[Midden-Oosten] The Syrian Quagmire

[Jeff]

The Syrian Quagmire
March 11, 2019 by Leila Al Shami
This article was first published at Fifth Estate.
https://leilashami.wordpress.com/2019/03/11/the-syrian-quagmire/

If 2011 looked like the moment when people could unite, both within and 
across countries, to topple decades-old dictatorships with the demand 
for freedom and social justice; today looks like the moment of 
counter-revolutionary success. After eight years of increasingly brutal 
conflict in Syria, Assad still presides over a now destroyed, fragmented 
and traumatized country. The narrative is that the war is nearing its 
end. States once vocally opposed to Assad now have other strategic 
concerns which take precedence over the victims of his savage efforts to 
hold onto power. Yet on the ground conditions are far from stable and 
civilians remain trapped and are paying the price for ongoing struggles 
for power and territory between the regime, foreign states and 
ideological war lords.

Trump’s announcement (by tweet) in December, that he planned to withdraw 
US troops from Syria, led to panic amongst many Syrians, and 
precipitated a new wave of jostling between international and regional 
powers. The Kurdish YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which have been 
working together with the US in the fight against ISIS and are now in 
control over a large territory in the north and east of the country, 
have been abandoned. Without US backing, they are unlikely to maintain a 
presence in Arab majority areas in eastern Syria, and Trump’s 
announcement sent waves of families fleeing SDF controlled towns in the 
Deir Al Zour countryside towards opposition controlled areas in the 
north. They fear that the regime and Iranian militias will take over and 
enact retribution on those perceived as dissidents. Protests have broken 
out against the SDF in Manbij, Tabqa and Mansoura. People are angered by 
SDF negotiations with the regime, as well as long-standing resentments 
relating to a lack of adequate service provision, arbitrary arrests and 
forced conscription. Some have called upon Turkey to intervene to 
protect them. There is also the fear of ISIS resurgence. Despite Trump’s 
boast that the terror group had been defeated, the war continues. On 18 
January, the Syrian Network for Human Rights reported that International 
Coalition war planes killed at least 15 civilians, including six 
children, in Al Baghouz Tahtani villiage in Deir Al Zour.

In Kurdish majority areas, the fears are different. Turkey, long an 
enemy of Kurdish autonomy both at home and abroad, has announced its 
intention to intervene to establish a ‘safe-zone’ in the north-east of 
the country. Turkey’s main aim in Syria, having long since abandoned 
rebels in the fight against the regime, has been to prevent Kurdish 
control along its border and establish an area to return Syrian refugees 
to, some 3.5 million of which are currently residing in Turkey. Last 
year, Turkish and allied rebel forces took over Afrin, a Kurdish 
majority area formerly under the control of the PYD, which Turkey 
considers a terrorist group for its links to the PKK. The occupying 
forces have carried out obscene acts of violence against the local 
population including the looting of Kurdish homes and businesses, forced 
displacement, kidnappings, assassinations and rape. Kurdish leaders have 
rejected the idea of an expanded Turkish presence and instead have 
requested international protection. Without this, they may be faced with 
little choice but to negotiate the return of regime control and 
therefore place their faith in those that Kurds in their thousands rose 
up to overthrow in 2011.

Elsewhere the situation is no better. In January, the powerful hard-line 
Islamist group Hayaat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) declared war on rebel groups 
and captured much of opposition held territory in Idlib, parts of Aleppo 
and Hama. The HTS-affiliated Salvation Government, which has been 
accused of corruption, imposing hard-line Islamist rule, wide-spread 
arrests and arbitrary killing of opponents (both civil activists and 
rebel fighters) is attempting to take over all civil institutions. Local 
councils, Free Syria Police Forces, university students and medical 
workers have protested such attempts, stressing their independence and 
neutrality from any armed group. Western donors have withdrawn funding 
for civil society activities and humanitarian aid, fearing it may end up 
in HTS hands – a designated terrorist group – leaving the health care 
system and provision for internally displaced Syrians currently facing 
severe winter storms, on the brink of collapse. With HTS now in control, 
Assad and Russia may break the cease-fire deal and justify an attack on 
the province in the name of the War on Terror, with disastrous 
consequences for the three million civilians who reside there. As I 
write, regime shells rain down on the small town of Maarat Al-Nu’man, 
famed for its resistance to both the Assad regime and HTS, leaving 
casualties and destruction in their wake.

Despite many countries desire to rid themselves of their ‘refugee 
problem’ by suggesting that stability is returning; the situation in 
regime-controlled areas is also catastrophic. In Deraa in the south, and 
eastern Ghouta near Damascus, the return of the regime has meant a 
return of ‘the Kingdom of Silence and Fear.’ There are ongoing mass 
arrest campaigns and forced conscription to regime forces (despite 
amnesty deals which accompanied the ‘reconciliation’ process for those 
who chose to stay rather than be forcibly displaced from their homes). 
Resistance to the regime has re-emerged in Deraa including protests, 
graffiti and assassinations of pro-regime fighters and local figures 
that were involved in the reconciliation process and are now accused of 
betrayal. The living conditions in these areas are desperate as both 
international and local NGOs which provided services and employment 
opportunities in the face of local economic collapse, ceased operations 
following the regime take over. In regime-controlled Aleppo and 
Damascus, shortages of gas, oil and electricity and the monopolization 
of goods and services by regime militia who are charging exorbitant 
prices, has led to widespread public criticism of the regime even among 
its loyalist support base. Many Syrians who fled or were forcibly 
displaced from their homes, fear not only arrest if they return, but 
that they no longer have homes to return to. Laws have been put in place 
to expropriate property in formally rebel-held communities, and transfer 
it to loyalist hands under the pretext of reconstruction and 
development. The working class suburbs which were hotbeds of resistance 
are to be turned over to luxury malls and high end development, 
providing homes for those whose loyalty to the regime is not in 
question.

For many Syrians there can be no stability, much less peace, while those 
responsible for the country’s destruction remain in power. In recent 
months Syrian families have been learning the terrible fate of their 
loved ones, as the regime has issued death notices to civil registries 
of thousands of people who have been killed in regime detention. Many of 
those killed were activists arrested in 2011 and 2012 including 
non-violent advocate Yahya Shurbaji and his brother Ma’an who were among 
1,000 people from Daraya tortured to death in jail. Another executed was 
Layla Shweikani, a young woman from Chicago who travelled to Syria to 
help those displaced by the conflict and was detained in Damascus in 
2016. Tens of thousands of Syrians remain detained or disappeared. 
Syrians continue to demand justice and accountability for all those 
responsible for war crimes and mass human rights violations, yet the 
world seems increasingly impervious to their calls.

In Syria, and elsewhere in the region, revolutionary uprisings and 
inspiring experiments in grass roots democracy have been crushed by 
counter-revolutionary forces. Yet popular anger has not dissipated. None 
of the factors which caused the uprisings have been resolved and the 
situation has deteriorated socially, politically and economically. Peace 
and freedom remain as elusive as ever.