Assad’s Enemies Are Not Our Friends
The fall of Bashar Al Assad’s brutal regime is a moment for celebration. He is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and the immiseration of millions more. Like his late Baathist co-partisan, Sadaam Hussein, Assad used the state to torture, kill, and maim innocent civilians for decades. He will now join Edward Snowden in exile in Russia, where he will almost certainly try to be a player in Syria’s future.
American government officials should be eager to seize this opportunity, but wary about rehabilitating enemies for the sake of creating false allies. Over the last twenty years, American officials have fooled themselves that some terrorists could be made statesmen, only to watch them slaughter more innocents. We’ve emboldened the Taliban and al Qaeda by treating Sirajuddin Haqqani as a statesman. We’ve repeatedly released terrorists in custody, only to see them return to the battlefield stronger and deadlier.
As President Biden and President-elect Trump look at the battlefield, it will be tempting to tip the scales for one group. Some of that instinct may be borne of a desire to undo the mistakes of the early years of the Syrian Civil War, in which the United States did too little to empower the democratic forces that may have been aligned with American values and interests. However, it’s important to remember that all the players in this sordid drama are drenched in blood; and some of that blood is American. After thirteen years of war, everyone’s hands are stained. Both Biden and Trump should be steely-eyed about the Syrian battlefield. Supporting any government led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) or the Syrian National Army would be a catastrophic mistake that would encourage similar groups across the globe.
Currently, the Biden administration is considering removing HTS from the list of foreign terrorist organizations to ease the way to engaging with the terror group. That would be a mistake.
HTS led the fight that brought down Assad and is forming a government. Before the group’s leader, specially designated global terrorist Aby Mohammad al Jolani, launched a public relations campaign to recast himself as a moderate, he was a major Islamist militant. He entered Iraq in 2003 to fight for Al Qaeda in Iraq against U.S. forces. He was subsequently captured and spent five years at Camp Bucca. Upon his release, he returned to Syria, where he became the head of Al Qaeda. He reported to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the future leader of the Islamic State, while Baghdadi was still part of Al Qaeda. After a dispute between the two over who would control the jihad in Syria, Al Qaeda Emir Ayman al Zawahiri sided with Julani.
Julani purportedly broke with al Qaeda in 2016. However, he never denounced al Qaeda or renounced his oath to Zawahiri. He stated that his group would have “no affiliation to any external entity”—a statement so vague as to be meaningless. In fact, this decision not to affiliate with an external entity came after Jolani consulted with representatives of al Qaeda’s central leadership, including Abu Khayr al Masri, al Qaeda’s second-in-command at the time.
Julani’s statement that what would become HTS has “no affiliation to any external entity” is false. Numerous “external entities” are affiliated with HTS to this day, and many of them helped Julani’s forces seize Damascus. Among them are the Turkistan Islamic Party, a Uighur jihadist group whose leader sits on al Qaeda’s central council and is based in Afghanistan, and Katibat Imam al Bukhari, an Uzbek terror group that swears allegiance to the head of the Afghan Taliban. These groups have thousands of fighters who operate under the banner of HTS. Those pinning their hope on Julani suddenly becoming Syria’s next great hope would do well to look at Julani’s past activities and present allies.
Other anti-Assad groups include the Syrian National Army, which is backed by Turkey and includes jihadist organizations that fight in its ranks, and the ironically named, U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is dominated by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), another U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. The United States backed the SDF despite its terrorist roots precisely because there are no good actors in Syria, and American policymakers were desperate for an ally to battle the Islamic State. Turkey backs the Syrian National Army in part because its enemy, the PKK, which is responsible for killing thousands of civilians in Turkey, holds significant territory in northern and eastern Syria.
There’s an understandable urge to help the people of Syria, who are rejoicing at the fall of a brutal authoritarian regime. But the danger hasn’t passed. First, the United States, Israel, and allied NATO’s intelligence communities should be scouring Syria for any chemical weapons. This is a crucial race against time, and if HTS or any other group gets its hands on these weapons, they could use them against the United States.
After securing Syria’s WMD, the United States must help its allies defend their borders. We should be assisting Israel and Jordan in ensuring they don’t suffer any blowback from the fall of Assad. Israel has its hands full fighting a war that spans Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza, and Yemen. Jordan already hosts American forces. The United States has likely been feeding Israel targeting packages of Syrian targets, and the American intelligence community has an excellent relationship with the Jordanian General Directorate of Intelligence.
Our relationships with Iraq and Turkey, two of Syria’s other neighbors, are more complicated. The Iraqi government, which is majority Shia, has a tense, highly complex relationship with its Shia-majority neighbor, Iran. Over the last year, the Biden administration has been preparing the ground to leave Iraq. While this is an understandable urge, considering America’s 35-year struggle with Saddam Hussein and what came after, it would be a catastrophic mistake. The Islamic State remains potent in Iraq. While Iraq’s special operations forces are highly competent, they’re not enough to fight the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and Iranian proxy groups like Kataib Hizballah, Asaib al-Haq, or Muqtada al-Sadr’s groups. A small, continued American presence in Iraq would help strengthen the country against both Sunni Islamists and Iranian proxies.
Turkey is a NATO ally, but its president, Recep Erdoğan, is an occasional friend of Vladimir Putin and is providing material support to Hamas. At the same time, Turkey is home to the critically important Incirlik Airfield, a joint Turkish-American base home to the 39th Air Base Wing, which provides critical humanitarian support throughout the region and has as its mission to “defend NATO’s southern flank.”
Turkey has a right to defend its borders against Kurdish terrorist groups like the PKK. Erdoğan has chosen its favored terrorists in the Syrian Civil War, which happen to be fighting the United States’s favored terrorists. If the United States is going to de-list any of these groups as terrorists, it should be the PKK, who don’t have extensive links to international Islamist networks (they’re predominantly Marxist Kurdish nationalists) and are related to other Kurdish groups that have long cooperated with the United States. When we play nice with former enemies, as we’re currently doing with the Taliban/al Qaeda leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, it makes our promises and assurances seem suspect. Our allies take notice, as do our enemies.
Whatever this administration or the next one does, it would be an error to legitimize HTS, as recent reporting suggests this is being heavily debated in D.C. and London. Julani is a terrorist with American blood on his hands.
Instead, the United States and a coalition of concerned nations should take this opportunity to destroy HTS and its followers, as they did with its Islamic State forebears, and is currently doing in Syria. There’s an opportunity to rid the world of a blossoming terror state.
American involvement in Syria will continue because Syria will demand American attention. Rather than searching for saints—or pretending devils are saints—American policy should serve America’s overall interests of defeating radical Sunni and Shia Islamic terrorism in whatever form or name it takes. These men are not our allies. They’re murderers, rapists, torturers, and tyrants. We mustn’t forget this, as we have done so many times in the past.