‘Memo’ on Syria rattles Washington

WASHINGTON / AP

State Department officials shook up America’s generally obedient diplomatic establishment this week with an internal memo urging US military action against Syria’s government with the goal of pressing President Bashar Assad to accept a cease-fire and gaining
the upper hand on him in
future talks on a political transition.
Reasons abound for why an intervention is improbable, not least the vague military objective and risks for US service personnel. Most significant, President Barack Obama is opposed.
Even the diplomats who signed the “dissent channel cable” aren’t calling for US forces to push Assad out of power immediately or make him surrender territory to opposition groups — more typical goals for military campaigns. Instead, they say targeted US attacks could increase leverage over the Syrian leader in diplomatic negotiations that have repeatedly failed so far.
Intervening would plunge Washington into an unpredictable and deadly conflict. The Syrian opposition includes scores of rebel formations jostling among rival ethnic groups and US-designated terrorist organizations such as the IS. Russia’s air force, Iranian troops and paramilitary units are fighting alongside Assad, crowding the skies and the battlefield.
And American priorities are elsewhere. Despite calling on Assad to step aside five years ago, Obama is focused on defeating the IS in Syria and not regime change. His administration wants to preserve Syria’s state and army for a future “transition government” that could restore order and help tackle IS. It wants Russia and Iran to help in that effort. Here is a look at what frustrated State Department officials called for and why a policy shift is unlikely:

WHITE HOUSE
RESISTANCE
The now classified cable was transmitted through an official channel for dissenting views. Fifty-one mostly mid-level department officials who work on America’s Syria policy signed on. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal quoted from copies they reported seeing or obtaining.
The document expresses clear frustration with a White House-driven response to a conflict that has killed perhaps a half-million people and contributed to a worldwide refugee crisis.
“The moral rationale for taking steps to end the deaths and suffering in Syria, after five years of brutal war, is evident and unquestionable,” The Times quoted it as saying.
The sentiment isn’t new in Foggy Bottom. Obama’s last two secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, pushed for intervention, as has a former defense secretary and CIA director. But the commander in chief has the last word, and nothing has swayed him thus far.
When Assad crossed Obama’s “red line” in 2013 by using chemical weapons, the US president backed down from his threat of retaliatory strikes. And ongoing chaos in Libya, where the US helped overthrow dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, is only making him more reticent.
“None of the options are good,” Obama said in Saudi Arabia in April. Any “Plan B” without a political settlement risks extending the war for years, he said.
“The president has always been clear that he doesn’t see a military solution to the crisis in Syria, and that remains the case,” White House spokeswoman Jennifer Friedman added Friday.

MANY UNKNOWNS
Apart from defeating IS, Obama’s Syria strategy has three stages: forcing Assad into a cease-fire and “political transition” talks, pressing him to leave power, then uniting his army and moderate forces to join the counterterrorism effort.
After five years of civil war, the chain of events hasn’t yet started. Fighting rages despite numerous partial cease-fires between Syria’s government and opposition groups.
And without leverage, the dissenters noted, Assad will never feel pressure to stop bombing and negotiate.
Military action can “drive a more focused and hard-nosed US-led diplomatic process,” they said, shifting “the tide of the conflict” and sending a “clear signal to the regime and its backers that there will be no military solution.”
But if airstrikes are limited, would they scare Assad into peace talks or make him more determined to dig in? If the US ultimately hopes Assad will negotiate his own departure, what new incentive would he have?
“The threat of strikes brings dramatic results,” Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said approvingly of the memo.
“This isn’t about invading Syria or another Iraq. It’s about punishing Assad for his violations of the cessation of hostilities. And it could, if backed up with resolve, change Assad’s increasingly rigid negotiating position.
The memo says doing that would address the lack of support among Syria’s Sunni majority for the US goals of isolating and defeating IS. Sunnis are leading the fight against Assad, a member of Syria’s Shiite-linked Alawite minority.
But if Libya is an example, US intervention doesn’t always play out that way. A year after Gadhafi’s overthrow, militants attacked the American diplomatic outpost in the city of Benghazi. Washington has no diplomatic presence inside the country today.

RUSSIA
“We have been arguing from the beginning of the Syrian crisis that there should be more robust intervention,” Foreign Minister Adel Al Jubeir of Saudi Arabia, a key US ally, said.
But if planning an intervention was complicated early on, it became harder after Russia’s foray into the conflict in September.
Attacking Assad’s forces now would risk escalating a proxy war with Moscow, which has been hitting US-backed rebels.

Troops clear IS mines in
recaptured areas of Fallujah

BAGHDAD / AP

An Iraqi military official says government forces are clearing mines and explosives left behind by members of the IS group in areas recently retaken from the extremists in the city of Fallujah.
Brig. Haider Al-Obeidi told The Associated Press on Saturday that operations are still ongoing in Fallujah, with the air force hitting targets in the city including IS snipers positioned near the main hospital.
Al-Obedi’s comments came a day after Iraqi special forces swept into Fallujah, recapturing most of the city as IS’s two-year-old grip crumbled after weeks of fighting.
He said troops are advancing toward the hospital cautiously, concerned that militants stationed there may use patients as human shields.
The Fallujah offensive began in late May, and IS’s defenses in much of the city collapsed abruptly.

IS mounts fierce defence of besieged Syrian bastion

Beirut / AFP

IS group extremists have launched a wave of suicide and car bombings to defend a besieged stronghold in northern Syria against US-backed fighters, a monitor said on Saturday.
A Kurdish-Arab alliance last week encircled the city of Manbij and severed a key supply route used by IS from the Turkish border to the extremists’ de facto Syrian capital, Raqa. But since then the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by US air strikes, have been slowed by almost daily suicide bombings by IS, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
On Friday, IS carried out two suicide attacks and five car bombings in the southwestern suburbs of Manbij, according to the British-based monitor, which relies on a network of sources on the ground. The number of casualties was unknown. The operation has also been complicated by the presence of tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the city, although more than 1,000 have managed to escape with the help of the SDF.