Why The US
Is Dropping Calls For Assad To Go
In Syria and Lebanon there are no plans for a
future, but the Syrian army is going to have a role
in any New Syria
By Robert Fisk
May 27,
2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "The
Independent
"
- I’m
getting a bit tired of reading about the “US-backed
alliance of Syrian militias” and their advance
against Isis. The ‘alliance’ is largely Kurdish –
which is why, I suppose, the Americans talked about
northern Syria when they announced the visit of
General Joseph Votel, the head of US Central
Command, to the little Kurdish enclave.
General
Votel could only set foot in the tiny strip of
territory along the Turkish border partly held by
Kurdish and a sprinkling of Turkmen groups. A visit
to northern Syria by an American general is thus a
lot less impressive than it sounds.
It’s
interesting to see a US commander crossing the
border to cheer on participants in a civil war.
That’s also what the American military has been
doing in Iraq, where forces have been encouraging
Shia militias fighting on the outskirts of Fallujah,
and even providing air support to the forces
of the perilously weak government in Baghdad.
For Iraq
now meets many of the definitions of civil war. Yet
in Syria, the Americans started by supporting
“democratic” forces fighting to overthrow Bashar
al-Assad and mysteriously supported the same men
(and women) when they were ready to fight Isis for
Ain al-Arab (or Kobani for those who prefer the
Kurdish version of the name).
How did
this transfer of allegiance come about? Are
the Kurds supposed to fight their way into Raqqa and
when Isis has turned tail and run across the Iraqi
border, to fight on against the Syrian government
army and its Lebanese militia allies and its Iranian
allies?
Has anyone
in northern Syria looked at any maps? And do the
Kurds think that Turkey will allow their mini-state
to survive?
“We do,
absolutely, have to go with what we’ve got,”
according to General Vogel. And I couldn’t agree
more. What that means is that the “Assad has got to
go” routine is changing. We haven’t heard many
Americans saying that recently, and we’ve hardly
noticed it.
The Russian
military is still in Syria (albeit scaled down), but
we saw plenty of them at Palmyra after its
recapture. Assad’s forces want to take back Deir El-Zour,
where their soldiers are still fighting under siege.
I suspect
that the Assad-must-go campaign is going to be
gently dropped – thanks to Isis, of course, which is
even more hateful for the Americans than the Syrian
government in Damascus.
Certainly,
Isis still exists on the border with Lebanon.
Incredibly, nine soldiers are still being held in an
enclave on the Lebanese border after being captured
almost two years ago.
The father
of the Lebanese soldier Mohamed Hamieh, executed at
the time by the Jabhat al-Nusra Front (recently
credited as “moderates” by Saudi Arabia and Qatar),
this week went to the Lebanese home of his killer’s
nephew (Sheikh Mustafa Hujeiri is a well-known
figure on Islamist tapes) and shot the 20-year old
35 times. He then left the corpse on the grave of
his own son.
It was a
bad week in Lebanon. The government staged the usual
military parades to mark Liberation Day when
guerrilla fighters finally persuaded the Israeli
army to flee across the border after 22 years of
occupation in 2000. Tanks and armoured vehicles
drove through the streets of Beirut amid public
assurances (and private fears) of inter-communal
violence amid the generals.
Many of
those resistance men who drove out the Israelis are
now fighting – and dying – for the Assad regime in
Damascus. Thus has the Syrian war touched Lebanon
again. The fears are, of course, of a Sunni-Shia
conflict starting in the Beqaa Valley.
The Syrian
war has already divided Lebanon, not least because
so many Hezbollah men have perished in Syria. They
are “martyrs” to the militia and many Shiites, but
the source of great anger to Lebanon’s Sunnis. The
Islamists up at Arsal, including the Nusra Front
men, are Sunnis.
And still,
in Syria as well as Lebanon, there are no plans for
a future. No plans for post-war development. No
plans for future policy towards Assad.
The Syrian
army is going to have a role in any New Syria. Maybe
the Russians realise this, which is why they
intervened so dramatically. But Syrian military
casualties are so high – half the government
soldiers I have met since the start of the conflict
in 2011 are now dead – that it was probably
inevitable that Moscow decided to bring its air
force to Lattakia and Tartous.
If Isis is
‘beaten’ – and the recapture of Fallujah and Raqqa
will not achieve that – then there must be projects
for those Syrians who fought on both sides. The
Syrians are specialists on ‘mediation’
committees, but this will have to be far greater
than that.
And what do
we have? Turkey threatens Isis, and Nusra and Isis
remains a threat right across the Middle East.
Saudis support Isis and Qatar supports Nusra, and
Hezbollah supports the regime.
The
Americans seem to have left the air bombing to the
Russians (after complaining about it) and Putin is
not afraid to say the obvious: that the government
in Damascus is a better bet than Isis.
We shall
see who wins. “We do, absolutely, have to go with
what we’ve got.” That pretty much sums it up.
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