US being urged to cooperate with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad
September 18, 2015 9:35pm
VIDEO: Syria: Assad says consensus can't be implemented unless terrorism is defeated
CHARIS CHANG and wiresnews.com.au
AS THE crisis escalates in Syria, the US and its allies may yet do the unthinkable — support a president once accused of torturing and massacring his own people.
Pressure is building on the US to assist Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in an effort to bring down Islamic State and restore stability to the country, despite his controversial past.
With the migrant crisis placing increasing pressure on Europe, experts now seem to be grasping for any solution, to try and turn the situation around.
There’s talk of a “diplomatic solution” to resolve the Syrian civil war, which would allow the government and foreign forces to work together to defeat Islamic State.
But should the US really work together with a regime that has proved to be so ruthless? Does it even have a choice?
DEAL WITH THE DEVIL
Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has long been a controversial figure. In 2011 he was accused of using chemical weapons on his own citizens and has tried to crush a rebel uprising that developed after the Arab Spring.
RELATED: 10 points to help you understand the conflict in Syria
The US was a vocal opponent to Assad’s use of chemical weapons and was instrumental in destroying the country’s stockpile and protecting rebels from a government crackdown. It is now being pushed to consider whether cooperating with Assad is the best way to address the deteriorating situation in Syria and combating Islamic State.
Experts say that Russia’s strong support for Assad combined with the arrival of thousands of Syrian asylum-seekers may push Europe to adopt a new approach towards the regime.
“Indeed, after the migrant crisis, we heard several European voices pleading for a closer cooperation with Assad and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin,” Karim Bitar, head of research at the Institute for International and Strategic Relations, said.
“Clearly, the ‘stability at all costs’ narrative is rapidly gaining ground.”
PRESSURE BUILDING
The civil war in Syria may also become a broader international conflict as Russia and US position themselves on either side of the fighting.
Russia has been supporting the Assad government with weapons and other equipment and the US is worried that it has been escalating its military aid in Syria recently.
In recent days, Moscow has sent about a half-dozen battle tanks and other weaponry — along with military advisers, technicians, security guards and portable housing units — to Syria with the apparent goal of setting up an air base near the coastal town of Latakia, an Assad stronghold.
US officials have said Moscow is simply trying to prop up Assad and have rejected his participation in the global war on IS.
“Nothing’s changed about the fact that we don’t want to see the Assad regime getting any support,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said.
“There can’t be a role (for) the Assad regime in efforts to stabilise the situation in Syria, much less go against ISIL.”
In contrast, the US has provided non-lethal military aid such as food, trucks, communications equipment and medical supplies to rebels fighting Assad. It pushed for the regime to give up its chemical weapons and more recently it has supported moderate rebels with air strikes.
But the civil war has been complicated because other jihadists and IS have also joined the fighting, and each group has its own aims. After four years, the war is at a stalemate with the Syrian government in control of western and central Syria around Damascus, while Islamic State has claimed parts of eastern and northern Syria.
Photo: Members of Ahrar al-Sham, a key component in the Islamic Front rebel coalition, which has been battling both President Bashar al-Assad's regime, and jihadists from the Islamic State group. Picture: AFP/HO/AHRAR AL-SHAMSource:Supplied
Another complication is that military dialogue between Russia and the US has been suspended since 2014, following Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday that Moscow had proposed opening a “military-to-military conversation” to ensure Russian forces do not come into conflict with the US-led coalition fighting IS.
A spokesman for the White House said the United States could be willing to take up a Russian offer of talks so long as they were “tactical, practical discussions”.
He said it would use the talks to urge Russia to focus its actions in Syria on countering IS.
TIME TO CO-OPERATE?
Even as far back as 2013, one former US Central Intelligence Agency chief was already predicting an Assad win could be the best outcome.
Michael Hayden, who headed the CIA until 2009, saw three possible outcomes.
The first was for conflict between ever more extreme Sunni and Shiite factions, and the second, which he deemed the most likely, was the “dissolution of Syria’’.
“Option three is Assad wins,’’ Mr Hayden told the annual Jamestown Foundation conference of terror experts.
“And I must tell you at the moment, as ugly as it sounds, I’m kind of trending toward option three as the best out of three very, very ugly possible outcomes,’’ he said.
Photo: A Syrian woman kisses a poster of Russian President Vladimir Putin during a pro-Syrian government protest in front of the Russian Embassy in Damascus, Syria. Picture: AP/Muzaffar SalmanSource:AP
Four years after the conflict in Syria began, about 240,000 people have died in fighting and about four million Syrians have fled the country and registered as refugees with the UNHCR.
While the war began as an uprising against the Assad regime, the threat of Islamic State is now being seen as the greater enemy.
Russia is now trying to convince the West that it needs to work with Syria in the fight against IS.
The West’s desire to combat the jihadist group may force it to work with Assad, and restoring peace to the country would also relieve the migrant crisis as citizens could return home.
In an interview with Russian media on Wednesday, Assad said there could be no political solution for his country’s crisis until terrorism was defeated. He singled out groups including IS, which has captured about a third of Syrian territory along with large swathes of land in neighbouring Iraq, as well as al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, and “some others”, without specifying.
“We, the political parties, the government and the armed groups that fought against the government, we must all unite in the name of defeating terrorism,” Assad said.
He added he would only give up power if the people ask him to do so, not the United States.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq should co-ordinate its action with Assad’s government in conformity with international law.
RELATED: Australia joins US in air strikes on Syria
“There is no reason to evade cooperation with the Syrian leadership, which confronts that terror threat,” Lavrov said. He added that “the Syrian president commands the most capable ground force fighting terrorism.”
“Rejecting such a possibility, ignoring the capability of the Syrian army as a partner and ally in the fight against the IS means sacrificing security of the entire region for political or geopolitical intentions and calculations,” he said.
In an interview on Lateline last night, a top adviser to Assad, Bouthaina Shaaban said the West needed to stop opposing Assad and start cooperating with the regime.
“My message to the Australian Government is that there should be a real intention to fighting terrorism,” she said.
“And the real intention should come through a real coalition and cooperation with Russia, Iran, China, the government of Syria, and all countries and governments who truly are interested in fighting terrorism.”
She also accused Coalition governments of wanting to make Syria “a country that is a satellite for the West”.
“Syria is 10,000 years old. The Syrian people are very civilised people. They are very well capable of choosing their government and choosing their president without any interference from the West.”
WE MAY HAVE NO CHOICE
In an unwinnable war, experts are now starting to recognise that keeping some form of the Assad regime operating could be the best option to return stability to the country.
“I think what will end up happening is something short of the collapse of the Assad regime,” Dr Rodger Shanahan, a former peacekeeper in Syria who is now a Research Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, told news.com.au earlier this month.
“A reasonable outcome you’d think is a ‘regime lite’ where Assad is not the ruler at an agreed time in the future, and where some opposition elements are incorporated in the government and military. How you get there is the difficulty.”
Counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen told Lateline that the key to finding a diplomatic solution in Syria, which could see stability restored and IS defeated, may need to involve Russia and the Assad regime.
“People are saying: ‘look, Assad himself, his family and some of his cronies need to go’. But the regime needs to stay, because without the regime as part of some kind of a future provisional or transitional government, there is going to be a power vacuum that simply results in ISIS (Islamic State) filling that vacuum and taking over the country,” he said.
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AS THE crisis escalates in Syria, the US and its allies may yet do the unthinkable — support a president once accused of torturing and massacring his own people.
But should the US really work together with a regime that has proved to be so ruthless? Does it even have a choice?
And then
Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has long been a controversial figure. In 2011 he was accused of using chemical weapons on his own citizens and has tried to crush a rebel uprising that developed after the Arab Spring.
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What do YOU think?
Riêng người Việt Nam BỊ MẤT NƯỚC vào tay bè lũ chó má phản quốc CƯỚP NƯỚC DIỆT CHỦNG BÁN NƯỚC việt cộng nghĩ gì, rút tỉa thêm bài học kinh nghiệm gì qua tình hình Syria, qua "DEAL WITH THE DEVIL" ?
Xin hãy ĐỪNG QUÊN, độc tài Syria's brutal dictator Assad chỉ GIẾT DÂN, còn bè lũ chó má việt cộng không những GIẾT DÂN mà còn BÁN NƯỚC .
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Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị .
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