"Syria is a mess, but is not our friend. THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!" This is what President-elect Donald J. Trump posted, in all caps, on X (formerly Twitter) on Dec. 7 as the Assad regime was rapidly collapsing.
The barbaric despot who ruled Syria for decades was driven out by the rebel forces who had mounted a blitzkrieg-like offensive in which they captured Aleppo, Homs and other key cities and seized control of the capital, Damascus.
Likely driven by the goal of fulfilling his mandate to stop sending Americans to fight foreign wars, President Trump’s instincts are noble. Let Allah sort this one out seems like a reasonable approach. America has plenty of our own problems at this time, not the least of which are the unknown drone swarms flying over our critical military installations inside the homeland – a mystery that our government seems incapable of solving. But here’s the dilemma that will almost certainly complicate Trump’s "stay out of someone else’s fights" foreign policy approach.
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If left to its own devices, Syria will highly likely turn into a terrorist state. That is a nation state run by terrorists and harboring terrorist groups. Another Afghanistan in other words.
Following the fall of Bashar al Assad, Syria is now run by a de facto terrorist organization, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). HTS is the dominant rebel force that led the various disparate groups to stage the insurrection. The U.N. Security Council itself considers HTS as a terrorist group, having unanimously adopted in 2015 Resolution 2254, which calls on member states to "to prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically by" HTS’s predecessor, the Al-Nusra Front. Consequently, Member states are now obligated to comply with the sanction regime levied on HTS – asset freeze, a travel ban and an arms embargo. There’s a reason why Syria has been designated a State Sponsor of Terrorism since December 1979.
A former Al Qaeda affiliate with ties to ISIS, HTS adheres to the violent jihadist doctrine. The head of HTS and de facto leader of Syria is Abu Mohammed al-Golani, who, after the ouster of Assad started presenting himself by his legal name Ahmad Hussein al-Sharaa.
Al Golani received his marching orders in 2011 to insert a rebel group into the civil war in Syria by none other than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder and leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, also known as Al Qaeda in Iraq. In 2014, ISIS, an outgrowth of al-Qaeda in Iraq, burrowed itself in Syria, taking advantage of the civil war and proclaimed itself a caliphate. Al Bagdadi is the thug who killed himself and three of his young children when he detonated his vest when U.S. commandos and their dogs chased him down in a tunnel in northwestern Syria as part of a special operation authorized by President Trump in October 2019.
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ISIS and Al Qaeda are a bunch of head choppers who have decapitated Jews and Christians and burned a Jordanian pilot alive in a cage. Al Golani comes from that stock. He is a radical militant, a designated terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head placed by the U.S. State Department. Just because he scored an exclusive CNN interview, having polished his image, trimmed his beard and donned a Zelenskyy-like olive green uniform doesn’t make him a moderate.
On Wednesday, he claimed that Syria is not a threat to the world and called for the lifting of sanctions from Syria and for the delisting of HTS as a terrorist organization designated as such by the U.N., U.S., EU and U.K. He claimed that he supports women’s education, noting in an interview with the BBC that when he ruled Idlib some 60% of women attended university there.
But when asked if alcohol would be allowed in Syria, his response was telling: "There are many things I just don't have the right to talk about because they are legal issues." He added that the "Syrian committee of legal experts [is] to write a constitution. They will decide. And any ruler or president will have to follow the law." The law that he is talking about is highly likely the extremist version of Islamic Law, a repressive form of Sharia law that is typically imposed by Islamist groups, such as the Taliban.
Already there are reports that Christmas decorations are being torn down and women are forced to wear veils.
President Trump will likely have to deal with Syria for the same reasons that the U.S. military went into Afghanistan in 2001 – to prevent the spread of terrorism. But his options are not limitless. He will likely apply pressure on Turkey’s Erdogan, who is the main backer of HTS and the sponsor of the Syrian National Army, another militia group, that is part of the rebel alliance leading the anti-Assad insurrection.
But as the balance of power is shifting in the Middle East, away from Iran, favoring Turkey, Erdogan’s ambitions will likely grow. Having ruled Turkey for more than 20 years, Erdogan’s mission has been to place Turkey back at the center of the world map, reviving the country’s Ottoman Empire past. He also wants to place religion in the predominantly Muslim Turkey as the centerpiece of the Turkish identity "that will work for the construction of a new civilization."
Eyeing dominance in the region, Turkey, which is already playing both sides, U.S./NATO and Russia, is unlikely to be a cooperative partner for the U.S., whose influence in the region has diminished during the Biden administration.
Doing nothing will lead to the emergence of a terrorist state at the heart of the Middle East on Trump’s watch. Deploying American troops to calm things down in Turkey will violate his no-foreign wars promise. Either way, Trump will be blamed for what happened to Syria on Biden’s watch.
