Negotiation and escalation in the Syrian civil war after Aleppo
Brian M Downing
The war in Syria is entering its sixth year. Various rebel groups, backed by Sunni powers, had the upper hand until Hisbollah, Iran, and Russia intervened on the government side. Over the last year government forces developed a tactic of heavy airstrikes on rebel-held areas, easing the way for weary ground troops.
Aleppo, Syria’s largest city now in ruins, has fallen to government forces after relentless use of that air-ground tactic. The war will likely continue into 2017 – in part because of the pitiless attack on Aleppo and the fecklessness of world opinion, in part because of the will of the combatants and their supporters.
Peace overtures?
Having solidified its hold on western Syria with the seizure of Aleppo and Idlib, the government – pressed firmly by Russia – may establish a solid defensive line against the rebels and refrain from further offensive actions. Russia will then shift to a diplomatic tack.
Russia will do so because it sees no point to reconquering all of Syria. This would be an open-ended conflict that all but ensures increased foreign support from the Gulf powers and Turkey. Further, Russia does not want lasting enmity with the Gulf powers. It sees them as potential large-scale arms purchasers and longer term, as part of its authoritarian, anti-West axis with China.
The position of the US next year cannot be calculated. President-elect Trump has spoken of cooperation with the Russians against ISIL and al Qaeda, but many of his appointees, save for the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, are adversarial toward Russia and will counsel against anything more than pro forma cooperation. The same can be said of the security bureaus in Washington.
Continued warfare after Aleppo
The Syrian-Russian-Iranian assault on Aleppo, and the expected reprise on Idlib in coming weeks, may weaken the outside powers’ willingness to pursue meaningful negotiations. A settlement now would recognize the legitimacy of the Russian air campaign, with all its intended, non-collateral civilian casualties, and also the fecklessness of critics in foreign capitals.
Reports of civilian casualties and summary executions have, in Middle-Eastern publics, a highly sectarian element. Shia troops are reported to be killing Sunni prisoners and civilians – a point made forcefully and repeatedly on Al Jazeera broadcasts across the region. Criticism in western capitals will be limited compared to that in Sunni ones, where such killings and oppression over the years have led to outrage and inflows of dedicated fighters to aid their brethren. Such was the case in Afghanistan in the eighties, and later in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Iraq.
Sunni districts in Damascus, Idlib, Deraa, and the ruins of Aleppo may become havens for guerrillas and car-bombibgs. Chechen and Tajik veterans of Aleppo may return home to wage war.
Rebel forces and their foreign backers might not be dispirited by Aleppo. They see that their fighters have fought with considerable tenacity and are prepared to continue the war. One thing made clear, in both Syria and Iraq, is the cohesion and effectiveness of Salafist forces such as ISIL, al Qaeda, and Ahrar al Sham.1
Syrian forces and their allied ground troops are difficult to assess. We see only staged footage of celebratory fighters in remarkably tidy uniforms and with clean faces. Willie and Joe they’re not.
Syrian forces have been at war for over five years now and have taken heavy casualties. Assaults on Aleppo and other cities where rebels have fought from defense positions must have been quite costly, perhaps worryingly so from Damascus’s perspective.
The rapid loss of Palmyra to the south, despite Russian airstrikes, to an ISIL force suggests that the best Syrian troops are allocated to the north and that other positions are manned by inferior troops, and are vulnerable.
Rebel forces may calculate that Damascus’s victory at Aleppo was pyrrhic, to import a term from the Aegean just to the west. It may have cost too many troops, exposed other parts of the country to counteroffensive, and perhaps more importantly fueled Sunni passions in the region.
1See my “Cohesion and disintegration in Iraq’s armies,” Asia Times, September 4, 2014.
Copyright 2016 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.