Nowhere to go but up

The world grapples with a new Syria, and prays for a better outcome than the old Syria

Syria, a nation known for more than a decade as nothing less than hell on earth, finally has a chance to rise.

My interest in Syria began during my visit to Washington DC in April. At the same Hudson Institute conference as the lament from Romanian officials, I was also privileged enough to hear a US official tasked with Middle Eastern Affairs describing the Trump Administration’s approach to stabilizing an intractably problematic region. While many of the typical policy approaches such as finding a solution to the Iranian nuclear dilemma and expanding the Abraham Accords to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were featured, I will opt to highlight once area of focus that will probably receive less attention: the future of the Syrian Arab Republic.

Since Syria’s majority yet marginalized Sunni population erupted their simmering discontent into a full-blown rebellion during the height of the so-called “Arab Spring” in 2011, Syria has been transformed into a hellscape of terrorism, mass atrocities and crimes against humanity, and obliterated towns and cities. In the words of the White House official, Syria has become a country whose main exports are not goods and services, but instead problems, including the amphetamine-type stimulant Captagon. One of the more well-publicized and most serious of these problems has been the Islamic State (ISIS), a gang of unhinged, apocalyptic fanatics with the definitive intent to launch terror and mayhem far from the Middle East.

While thankfully their capability to do so today is modest, Syria’s catastrophe has also unleashed a spillover even more destabilizing to the world than the monsters of ISIS: migrants and refugees. Since the nation began to unravel in 2011, more than six million Syrians have fled the country, plunging neighboring nations into a profound economic, social, and demographic crisis. Lebanon in particular has been hit hard, suffering a complete economic collapse exacerbated by that country’s eternal sectarian tensions. Much more visible to Americans has been mass migration to Europe, a phenomenon that has certainly, at least in my opinion, accelerated the continent’s decline. This author considers Germany’s decision to accept one million Syrians in 2015 to be one of the most catastrophic mistakes any nation has made in modern times.

Last December, the regime of the so-called Butcher of Damascus, Bashar al-Assad, collapsed suddenly as loyalist troops surrendered their weapons and allowed Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni Islamist Syrian rebel outfit, to take over Damascus, Syria’s capital, without much bloodshed. This event, while surprising when it first happened, was the inevitable consequence of the Assad Regime’s main allies, Russia and Iran, slowly backing away from their vassal due to Russia’s distractions in Ukraine and the collapse of Iran’s terrorist “Axis of Resistance.” While the weakening of two fundamental American adversaries may sound like a triumph, the history of HTS proves the intense complexity of the Middle East and why much of the world remains skeptical of the group’s plans to rebuild their devastated country.

Before one starts praising HTS’ leader and Syria’s new president Ahmed Al-Sharaa, we must first examine his background. In the words of Donald Trump, Al-Sharaa is a “tough guy, with a very strong past.” That would be putting it mildly. In 2003, as American troops successfully overthrew the Iraqi government and rolled their tanks into Baghdad, al-Sharaa was one of the millions of Arabs outraged by this development and vowed to join the Islamist and jihadist resistance to the American occupation. By 2005, al-Sharaa was a full-fledged Al Qaeda militant fighting the jihad against American and allied soldiers in Iraq’s civil war. While Al-Sharaa did not meet his 72 virgins, he was instead captured and spent more than five years in American prisons, his hatred for all non-jihad entities and worldviews only growing. After his release from prison in 2011, Al-Sharaa sought out yet more jihad, this time in his home country of Syria.

By 2012, Ahmed Al-Sharaa was so entrenched in his jihadism that he opted to ally himself with another butcher, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi jihadist who famously became known as the Caliph of the Islamic State. However, by the next year, competing visions for Syria and al-Baghdadi’s grotesque brutality and violence on an industrial scale, led to a messy and bloody breakup between the Caliph and al-Sharaa’s group, then titled the Al-Nusra Front. The Front was designated as a terrorist organization by the United States in 2012, and after rebranding as HTS in 2017, was blacklisted again in 2018. These designations meant that cooperation with the United States and other allies in the war against ISIS was limited. During that time, Al-Sharaa, through brutality and zero tolerance for dissent, consolidated his position as the leader of Syria’s non-ISIS opposition in the opposition stronghold of Idlib.

Even as it appeared HTS had been marginalized, Al-Sharaa knew it would only be a matter of time before he pounced.

Now, HTS has been officially dissolved as the organization transforms from a militia to a governing body. Not only has the terrorist label been discarded by the international community, the punishing sanctions imposed on Syria for the Assad regime’s atrocities against civilians, on the strong recommendation of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, are on course to disappear. In the words of President Trump, “It’s (Syria’s) time to shine. Good luck, Syria. Show us something very special, like they’ve done, frankly, in Saudi Arabia, OK? They’re going to show us something special. Very good people.” The two presidents even met in Riyadh last week, with Trump urging al-Sharaa to join the Abraham Accords and recognize Israel. While such an about-face from a “former” jihadist is highly unlikely, the meeting was indeed historic.

The current administration has made clear that the traditional American policy of attempting to insert human rights and molding Middle Eastern societies to look more like our own has been tossed into the dustbin. Gone is the so-called “nation-building” of the Bush era, a policy where Washington believed it could reformulate entire cultures with thousands of years traditions into something dramatically different overnight. Instead, the United States would pursue a more pragmatic, business focused approach promoting regional peace and commerce without interfering in the domestic affairs of the region. Giving legitimacy to a man who spent nearly 20 years fighting under the Al Qaeda and jihadist banners is the ultimate embodiment of this approach.

So, what is my opinion on this shift in US strategy? First off, I want to make clear that I do not condone Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s militant past and believe that steps must be taken to ensure he forms an inclusive regime that doesn’t fuel even more conflict in the region. However, and contrary to what I feel is a misguided and appeasement-heavy approach by the Trump Administration regarding Ukraine and Russia, their policy in the Middle East is rock solid. The regime-change wars of the Bush era stained our reputation and cost trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives. Syria, like Ukraine, is a country that must be handled with great care. While Al-Sharaa’s inclusion of a Christian woman in his cabinet is a positive development, rigorous monitoring, backed by the seemingly unlimited funds awarded by the ultra-wealthy Gulf States, should work for the foreseeable future lest Al-Sharaa regress into his old ways.

If this approach proves successful in the long term, and Syria is allowed to develop in a manner best for Syria, not Washington, Syria will no longer be the world’s largest exporter of chaos. And that kind of future, though far from guaranteed, would most certainly be in the interests of not only the Middle East, but United States as well.