Asked whether coalition airstrikes are helping him, Assad said that the bombardments -- the Obama administration's preferred military tactic in the fight against the Islamic State -- aren't enough. "Troops on the ground that know the land and can react are essential," Assad told journalist Régis Le Sommier. "That is why there haven't been any tangible results in the two months of strikes led by the coalition. It isn't true that the strikes are helpful. They would of course have helped had they been serious and efficient."Despite the wishful thinking of some in the West when he came on the scene to replace his father, Hafez al-Assad of "Hama rules" fame, Bashar (Opthamologist by training) is a chip off the old despotic block. I suspect that's more nurture than nature, but he has in any event survived in an environment which would have exposed and destroyed him for any weakness. In fact, the entire region is like that.
The Baath regime in Syria as in Iraq is bad news, but it was (pretty much) equal-opportunity bad news. Christians, Alawis and other non-Sunni minority groups survived as well as anyone could in Syria until things came apart in 2011. Being an enemy of the State was what would get you tortured and killed, and as brutal as that is it's something you could avoid, i.e. you weren't born into it.
Enter Da'esh/IS/ISIL/Al Queda/etc. The decendants of the Moslem Brotherhood old Hafez decimated in Hama, they are rabidly intolerant Sunni militias, so intolerant that most Sunnis don't want to live under them either. The non-Sunnis who remain have been forced to side with Assad in sheer self-preservation. In that case the "enemy of their enemy" is their only hope.
Does that mean that we should work with him? Well, that depends. In an ideal world where we all love each other and some rare zombie virus makes people turn nasty, no. In the real world where things are a lot greyer than that you don't work with a murderous sadistc regime unless of course they are less distasteful than the alternatives.The question: is Assad sufficiently less off-putting than Da'esh/Al-Queda/Nusra to be worth propping up?
I won't pretend that this is a simple decision, but I'll zoom out enough to try to put it in perspective. Until 2003, Iraq and Syria were "stable". Not Parliamentary-Rule-of-Law stable, but most people could go about their daily lives with little chance of violence which counts as stability in most parts of the world. Once the Americans broke Iraq (that is neither ideological nor debatable at this point) the whole region began to creak. The eventual result was the so-called "Arab Spring" which succeeded only in the place it began, in Tunisia. Egypt got the government it thought it wanted in the Muslim Brotherhood, but quickly realized that having the military run things was not so bad after all. Syria tried to reform but that only exposed how brittle the power structure was and of course it shattered.
Shit gets tribal pretty quickly in situations like that (civil war) and the surviving enclaves are the Alawis (Assad's "tribe") and the Kurds. The Syrian Kurds' only chance of survival is to amalgamate with the Iraqi Kurds and I have said before this is where I think we should put our efforts. Erdrogan and the Turkish government; in his/their effots to re-create the Ottoman empire has/have placed themselves in opposition to NATO's interests and should be booted out of the alliance. I mention this because the Turks are the single biggest impediment to carving out a stable safe-haven for people fleeing Da'esh.
The Iranians also have Kurdish issues, but they are a bit more pragmatic and are actively supporting their militias fighting Da'esh. Should we co-operate with them? How I work it out is that worst-case scenario, Iran spreads its' (Shia) "Islamic Republic" to parts of Iraq; that is still less miserable than Daesh/Al Queda. This would defacto split off Iraqi Kurdistan to join up with Rojava. In case you wonder why I think we should support that, go read this.
Are the Kurds perfect? Not by a long shot, but as far as I can tell they are better than all regional alternatives. My information is not based on personal experience, but by all accounts their internal tribal issues don't turn into oppressing other people which is all that I can ask of a group. The real litmus test is "would I take a trip there [Iraqi Kudistan]?". The answer in this case is "yes" because even as in infidel Westerner I would be as safe there anywhere other than home. Their proposed constitution looks pretty Socialist (not surprising, Kurdish Workers' Party and all) but Disestablishmentarianism is the law of the land making it unique in the region since Turkey has purged Ataturk.
Coming back to Assad, the Social Contract of the Rojava Cantons (linked above) recognises the "territorial integrity of Syria" which brings it in line with the rump Baath state. This is potential common ground, but there is no way the Cantons would let Assad back in control. What I don't know is what the Iranians would think about cutting loose their link to Hezbollah, inevitable if the current power structure is dissolved.
That could be grounds for some old-school "sphere of influence" talks between the US, Saudis and Iranians. The tradeoff could be recognition of defacto Iranian expansion into Iraq, sans "Sunni Triangle" in exchange for cutting the Levant loose. The Saudis would have cause to dislike this, but it wouldn't change much on the groud so it might not be a deal breaker. Hezbollah has bled a great deal for the Assad regime (really for Iran) so it's unlikely Iran would cut ties, but they would gain more Shia in Iraq than they'd lose in Lebanon so who knows?
The region (and many others) has a preference for backing "the Strong Horse". Assad's Syria was that in the immediate area for many years; it is so no longer, but it can still do a lot of damage. The Alawis are a fairly despised minority in the ME, but so are the Kurds, Christians, Yazidis, etc. I see common cause there, but there are a lot of Great and Regional Power interests to overcome before the underdogs can band together. Get rid of Assad and the Baath Party and we could work with non IS Syria against Da'esh and in spite of Erdrogan. I deduce Iran as the lynchpin of this, with Russia having some say, maybe just as an extraction plan for the Baath ruling elite.
There's your angle Obama; you still have a chance to actually earn that Nobel Peace Prize. Fat chance the USA does anything this coherently thought-out with an understanding of the region and history, but the regional players understand these things. Somebody will do something but it probably won't be us.
