After a half century of Assad household dictatorial rule, Bashar Assad has fled and Syrians can lastly rejoice the tip of a horrific regime that gassed, starved and murdered its personal individuals. Syrians have suffered terribly for a few years, particularly these tortured or disappeared by Assad’s henchmen, and the nation’s individuals want and deserve American assist now. However the brand new rebel-led authorities in Damascus has a sordid historical past of its personal, and U.S. officers should fastidiously assess how you can work together with the brand new regime, beginning with a collection of U.S. precedence pursuits.
Lengthy earlier than the lightning occasions that immediately led to the tip of the Assad regime this week, the United Nations Basic Meeting mandated an investigation into using systemic torture and abuse in its prisons. Launched simply because the regime was collapsing, the report is tough to learn, however the images which have come out of the infamous Sednaya jail since its doorways had been opened are infinitely worse.
There may be little question that the area is already higher off with out Assad. Bumper-to-bumper visitors has clogged the roads resulting in Damascus as refugees in neighboring international locations stream house after years of pressured displacement. Arab states ought to see virtually speedy reduction from a current drug epidemic that was fueled by the Assad regime’s manufacturing and regional distribution of a notorious amphetamine-like substance called Captagon.
The autumn of the Assad regime can be strategically useful to the U.S. and its allies within the area by advantage of eradicating a linchpin of Iran’s “axis of resistance.” This axis was a three-legged stool — based mostly on Iran, Syria and the Lebanon-based group Hezbollah — and it may well not stand. Syria served as a land bridge throughout which Iran shipped weapons to Hezbollah for a few years. With out Syria, Iran will discover it far tougher to rearm these fighters. And with out Iranian weapons and funds, the Lebanese terrorist group faces an incredible problem reconstituting itself after being devastated by a collection of Israeli strikes have devastated the group.
Israel has capitalized on this weak second in Syria to destroy an enormous variety of weapons earlier than they will fall into new fingers and be used towards Israel or others. Since Saturday, the Israeli air drive and navy have hit more than 350 strategic targets across the country, destroying an estimated 70% of Syria’s army capabilities.
The insurgent alliance taking energy in Syria now’s led by Hayat Tahrir al Sham, a delegated terrorist group that grew out of Al Qaeda and was first dispatched by Al Qaeda in Iraq, which later turned Islamic State. Whereas Hayat Tahrir al Sham has fought each Islamic State and an Al Qaeda splinter aspect in Syria, it stays a jihadist group known as out by the State Division. In 2020, the U.S. added the group to its checklist of entities of specific concern beneath the Worldwide Spiritual Freedom Act “for having engaged in particularly severe violations of non secular freedom” in areas of Syria beneath its management. Based on one other State Division report, the group now main rebels “dedicated a variety of abuses, together with killings, kidnappings, bodily abuse, and recruitment or use of kid troopers.”
Simply prior to now yr, courts in the US have convicted individuals of funding terrorism for elevating funds for Hayat Tahrir al Sham. And two Al Qaeda branches, one in North Africa and one other within the Sahel, already issued a joint statement urging fellow jihadists to rebuild Syria as a “Sunni entity” dominated by sharia. Al Qaeda branches in Yemen and South Asia additionally issued statements supporting the offensive that deposed Assad.
In the meantime, social media is replete with photographs of jihadist rebels in Syria describing their victory there as a primary, not final, step. In a single, a bunch of rebels appear and proclaim: “We entered the Umayyad mosque in Damascus chanting Allah Akbar and with the assistance of Allah we can even enter the Al-Aqsa mosque and we can even enter the Prophet Muhammad’s mosque and the Kaaba in Mecca,” referring to websites in Jerusalem and Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. needs to be cautious about eradicating sanctions towards the Syrian state, the Hayat Tahrir al Sham group and its chief, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. Such softening ought to happen solely in return for clear deliverables. Nevertheless, Washington ought to instantly problem licenses allowing a variety of humanitarian assist to Syria. Removing from the checklist of identified terrorist teams needs to be earned, not gifted, particularly when coping with a jihadist group in energy.
This week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken laid out what the political transition course of in Syria must appear like for the U.S. to acknowledge a future Syrian authorities: respect for the rights of minorities, facilitation of humanitarian help to all in want, stopping Syria from getting used as a base for terrorism, stopping Syria from posing a menace to its neighbors, and guaranteeing that any stockpiles of chemical or organic weapons are secured and safely destroyed.
Different key U.S. pursuits implied however not expressly included on this assertion embrace defending U.S. Kurdish allies in northeast Syria and enabling them to proceed sustaining detention camps holding Islamic State fighters and guaranteeing that Syria actually break with Iran and Hezbollah in order that Syria will not function a land bridge to rearm Lebanese fighters. To safe these pursuits, will probably be important for the incoming U.S. administration to keep up its small however influential U.S. army presence in Syria, which then-President Trump twice tried to take away throughout his first time period.
U.S. officers have motive to tread fastidiously. On the one hand, Hayat Tahrir al Sham has a demonstrated seven-year file of governance within the components of Syria which were beneath its management, working what it known as the Syrian Salvation Authorities with a number of ministries to control the territory it managed. And whereas prior to now the group dispatched suicide bombers in its assaults, it has not employed such techniques in recent times.
U.S. officers want to look at not solely how the brand new ruling insurgent alliance governs within the second, however the way it governs going ahead. For a lot of, Syria at this time has very robust echoes of Iran after the 1979 revolution. Again then, many teams of Iranians against the shah — communists, secularists, Islamists — obtained behind Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution. The brand new authorities in Tehran talked the discuss respecting minority rights and even included secularists in authorities for a time. Then the theocracy took maintain and Iran turned a sponsor of terrorism for many years, persevering with to this present day.
Within the U.S., officers in each the outgoing and incoming presidential administrations ought to rejoice the demise of the Assad dictatorship, however America’s Syria coverage going ahead needs to be based mostly not on trusting new Syrian officers’ phrases however on verifying their actions.
Matthew Levitt is a senior fellow and director of this system on counter-terrorism and intelligence on the Washington Institute for Close to East Coverage.
