Is the enemy of my enemy always my friend?
New year, new Syria
On January 3 I was scrolling through Reddit when I came across the picture above with a headline along the lines of, “German foreign minister shakes her own hand after new Syrian leader refuses to greet her with handshake.” Admittedly, this rubbed me the wrong way as I am sure it was intended to, because upon reflection this was clearly rage-bait. After a bit of investigating I realized that Minister Baerbock was not “shaking her own hand”, she was simply clasping her hands together while introducing herself. In addition, it was well understood by both sides prior to this meeting that there would be no handshake. In fact there wasn’t even supposed to be a handshake between the Syrian leader and the French foreign minister, which is how we ended up with that awkward finger-shake pictured above. Essentially, this was all a big nothing-burger, further emphasized by the post being removed from Reddit less than an hour later.
With all of that considered it still got me thinking, is it possible for someone to be a “former terrorist”? Ahmed al-Sharaa, or Abu Mohammad al-Julani as he was more commonly called prior to taking power, has been a self-proclaimed jihadist for his entire adult-life. He had a nearly Forrest Gump-like ability to always be in the background amongst the world’s most infamous jihadists over the last 25 years. Now as the de-facto leader of Syria he claims he is of no threat to the West. However it might not be such a ridiculous question to ask how “reformed” he truly is if he is unwilling to shake the hand of another country’s foreign minister, particularly when that country has been accommodating nearly a million Syrian refugees for the better part of a decade.
Ding-dong, Assad is gone
To say the last five weeks in Syria have been tumultuous is obviously a gross understatement. After nearly 14 years of civil war Bashar al-Assad and his Syrian Ba’athist party have been deposed by a mix of rebel groups, primarily led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The speed at which the Assad regime collapsed under the renewed rebel offensive surprised most around the world, including the rebel groups themselves. The offensive began November 27 with rebel groups attacking northern governorates in Idlib, Aleppo, and Hama. By December 8 the opposition groups had taken the Syrian capital of Damascus and President Bashar al-Assad was on a plane to his new residence in Moscow.
The Assad regime began all the way back in 1971 with Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, deposing fellow Ba’athist Salah Jadid and appointing himself President. Over the next few decades Assad transformed the Syrian government into a one-party dictatorship and cult-of-personality centered on himself and his family. After the death of his oldest son, and with his own health failing, Hafez recalled his second son back to Syria to begin the transfer of power within his family. Before being recalled to Syria, Bashar al-Assad was training as an ophthalmologist in London and had no prior political or military experience. Bashar took the reins after his father’s death in 2000 and continued his oppressive policies and perpetrated violent crackdowns against opponents.
“Maybe the days we were hoping for are here, when the people would revolt against their tyrants.”
-Ahmed al-Sharaa, Emir of HTS and de-facto leader of Syria
The Arab Spring and Syrian Civil War
The Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests in much of the Arab world beginning in the early 2010s. While most of these movements were violently stamped out by their respective governments, the Arab Spring did lead to regime changes in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Yemen. One of the other long-lasting effects of these protest movements was the Syrian revolution and subsequent civil war. The Syrian Civil War is way too long and complicated to explain in detail without losing sight of what this blog post is really about, and quite frankly, I am not qualified to explain it. Staring at maps of the Syrian civil war over the last 14 years and trying to decipher which groups controlled which territory at which time will make one’s eyes bleed.
For the purposes of this post there are three main takeaways I’d like the reader to recall about the Syrian civil war:
- The emergence of the Islamic State (ISIS) as a quasi-state, controlling approximately half of Syria’s geographic territory and naming the Syrian city Raqqa as its capital, peaking in 2015.
- The largest refugee crisis on earth, including more than seven million Syrians externally displaced, with over 965,000 residing in Germany alone
- The Assad government’s indiscriminate bombing of civilian centers including hospitals, supported by the regime’s allies in the Kremlin. This also included the use of chemical weapons on Syrian citizens, such as sarin nerve gas and chlorine gas.
With all of that considered, and the fact that approximately 600,000 have been killed, one can understand why people are happy with any outcome that ends hostilities. The question now becomes, did the Syrian people oust one tyrant just to have another take his place?
The Jihadist
Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, also known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani, was born in Saudi Arabia to a Syrian family displaced from their home in the Golan Heights after Israel’s occupation following the Six-Day War. He was raised in an upscale neighborhood in Damascus before becoming radicalized by the Second Intifada in 2000, and eventually joining al-Qaeda just prior to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Al-Sharaa fought as an insurgent during the US occupation of Iraq under the command of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
There is some controversy over whether or not al-Sharaa had ever met al-Zarqawi in-the-flesh. In the past he has been described as a “close associate” of the Al-Qaeda leader, but according to his own testimony he never met al-Zarqawi and was only a foot-soldier during the insurgency. In 2006, shortly before the outbreak of the sectarian civil war in Iraq, al-Sharaa was arrested by American forces and imprisoned for the next five years.
What occurred during al-Sharaa’s imprisonment is a bit murky, and we really only have his account of the situation to go on, but the man who left prison in 2011 seemed to be a much more powerful figure in the jihadist movement than the one who entered. Within a short time of his release, al-Sharaa was meeting with the Emir of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. During this meeting he requested to bring the jihad to Syria, as well as asking for funding and manpower. According to al-Sharaa, he entered Syria with only six men and received approximately $50,000 monthly from al-Baghdadi. Within a year his ranks grew from the original six companions to over 5,000 men, and with that came more responsibility and funding from al-Baghdadi.
Ahmed al-Sharaa’s new organization was named Al-Nusra Front, a Salafist-jihadist group which aimed to establish an Islamic caliphate in Syria under sharia law. Salafism, in short, is the belief in a literalist interpretation of the Quran and a call for a return to the old traditions. This put Al-Nusra at odds not only with Assad’s Ba’athist regime, but also non-jihadist Western-backed rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Syrian Defense Force (SDF). At some point around 2013, Al-Nusra Front had a falling out with ISIS, due to al-Baghdadi’s desire to consolidate all jihadist groups in the Levant under his direct control. From 2013-2016 the Al-Nusra Front declared their loyalty to al-Qaeda and its leader Ayman al-Zawahiri (who was one of the primary orchestrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks).
Following the increase of Russian involvement in the Syrian Civil War, al-Sharaa recognized that he and Al-Nusra Front would require financial backing from foreign nations if they ever hoped to continue their war effort. He also recognized that foreign investments would remain effectively impossible while they were aligned with al-Qaeda. In early 2017 Al-Nusra cut ties with al-Qaeda and began merging with other Sunni-Islamist groups in Syria to form Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). This “re-branding” of sorts did little to sway Western governments as HTS is still considered a terrorist organization by the UN security council due to its past allegiances and jihadist tactics, including suicide bombers.
Russian involvement in the civil war
Prior to September 2015, Russia’s involvement in Syria’s civil war was mostly limited to financial and military aid by providing Assad’s forces with billions of dollars in weapons and equipment. Between September 2015 and December 2017 the Kremlin began attacking rebel strongholds through a series of brutal air strikes, before finally committing to putting boots on the ground, mostly in the form of their private military contractor (PMC) Wagner Group. In a sense, the atrocities we witnessed in Syria were a mere preview of what was to come in Ukraine just a few years later, similar to Nazi Germany testing new technologies and tactics during the Spanish Civil War.
In exchange for propping up his failing regime, al-Assad allowed the Russians to operate two military bases in Syrian territory: the Tartus naval base and the Khmeimim air base. Tartus gave Russia a Mediterranean port with the capability to place nuclear-powered cruise-missile submarines, guided-missile cruisers, as well as an accompaniment of escort ships such as destroyers, frigates, and corvettes. In addition, Tartus naval base was the only port capable of repair and replenishment for the Russian navy in the Mediterranean, which became especially important after Turkey closed the straits to the Black Sea once Russia invaded Ukraine. Khmeimim air base facilitated Russia’s ability to bomb Syrian territory controlled by rebel groups while also creating a “no-fly zone” for the US and its allies.
What does this mean for Moscow?
So how, with so much invested in Syria, did Russia allow the Assad regime to fall? Well they’ve been a little distracted the last three years in case you haven’t noticed. Concerningly for the Kremlin, this is not the only area of the world where Russian influence seems to be waning, as Armenia has exited the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) after its disastrous war with Azerbaijan.
Since al-Assad’s exile to Russia much has been speculated about the fate of the Russian bases in Syria. While no official resolution has been announced publicly, it’s become clear that the Kremlin is anticipating losing the bases. In mid-December the Russians began evacuating their air defense systems from Khmeimim air base to Tartus naval base. In late December the Russian Mediterranean task force was moved from its home at Tartus to Benghazi, Libya where they will be unable to repair and replenish their ships, essentially ending naval operations in the Mediterranean.
It can not be stressed enough how embarrassing this whole debacle is for Putin and the Kremlin. The loss of face on the international stage, the abandonment of their most important strategic allies, and the precarious position of their Mediterranean naval task force compels other Moscow-aligned nations to reconsider their alliances. It signals to the African governments propped up by Russia’s Africa Corps (formerly Wagner) that Moscow is unwilling, or worse, unable to protect its interests internationally.
The man of the hour
History is filled with men who made better revolutionaries than they did leaders of a nation. I think many Westerners would be lying if they didn’t claim to be at least a bit apprehensive of the new Syrian leader and his regime. Unfortunately we have seen what becomes of a nation when it falls to a jihadist organization that imposes sharia law on its citizenry. But for better or for worse Ahmed al-Sharaa is the new leader in Damascus, and the US is not in a position to be throwing away potential allies in the Middle East. The fall of the Assad government is an enormous black-eye for our adversaries in Russia and Iran. We would be foolish not to give al-Sharaa a chance to deliver on his word to establish pragmatic relationships with the West (and pose no threat to their security).
On December 20 the US sent Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf and a group of diplomats to meet with al-Sharaa in Damascus. The meeting was called “very productive” by the State Department, but the details of the meeting are not known to the public. Whatever was discussed in that meeting must have been “very productive” indeed because the State Department agreed to lift the $10 million bounty on al-Sharaa’s head (but did not lift the terrorist designation of the HTS).
In every article I’ve read on this meeting it seems like the primary discussion was about inclusivity and human rights in the new Syria. However I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that the status of the two Russian bases was also discussed. By removing the bounty from al-Sharaa’s head the US State department put themselves in a very sticky situation if al-Sharaa were to continue his jihad outside of Syria. In exchange for taking on this risk I would hope some agreement was made to have the Russian troops removed from Syrian soil within the next few months.
Ahmed al-Sharaa was the subject of Martin Smith’s PBS Frontline 2021 documentary The Jihadist. In the documentary Smith interviews American Ambassador James Jeffrey who has served as a diplomat in the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. Jeffrey served as United States Deputy National Security Advisor, Ambassador to Turkey, Ambassador to Iraq, and the United States Special Representative for Syria Engagement. It is therefore a good assumption to believe that he knows the realities of Middle Eastern politics better than most in the US. Below is a quote from Ambassador Jeffrey when asked about al-Sharaa’s leadership:
“Look, he’s the least bad option of the various options…When there is not the normal setup of nation-states and of international norms and rules, you wind up with groups like this, that do things you don’t like but in the here and now are the folks you have to deal with to avoid even worse things.”
Is the West making a mistake in putting their faith in a jihadist? Or should the response be diplomatic isolation, similar to how the Taliban in Afghanistan is currently being dealt with? Please let me know in the comments.