atrocities. Regime-linked shabiha who had commandeered local homes fled, leaving them stripped bare, looting further as they left town. The regime is now bombing Palmyra, destroying a school and hospital … and (is) reported to be even firing mortars into the historic ruins. (There’s outrage at why, in contrast, they didn’t bomb the Islamic State convoys which could be seen roaring across the open landscape well before they arrived at Palmyra).”
If this source is to be believed, local civilians, understandably enough, “were terrified, hiding for days in a crowded basement. They emerged to dig wells in the street to get water but suddenly found Islamic State had restored the power and water, and were coming to every street delivering food and modest Islamic garments for the women. There is relief and a sense (that) things could be getting back to normal.
“Islamic State (leaders) are also reported to be offering assurances that they will not destroy the old city and ruins (psychologically important as the main source of local employment with the tourism industry). People are being told if they need medical services and other things they can go to Raqqa, with the road there open and safe.”
Of course, in the event, Islamic State did destroy the ancient city, beheading Khaled al-Asaad, the 82-year old scholar who had managed the site for 50 years, and hanging his body from a column on one of the ancient temples, which they later dynamited.
But this first-hand account illustrates the dilemma facing ordinary Syrians. On the one hand, a brutal and ineffective national government has largely abandoned its people to their fate. On the other, an ideologically abhorrent jihadist entity, for all its fanaticism, is better at administering territory and population than the regime, and has proven skilled at winning over sceptical populations (at least initially).
It’s no surprise that so many millions of Syrians have chosen to flee this intolerable situation. For those who remain, however, four things — the Iranian nuclear deal, Turkey’s entry into the war, Russian military intervention and the European refugee crisis — may be about to transform the conflict.
Whatever the outcome, for those caught in the middle, the end game can’t come soon enough.
David Kilcullen is an Australian author, strategist and counter-insurgency expert.
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