In Syria, New Conflict Looms As ISIS Loses Ground
Latest advance by Assad regime highlights the risk of a clash with Washington’s Kurdish-led allies.
By Yaroslav Trofimov
The Wall Street Journal
September 8, 2017
The Syrian regime’s successful offensive in Deir Ezzour this week pushed it ahead in the race against America’s Kurdish-led allies over who will inherit Islamic State’s remaining Syrian real estate.
With the extremist group losing ground fast, President Bashar al-Assad has emerged in his strongest position since the Syrian uprising began in 2011. Yet large parts of the country remain outside his reach, including an American-protected zone run by the Kurds in northeastern Syria and a smaller Turkish occupation zone nearby.
The question now is where precisely the line between regime and Kurdish areas will be drawn after Islamic State’s defeat and whether it will solidify into a semi-permanent partition of the country or spark a new bout of violence that could force the U.S. to make difficult choices.
American military planning calls for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, currently finishing the battle to take Raqqa from Islamic State, to push further south down the Euphrates River and to seize the extremist group’s remaining cities of Mayadeen and then al-Bukamal on the Iraqi border. That contested swath of Syria also holds most of its oil and gas reserves.
This week’s blitz by the Syrian army and its Shiite militia allies to relieve a besieged garrison in Deir Ezzour could within days cut off the way for such SDF advances. Large parts of the city remain under Islamic State control.
“It was a race but once the regime takes Deir Ezzour, it’s game over for the U.S.-led coalition. They will have to stop,” said Monzer Akbik, a leader of the mostly Arab Tayyar al-Ghad party that is loosely allied with the SDF. “After Deir Ezzour, the regime will be able to go to al-Bukamal, and once al-Bukamal is taken, the Iranians will have achieved an uninterrupted land route from Tehran to Baghdad to Damascus to Hezbollah in Beirut.”
The regime and SDF aren’t enemies, so far. They both share a hostility to Turkey and Turkey’s Syrian proxies, who occupy an area northeast of Aleppo. Despite isolated skirmishes over the past year, regime-held enclaves operate inside Kurdish territory in the northeastern cities of Hasakah and Qamishli, while the large Kurdish enclave of Afrin in western Syria enjoys Russian protection from Turkey and is connected to the rest of the world through regime territory.
“The SDF and the regime generally did not fight each other until now. We will see soon whether this will still hold true,” said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“The idea in U.S. policy circles is that we will now have a soft partition of Syria along the Euphrates, as it was along the Elbe [in Germany] at the end of the Second World War, except that the Americans are now coming from the east and the Russians from the west. But the regime and the Iranians are not interested in a soft partition. What they are after is a military victory.”
Indeed, Mr. Assad has repeatedly rejected the idea of maintaining Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria. Safwan Akkash, one of the leaders of the moderate and predominantly Sunni Arab Syrian opposition, predicted that the regime will eventually attack America’s Kurdish allies.
“The regime will not tolerate a Kurdish autonomous region,” he said. “Everything will be temporary in the sharing of influence between the Russians and the Americans. The current conflict will be followed by another conflict.”
That may not happen immediately, in part because the U.S. and Russia are loath to see a full-out war between the regime and the SDF. The regime also has more immediate priorities, such as rebel-dominated Idlib province in the northwest, which is increasingly controlled by jihadists allied with al Qaeda.
But such a conflict appears imminent and should it erupt, it would confront Washington with an unpalatable choice of either abandoning its Kurdish allies or taking direct military action against the Assad regime, said Robert Ford, the U.S. ambassador to Syria under the Obama administration who is now a fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
“Sooner or later, the government in Damascus will try to reimpose its authority. Will they move in six months, a year, 18 months?” Mr. Ford said. “That will be a big decision for the Trump administration: Should they use American armed forces to protect the Syrian Kurdish autonomous region? If they do, it would be against international law, and I don’t think there is any country in the region that would support it.”
One hope of avoiding such a scenario—which would, among other things, strain even further the already fraught U.S. relationship with Russia—lies in the United Nations-sponsored peace process in Geneva.
There, however, the Kurdish movement—now in control of the second-largest territory after the regime—isn’t even represented because of Turkish objections. And the beleaguered Sunni Arab opposition, which was making major advances until Russia’s intervention two years ago reversed the course of the war, holds increasingly weak cards.
This means that, for Mr. Assad, there are few reasons to be flexible in the peace process now, said Kamal Alam, a visiting fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London who frequently travels to Damascus.
“The government has the upper hand, and they are far stronger than they have ever been” since the war began, Mr. Alam said. “They will still go to the talks, but they no longer have the pressure to give up too much.”
The Syrian regime’s successful offensive in Deir Ezzour this week pushed it ahead in the race against America’s Kurdish-led allies over who will inherit Islamic State’s remaining Syrian real estate.
With the extremist group losing ground fast, President Bashar al-Assad has emerged in his strongest position since the Syrian uprising began in 2011. Yet large parts of the country remain outside his reach, including an American-protected zone run by the Kurds in northeastern Syria and a smaller Turkish occupation zone nearby.
The question now is where precisely the line between regime and Kurdish areas will be drawn after Islamic State’s defeat and whether it will solidify into a semi-permanent partition of the country or spark a new bout of violence that could force the U.S. to make difficult choices.
American military planning calls for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, currently finishing the battle to take Raqqa from Islamic State, to push further south down the Euphrates River and to seize the extremist group’s remaining cities of Mayadeen and then al-Bukamal on the Iraqi border. That contested swath of Syria also holds most of its oil and gas reserves.
This week’s blitz by the Syrian army and its Shiite militia allies to relieve a besieged garrison in Deir Ezzour could within days cut off the way for such SDF advances. Large parts of the city remain under Islamic State control.
“It was a race but once the regime takes Deir Ezzour, it’s game over for the U.S.-led coalition. They will have to stop,” said Monzer Akbik, a leader of the mostly Arab Tayyar al-Ghad party that is loosely allied with the SDF. “After Deir Ezzour, the regime will be able to go to al-Bukamal, and once al-Bukamal is taken, the Iranians will have achieved an uninterrupted land route from Tehran to Baghdad to Damascus to Hezbollah in Beirut.”
The regime and SDF aren’t enemies, so far. They both share a hostility to Turkey and Turkey’s Syrian proxies, who occupy an area northeast of Aleppo. Despite isolated skirmishes over the past year, regime-held enclaves operate inside Kurdish territory in the northeastern cities of Hasakah and Qamishli, while the large Kurdish enclave of Afrin in western Syria enjoys Russian protection from Turkey and is connected to the rest of the world through regime territory.
“The SDF and the regime generally did not fight each other until now. We will see soon whether this will still hold true,” said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“The idea in U.S. policy circles is that we will now have a soft partition of Syria along the Euphrates, as it was along the Elbe [in Germany] at the end of the Second World War, except that the Americans are now coming from the east and the Russians from the west. But the regime and the Iranians are not interested in a soft partition. What they are after is a military victory.”
Indeed, Mr. Assad has repeatedly rejected the idea of maintaining Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria. Safwan Akkash, one of the leaders of the moderate and predominantly Sunni Arab Syrian opposition, predicted that the regime will eventually attack America’s Kurdish allies.
“The regime will not tolerate a Kurdish autonomous region,” he said. “Everything will be temporary in the sharing of influence between the Russians and the Americans. The current conflict will be followed by another conflict.”
That may not happen immediately, in part because the U.S. and Russia are loath to see a full-out war between the regime and the SDF. The regime also has more immediate priorities, such as rebel-dominated Idlib province in the northwest, which is increasingly controlled by jihadists allied with al Qaeda.
But such a conflict appears imminent and should it erupt, it would confront Washington with an unpalatable choice of either abandoning its Kurdish allies or taking direct military action against the Assad regime, said Robert Ford, the U.S. ambassador to Syria under the Obama administration who is now a fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
“Sooner or later, the government in Damascus will try to reimpose its authority. Will they move in six months, a year, 18 months?” Mr. Ford said. “That will be a big decision for the Trump administration: Should they use American armed forces to protect the Syrian Kurdish autonomous region? If they do, it would be against international law, and I don’t think there is any country in the region that would support it.”
One hope of avoiding such a scenario—which would, among other things, strain even further the already fraught U.S. relationship with Russia—lies in the United Nations-sponsored peace process in Geneva.
There, however, the Kurdish movement—now in control of the second-largest territory after the regime—isn’t even represented because of Turkish objections. And the beleaguered Sunni Arab opposition, which was making major advances until Russia’s intervention two years ago reversed the course of the war, holds increasingly weak cards.
This means that, for Mr. Assad, there are few reasons to be flexible in the peace process now, said Kamal Alam, a visiting fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London who frequently travels to Damascus.
“The government has the upper hand, and they are far stronger than they have ever been” since the war began, Mr. Alam said. “They will still go to the talks, but they no longer have the pressure to give up too much.”
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