THE NEVER ENDING BATTLE FOR SYRIA / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES

The Never-ending Battle for Syria

Dominating the Middle East requires controlling this part of it.

By: Hilal Khashan

Syria has been the target of countless attempts at subjugation undertaken by external powers throughout its history. 

Since the rise of modern-day Syria after the Second World War, the country has been beset by foreign interventions, social turmoil and political instability, all of which cast doubt over its viability as a united political entity.

Legacy of Foreign Intervention

The United States was one of the first countries to intervene in Syria’s internal affairs after the country gained independence in 1946. 

The CIA supported a coup led by Hosni al-Zaim in March 1949 to ensure a Saudi oil pipeline would be extended into Lebanon via Syria despite the Syrian parliament’s objections.

The Communist Party emerged as the most potent political movement in the country after the Military Intelligence Directorate (led by Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj, a close ally of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser) in 1955 neutralized the Syrian National and Social Party, which had right-wing tendencies at the time. 

Meanwhile, the influence of Marxist military officer Afif al-Bizri grew after a CIA- and Iraqi-backed coup, codenamed Operation Straggle, failed in 1956. 

Al-Bizri later became chief of staff of Syria’s army.

As the Communist Party’s influence surged and amid the 1956 Suez crisis, Nasser’s popularity in Syria soared and demands for a merger with Egypt grew. 

These developments prompted the CIA to plan another coup, codenamed Operation Wappen, in which senior U.S. embassy staff in Damascus took part. 

The U.S. also pushed the anti-communist government of Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes to deploy troops near the Syrian border. 

This move convinced Nasser to send his own troops to the Turkish border in a symbolic show of solidarity with Syria.

While the Aleppo-based People’s Party backed Iraq’s attempt to create a federal system with Syria, the Damascus-based National Party supported the establishment of stronger ties with Egypt. 

The split between Aleppo and Damascus reflected the former’s economic ties with Mosul in Iraq and the latter’s longstanding political relations with Egypt. 

In March 1951, clashes erupted between Syria and Israel when the latter attempted to control an area that had been demilitarized under the 1949 Armistice Agreement. 

Syria requested military assistance from the Arab League countries, but only Iraq responded, holding a military parade in Damascus before sending its forces to the armistice line.

In 1958, Egypt and Syria merged into a single state called the United Arab Republic. 

One of the first leaders to respond to the new union was Menderes, the Turkish prime minister, who called it an “unsettling matter for a person to sleep with a country of 6 million people on his borders, and wake up in the morning, to find that it has become a country with a population of 26 million people.” 

As for Saudi Arabia, King Saud called the merger a “dirty” union and tried to shoot down Nasser’s plane on his return from Damascus. 

After the September 1961 coup in Syria that ended the union, Turkey’s information minister expressed joy over its failure. 

Since then, Turkish policy toward Syria has focused on preventing it from uniting with any Arab country.

An Interlude

After the dissolution of the United Arab Republic in 1961, foreign countries refrained from meddling in Syria’s affairs, and leading Arab countries became preoccupied with other matters. 

In June 1961, Iraqi Prime Minister Abdul-Karim Qassem announced his intention to annex Kuwait, prompting the British to send paratroopers and naval vessels to defend the fledgling state. 

A year later, a republican coup took place in Yemen. 

The beleaguered coup leader appealed for help from Nasser, who ended up sending one-third of the Egyptian army to support the new regime. 

The emerging civil war there, which lasted until 1967, shifted Middle Eastern attention away from Syria. 

In June 1967, the Six-Day War broke out, resulting in a massive Israeli victory against Egypt, Syria and Jordan, forcing these countries to focus on the fallout of conflict.

Baathist Alawite military officers tightened their grip over Syria after the February 1966 coup amid Egypt’s quagmire in the Yemen war, the return of the Muslim Brotherhood threat in Egypt, Fatah’s operations against Israel, and Arab states’ preoccupation with Israeli plans for the Jordan River. 

Two months after Nasser’s death in September 1970, Syrian Defense Minister Hafez Assad turned against his fellow Alawite officers and seized power. 

In March 1971, he was elected president, winning 99.99 percent of the votes according to the committee supervising the election.

Assad’s presidency coincided with Arab countries’ agreement to stop intervening in each another’s internal affairs. 

In Lebanon, they opted to settle their differences by sponsoring a total of 14 Palestinian guerrilla factions and a number of Lebanese sects, all wrangling for control over the country’s political system. 

By 1976, Assad dominated Lebanon after invading it to prevent the Palestine Liberation Organization from defeating the Christian militias. 

In the meantime, Assad succeeded against all odds at transforming Syria from an arena of competition into a regional power. 

Immediately after the triumph of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, he struck a strategic alliance with Iran to contain Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s regional ambitions. 

The outbreak of the eight-year Iran-Iraq War in 1980 alarmed the oil-rich Gulf countries, which were wary of the expansionist tendencies of the two combatants. 

Assad, who fostered close relations with Iran, promised to use his good offices with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to prevent Tehran from violating their territorial integrity. 

However, Assad could not prevent Khomeini from establishing Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1985. 

He closely monitored the activities of both Hezbollah and Iran in Lebanon, but his son, Bashar, who succeeded him in 2000, did not have the acumen of his father.

Foreign Intervention Returns

The Sept. 11 attacks occurred just over a year after Bashar Assad ascended to the presidency. 

As the Bush administration planned its invasion of Iraq, it justified the decision on the grounds that it needed to dismantle Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction program. 

The invasion and President George W. Bush’s declaration after the end of the initial military operation that democracy would spread from Tehran to Damascus alarmed the politically insecure Assad. 

His Alawite and Ismaili government officials urged him to revive his father’s strategic alliance with Iran and scrap his political reform plans.

From the first days of the uprising in 2011, Iran stood by Assad. 

It sent Afghan, Pakistani and Iraqi Shiite militias to support his regime militarily and financially. 

Iran assigned Hezbollah the task of leading the battle on the ground against the opposition and supplied Assad’s forces with Revolutionary Guard personnel masquerading as advisers. 

Together with Russia and Turkey, Iran forged a path to solve the Syrian crisis as an alternative to the one presented by the international community, led by the United Nations. 

The U.N.’s solution failed because Assad refused to make concessions to the opposition, while the secondary path established in 2017 several temporary deescalation zones.

Russia intervened in September 2015 after regime forces and Iranian-backed militias suffered a significant defeat in the Idlib region. 

Russia’s intervention made a big difference on the ground, resulting in enormous losses for the opposition, which had controlled more than half of Syrian territory to that point. 

Russia, which had established an air base in Hmeimim and a naval base at Tartus, became the primary military force in Syria and the guarantor of the Assad regime’s survival.

The direct involvement of the regime’s foreign allies in the conflict prompted other countries to also seek a foothold in Syria. 

Washington supported the opposition without allowing it to overthrow the regime. 

It controlled the quantity and types of weapons transferred to opposition forces and prevented them from obtaining air defense systems despite the indiscriminate bombing operations of the regime’s air force, which killed tens of thousands of Syrians. 

Saudi Arabia completely reversed its position on the war between 2012 and 2016. 

Initially a strong backer of the Syrian opposition, it decided to terminate its support in 2017, due in part to the 2016 election of Donald Trump, who had expressed his disinterest in overthrowing Assad. 

Following the collapse of the U.S.-administered southern front, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates gradually shifted their policy to restore ties with Assad’s regime.

The United States’ support of the opposition also extended to the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which played a key role in the U.S.-led coalition’s fight against the Islamic State. 

This caused a significant rift in the relationship between the United States and its NATO ally Turkey, which had established relations with most of the armed opposition groups, especially in northwestern Syria.

As the conflict escalated, both the U.S. and Turkey sent forces into Syria. 

In addition to experts and advisers, Washington sent soldiers and material assets and established air and ground bases in the northeast of the country. 

Turkey deployed its forces to support armed opposition groups in three offensives. 

In the first offensive, Operation Euphrates Shield, the Turkish army entered the vicinity of Jarabulus in mid-2016. 

It was followed in 2018 by Operation Olive Branch, focused on expelling the YPG from Afrin. 

In 2019, Turkish forces launched a massive attack, codenamed Peace Spring, on territory held by the Syrian Democratic Forces between the border towns of Ras al-Ain and Tal Abyad.

The Road Ahead

The conflict has radically changed the concept of sovereignty in Syria. 

Central sovereignty has been eroded due to internal conflict, foreign interventions and the emergence of armed local groups. 

This situation makes it difficult to reach a political solution and achieve stability in the country.

Given the eclipse of Iran’s regional influence and Russia’s decision to extricate itself from Syrian affairs, Turkey and Israel will play a key role in determining the fate of the Syrian state. 

Turkey views the Kurdish autonomous region in northeastern Syria as an existential threat because it could eventually enable the YPG (which is linked to the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and its political wing, the Democratic Union Party, to lay the foundations of a Kurdish state, which could lead to Turkey’s own disintegration. 

It is unlikely that Turkey will succumb to U.S. pressure to refrain from military action against the Kurds there.

As for Israel, Hamas’ attack in 2023 has exacerbated Israel’s deep-seated security fears. 

Immediately after the Assad regime’s fall, the Israeli air force launched a comprehensive air campaign that destroyed Syria’s entire military arsenal. 

Israeli troops also captured border sites on the Syrian side of the 1974 ceasefire line.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged in October 2023 to transform the Middle East by the time the war with Hamas ends. 

The demise of Assad’s regime, Iran’s hurried withdrawal from Syria and Hezbollah’s eviction from southern Lebanon don’t seem to have completed this transformation. 

With a devastated economy, a traumatized population and no army, Syria is a sitting duck.