Tag Archive for: Syria

Syria’s house of cards

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Some 54 years after Hafez al-Assad seized power in Syria, rebels overthrew the dynasty his son Bashar squandered. Bashar al-Assad’s downfall was made possible partly by the fact that his Iranian and Russian patrons were distracted by their own existential problems. But it was Assad’s own shortcomings that hastened the regime’s collapse. Hemmed in by a parasitic economy and an ossified political system that brooked no dissent, Assad lacked the strength to reform much of anything.

Bashar was never groomed to lead Syria. His elder brother, Bassel, was their father’s heir apparent. But after Bassel’s untimely death in 1994, Bashar was summoned home from his ophthalmology residency in London.

When Hafez died in 2000, he bequeathed his son a strong and stable state. Syria’s days as a pariah were over. It no longer clashed with America by shooting down navy pilots. After Hafez pledged troops to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, he became a partner in the quest for peace, developing a close rapport with US President Bill Clinton.

Many hoped Bashar’s exposure to the West, which his father lacked, would help him moderate the ruling Ba’ath Party in power since 1963. Initially, Bashar seemed to embrace the role of reformer, releasing political prisoners and allowing intellectual salons to flourish.

But he abruptly changed tack, stifling dissent and allowing corruption to run rampant. To compensate, he diverted Syrians’ frustrations by demonising foreign bogeymen. He blamed Jews for betraying Jesus. He opened his country to foreign jihadists, facilitating their travel to Iraq to fight Americans. And he proved willing to emulate his father’s violent proclivities. When Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri refused to toe the line, Bashar threatened to ‘break Lebanon’ and conspired with Hezbollah to assassinate him.

Bashar was shackled to the Ba’ath regime his father cobbled together from minorities to rule over the Arab Sunnis, who comprise around 64 percent of the Syrian population. The Ba’ath also appealed to provincial Sunnis who had long faced discrimination by urban elites. Any reform would jeopardise the supremacy of Assad’s Alawi sect, a Shia offshoot accounting for around 12 percent of the population.

By 2006, even Syria’s most fervent Western supporters had broken with Assad. French President Jacques Chirac, an ally of Hafez, confessed that Bashar ‘seemed to me incompatible with security and peace.’ Some nicknamed him the ‘blind eye doctor’. Others dubbed him ‘Fredo’, after Don Corleone’s blundering middle son in The Godfather.

So, when revolts erupted throughout the Arab world in 2011, it was logical to believe the contagion would reach Syria. But Bashar was either oblivious to Syrians’ grievances or chose to ignore them. Weeks before they took to the streets, he told the Wall Street Journal, ‘we are outside of this’, and that Syria was stable because he was ‘closely linked to the beliefs of the people’.

But when the regime’s rural base turned on it, protests erupted. To blunt the rebellion, Assad leaned on urban elites, who disdained the bumpkins, and on the working class, who never identified with rural grievances.

This did not suffice to save Bashar, however, and he was compelled to turn to the Russians for air support and Iran-backed militias, especially Hezbollah. After several years of fighting, Bashar was able to claw back control of most territory comprising the spine of the country, from Aleppo in the north to Damascus in the south, where most Syrians live.

Like his father, Bashar was afforded a second chance; unlike his father, he frittered it away. Unable to secure political reform, his supporters now clamoured for economic change, homing in on the distribution of resources and reconstruction. But a regime with so many similarities to the Sopranos could never concede its coveted rents, even if doing so would have brought social harmony. Like the fictional mafia family, Assad’s regime relied on kickbacks from wealthy business owners and shaking down foreigners. When the World Food Program neglected to pay bribes at Syrian ports, its rice shipment rotted in storage. Similarly, Bashar’s uncle once intimated to an American diplomat that Syria would purchase Boeing planes if he was appointed the sales agent.

With sufficient revenue streams, the regime forged a trickle-down economic model, placating society with subsidised commodities while enriching itself with ill-gotten gains. But the civil war shrank the revenue base from which to extract domestic rents, and there were no more foreigners to extort. Today, Syria earns almost twice as much from illicit exports of the amphetamine Captagon as it does from legal trade. With the economy contracting and cuts to subsidies making everyday staples unaffordable for the average wage earner, around 70 percent of Syrian households say they cannot meet their basic needs.

Nor are the poor the only ones who suffered under Assad. A regime built on capturing resources eventually turned on the entrepreneurs and business leaders whose legitimate companies sustained it.

Consider the case of Samer al-Dibs, a scion of the pre-Ba’ath elite who ruled Syria from 1860–1963. His family is active in industries ranging from paper manufacturing to banking. He never supported the protests in 2011 and was even willing to represent the regime at international conferences. But in parliamentary elections this past July, the regime deprived him of the seat he had held for 17 years, denying him the prerogatives that he and others leveraged to expand their businesses.

So, when the rebels launched their blitzkrieg 12 days ago, such figures refused to support the regime. And, consumed with more pressing conflicts against Israel and Ukraine, Bashar’s Iranian and Russian patrons lacked the resources to rescue him again. But it was his hubris and refusal to embrace economic and political reform which ultimately doomed his rule.

Just look at the lights: Assad’s territory was growing poorer as opposition’s economy advanced

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Explanation is in illumination. To understand why the regime of Bashar al-Assad fell so suddenly in Syria in the past week, just note how night-time lights faded in cities it controlled.

Lighting is an indicator of prosperity, and in the years before the collapse it progressively dimmed in the regime’s cities and brightened in those controlled by the opposition. The opposition governed better, so its people were better off and could afford to turn on the lights.

A population shift is further evidence of the economic imbalance that helps explain the opposition’s success, alongside the important factor of loss of foreign air support.

After five years of relative stagnation, the battle lines in Syria saw seismic shifts, upending the entire history of the revolution and war. Within two weeks of a surprise offensive, Damascus had fallen, Bashar al-Assad had fled, and Russian bases along the country’s Mediterranean coast were hurriedly withdrawing. Over 20,000 days of continuous Assad totalitarian rule came crashing down in barely more than 10.

 

The situation across northern Syria on 6 December. Damascus fell to the opposition on the morning of 8 December.

 

The groups mounting this offensive would hardly have considered this level of success. The offensive was initially launched to push back regime lines from civilian areas, where a concerted and systematic campaign of attacks on civilians by artillery and drones had created an unbearable burden of violence on many of the frontline communities. Instead, the regime retreated and didn’t stop. The 12 million Syrians who had been displaced from their homes by violence and fighting are now welcome to return home.

The crucial question is why and how did the regime’s lines collapse so quickly? Why was its command and control so poor? Why did it cede so much territory, captured during more than a decade and at the cost of tens of thousands of soldiers’ lives, to opposition forces within days without a fight?

 

Ratios of captured and destroyed military vehicles and equipment, comparing Russia in the Ukraine War and the Syrian Army in Syria in the first week of the opposition’s offensive.

 

 

One crucial element is a distinct lack of support by foreign backers—Russia, Iran and Hezbollah—each of which was embroiled in its own fight and unable to offer the high level of support that proved critical to the regime over the previous 10 years. Another element has been establishment of good governance by the Syrian Salvation Government and the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which maintains firm control over much of this area. Here, establishment of a responsive, civilian-led technocratic government has allowed for material improvements in the lives of civilians living in opposition-controlled areas. This is especially prominent following broad ceasefires that froze the front lines in Syria since 2020 and gave space for civilian institutions to re-emerge and grow despite regular attacks by regime forces.

That allowed the military factions of the opposition to rapidly professionalise, consolidate command structures and make major strides in developing new tactics and weapons (the role of drones and night-vision in the first week of this offensive was crucial in preventing Assad’s forces from regrouping and mounting counterattacks).

Those two factors explain why the regime lacked the overwhelming firepower it was once able to bring to the battlefield with allies’ help; they also explain how the opposition could seize the initiative and continue to push beyond their initial goals. However, they don’t address one critical issue that has proven decisive in battles since the offensive began: Why was the regime so unwilling to fight?

 

A schematic showing the key factors for the regime’s lack of combat effectiveness over the past 10 days

 

Detailed analysis of satellite imagery captured over the past decade begins to answer this question. Areas under regime control, despite the massive burden on loyalist communities to re-establish government control over much of Syria, have languished economically over the past six years. Demographic effects of more than a decade of war and the disproportionate degree of manpower coming from traditionally loyalist and Alawite communities have sucked opportunity from those areas. Widespread economic mismanagement and lingering effects of aggressive sanctions have forced the economy in regime areas to contract.

In short, for loyalist communities around Syria, 14 years of deep sacrifice and burden has only resulted in their communities going backwards. As HTS and allied militias began to shatter the thin veil of stability and security built up over the previous five years when the battle lines had been largely frozen, loyalist communities decided that the sacrifice was no longer worthwhile—especially in maintaining firm control over the large, Sunni-majority regions of Syria. The implicit social contract in which loyalist sacrifices were rewarded with patronage and preferential development had languished and then shattered under the pressure of an armed assault.

 

 

Urban illumination is widely considered to be a proxy for economic activity. Since 2018, the level of night-time illumination in major regime-controlled cities across Syria has roughly halved whereas key towns in opposition-controlled territory have increased their night-time lights by a factor of 10. This demonstrates that, despite an unending campaign of aerial bombing and economic pressure, opposition-controlled territories, since around 2018, were able to begin to reverse the years of acute destruction and see meaningful reconstruction and revitalisation.

Meanwhile, regime-controlled communities followed a different path. Reconstruction was essentially non-existent, neighbourhoods that revolted were demolished rather than rebuilt, and even loyalist communities saw drastic reductions in livelihoods and economic opportunities.

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) territory grew at a similar rate to opposition areas following the defeat of ISIS before stagnating under Turkish airstrikes, which systematically targeted power infrastructure.

 

The observed trend in night-time light intensity between 2020 and 2024, with blue showing increases and red showing decreases.

 

The contrast is also clear in population estimates. The percentage of Syrians in Syria living in opposition-governed territory grew between 2020 and 2023, according to analysis by the Jusoor Center for Studies, from 24 percent to 26 percent, despite systematic bombardment and violence by the Assad regime.

Likewise, the effects of economic mismanagement and sanctions in government-controlled Syrian territory are clear in shortages of basic goods over the past four years, sweeping cutting of government subsidies and dramatic devaluation of the Syrian pound. For example, since 2020 there have been acute fuel shortages across government-held territory, which have worsened in recent months. Over that same period, the value of the Syrian pound has fallen from 2000 per US dollar to less than 15,000 per US dollar. The price of bread and other staple goods has drastically risen. Meanwhile, key figures within the regime were living lavishly: the Washington Post writes that, in recent years, they ran the country as their own ‘personal piggy bank’.

The battlefield effects of those dynamics were clear as soon as this shock offensive was launched. Frontline units melted away; for example, the fortified but undermanned 46th Regiment headquarters fell to opposition fighters in the first day of the offensive. As early as 28 November, there were widespread reports of soldiers from the loyalist coastal communities deserting the Aleppo, Idlib and Hama front lines to go home.

As the opposition offensive swept through Aleppo and kept pushing south, fighters came up against the Hama ‘minority-wall’. This is a collection of Christian and Alawite villages in Hama and Homs that had previously been mobilised by the Syrian Army to effectively defend the front lines in that area from opposition assaults. While some of those villages—with help from Syrian Army reinforcements—fiercely defended particular localities to the north of Hama, most of the villages were captured without fighting and often with local agreements. Such agreements saw the non-violent capture of both the Ismaili city of Salamiyah and the Christian town of Muhrahda on the outskirts of Hama by the opposition. That experience contrasts sharply with previous attempts at opposition outreach in those areas. It demonstrates both the increased local confidence in opposition governance and the languishing conditions in regime territory—not to mention the changing reality of the war. This has now occurred even in Assad’s home town.

In the days following the fall of Assad’s government, there was an outpouring of grievances and complaints about the final years of his rule, even from outright regime cheerleaders, who now felt comfortable discussing deep problems of Assad’s rule. Bashar al-Assad’s sister-in-law posted a picture of the revolutionary Syrian flag on Instagram.

While the rest of the world saw Syria as a frozen conflict, Assad and his regime’s poor governance were hollowing out state capacity and institutions and building resentment, and the lives of its people were only getting materially worse. Under the threat of a competent and concerted opposition offensive and without the support of foreign militaries to help the regime fight back more easily, Syrians pushed through that shell and emerged under a revolutionary flag.

Syria’s multi-purpose election

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On 26 May, Syria held its second presidential election since the 2011 revolution. What was described by most observers as a sham yielded an unsurprising result—the re-election of Bashar Al-Assad for a fourth consecutive term with 95.1% of the vote. His obscure opponents, Mahmoud Marei and Abdullah Abdullah, managed to garner just 3.3% and 1.5%, respectively, with official voter turnout reported to be 78.6%.

While the election was neither free nor fair, it served three important purposes: to symbolise Assad’s authority domestically, to facilitate re-engagement with Arab states and to attempt to project legitimacy abroad. Elections in authoritarian states often signal to domestic and international audiences that a ‘mandate has been renewed’ and that the establishment is united behind the president.

Assad’s re-election is particularly important to the regime’s narrowing supporter base. The Syrian pound lost 57% of its value in the past year alone, while prices for basic commodities increased by 313%. Breadlines and kilometre-long queues for fuel have become a regular sight for those living in coastal regime strongholds like Latakia. While some Syrians have seen the regime as an anchor for stability, most are facing unparalleled levels of poverty and a decline in living standards not witnessed even at the height of the country’s civil war. The regime, incapable of effectively addressing the economic situation, opted to deploy the best available tools at its disposal: coercion and fraud.

Government employees and university students were forced to participate in the election and attend rallies or risk being dismissed or detained. Widespread evidence of voter fraud both in Syria and in diplomatic missions abroad—as was the case in Syria’s honorary consulate in Sydney—was also a common sight. Fraudulent results help portray the regime as more popular than it actually is, thereby making revolutions seem impossible.

There were also significant inconsistencies in election results. With 95.1% percent ‘voting’ for Assad, the regime gave up the pretence of presenting ‘realistic’ numbers as it tried to do in 2014, when Assad won with ‘only’ 88.7% of the vote. Damascus has claimed that more than 14 million Syrians voted, despite the fact that the total population in regime-controlled areas is roughly 13.9 million.

The election was also intended to send a direct message to the opposition and revolutionaries who rose up against the regime a decade ago. Assad cast his vote in Douma, a city that was under a brutal five-year-long siege and the main site of the infamous 2018 chemical attack. It signalled to opponents that resistance was futile and that the regime was here to stay. During his televised victory speech, Assad said that, through the election result, voters had ‘redefined nationalism and that also means automatically redefining treason’, a message aimed at labelling all those who continue to oppose the regime as traitors.

Regionally, the election was aimed at encouraging Arab states to mend ties with the regime. Although members of the G7 indicated that the time was not right for ‘any form of normalization’ with Damascus, that sentiment may not resonate with Syria’s neighbours. Arab states continue to flirt with the idea of rehabilitating ties with Assad, as has been seen with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman in recent years. There are reports that Saudi Arabia is set to be next in line. Syria’s return to the Arab League after a 10-year suspension also seems to be just a matter of time. Now that the election formalities have been concluded, Gulf states have begun to lobby the US to ease its sanctions on the regime.

On the international front, the regime used the election as a tool to demonstrate that state institutions were functioning and that the country was safe for refugees to return to—a notion directed towards European states to provide an incentive for the regime’s gradual rehabilitation in the eyes of the international community.

Contrary to Assad’s expectations, the chances of that happening remain close to zero. The foreign ministries of the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France and the United States issued a joint statement denouncing the election as a sham. Germany took further measures by banning the conduct of electoral procedures at the Syrian embassy in Berlin.

The election will also have a minimal impact on Syria’s political peace process. The United Nations special envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, indicated that the election falls outside internationally agreed frameworks on resolving the conflict, meaning that any political settlement is unlikely to be obstructed by the outcome of the election.

While prospects for resolving the conflict peacefully in line with UN Security Council resolution 2254 remain bleak, it is not impossible. The resumption of nuclear talks with Iran could provide the next opportunity to revive Syria’s political peace process. Negotiations could potentially result in notable concessions by Tehran, such as the withdrawal of its proxies in Syrian territories. Russia has said that it will not rule out early elections should the regime and opposition agree on a new constitution, indicating that the recent elections don’t hold much political value in Moscow’s view.

Given that the regime has consented to the mandate given by the UN-sponsored constitutional committee, and that this new term is the last Assad can contest according to the current constitution, the regime may be forced to sit down at the negotiating table. This could offer another avenue to achieve a much-needed political breakthrough. For now, however, Western powers are more inclined to maintain the status quo and follow a wait-and-see approach to the conflict. Whether we will witness a change in this strategy is dependent on how each of the targeted audiences interprets—and responds to—Assad’s re-election.

Playing with fire in Idlib

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The twists and turns of the Syrian conflict over the past eight years are already legendary, but the latest lurch into chaos has been described by the normally measured UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, as ‘one of the most alarming moments across the [confict’s] duration’. Perhaps, however, the most surprising aspect of the current flare-up is why it didn’t happen sooner.

As part of the ‘reconciliation’ deals reached with the Syrian regime, through Russian facilitation, rebels who had held out in Aleppo, Homs and southern Syria agreed to accept consignment to Idlib province in the country’s northwest corner. There, the accumulation of largely Islamist forces mixed in with and largely began to dominate more secular elements. Under a ‘memorandum on stabilisation’ signed at Sochi in Russia in September 2018, Turkey assumed the role of keeping order through a system of 12 ‘observation posts’ encircling the province.

The rules the Turkish ‘observers’ were meant to be preserving were never clear; the means to enforce the ceasefire were even less so, beyond enhancing an existing ‘Joint Iranian–Russian–Turkish Coordination Centre’. The Sochi agreement was freely interpreted by Turkey as giving it the right to provide a protective screen for the armed opponents of the Syrian regime: a role ill-fitted with Russia’s interest in aiding the restoration of government control in the area.

As the ceasefire steadily unravelled, Turkey felt sufficiently emboldened not only to protect the rebel elements from action by regime forces but also to deploy its own armed forces in support of operations to counter the forces of the Syrian government. Attempts by Russia to smooth over the tensions, all the while deploying its own air force to back the Syrian army, added further to the imbroglio. High-level discussions between Turkish and Russian leaders simply prolonged the muddle.

Meanwhile Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan embarked on another of the lurches of policy which have become the hallmark of his administration. Turkish forces became active participants with the rebels, scaling up the rebels’ anti-tank artillery and deploying Turkish heavy weaponry and main-force units in anti-Syrian operations.

At that point Russia seems to have accepted that the Sochi game plan was unworkable and decided it was time to show who really was going to call the shots in restoring government control to Syria. In a spectacular show of force on 27 February, Russian (or possibly Russian and Syrian) aircraft were sent in to attack a military battalion arriving in convoy from Turkey. Massive bombing resulted in the deaths of more than 30 Turkish soldiers.

It’s tempting to see the attack on a Turkish convoy as a blunt gesture by Russian President Vladimir Putin to inform Erdogan that his forces went too far in deploying sizeable fighting units rather than observers and in conducting operations the previous week that had resulted in Russian casualties. The message was, ‘Back off.’

Turkey responded by ignoring Russia’s warning and openly boasting of its massive build-up across the frontier meant to reverse the regime’s recent recovery of territory around Saraqeb and in southern Idlib province. Turkey has also played its humanitarian card, inviting many of the pool of Syrian refugees in Turkey to test the EU’s barriers against a further wave of refugees.

In the face of a new onslaught which has seen civilians fleeing from one part of Idlib province to another, the international community is struggling to raise funds to alleviate a new peak of suffering. The UN relief program’s chief has understandably asked why the Security Council is ‘unable to stop the carnage amongst a civilian population trapped in a war zone’. Not only are Security Council members looking away, but heavy donor fatigue and anaemic whispers about ‘peace processes’ barely register in the outside world.

In effect, rightful outrage from the international community at the conflict has for some time been a factor delaying a conclusion. For Western countries, sanctions against the Syrian regime remain the moral salve applied whenever a new atrocity emerges. Moral outrage alone, however, was never likely to hasten an end to the conflict; now it is more likely to prolong it. After almost nine years, Syria’s rulers and their backers have weathered every storm and are unlikely to bend to another puff of wind. Moreover, those who run a country cut off from normal economic links simply end up profiting from its isolation by diverting informal trade and financial channels to their own advantage—expanding opportunities for corruption that partly motivated the conflict in the first place.

Some external Arab players seem anxious to get the trade and investment flowing again, but the US’s massive power to reinforce sanctions against Syria brings ever more petty restrictions. The aim of ensuring other countries don’t step out of line is bolstered by secondary restrictive mechanisms through US financial channels which reduce Syria’s capacity even to contemplate externally funded programs of rebuilding. Average Syrians must simply see this as the last strand of hope being snatched from them.

Hopefully this policy will soon run its course, as it does nothing to salvage at least some of the assets that Syria has long provided the Middle East. If this multiethnic and multi-confessional state can survive as a viable entity, divisive forces that have begun to shift like tectonic plates across the region might be averted.

What can be salvaged from this pitiless conflict? The real antidote to Hayat al-Tahrir al-Sham and other al-Qaeda offshoots in Idlib is a Syria that returns to its secular traditions and provides a state for all its citizens—a rare commodity these days in the Middle East. Allowing the war to grind on because outsiders don’t feel 100% of their objectives have been achieved will enable endemic conflict to perpetuate divisions the rebels have exploited. The longer an outcome is delayed, the less there will be of Syria worth reviving.

A policy of letting Syria perish throws away an important key to allowing the Middle East a viable future. Syrians have shown extraordinary resilience in the face of a savage conflict. Their capacity to regenerate the economy through agriculture and industrial development is potentially unlimited. While the world wrings its hands over who will fund Syria’s rebuilding, most Syrians probably suspect that they will have to, and in some areas a few are quietly getting on with it where they can. Prospects of a ‘rebuilding’ funded by outsiders has been presented as a lure. But the lure has almost no value. The course of the war has shown that the sympathies of outsiders have never been good for much and that supporting an unwinnable struggle was the ultimate disservice Westerners could offer.

‘In Syria, you can no longer distinguish between right and wrong’, one Syrian woman told the New York Times last week. ‘They say the regime is bad and the rebels are good. Sometimes they say the regime is good and the rebels are bad. I can’t tell anymore. They’ve both ruined my life.’

Turkey’s dam-building program could generate fresh conflict in the Middle East

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Countries across the Middle East are facing a bleak future of declining rainfall, diminishing surface- and groundwater supplies, and increasing desertification.

Since 1998, the region has faced the worst drought conditions in 900 years; it is home to 10 of the 17 countries that are currently facing ‘extremely high’ water stress. Soaring temperatures across the region—average summer temperatures are predicted to rise by 4°C by 2050 even if global rises are limited to 2°C—are increasing evaporation of surface water, forcing an over-reliance on aquifers and groundwater supplies that are already at risk of over-exploitation.

Between 2003 and 2010, parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins lost 144 cubic kilometres of total stored freshwater; 60% of that loss was attributed to the pumping of groundwater from underground reservoirs.

Given this backdrop, it’s alarming that the impact of the Middle East’s climatic conditions on water supplies is being exacerbated by dam projects that will worsen the already acute water stress and land degradation that is jeopardising agriculture across the region.

Turkey’s Southeastern Anatolia Project is one of the largest and most controversial dam-building programs globally. Twenty-two dams are slated to be constructed along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers near Turkey’s borders with Syria and Iraq. The project has attracted the ire of countries across the Middle East since its inception because of the impact it will have on critical water supplies in Turkey’s southern neighbours. In recent months Ankara has commenced filling the Ilisu Dam, the largest dam in the proposed network, further focusing attention on its actions and inflaming already tense relations with its neighbours.

Turkey’s dam and hydropower constructions on the Tigris and Euphrates are estimated to have cut water to Iraq by 80% since 1975, jeopardising agriculture and natural habitats. Iraq has also been adversely affected by dam projects and agricultural developments in Iran. As a result of declining water, desertification, salination and mismanagement, Iraq is currently losing an estimated 25,000 hectares of arable land annually, mostly in the south of the country.

Syria has also been directly impacted by Ankara’s dam-building projects, which have reduced water flows to Syria by an estimated 40%. This has been particularly problematic for Damascus, as water scarcity is more severe in Syria than in either Turkey or Iraq. The long drought that started in 2006 devastated Syria’s agriculture and forced large numbers of people into cities. It has also been linked to the social upheaval and unrest that led to the civil war in Syria. By 2011, Syria’s total annual water withdrawal as a percentage of internal renewable water resources had reached 160%, compared with 80% in Iraq and 20% in Turkey.

Iran has also criticised Turkey’s dam-building program, claiming that the Ilisu Dam poses ‘a serious environmental threat to Iraq and eventually Iran by reducing the entry of Tigris water to Iraqi territory by 56%’. Iran is facing a broader crisis in its water supplies—12 of its 31 provinces are expected to have exhausted their groundwater reserves within the next 50 years. Tehran has also predicted a decline in surface-water runoff from rainfall and snow melt of 25% by 2030. These trends make the water supplied by the Tigris even more critical to the functioning of Iran’s agriculture.

Clearly, the Middle East is facing a broad range of climatic and environmental issues, which collectively pose potentially existential challenges for the countries of the region. But the most critical problem is water security, and the transboundary Tigris–Euphrates river system is a central component of that. Turkey holds almost all of the cards on this issue: it controls 90% and 44%, respectively, of the waterflows of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Over the past 20 years or so, however, Ankara has been dismissive of demands from its neighbours for a formal water-sharing agreement to regulate the flows in the Tigris–Euphrates system.

Regional instability and political tensions arising from Turkey’s incursions into northern Syria in recent weeks make the prospect of a negotiated water-sharing agreement between Turkey and its southern neighbours remote. There’s also a risk that Ankara will ‘weaponise’ water in future disputes with its neighbours, using its control over riverine water supplies as a lever.

Turkey has been accused of ‘manipulating the present regional instability to further its agenda in the crisis-ridden Middle East, including by pursuing its ambitious plans to be a regional “water superpower” that could give it main control over the region’s waters’.

The US intelligence community’s now-dated 2012 global water security assessment noted that while water-related state-on-state conflict was unlikely within the decade to 2022, the use of water as a weapon would become more likely beyond that time frame. It also noted that ‘water problems—when combined with poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions—contribute to social disruptions that can result in state failure’.

All of those ingredients are already apparent across the Middle East, and Turkey’s dam-building program will create further water stress, inflaming an already fragile situation. Water has featured throughout the region’s history as both a weapon of war and a trigger of conflict. In the past 60 years alone, there have been at least 25 instances in which water has been a trigger for conflict between communities and between states.

Fortunately, the last case of an actual war between states over water occurred over 4,500 years ago. But given the current environmental and climatic context and the lack of space for political and diplomatic solutions to water disputes, the Southeastern Anatolian Project may prove to be a game-changing factor.

It not only increases the risk of water-related state failure similar to what occurred in Syria, but also heightens the risk that the Middle East could move from tensions over water to actual war.

Time to bite the bullet in Syria

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Recent events in Syria have naturally raised two questions: Who lost the country? And where might the international community go from here?

The first one is easier to answer. Looking back, Syria has probably been lost since the popular uprising in 2011. When President Bashar al-Assad’s regime stubbornly refused any effort to resolve the matter peacefully, no outside power proved willing to intervene. Instead, everyone hoped that a mix of sanctions, United Nations–led diplomacy and half-hearted attempts to support a ‘moderate’ opposition would eventually bring down the regime.

It didn’t work. Fundamentalist forces gained political ground and territory, and others, including Iranian-backed militias and the Russian military after the northern autumn of 2015, rushed to Assad’s defence. Although the regime had long deprived the Kurds in northern Syria of most of their rights, it started making concessions to them when it came under pressure. As a result, Kurdish militias abstained from challenging Assad, which led much of the broader Syrian opposition to shun them.

After Islamic State established its ‘caliphate’ in the Syrian city of Raqqa and the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014—enabling it to strike even Baghdad—there was an understandable rush to confront the terrorist threat. In Iraq, that task fell largely to Iranian-aligned Shia militias. In Syria, the situation was more complicated. The United States had no intention of sending in its own combat forces, but it also knew that the Syrian opposition groups that it (and Turkey) had been arming were not up to the challenge. In any case, those groups were focused on toppling Assad, which had ceased to be a high priority for Western policymakers.

Given these constraints, the US threw its support behind the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). The US has long recognised the YPG as an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it, along with the European Union and Turkey, classifies as a terrorist organisation. But even if the decision didn’t fit with any long-term strategy, it satisfied short-term tactical needs, and supporting the YPG ultimately proved successful in depriving IS of its territory (though the group will remain a long-term threat).

The uprooting of IS would have been a good time to launch a political process to resolve the broader conflict. In fact, there were at least two options on the table. The first was to establish a Kurdish/YPG-governed entity in northern and northeastern Syria. But that would have raised the ire of Turkey, which was not ready to tolerate any PKK presence on its border. In addition to requiring an open-ended US military presence, this scenario would have resulted in Kurds ruling over substantial swathes of non-Kurdish territory.

The other option was to pursue a broader political settlement, with the goal of creating an inclusive governance structure acceptable to the regime in Damascus. Over time, this process could have led to an arrangement similar to that in northern Iraq, where the Kurdistan Regional Government now cooperates closely with Turkey.

But that didn’t happen. As the US position evolved, Washington rejected the first option and then actively discouraged the second, making a crisis inevitable. The trigger was a telephone call in which US President Donald Trump gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a green light to send forces into Syria. Trump ordered the US military to abandon the area immediately, and added insult to injury by announcing it all on Twitter, shocking both the Kurds and many of his own advisers.

Since then, everything has come crashing down. With their credibility in tatters, US officials have desperately sought to create some kind of policy out of the ruins created by the presidential tweets. The president has threatened to destroy Turkey’s economy if it does what he enabled it to do. With Kurds—most of them civilians—fleeing Turkish bombs, the UN Security Council stayed typically silent, while the Europeans condemned everything and everyone involved.

As foreign-policy disasters go, this is one for the record books. But the seeds for this larger conflagration were sown long before the now-infamous Trump–Erdogan call. Absent any coherent policy, the conditions were ripe for a crisis. The question now is whether there’s any constructive way to proceed.

For now, the US has agreed with Turkey on establishing the wide security zone in northern Syria it sought. Russia, meanwhile, has evidently brokered some sort of arrangement between the YPG and the Assad regime. With Russian and Syrian government forces now entering some of the areas vacated by the US, the Trump administration is left trying to manage its relations with Turkey. As for the EU, there’s little to be done. Having already cut off all high-level political contacts with Turkey, it is impotent in the face of this latest crisis.

Logic dictates that all of the relevant parties in the region should now sit down and try to come to some kind of agreement. In addition to the Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraq and other Arab countries, there need to be places at the table for Turkey, Iran and the Syrian government. Yes, the Assad regime is associated with a wide range of horrors and atrocities—but there’s simply no other way forward.

Regional talks certainly won’t come easy. Many parties will have to swallow hard and face difficult realities. Unfortunately, the prospect of a democratic Syria was lost years ago. The top priority now must be to restore stability and prevent further catastrophes. There are no longer any good options, if, in fact, there ever were.

Navigating the Syrian endgame

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After a suspiciously sudden conversion, Russian President Vladimir Putin now claims to be worried about the fate of millions of refugees who have fled the carnage in Syria. In last weekend’s meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Putin expressed his hope that the European Union would help to rebuild Syria so that its displaced people could start to return home. And in recent weeks, Russian diplomats have been hawking the same message across European capitals.

To be sure, now that Bashar al-Assad’s regime has reclaimed most of the country’s territory, Syria’s civil war is clearly winding down. But that outcome was not inevitable. On the contrary, the Syrian army was very close to collapsing at one point. Only with the crucial help of Iranian-backed militias and Russian air support did Assad manage to turn things around.

Meanwhile, US efforts to establish a ‘moderate’ armed opposition achieved little, apart from giving the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG)—an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party—control of the strip of northern Syria abutting the Turkish border. The only thing left to do now is to destroy Al Nusra’s remaining enclave in Idlib and broker some kind of settlement between the YPG and Assad.

Assad has survived at a horrible cost. More than half of the Syrian population has been displaced internally or forced to flee to nearby countries or to Europe. Much of Syria’s infrastructure—from housing blocks to hospitals—lies in ruins. And, needless to say, the country’s economy has been shattered, owing to the direct effects of the conflict and to sanctions that were imposed as part of the failed effort to force Assad into a political settlement.

No other country in the past half-century has suffered so heavy a toll in human lives and physical destruction. There can be no doubt that the responsibility for this tragedy rests with the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian sponsors. Of course, they will say they were fighting terrorism, as if that excuses their indiscriminate methods and reckless disregard for civilian lives. But future generations will remember the true source of the terror that was visited upon the Levant over the past seven years.

The estimated cost of rebuilding Syria varies widely. While a 2017 World Bank study puts the price at around US$225 billion, more recent assessments suggest a total closer to US$400 billion; others expect the sum to approach US$1 trillion. And that does not even count the human costs of the war.

It is clear from Putin’s European charm offensive that Russia has no intention of footing even a small part of the bill. Apparently, the Kremlin does not feel as though it has a duty to rebuild the cities and restore the livelihoods that its bombs destroyed.

Nor is the United States particularly eager to help. Just last week, the Trump administration cancelled US$230 million in funding for the reconstruction of Raqqa and other areas liberated from ISIS. It is now hoping that Saudi Arabia will foot the bill instead. If there is any wisdom in that move, it remains to be seen.

With the US stepping back, it is obvious why Putin suddenly wants to talk to the Europeans about the plight of Syrian refugees. He didn’t care about them when his bombs were falling on their neighbourhoods and forcing them to flee. But now that he wants Europe to bail out Assad, he has found some compassion.

But it is not clear that Assad even wants displaced Syrians to return. If anything, he seems ready to exploit the situation to reengineer the country’s ethnic and political composition, making it safer for his own minority sect, the Alawites. Hence, a new law grants refugees just one year to reclaim their property before the government seizes it; and other bureaucratic requirements seem designed to allow Syrian authorities to refuse reentry to anyone they don’t like.

Moreover, Assad has stated explicitly that European companies are not welcome to help with the reconstruction, and that preference should be given to Russian firms. Clearly, the regime is preparing to profit from any rebuilding assistance that comes its way. For all of these reasons, the last thing that Europeans should do is send money directly to Assad. A far better option is to offer direct financial support to individuals and families that are willing and able to return to their country.

At the same time, the EU should not lift sanctions until a credible political settlement between the regime and opposition forces has been reached. The question is whether such a settlement is even possible. So far, every realistic proposal has been torpedoed by Assad’s insistence that he remain in power.

Assad would do well to remember that he now rules over the wreckage of a country. Even when the guns fall silent, his regime will not be secure. His inability to revive Syria will leave him vulnerable in the same way that his refusal to countenance political reforms did eight years ago. Europe has no interest in saving Assad from that dilemma. Help for Syria must await a genuine political solution. After the destruction that the Assad regime has wrought, there is no other way forward.

What’s in the pipeline for Merkel and Putin?

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Schloss Meseberg is a Baroque-style palace that serves as the official guest house of the German federal government. It sits in an idyllic location 70 kilometres north of the capital, and on Saturday Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin on a working visit there. It was their second get-together in three months, signalling a wish by both leaders to find solutions to international issues in the face of the uncertainty US President Donald Trump has brought to global politics.

Expectations were strong that Merkel would raise her concerns about the situation in Idlib, where thousands of internally displaced Syrians are threatened by the likely upcoming battle for the city between Russian-supported Syrian government troops and the remaining rebels in the enclave. Over three hours, they discussed that topic, plus Iran, the conflict in Ukraine, and Nord Stream 2, the controversial gas pipeline project. The leaders made short statements prior to the talks, but neither gave a press statement afterwards.

Merkel and Putin have shared the international stage for over a decade and they have regularly discussed global issues in depth. But what was initially a positive relationship has become increasingly troubled since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, the conflict in Eastern Ukraine and the Kremlin’s questionable involvement in Syria. Germany played a key role in levelling sanctions against the Kremlin and supported NATO measures to deter Russian military threats along its eastern border. For example, Germany serves as the framework nation for NATO’s enhanced forward presence in Lithuania.

But even in the increasingly tense times since 2014, Germany’s chancellor has retained a better connection with Putin than any other leader in Europe, or in the White House. Over and over, Merkel has attempted to find diplomatic solutions to conflicts by involving all sides in negotiations.

Merkel said that Germany and Russia (as a permanent member of the UN Security Council) shared a responsibility to find solutions to international conflicts. She stressed that many such issues couldn’t be solved without Moscow’s involvement. Merkel underlined the need for Russia to be engaged in avoiding a humanitarian catastrophe in Idlib and in working on a post-conflict order in Syria, which must include constitutional reform and elections.

While Germany and other European nations share with Russia a determination to end the war in Syria, their views on how that should be done vary significantly.

Moscow continues to support Bashar al-Assad and wants to retain its strategic foothold in the region, but it also wants to end its involvement in the conflict to save the millions of roubles that it consumes. Europe favours lasting peace, but without Assad, and seeks a return to safety and stability to allow refugees to go back.

In his short statement, Putin touched on his expectation that European governments would step up their efforts to rebuild essential infrastructure in Syria to facilitate the return of refugees from the region. Much of that infrastructure was destroyed by the Russian air force.

Both sides can use the Syrian conflict as a pressure tool. Putin knows he can use his influence over the Assad regime, especially when it comes to Idlib, while the EU knows that the Kremlin longs for better relations with the West. Showing willingness to find a solution that meets Europe’s goals in the post-war order in Syria could bring Russia a step closer to achieving that.

However, Europe expects much more from Russia than a change of approach to the war in Syria and what should follow it. The conflict in Eastern Ukraine was also an important item on Saturday’s agenda. Merkel is said to have again raised the possibility of an international peacebuilding mission being deployed to Ukraine’s conflict region, something she discussed with Putin during their meeting in Sochi in May.

A related issue is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project which Moscow intends to have online by the end of 2019 to carry Russian gas to Germany, and from there to other parts of Europe. That will circumvent the need to transit the gas through Ukraine, which means Kiev will lose out on about US$3 billion a year in fees. Merkel changed her approach to the pipeline project recently—acknowledging its political character but continuing to support it—while Putin again ignored Merkel’s call for Ukraine to be involved in it. The Russian leader insisted that the project was ‘only economic’.

Putin knows, however, that Nord Stream 2 will play a significant role in improving relations with the rest of Europe. And improving German–Russian relations will be key to warming up general EU–Russia relations. Both will improve only if the Russian government shows willingness to de-escalate in both Syria and Ukraine. Whether Saturday’s meeting stirred discussions on that possibility remains to be seen.

Syria: what if?

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US President Donald Trump has been widely criticised for his supposed fawning performance in Helsinki at the summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But a minority of commentators have made three countervailing arguments to explain and justify Trump’s statements: preventing a US–Russia nuclear war by calming bilateral tensions that have arisen from the dangerous infection of Russophobia is a transcendental goal that should override all other considerations; if the main strategic rival in the foreseeable future is going to be China, then improving relations with Russia is a strategic move on the geopolitical chessboard; and Russian cooperation is essential to extricating the US from the mess created by the Obama administration’s pursuit of incoherent and inconsistent goals in the Middle East.

So, what if the road to the Syrian hell was paved with the good intentions of liberal humanitarians motivated to act in defence of innocent civilians being massacred in Bashar al-Assad’s brutal crackdown? More starkly still, what if the US-led West (including Australia) had stayed completely out of the Syrian civil war, limiting expressions of abhorrence to strong diplomatic protests? Assad would have triumphed sooner rather than later, but with significantly lower loss of life. Does the West then bear any moral responsibility—not primary, but partial—for the higher humanitarian toll? Or is virtuous intent proof against such tough self-questioning, simply denying the reality of what David Kennedy called The dark sides of virtue (2005)?

Taking sides in the battle to topple dictators who don’t kowtow to Washington’s moral compass is the modern-day equivalent of the white man’s burden that Kipling extolled. Tragically, external interference prolonged, intensified and widened the conflict—and civilian casualties and agony—without dislodging Assad from power. Had the West resisted the temptation to get involved on the side of the rebels, the numbers killed and displaced as the price of Assad prevailing would have been considerably fewer and the scale of the refugee crisis engulfing Europe would have been significantly smaller.

The Syrian uprising began in March 2011 as part of the Arab Spring. It rapidly descended into a vicious civil war, first with a savage crackdown by Assad, then with the influx of freedom fighters, jihadists and mercenaries from all over, and finally with the growing involvement of regional and global powers on rival sides, each with its own agenda. The Sunni/Shia and Arab/non-Arab divisions also intersect in Syria’s civil war. No one knows how many militias are active there, or their strength, allegiances and external patrons.

The US was adamant that Assad had to go, but Russia, backed by China, insisted that the rebels also had to renounce violence and that only an inclusive Syrian political process could resolve the crisis. The anti-Assad forces rapidly morphed and fragmented into increasingly radicalised groups fighting to establish an Islamist regime after Assad’s ousting. The laws of war were violated by all sides.

The seven-year civil war has cost half a million lives (plus two million wounded) and produced the biggest mass population shift of internally displaced persons and refugees—about half of Syria’s pre-2011 total population—in recent decades. Millions have grown to adulthood without experiencing childhood. Physical, social and health infrastructure has been gutted and many priceless historical treasures deserving of the ‘common heritage of mankind’ label destroyed.

Had the stakes been high enough, Western powers could have gone in with a full-fledged invasion force, effected yet another regime change and installed a West-leaning government dedicated to instilling a liberal democratic order that respects the rule of law and promotes human rights norms. Coalition forces tried that in Afghanistan and Iraq with little success. Western forces proved highly efficient at winning the initial war but incapable of securing the peace and became bogged down instead. Western publics lack the stomach for yet another Middle Eastern quagmire where liberators become occupiers, initially grateful natives turn on them as jihadist influence takes deep root, and anarchy is let loose.

A second option would have been to launch air strikes on Assad’s forces to support a rebel offensive to capture the key institutions of government. Following the defeat of the ruling regime, a coalition of anti-Assad forces would form an interim government pending internationally observed elections, and peace and good governance would prevail. Unfortunately, that approach didn’t work out too well in Libya. And Syria had a far greater potential to fragment and collapse into a sectarian bloodbath involving more numerous and vicious militias than their Libyan counterparts as the centre failed to hold and the state withered away.

The policy actually pursued was to encourage anti-Assad forces, give them arms, money and training, and back them diplomatically in international discourse, but without crossing the line into coordinating bombing raids with them against government targets. The returns on this form of investment in ‘moderate’ rebel forces were risible. Western governments could not distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’ rebels. As the ranks of the former thinned and the latter swelled, disillusionment grew in the West and the policy gradually changed from trying to overthrow Assad to trying to defeat Islamic State. From the start, Trump indicated a willingness to work with Putin to this end, thereby drawing to a close Barack Obama’s ill-conceived insistence that Assad must go.

Washington gave false hope by providing enough support to the rebels to prolong the armed conflict but not enough to secure a decisive victory. Western interference has worsened the pathology of broken, corrupt and dysfunctional politics across the region from Afghanistan through the Middle East to North Africa.

There is no humanitarian crisis so grave that outside interference cannot make it worse.

From Deraa to Deraa

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The flag of the Syrian government was raised again over central Deraa on 12 July, more than seven years after the first popular demonstrations against the Assad regime broke out in the city in March 2011. The symbolism is self-evident, but perhaps even more significant is the speedy progress Syrian forces have made in their effort to reopen the main border crossing with Jordan at Nasib. ‘Reconciliation agreements’ have marked the rapid pace of advance by Syrian forces in the area, indicating that the fight has gone out of the rebel groups that held patches of territory east and north of Deraa. Anecdotal reports signal that the rebels have been persuaded to depart partly by local residents who have been convinced for some time that the struggle is unwinnable.

Other potential flashpoints remain. West of Deraa, on the volcanic plain that stretches to the Golan escarpment, another patchwork of rebel groups includes residual elements of Islamic State hemmed in by other Islamist and militia elements. Israel is keen to see Islamist forces, particularly Hezbollah, kept away from the disengagement lines west of Quneitra. West and north of Aleppo, meanwhile, Turkish forces occupy the Afrin Valley and the hill country stretching around Aleppo from the west. To the east, the territory from Menbij to the Iraqi frontier has been taken by a joint American–Kurdish operation, its future undefined. Other areas outside the Syrian government’s direct control include much of Idlib province, the destination for fighters who refuse to accept ‘reconciliation’ deals with the government.

Significantly, all the reconciliation deals have been negotiated under Russian supervision, and Russian military police and other units have monitored the local ceasefires. Russia is also acting as intermediary between Israel and Iran to ensure that Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah units are kept well back from the line of division on the Golan. Turkey’s role in the north is less easy to define; in many ways it seems to be settling in as a long-term supervisory power.

The real tinder box at the moment covers most of Idlib province south of the road running between Aleppo and Antioch. Its population has been augmented by rebels who refused to stay in the zones selected for reconciliation deals over the past three years, and the local, largely Sunni population is consequently living in pitiful conditions. Little information emerges from what is effectively a black hole, filled with rebels armed with the light weapons they took when they were evicted and free of any stabilising outside presence. Internet postings indicate sporadic clashes between al-Qaeda units and more secular competitors as well as firefights along the southern edge of the province immediately north of Hama.

In eastern Syria, stay-behind Islamic State units survive in remote parts of the steppe on either side of the Euphrates, and there have been isolated reports of engagements with Syrian forces. And, finally, there is the curious case of the stretch of Syrian territory well to the east of the Jordanian border crossing at Nasib: except for its long common border with Jordan, and the fact that it straddles the main highway link to Baghdad, it is devoid of any sizeable population or strategic interest.

All conflicts, no matter how visceral and violent, have a natural half-life. But like the civil war in Lebanon (1975–90), they can also linger senselessly. A turning point finally came in Lebanon when the Arab League, notably Saudi Arabia, stepped in as arbiter and re-established more or less the same power-sharing formula as the National Pact of 1943. In Syria, the situation is a little clearer: there is now every sign that the regime will survive and take control of virtually all the state’s territory, assuming covenants can be reached with residual occupation forces and with Syria’s allies in the conflict.

The keys to this process are Russia, Turkey and Iran. Early in the conflict, Russia and Iran read the situation correctly and identified where their interests lay. Iran had been building relations with Syria since 1979, encouraging a greater role for Shiite Islam. The Soviet Union had been a long-term backer of Syria, though at some points during the rule of Hafez al-Assad, father of the current president, it was clearly bamboozled by the country’s complicated manoeuvring. After Hafez’s death in 2000, Russia probably found his son Bashar a little easier to read. Turkey, for its part, had been a backer of Bashar al-Assad’s mildly reformist economic agenda before 2011. It switched 180 degrees in the early stages of the conflict, allowing the rebels to use the Syrian border crossings as revolving doors—a policy it came to regret when Islamic State extended its campaign of violence into Turkey.

The missing element was the major Western powers. Most of them read the protest movements of 2011 as another phase of the Arab Spring and hoped that, given the right encouragement, a tide of popular enthusiasm would sweep Bashar al-Assad out of power. This was a fatal misreading: Syria was not Tunisia or Egypt. The call for Assad to go offered no identifiable basis for a post-Assad order, but many Syrians believed that the democracies would follow through and impose a solution.

Soon the encouragement turned more lethal, with the United States beginning to provide light weaponry. While the gesture was too ineffectual to make an impact, it deprived Western democracies of any role in calming the situation. When both Turkey and the US turned a blind eye to the role of Gulf interests intent on unseating Bashar and reversing the drift towards a Shiite identity for Syria, the conflict flared to peak intensity.

Perhaps a few lessons have been learned, but they may not be enough. The US presence in the northeast and its enigmatic foothold in the south may be a Pentagon armchair strategist’s idea of a claim to a seat at the final negotiations. But even a token presence can bring dangerous and unexpected outcomes. By inserting itself between Turkey, the Kurds, the local Arabs and the Syrian government, the US faces home-grown skills way out of its league.

In a recent paper for the Hoover Institution, the French political geographer Fabrice Balanche notes that all scenarios in the northeast of Syria suggest a no-win for the United States: ‘US troops could be pushed out of northern Syria, giving the Syrian regime and its allies free rein’, he writes. ‘Iran will then control the entire Syrian–Iraqi border and the corridor between Tehran and the Mediterranean Sea.’ The US strategy, once again oblivious to complex dynamics on the ground, is likely to hasten one of the very aims it professes to oppose.

Whatever credibility as a great power the US had before 2017 is now irrelevant if President Donald Trump continues to see the world as akin to a reality TV show. Whether we like it or not, Russia, by contrast, has played its role expertly and consistently. Before 2011, it was a guarded marginal player in the wider region; now it holds a master key to any solution. So, too, does Iran. Adopting tactics designed to exclude Russia and Iran is simply counterintuitive. In a regional order clumsily forged by the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the likely winners will continue to be those who know the environment and play the long game.