The astonishment over US Secretary of State John Kerry’s remarks about negotiating with Bashar Assad to resolve Syrian crisis is beyond comprehension.
It was not unexpected given several previous indications that we either ignored deliberately or did not want to believe. Since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, the western strategy, particularly of the US, has been ambiguous. Despite repeated calls from friends, allies and Syrian opposition, Washington hesitated for a long time in providing military support.
It was only after the entry of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in the Syrian war theater that the Obama administration decided to make fighting IS its priority while postponing any action against the Assad regime.
It was obvious that airstrikes by the US-led international coalition on IS positions would also reduce pressures on Syrian government forces. It was claimed that the aerial campaign would help government forces step up attacks on IS positions and other extremist groups. At the time the Syrian government cheered for the airstrikes, claiming that it was in the same trench with the US in the war on terrorism. The Syrian government, of course, makes no distinction between the factions fighting against it, lumping moderates and extremists together into one category: “Terrorists.” Thus, it used the “détente” to increase barrel bomb attacks and retake several positions from the opposition while the international coalition’s planes launched airstrikes on IS positions.
The US strategy on Syria, it became clear later, has sparked off disputes within the Obama administration, leading to the resignation, or sacking, of Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. In a letter to the White House, Hagel criticized what he saw as ambiguity surrounding the Obama administration’s position toward the future of the Assad regime, calling for a clearer position and warning that procrastination and delaying the response to the Syrian crisis would cause damage to the US strategy of eliminating IS. This was of course another indication that Washington was considering the survival of the Assad regime as an option in a bid to prevent Syria from falling into IS’ hands.
This was not only Washington’s position. Other players in the West and think tanks close to decision-making circles adopted the same position. The leaking of “Steps to Settle the Syrian Conflict,” a report prepared by the Swiss-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD), had kicked up a storm in the West last November. The report concluded that the solution in the near future in Syria lies in keeping the Assad regime in power instead of risking the fall of the Syrian state into the hands of the “jihadists.” The conclusions reached by the report were not the usual ones in that they aimed at achieving calm in Syria in stages and in a region-by-region manner. This turned out to be exactly what the UN Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura would propose later. In his proposal to Assad, de Mistura called for achieving calm in stages starting with Aleppo. The plan drew much criticism given that it meant that the international community was beginning to believe that calm could be achieved through Assad and thus that he was considered as part of the solution. But is this the whole story?
Of course not. The Syrian crisis intersects with the Iran nuclear talks. A deal with Iran, it has been reported, would only be sealed if the US dismissed any thoughts of toppling Assad’s regime, Tehran’s main ally in the region. This also suggests that Washington thinks Iran should have a role in the “war on terror” whether in Syria or Iraq. We Arabs should stop criticizing the US or any other country. Every country has the right to work for its own interests. Arab states should stop being dependent on others. The shifts in the Syrian crisis indicate that the Arab world needs a new strategy, which should begin by forming a bloc of those Arab states willing to deal with the imminent risks.
