Washington Needs a New Syria Policy Right Now

By the time you read this, the Syrian civil war might be over. The 13-year conflict, stuck in a bloody stalemate for the last three years, caught fire last week. What began as a small offensive push by opposition force Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) became a rout as the regime’s remaining forces collapsed and ended with the opposition marching through Damascus and Bashar al-Assad fleeing the country his family brutally ruled for more than five decades.

National security officials in the United States came to work Monday morning in need of a new strategy and policy for Syria. Even before this historic breakthrough, one was long overdue. Since the onset of Syria’s civil war in 2011, and over the course of three U.S. presidential administrations, U.S. policy on Syria has been seriously flawed.

Every choice was risky, producing decision paralysis that remained in evidence as recently as last week. When HTS’s offensive began, the U.S. State Department issued a flaccid joint statement with Britain, France, and Germany calling for de-escalation and urging the parties to pursue a negotiated settlement, as outlined in a 9-year-old U.N. Security Council resolution that was as meaningless to the warring parties today as it was the day it passed.

Now with the regime finally toppled by force, which was the only way Assad was ever going to be compelled to leave, the Biden administration, in coordination with the Trump transition team, has no choice but to try to find a new way forward.

HTS, the predominant opposition force in northwestern Syria, which has now entered Assad’s last redoubt of Damascus, was sired by the Islamic State. Although its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, has since separated from the Islamic State and al Qaeda, fought both forces into submission in the territory he controls, and attempted to project a pluralist and inclusive approach to his governance of Syrian territory, he still leads an Islamist movement with violent extremist roots.

HTS remains designated by the United States and others as a terrorist organization. As a means to further pressure Assad, policymakers in Washington have perennially debated the merits of delisting HTS—something Jolani has publicly sought for years—but never did because the political risk was too great. The decision not to change U.S. policy on HTS, even as it fought al Qaeda and extended protections and rights to Syria’s religious minorities within its domain, may have prolonged the conflict. It certainly ceded opportunity and advantage to America’s regional and global adversaries, Iran and Russia, which both acted decisively to prop up Assad and target HTS and the civilians under its rule in Idlib province, the besieged northwestern corner of Syria.

The fall of Assad represents a rare chance for Washington to both support a better future for Syrians and deal a blow to America’s adversaries. An isolated Assad relied heavily on Russian patronage to protect his regime. His primary patron, Russian President Vladimir Putin, paid lip service to supporting international dialogue while Russia abetted and enabled the Syrian regime’s war machine, which killed at least half a million Syrians and displaced many millions more. In exchange for keeping him in power, Assad granted Russia multiple military installations throughout western Syria. The Russian air force uses multiple Syrian bases, and the Russian navy has facilities at Tartus and Latakia, Russia’s only warm-water ports in the world.

Iran, too, supported Assad. Hezbollah and Iran-backed militias in Iraq fought alongside regime forces, while Iran recruited and provided a steady flow of Afghan fighters too. Tehran sent units from the Basij, an Iranian paramilitary force, to fight the Syrian opposition. In return for men and arms, the regime provided Tehran a permissive environment through which to transfer weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran’s oldest and most capable proxy force.

Many of the most lethal munitions in what was once Hezbollah’s vast arsenal of mortars, rockets, and precision-guided missiles came to Lebanon by way of Syria, courtesy of Assad. Iran used Syria as a thoroughfare to arm forces seeking to destabilize Jordan and the West Bank, including Hamas. Assad came to rely heavily on Hezbollah’s forces to fight in Syria on his behalf, holding the opposition forces at bay—which may have ultimately led to his undoing.

From Barack Obama to Donald Trump to Joe Biden, every U.S. Syria strategy sought Assad’s removal from power, while no strategy ever offered the necessary means to achieve it. After Iraq, it was impolitic to even consider aloud a U.S. military intervention to depose Assad. Fearful of breaking and buying another Middle Eastern despotic state, Obama and every administration that followed leaned on the nonmilitary tools of U.S. foreign-policy power to press Assad, unsuccessfully.

Assad ignored entreaties to enter U.N.-sponsored talks. The United States and its allies built a withering regime of sanctions, meant to impoverish and isolate Syria under Assad from the world economy. However, he persisted and found new illicit ventures through which he could sustain his war machine. Assad began synthesizing and trafficking the amphetamine-type drug Captagon, which provides billions of dollars annually in revenue while also exporting instability and strife to Syria’s neighbors, which he exploited to coerce them to reintegrate him into the region’s politics.

While unwilling to countenance military force to remove Assad, the renewed threat of terrorism was enough to drive the U.S. military back to Iraq and Syria in 2014. The United States was so firmly focused on the threat posed by the Islamic State that it established the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the de facto creation of an autonomous zone in northeastern Syria under its control.

Turkey, meanwhile, was so threatened by the growth and empowerment of the Kurdish separatist YPG (a constituent part of the SDF) on its border that it would launch multiple operations into Syria while standing up its own Syrian Arab proxy force, the Syrian National Army (SNA), to fight the Syrian Kurds and prevent them from contiguously holding Syria’s northern border with Turkey.

Washington’s myopic focus on the threat of the Islamic State in Syria and supporting the SDF for that reason was a case of treating the symptom and not the disease. The SDF survives because of the presence of roughly 900 U.S. troops in northeastern Syria, which acts as a deterrent to Turkey. Even given that, the SDF has frequently had to pivot from its counter-Islamic State mission to defend its territory from SNA and Turkish military attacks, and its leaders are under constant threat of Turkish drone strikes.

As much as the United States wanted to avoid direct involvement in Syria, Washington’s backing elsewhere ended up being critical to the final result. The repositioning of Moscow’s scarce military resources in Europe for its war in Ukraine, coupled with the rapid attrition of Hezbollah under Israel’s withering assault these past few months, quietly rotted away the foundations of the Assad regime’s defensive lines and capabilities. After observing Hezbollah’s military vulnerability and its impact on the regime’s security, Jolani launched an offensive to test Assad’s defenses. But when he pushed on the door, the whole house fell down.

Regime forces have been routed, often abandoning their positions without a fight. Other factions, including the one the U.S. military built to fight the Islamic State, have piled on. The SDF has expanded its control farther west to the Euphrates River and taken control of the strategic Iraq-Syria border crossing near Abu Kamal, which was abandoned last week by the Iran-backed militias that had taken it from the Islamic State. The SNA has also advanced from territory it controls in the north, but unlike HTS, which seems to be attempting to avoid conflict with the SDF, it remains hostile to Kurdish territorial advances.

The chaos and complexity of the situation might cause some to think the United States should just declare victory and remain disengaged. Doing so would be a costly mistake. The region and U.S. national security interests would be better served by Washington taking a proactive role in helping Syria’s fractured opposition forces to transition to peaceful and inclusive governance.

To do so, policymakers should consider some core considerations for U.S. national security in shaping a new strategy for Syria. First and foremost, the United States should work to expel Russia’s military presence from the country—if the Syrian opposition doesn’t do the job itself. Russia may well abandon Syria. If not, policymakers must consider how to put the squeeze on until they depart.

Secondly, the United States should work to close Syria to Iran. Iran has used Syria as a platform to arm its proxies throughout the Levant. Washington has a vested interest in working with a new Syrian government, as well as its regional partners and allies, to permanently close Syria as an avenue for Iran’s malign power projection.

Thirdly, the United States should seek to mediate peace between Israel and Syria. Multiple attempts were made while Assad was in power, but he proved unwilling to make a deal. A fledgling Syrian government will need the support of its neighbors and possibly the security assistance of the United States, something enjoyed in spades by Jordan and Egypt, both of which have deals with Israel.

Before any of that can happen, the multiple opposition groups in Syria, primarily HTS, the SNA, and the SDF, must come together to form a new Syrian government. It would be easy for a new round of fighting to break out, especially between the SNA and SDF. U.S. leadership is required, as other regional partners and allies have partnered with factions on the ground, often at cross-purposes.

In light of its leaders’ public pronouncements toward inclusion, the United States should consider what it would require to delist HTS as an foreign terrorist organization and make the delisting contingent on HTS meeting and upholding those conditions. What is the purpose of sanctions if not to change the behavior of the sanctioned? Washington should take steps to delist HTS if it meets the proper conditions. If it does not, the group can be relisted and likely targeted with force, if necessary, under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force.

With a legitimate government in place, a road map must be devised to deal with the Islamic State detainees held in makeshift facilities by the SDF and to provide social services and support for those still living in camps for the displaced. It is crucial that places such as al-Hol, home to tens of thousands of displaced people, including Islamic State families, not continue to be incubators for a new generation of violent extremists. Syria will need tremendous support, and the United States should provide it to end the cycle of radicalization that has afflicted so many in Syria’s far reaches.

U.S. indecision on Syria advanced the agendas of America’s adversaries and prolonged the presence, rule, and cruel butchery of Assad himself. It is well past time for Washington to demonstrate leadership, advance its global and regional interests, and support the freedom and future of the Syrian people.