The Syrian civil war has entered a new phase. President Bashar al-Assad’s government has consolidated its grip on the western half of the country, and in the east, U.S.-backed forces are advancing on the remnants of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). So far, these two campaigns have remained largely separate. But that is changing: Assad, with Iranian and Russian help, is starting to project more power into eastern Syria. As ISIS’ remaining territory shrinks, Syrian and U.S.-backed forces are converging on the same cities. Before long, Washington will have to decide whether, when, and how to withdraw. 

The United States has no good options in Syria, but some are worse than others. By now, hopes of getting rid of Assad or securing a reformed government are far-fetched fantasies, and so support for antigovernment factions should be off the table. The Syrian government is determined to take back the entire country and will probably succeed in doing so. That means the United States will have to abandon any hopes of supporting a separate Kurdish region or securing respect for human rights and democracy. And because Assad’s government is deeply corrupt, the United States should also rule out providing the regime with aid for reconstruction. There is, however, one way in which the United States can still do good: easing the suffering of the millions of Syrian refugees outside the country. By focusing on their plight, Washington would help some of the most vulnerable Syrians, reduce the burden on the countries that host them, and curb opportunities for jihadist recruitment in refugee communities.

VICTORY IN THE WEST

Over the last year and a half, Assad’s government has achieved an unprecedented string of military successes in western Syria. In December 2016, it forced the last rebel fighters and their families to quit Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, and then in May, it seized the final rebel holdout in the country’s third-largest city, Homs. Meanwhile, government forces have advanced steadily against longtime rebel strongholds near Damascus, capturing Daraya in August 2016 and Barzeh and Qaboun this past spring. 

A series of blunders by the opposition have aided Assad’s success. Murderous leadership rivalries among the opposition have prevented unified military operations. The opposition’s political leaders have failed to reach out to elements of the government’s support base, such as religious minority communities and middle-class business interests, that might have been sympathetic to their aims. The opposition was slow to reject extremist organizations operating in its midst, most notably the al Qaeda–affiliated al-Nusra Front. And rebel groups have never openly punished fighters who have committed atrocities. These failures have allowed Assad to retain enough support among Syria’s disparate professional, business, and minority communities, who fear they would suffer under Islamist rule, to mobilize the necessary resources and manpower to hang on. 

Assad has also benefited from foreign help. The Iranian government has assembled tens of thousands of Shiite fighters from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and even Pakistan to fight for the Syrian government. Together with Russian air support, these troops helped Assad’s ground forces recapture Syria’s main population centers. 

At the same time as Assad has received help from abroad, the opposition’s foreign support has withered away. In 2016, Turkey and the United States fell out over U.S. backing for Syrian Kurds fighting ISIS in eastern Syria. Turkey, fearing the development of an independent Kurdish region along its southern border, dropped its campaign against Assad and redirected its aid to Syrian rebels who would fight the Kurds. Then, in July, U.S. President Donald Trump ended a largely moribund CIA program that had been intended to help secular rebels fighting Assad, as the groups it had supported had turned into mere auxiliaries of al-Nusra Front.

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The Syrian civil war has entered a new phase. President Bashar al-Assad’s government has consolidated its grip on the western half of the country, and in the east, U.S.-backed forces are advancing on the remnants of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). So far, these two campaigns have remained largely separate. But that is changing: Assad, with Iranian and Russian help, is starting to project more power into eastern Syria. As ISIS’ remaining territory shrinks, Syrian and U.S.-backed forces are converging on the same cities. Before long, Washington will have to decide whether, when, and how to withdraw. 

The United States has no good options in Syria, but some are worse than others. By now, hopes of getting rid of Assad or securing a reformed government are far-fetched fantasies, and so support for antigovernment factions should be off the table. The Syrian government is determined to take back the entire country and will probably succeed in doing so. That means the United States will have to abandon any hopes of supporting a separate Kurdish region or securing respect for human rights and democracy. And because Assad’s government is deeply corrupt, the United States should also rule out providing the regime with aid for reconstruction. There is, however, one way in which the United States can still do good: easing the suffering of the millions of Syrian refugees outside the country. By focusing on their plight, Washington would help some of the most vulnerable Syrians, reduce the burden on the countries that host them, and curb opportunities for jihadist recruitment in refugee communities.

VICTORY IN THE WEST

Over the last year and a half, Assad’s government has achieved an unprecedented string of military successes in western Syria. In December 2016, it forced the last rebel fighters and their families to quit Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, and then in May, it seized the final rebel holdout in the country’s third-largest city, Homs. Meanwhile, government forces have advanced steadily against longtime rebel strongholds near Damascus, capturing Daraya in August 2016 and Barzeh and Qaboun this past spring. 

A series of blunders by the opposition have aided Assad’s success. Murderous leadership rivalries among the opposition have prevented unified military operations. The opposition’s political leaders have failed to reach out to elements of the government’s support base, such as religious minority communities and middle-class business interests, that might have been sympathetic to their aims. The opposition was slow to reject extremist organizations operating in its midst, most notably the al Qaeda–affiliated al-Nusra Front. And rebel groups have never openly punished fighters who have committed atrocities. These failures have allowed Assad to retain enough support among Syria’s disparate professional, business, and minority communities, who fear they would suffer under Islamist rule, to mobilize the necessary resources and manpower to hang on. 

Assad has also benefited from foreign help. The Iranian government has assembled tens of thousands of Shiite fighters from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and even Pakistan to fight for the Syrian government. Together with Russian air support, these troops helped Assad’s ground forces recapture Syria’s main population centers. 

At the same time as Assad has received help from abroad, the opposition’s foreign support has withered away. In 2016, Turkey and the United States fell out over U.S. backing for Syrian Kurds fighting ISIS in eastern Syria. Turkey, fearing the development of an independent Kurdish region along its southern border, dropped its campaign against Assad and redirected its aid to Syrian rebels who would fight the Kurds. Then, in July, U.S. President Donald Trump ended a largely moribund CIA program that had been intended to help secular rebels fighting Assad, as the groups it had supported had turned into mere auxiliaries of al-Nusra Front.

WASHINGTON'S BAD OPTIONS

Now that the end of the campaign against ISIS is in sight, the Trump administration will have to decide how long to keep a U.S. military presence in eastern Syria. Between 1,000 and 2,000 U.S. soldiers and a handful of American civilians are currently deployed in the country. The U.S. mission inside Syria started as military support for the Kurdish forces fighting ISIS but has grown to include keeping the peace between government forces, Arab rebels, and even Turkish soldiers in the northern Syrian city of Manbij and helping carry out initial reconstruction work. The United States’ first priority should be avoiding further mission creep and, above all, taking care not to get ensnared in any costly new military campaigns. 

There will be no shortage of seemingly plausible reasons to intervene. When the Syrian government and Kurdish forces inevitably fight over Kurdish self-governance in Rojava, or if the Syrian government attacks SDF forces in eastern Deir ez-Zor, the United States may be tempted to step in on behalf of old allies. That would be a mistake. No significant actor in the eastern Syrian war—not Jordan, nor the Iraqi Kurds, nor the Iraqi government in Baghdad—would help defend the Syrian Kurds or even the SDF fighters in Deir ez-Zor. The Turkish government would cheer Assad’s repression of the Syrian Kurds and would likely impede any U.S. aid that passed through Turkey. Russia is sensitive to Western intervention against authoritarian governments and has, in any case, limited leverage. Iran, facing its own restive Kurdish population, would back Assad. Moreover, there is no political will in the United States for a war on behalf of Syrian Kurdish interests or Syrian Arab tribal fighters in Deir ez-Zor, and eastern Syria has never been important to U.S. national security. 

Policymakers in Washington and Jerusalem are also anxious about Iran’s military position in Syria near the Golan Heights, from which it could threaten Israel. This is a legitimate concern: Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, one of the largest Iranian-mobilized Iraqi fighter groups in Syria, has already vowed that its next fight will be to liberate the Golan Heights. Syria is not the place to resist Iranian expansionism, however. Air strikes won’t compel Iranian forces to quit Syria, and ground incursions would simply force the United States to defend territories against sustained Iranian and Syrian unconventional warfare tactics. History indicates that the Iranian and Syrian governments might even recruit jihadists to fight U.S. forces. And the United States could expect little help from Turkey in any conflict with Iran. U.S. aid to Kurdish groups in Syria has created the potential for cooperation between Ankara and Tehran; in August, the chief of staff of the Iranian army visited Ankara for the first time since 1979. No one can know how long a war to limit Iranian influence in Syria would take or what achievable victory would look like.

As a result, many policymakers in Washington and Jerusalem hope that Russia will limit Iran’s influence, forestalling the need for a direct military confrontation. These hopes are misguided. Russia will not jeopardize its political and business relationships with Iran, which include shared interests in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Washington and Jerusalem should recognize that they both made their choice years ago. Having accepted that Assad will stay in power, the United States must also accept a newly influential Iran. 

The United States’ first priority should be avoiding further mission creep and, above all, taking care not to get ensnared in any costly new military campaigns.

Fortunately, the United States can live with greater Iranian influence in Syria. Iran’s presence will complicate Israeli security but will not threaten the country’s existence. Worse would be jihadists regaining Syrian territory and using it as a base to export terrorism. This is a real danger, as new jihadist groups have repeatedly appeared from the remnants of old ones. In 2011, for example, al-Nusra Front emerged from al Qaeda in Iraq. Al-Nusra learned from its predecessor: it was less brutal and concluded many alliances with non-jihadist groups until it could turn the tables on its erstwhile allies and destroy them one by one. If a new version of al Qaeda emerges in Syria, it will have learned from al-Nusra Front and ISIS and will likely be far harder to identify and contain than its forerunners. 

The best way to forestall extremist recruitment in the few areas still controlled by the opposition would be to restart the local economy. Economic frustrations among the residents of poor suburbs around Aleppo, Damascus, and Homs helped stir the original 2011 uprising. And according to a poll conducted by Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm, in 2017, 25 percent of young people in the Middle East considered providing better education and jobs the best means of resisting ISIS; only 13 percent thought the solution was military action. Right now, however, economic growth is a distant prospect. Only when the fighting stops will businesses be able to reopen and administrations be able to restore essential services such as clean water, electricity, hospitals, and schools. The Russian diplomatic strategy of creating de-escalation zones might allow for better local governance and economic recovery in those zones if the Syrian government would respect them. The United States, therefore, ought to back the Russian approach on the condition that economic aid will flow only if the cease-fires are respected. 

Securing even minimal respect for human rights, democratic norms, or good governance in Syria is now impossible.

Russia hopes that the West will eventually offer aid to rebuild Assad’s portions of Syria. But recent UN humanitarian programs have proved that attempting this would be a fool’s errand. Because outside resources have to flow through the Syrian government, substantial portions of UN aid have ended up in the pockets of government cronies or flowed solely to favored groups that support the government. In any case, U.S. sanctions against the Syrian government will make such an aid program legally impossible for the foreseeable future. Some analysts, including the Syria specialist Joshua Landis, have argued that the sanctions should be dismantled because they primarily punish the Syrian people rather than the government. These arguments miss the key point: the Syrian people will suffer official corruption, brutality, and economic mismanagement no matter what Washington and its allies do. The only question is whether to waste U.S. resources on the Syrian government.

Likewise, securing even minimal respect for human rights, democratic norms, or good governance in Syria is now impossible. Assad and his spokespeople have consistently said that the government will reassert full control over all Syrian territory. They mean it. The Baathist ideology that infuses the Syrian state rejects decentralization, and Syria lacks skilled provincial and town administrators. Iraq’s experience of corruption, mismanagement, and political infighting shows how hard it can be to decentralize a Baathist state, even with a degree of willpower and oil wealth that Syria does not have. Assad would rather live with a weakened but brutal centralized state than try to introduce real reform, a choice he made years ago.

There is one area where U.S. aid could do good: helping Syrian refugees in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. The governments of those countries, already overstretched, would likely allow the U.S. government and partner organizations to operate with greater autonomy than they could in Syrian-government-controlled areas. A renewed U.S. drive to raise funds would be extremely useful at a time of growing donor fatigue and dwindling UN resources, which have led to cuts in food rations in some refugee camps. Given the economic hardships in Syria and the government’s ethnic-cleansing program—the regime has seized whole neighborhoods in cities such as Damascus and Homs from restive communities in which the opposition found roots—many refugees are unlikely to return home in the near future. Helping those refugees maintain a semblance of dignity would diminish the appeal of extremists and partially relieve a vast humanitarian crisis. Such a meager policy would represent a sad response to an uprising that demanded at its start only basic accountability from the government and a recognition of Syrians’ dignity as human beings. But for the time being, it is the best the United States can do

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2017-10-16/keeping-out-syria