After a half century of Assad household dictatorial rule, Bashar Assad has fled and Syrians can lastly have fun the tip of a horrific regime that gassed, starved and murdered its personal folks. Syrians have suffered terribly for a few years, particularly these tortured or disappeared by Assad’s henchmen, and the nation’s folks 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 one can work together with the brand new regime, beginning with a sequence of U.S. precedence pursuits.
Lengthy earlier than the lightning occasions that all of a sudden led to the tip of the Assad regime this week, the United Nations Common Meeting mandated an investigation into the usage of systemic torture and abuse in its prisons. Launched simply because the regime was collapsing, the report is difficult to learn, however the photos which have come out of the infamous Sednaya jail since its doorways have been opened are infinitely worse.
There might 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 dwelling after years of compelled displacement. Arab states ought to see nearly fast reduction from a current drug epidemic that was fueled by the Assad regime’s manufacturing and regional distribution of a infamous amphetamine-like substance known as Captagon.
The autumn of the Assad regime can be strategically helpful 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 — primarily based on Iran, Syria and the Lebanon-based group Hezbollah — and it will possibly 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 sequence of Israeli strikes have devastated the group.
Israel has capitalized on this susceptible second in Syria to destroy an enormous variety of weapons earlier than they will fall into new fingers and be used in opposition to Israel or others. Since Saturday, the Israeli air drive and navy have hit greater than 350 strategic targets throughout the nation, destroying an estimated 70% of Syria’s navy capabilities.
The insurgent alliance taking energy in Syria now could be led by Hayat Tahrir al Sham, a chosen terrorist group that grew out of Al Qaeda and was first dispatched by Al Qaeda in Iraq, which later grew to become Islamic State. Whereas Hayat Tahrir al Sham has fought each Islamic State and an Al Qaeda splinter component in Syria, it stays a jihadist group known as out by the State Division. In 2020, the U.S. added the group to its record of entities of specific concern underneath the Worldwide Spiritual Freedom Act “for having engaged in notably extreme violations of non secular freedom” in areas of Syria underneath 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 up to now 12 months, courts in the US have convicted folks 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 assertion 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 photos of jihadist rebels in Syria describing their victory there as a primary, not final, step. In a single, a bunch of rebels seem and proclaim: “We entered the Umayyad mosque in Damascus chanting Allah Akbar and with the assistance of Allah we may even enter the Al-Aqsa mosque and we may even enter the Prophet Muhammad’s mosque and the Kaaba in Mecca,” referring to websites in Jerusalem and Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. ought to be cautious about eradicating sanctions in opposition to 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. Nonetheless, Washington ought to instantly concern licenses allowing a variety of humanitarian assist to Syria. Removing from the record of identified terrorist teams ought 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 seem 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 risk 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, it is going to be important for the incoming U.S. administration to keep up its small however influential U.S. navy presence in Syria, which then-President Trump twice tried to take away throughout his first time period.
U.S. officers have purpose to tread fastidiously. On the one hand, Hayat Tahrir al Sham has a demonstrated seven-year report of governance within the components of Syria which were underneath its management, working what it known as the Syrian Salvation Authorities with a number of ministries to manipulate the territory it managed. And whereas up to now the group dispatched suicide bombers in its assaults, it has not employed such ways lately.
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 in the present day has very robust echoes of Iran after the 1979 revolution. Again then, many teams of Iranians against the shah — communists, secularists, Islamists — received behind Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution. The brand new authorities in Tehran talked the speak about respecting minority rights and even included secularists in authorities for a time. Then the theocracy took maintain and Iran grew to become 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 have fun the demise of the Assad dictatorship, however America’s Syria coverage going ahead ought to be primarily based 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.
