Hello and welcome to the forecast.
Syria has burst into the news again because rebel forces have
taken the world and the Syrian government by surprise by not
just taking the second city of Syria, Aleppo, back into their
control but expanding both to the north and to the South.
Now Syria has long been at the centre of everything in the
Middle East, but it's essentially gone quiet for a few
years. The front lines in this long
civil war have been frozen for around four years.
So we as news organisations had rather looked the other way.
But not everyone was so short sighted.
People like Leena Khatib, who joins us today from Chatham
House and has been watching Syria very, very closely.
And of course, our international editor, Lindsay Hilson, joins us
from Ukraine. And of course, the war in
Ukraine and Russia's distraction there is also very important in
this whole story. So, Lindsay, let's just begin
with why Syria is so important. Well, let's just start because
of the Syrians, and because the Syrians who've been through so
much suffering and so much war, hundreds of thousands killed,
millions turned into refugees. And now we see this war coming
back again. And we begin to see how central
it has been to geopolitics really for the last 15 years or
so 'cause remember, it was President Obama who decided not
to intervene in Syria even when Bashar al-Assad crossed the red
line and used chemical weapons. And that was an opening for
President Putin. So in 2015, the Russians went in
with their air power and with some troops on the ground,
basically to save President Bashar al-Assad from being
overthrown by rebels. It wasn't just about their old
friend Bashar al-Assad. It was about President Putin
saying Russia is important on the world stage, Russia is a
power to be reckoned with, and it was about Russia filling the
void left by the United States of America.
So I think a lot has flowed from that decision made by President
Putin about Syria back in 2015. Yes, Lena, we often talk about
the the new age of impunity that we are in and you you could
argue it began with Syria. Yeah, absolutely not just that.
It's the age in which red lines have ceased to have much
meaning. When President Obama back in
2013 said that the use of chemical weapons was a red line,
privately Bashar al-Assad took that seriously.
But then when Bashar al-Assad saw that this was not followed
up with action, he basically just felt that the US rhetoric
is not really going to translate into any concrete action and
that red lines were basically rhetorical.
And unfortunately, since then, when you look at different
incidents in the Middle East where the US has invoked red
lines, you'll see a pattern in which threats are not translated
into action. And this has hurt the
credibility of the United States, not just when it comes
to its allies in the region, but also when it comes to its
opponents. Lindsay, can can you just
explain, you know Syria's current geopolitical importance.
You know who, who its alliances are with and why.
Yeah. So you've got Bashar al-Assad,
who is supported by Iran and also very reliant on Hezbollah,
also supported by Iran and by Russia.
So that's that. And then Shia forces from other
parts of the world, I mean Shia Muslim forces who've come in
from other parts of of the world.
But then the rebels, many of them are backed by Turkey.
And there are a lot of different groups.
And Lena is going to be much more expert than me on the
different groups that there there are.
But Turkey is a very important player here.
And but whereas in the past, the Saudis, the UAE, the Gulf
countries really supported those rebels, now some of those
countries have come round to, well, if not supporting, at
least tolerating Bashar al-Assad in the interests of stability.
So I think that one of the important questions is what role
is Turkey playing in this re emergence of this war?
Because these rebel groups, the Americans, the Western
countries, Europe, they're not really a friend to either side.
They're certainly not a friend to Bashar al-Assad and his
Iranian and Russian backers. But some of these groups were
allied with Islamic State, with al Qaeda.
So they're not friends of the West either.
And so I think that the critical power in the region is Turkey.
President Erdogan is a man who the West can do business with.
He's a man who President Putin can do business with, even
though they're on opposing sides in this war.
He, I would see, is very much a key player.
I don't know what you think, Lena.
Yeah. I mean, I was gonna say we have
to emphasize that these groups that are now leading this
military campaign against Iran, backed groups in Syria and
against the Syrian regime forces no longer are affiliates of ISIS
and al Qaeda. The group leading this alliance
of convenience is called Heya Pahrir Sham HTS.
It did begin life in 2012 as an affiliate of al Qaeda, and it
called itself at the time the Nusra Front.
And then, of course, you had ISIS rising.
And this proved to be a challenge for al Qaeda.
So the two groups in Syria were competing for legitimacy, who
was basically more Islamist than the other.
But then with time, the Nusra Front started having political
ambitions, and it rebranded, changed its name into HTS and
severed ties with al Qaeda. And not only that, it started
fighting al Qaeda and fighting ISIS as well.
And it has emerged as the most a militarily powerful group
amongst the rebels in the northwest of Syria.
And because it has political ambitions, it has set up a de
facto government, ruling Idlib in northwest Syria.
It calls itself the Salvation Government.
But just just to be clear on that, I mean, Lena, they're not
Democrats, are they? I mean, they are, they are
essentially Islamists. They are still Islamists, and
the people who have been under their rule in northwest Syria
have persistently protested against them.
And so here we have, as I said, an alliance of convenience
because this group and others see a moment in which Assad's
Iran backers are weakened. They see Russia distracted in
Ukraine, so they feel this is their moment.
And they've been training for four years to basically improve
their military capacity, manufacture their own drones.
They set up a Military Academy to train officers.
So you have HTS, basically still an Islamist group, but a group
that ultimately has political ambition to be part of the
political transition in Syria. So who supports them?
I mean where? Where do they get their weapons?
You know, what's the root? Who's giving them the money?
Well, as Lindsay said, they have links with Turkey.
Now, Turkey has been quite vague in its stance regarding this
current campaign by these rebel groups, because it's not just
HTS, it's HTS and some other groups, including a group
confusingly called the Syrian National Army, which has nothing
to do with the Syrian Arab Forces, which is the regime of
Bashar al Assad's actual army. This is a group set up by Turkey
because Turkey has its own ambitions to be influential in
Syria. So Turkey has basically not said
that it's against this attack, but at the same time not said
that it supports it. But de facto Turkey benefits
from this situation. And without Turkey, these groups
would not have the kind of funding and weapons that they
enjoy. So Lindsay, where, where does
that leave the West? I mean, you know, the, the truth
is, you know, when the, when the sort of the war lines were
frozen, the West looked the other way and they basically let
Assad claim victory despite everything that happened in
Aleppo. We have to talk about one other
group, and that is the Kurds, because we've talked about the
part of Syria which is controlled by Bashar al-Assad,
helped by his allies. And we've talked about the part
of Syria, Idlib in the northwest, which is controlled
by HTS and these other rebel groups who are basically Sunni.
And then you have the northeast, and that is a place which is
known as Rojava, and it is controlled by Kurdish forces who
are connected to the Kurdish forces over the border in
Turkey. And therefore, President Erdogan
does not like them at all. However, the West does quite
like them. And they are, they are regarded
as a more moderate force. I've spent quite a lot of time
there. They're very easy to deal with.
They're much more, I mean, they have female soldiers, many of
whom are very brave and so on. I wouldn't call them democratic,
but they are a much more sort of moderate force.
But they and they have some Western backing.
You know, there are American troops in there.
I was there and I, you know, I can't even remember what year it
was now. But Donald Trump when he was
last in power, suddenly just, he suddenly found out that there
were American troops somewhere in Syria.
And he said, well, we're going to get those out.
We don't want that. We don't want that.
And that was seen as an utter betrayal of the Kurds, of our
allies. But.
They're still there, aren't they?
But yeah, he wasn't in the end. They managed the the people who
he was working with at that time, you know who were the.
Guardrails kicked in. Yeah, the adults in the room
didn't let him do that. But the Kurdish forces there are
quite important to the West. And the reason for that is
because they were in the forefront of beating ISIS.
Islamic State, you remember, it had the caliphate, which had its
its headquarters in Raqqa. And now there are all these
prison camps which the Kurds run, where they control and hold
many of these jihadis. Now, this is very controversial
and I would argue extremely cruel, especially to the
children who've been held in there.
But in there, there are also, you know, Westerners who went to
fight for Islamic State. You know, Shamima Begum is the
most famous one from the UK. But there are many others.
And countries like the UK and Canada don't want those people
back. And it's the Kurds who are
imprisoning them, sometimes under not very good conditions I
must say, But that is where the West is and they don't want that
destabilised. So there's another complication
to add to this situation. I mean, so, so just, I mean,
because it, you know, obviously it's getting very, very
complicated to follow, but we have a situation in which Turkey
supports one lot, America supports the Kurds and America
and Turkey, who are allies and in NATO together are supporting
opposing factions. Yes.
And President Erdogan and Vladimir Putin, who are on
opposite sides on the war, actually get along quite well,
which is why I think that Erdogan is the key to any kind
of resolution because he is. And, and one of the reasons that
this has happened is that Erdogan has been pushing Bashar
al-Assad for some months now to try and sort some of this out to
come to some kind of accommodation.
And Bashar Assad has refused to do that.
He's a stubborn man. He again, is a tall man.
He runs what is basically a narco state now.
But I think the President Putin may now gang up with Erdogan to
say to Bashar al-Assad, you just can't carry on like this.
I don't know, Lena, have I got that all wrong?
No, I mean, I was going to say that this is part of the reason
why Turkey is being vague about this campaign by the rebels,
because it's a way to pressure Assad to finally agree to a
deal. I mean, ultimately the situation
is complicated, but it's actually also simple at the same
time. Everybody wants power, everybody
wants influence. And these rebel groups in
particular, including the Kurds, actually are all being
pragmatic. So you will see, if you, like
me, follow the communiques by these rebel groups conducting
the campaign against Assad and the Iran proxies.
Most of the time they are not talking about Russia.
In fact, they issued an open statement to Russia saying our
fight is not with you. What this tells me is that they
want a deal at some point made between them, Russia and Turkey
about power sharing in Syria. Right, so, well, So what What?
What does a deal begin to look like?
Are you talking about carving up Syria effectively?
No. Having some sort of federation
or what? No, what they, what they are
interested in is be part of the political transition.
Now there is AUN LED peace process which of course sadly
has LED nowhere in terms of political transition.
There was AUN Security Council resolution, Resolution 2254 that
says there has to be political transition in Syria, which
basically means Assad stepping aside.
And a group of people who have been brought by the UN from both
sides were meant to come up with some sort of power sharing deal
that involves elements from the old Assad regime and elements
from the opposition in its different factions.
However, because HTS and all those Islamist groups in the
northwest are listed as terrorists by many countries
around the world, they are not part of this political process.
What they're hoping would happen, and here, Lindsay, maybe
you can weigh in, is basically have a scenario a bit like the
Taliban in Afghanistan, whereby they are eventually recognized
as, you know, legitimate political actors and be part of
this political transition at large.
Well, I don't think that the Taliban are accepted as a
legitimate political actors. It's just that nobody knows what
to do about it. And because the Americans pulled
their forces out in such a precipitous way, you know,
that's what we ended up with. And now everybody just sort of,
you know, keeps coughing twice and looking the other way and
taking absolutely no notice about the horrendous things that
are happening to women there. But Lena, it's very hard for me
to see how this kind of transition could work without a
carve up of the country, because Bashar al-Assad, as I understand
it, is not going to step aside unless there's a coup against
him. And I, I can't see how these
enemies could work together because they have such different
visions for the country and because the country is ruined
and is now entirely dependent, as I can see it, on drugs as a
way of fueling the economy. This drug captagan, which
Hezbollah and the Assad regime traffic in in order to keep
things going. I I just find it very hard to
see how you turn that into any kind of functioning state.
Functioning is the keyword here. I would give you Lebanon as an
example of a country in which you had many, many, many
factions fighting with one another and then realizing that
no one can actually win and in the end agreeing to a very slow
power sharing agreement. So unfortunately, I am not
predicting that even if Assad is removed, whether by force, which
is what these rebel groups are now trying to do, or whether,
you know, eventually Erdogan and Putin managed to kind of carve
up some political deal with him. I don't see the future being
rosy, unfortunately for, you know, at least the short term in
Syria because we've seen what these, you know, kind of
so-called peace building agreements based on power
sharing can do. And it's also far from clear
whether any of these groups and and the government have any kind
of popular support that would last.
I mean, you know, when you're on the ground there and you talk to
people, they say whatever they feel they have to say at the
time, you know, I remember being in West Aleppo and talking to
people about the Syrian, you know, the Assad government and
them saying, yes, yes, it's, you know, it's, it's it's more
stable and that, you know, we'd rather, you know, we'd rather be
here. But there was no, there was
nothing convincing about it. And and, you know, none of those
options are offering any kind of real political freedom.
They don't offer democracy. They don't offer sort of power
to the people in in any sense. So I mean, what whatever you end
up with in terms of a deal, it wouldn't be very stable, would
it? It wouldn't be, and sadly you
are most likely going to end up with a scenario in which Syria
is run by a Russian puppet who would be a replacement for
Assad. The democratic forces within
Syria, civil society, the intellectuals, the the people
who believe in liberal democracy will then have another fight on
their hands, which will be a political fight, not a military
one, to try to carve out at least some space in this kind of
setting. Ordinary Syrians, what they
would want, I mean, you know, democracy, freedom, I love it
all. But for most Syrians, if you
could get up in the morning and go to work and make a living and
know that your house wasn't going to be blown up and that
your kids would get to school and things would be all right
and that you could survive and, you know, bring up a family and
so on, you know what? It might be good enough, at
least for the moment. I mean, in in the meantime,
though, I mean, we are seeing Russia bombing Idlib again with
Syria, which I think a lot of people might find surprising.
You know, are, are Russian forces still in Syria in the
same way that they were before? And similarly with Hezbollah, I
mean, you know, you assume that when Hezbollah was fighting
Israel, they would have pulled all their people back.
But it seems that Hezbollah is still there as well.
Well, I think some Hezbollah is there, but let me, maybe Lena
can tell us more about Hezbollah and let me tell you a little bit
about the Russians. So the Russians are not there in
the numbers that they used to be.
And although Russia did have a force on the ground about 5000
at the maximum, most of those were pulled out in 2022 when
Russia invaded Ukraine because they needed the forces here.
And what you were left with was a sort of rump Air Force.
Some, you know, they, they pulled out some of their fighter
bombers and they left some. So the ones that are still there
are, yes, in action, bombing people, probably not rebels,
probably ordinary people. But President Putin cannot
afford to send large numbers of people back in.
And the other people who were there fighting for President
Bashar al-Assad were you remember the Wagner Group?
Oh, Prigajin, his people, He had a lot of mercenaries in there.
Now, when things wound down in Syria and after Prigajin, you
know, was in a plane that unfortunately fell out of the
sky in some mysterious manner after he had risen up against
against President Putin, a lot of those mercenaries were
redeployed to this new Africa Corps.
So they were sent to other to to parts of Africa.
So, and now here in Ukraine, what I've seen on the frontline
is that the Russians are advancing and it's important to
them to get into a position of strength before President Trump
comes into office in January because they know that he's
going to try and force some kind of negotiation.
So the last thing President Putin wants to do at the moment
is weaken his forces here in Ukraine in order to deal with
this problem over there in Syria.
He wants to keep his forces here, which is why I think he's
going to call on President Erdogan.
Yeah, and also when it comes to Russia and Syria, because it
remains the more dominant actor amongst the two foreign backers
of Assad, Iran and Russia. Russia doesn't need to deploy
huge resources because it knows it's still going to be
influential. It knows it can make a deal with
whoever is left on the ground. And already, as I said, the
rebel groups have already appealed to the Russians to kind
of say our fight is not with you, so they are ready for a
deal. So Russia doesn't need these
resources. Now, in terms of why it's
bombing civilian areas in Idlib right now and not, for example,
bombing the rebels directly, meaning military targets, it's
because it thinks that this way it can push the rebels to go
back to the northwest to defend civilian areas.
But what the rebels are doing instead is they're keeping
advancing South. And as they do that, they are
actually acquiring more and more of the arsenal of the Syrian
Army of Bashar al-Assad and increasing their own air defense
capabilities and using those against the Russian planes.
So it's actually interesting militarily how the the two sides
are are are calculating very differently.
Right now, just to sort of make things even more complicated,
the big player we haven't talked about is Iran.
So, so Lena, what? Where does Iran sit now?
Because there were Revolutionary Guard in, in, in Syria.
And they're, they're not now, are they?
They are still there, Iran. They.
Are still there. Yeah, Iran is still present in
Syria through various proxy groups like Hezbollah and like
groups that are Pakistani and Afghan and also Hezbollah.
Of course, Lebanese Hezbollah is supported by Iran.
They are still present. However, they are significantly
weakened. Even though Hezbollah did not
withdraw from Syria to focus on Lebanon, its ability to move in
Syria has been curtailed because Israel keeps bombing Iran sites
inside Syria. And Hezbollah also is now under
a ceasefire agreement with Israel that says that it is not
allowed to move its troops in Lebanon or transfer weapons.
So Hezbollah can't send reinforcements into Syria from
Lebanon. And this has left Iran basically
weakened more than ever inside Syria, which is why the rebel
groups are taking advantage. But when it comes to Iran, Syria
is very important because without Syria, Hezbollah won't
be able to have weapons transferred to it from Iran
through Syria and to Lebanon. And the Captagon trade that
Lindsay mentioned is very important.
This drug trade is bringing a lot of money to the Assad regime
and Hezbollah as well, and this is not something that Iran will
want to lose. So Iran will definitely try to
prop up the Assad regime, but its ability right now is not
what it used to be. Of course, what's coming down
the line as well in January is Donald Trump in the White House.
And I mean, we we see what he's doing in Gaza, where he has just
warned Hamas to release the hostages or face an even bigger
onslaught, it seems. I mean, he seems to be, you
know, threatening American attack as well as Israeli.
So where, where might he sit on this one, Lindsay?
I think he's in a will be in a complicated position because
he's also belligerent towards Iran.
And obviously, you know, he in, you know, he, he talks about
that, but at the same time, he's also talked about maybe, you
know, doing some kind of deal with Iran.
And then, you know, again, it comes back to Putin and Ukraine.
He, he says that he's the man who can end end wars.
He can end the war here in Ukraine in 24 hours.
And that means he, he wants to talk to Putin and he wants to
get this, to get this thing sorted.
But now you have this whole other theatre of war, which no
single person can really have much impact on, you know,
because the Americans largely absented themselves from all of
this. It's hard to see how he comes in
and sorts it out. So I think it once again, it
may, it may make him look weak. And that's not a thing that that
President Trump likes. I mean, Lena, of course.
I mean, Trump would argue that he's the only person who was
strong on Syria because he did at least bomb Assad over the use
of chemical weapons. Yeah, and now he's also thinking
and saying that this time he's not going to be as nice vis a
vis Iran. I think Trump obviously
recognizes that in his first term, he may claim that no wars
were happening in the Middle East, which of course is not
true. But he did not manage to make a,
you know, a deal happen for Syria and or to get Iran to, you
know, basically behave according to international law because it
kept enriching, you know, nuclear elements and it kept
destabilizing the region. This is not something that his
presidency dealt with in the first term.
So I think now he's looking at all those issues as one
interconnected issue, which is about Iran's influence in the
region. And he is indicating, and this
can be seen through the people who he has hired in his cabinet,
that he will pursue another iteration of the so-called
maximum pressure policy towards Iran, but this time it's a
higher maximum. Now, at the same time, he does
not want the US to be involved in military action in the Middle
East. He does not want a quagmire like
the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And so I think he's going to
mostly use economic sanctions on Iran more so than before.
He's probably going to seek to completely cancel the nuclear
deal with Iran and instead negotiate with Iran on a deal
that would link the nuclear enrichment file with Iran's
regional destabilization, taking advantage of the weakening of
Iran in the region right now. I mean, despite the rhetoric,
Iran's so-called the old narrative of unity of France
that all it's proxies will spring into action in a huge way
together has not quite happened. And so there is fear in Iran and
worry regarding what the Trump administration might do.
So, you know, maybe this will be the silver lining in all of
this. I mean, Lindsay, it's worth just
pausing for a moment to think if, if all that were to come to
pass, Donald Trump would be the man who ends the war in Ukraine,
ends the war in the Middle East and puts Iran back in his box.
I mean, he, he, he could come out of this incredibly well.
It depends how long term you're talking, isn't it?
Because, you know, ending wars is one thing and freezing
conflicts is another. And that's what we've seen in
Syria, that the conflict was frozen.
It wasn't over. And I think that here in
Ukraine, you could see the conflict frozen, but not over.
And then what everybody here fears is President Putin coming
back for more. And so doing a deal anywhere in
the world where you force it and you say everything stops, you
can tout that as peace, but that isn't peace.
That's just a temporary absence of war.
And that does not solve the deep underlying problems that any of
these countries have. We must remember that one of the
key winners in all this is Israel.
Israel has been looking forward to the day when Irans regional
influence is weakened and now is a moment.
Although Israel had considered Assad to be a convenient leader
of Syria because he did not himself to form a threat to
Israel, the proliferation of Iran backed groups including
Hezbollah threatening Israel in the Middle East is not in its
interests and now there is a moment for it to change the
status quo. And of course, one of Israel's
biggest backers is President-elect Trump, so he may
be pushing forever more Israeli influence in the region,
whatever Arabs and others think about it.
We must leave it there. Lindsay.
Lena, thank you both very much indeed.
That's the forecast. Until next time, bye.
Bye.