What's happening in Syria?

Several people have asked me recently what the heck is going on in Syria. So I've written a brief run down of what's going on and how we got here. This is meant as a primer, and a lot of what I wrote is admittedly overly simplified. But hopefully it captures the important stuff without obfuscating too much.

This is what is happening in Syria:

Inspired by other Arab uprisings, the Syrian people began a peaceful movement in 2011 to reform and later overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad. Bashar and his father Hafez before him have ruled Syria with an iron grip for decades. It was therefore no surprise the regime responded with a violent crackdown. Assad promised that the region would burn if the international community supported the opposition.

The Syrian opposition failed to unify in the face of regime violence, as some continued to protest peacefully but others began to pick up arms to meet force with force. Neighborhood defense forces and military defectors grew into the Free Syrian Army, a loose coalition of armed groups across the country opposed to the Assad regime. Protests morphed into clashes and, soon enough, full-on battles.

The violence exacerbated pre-existing societal cleavages within the country, and sectarianism grew increasingly salient. Sunnis, who represent the majority of Syrians, became the loudest voice within the opposition. Assad, who comes from the minority Alawite community, attracted the support of other minority sects, including Shia and Christians, who feared Sunni intentions. Of course, not all Sunnis support the opposition and not all minorities support the regime – but these schisms have grown ever deeper. Kurdish Syrians have also fought both sides as they attempt to carve out their own autonomy.

Now, radicals from all communities have drowned out moderates. This process has been accelerated by the intervention of outside forces that have stirred the sectarian pot. Assad has relied increasingly on Iran and Hezbollah – both Shia who face common Sunni rivals. Meanwhile, Sunni groups inspired by and part of al-Qaeda have joined the fight on the side of the opposition and become some of its most powerful military forces. Gulf states, also Sunni, have contributed arms and financing to the rebels. As the war has become more transnational, so has the risk that it’ll spill over in neighboring Lebanon, Iraq and to a lesser extent Turkey and Jordan. Now, factions within both the regime and the opposition speak openly of ethnic cleansing and have committed countless war crimes.

And to be clear, Syria is a civil war. Over 100,000 people have died in the past two years in Syria, and there is no sign the violence will abate any time soon. One in four Syrians are now displaced from their homes. The battle has reached largely a stalemate, after a series of rebel advances were stopped and reversed earlier this year. The opposition has secured control of much of the north and the east, near the Turkish border. The regime has control of the south and the west, near the Lebanon border. The capital Damascus is controlled by the regime, but the rebels control many of the Damascus suburbs.

It is in these suburbs which the Assad regime has most recently used chemical weapons, likely sarin gas. It is not the first time the regime has used chemical weapons, but the scale of this attack (somewhere between 300 and 1200 dead) is unprecedented. It is the worst use of chemical weapons since Saddam Hussein gassed Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980's. We know the regime used chemical weapons because we intercepted regime communications talking about the attack. Still, the attack only represents a small fraction of the total people killed in the past two years, largely from small arms, shelling, and bombs.

It is not clear why Assad would use chemical weapons on this scale. The timing is also odd, because the UN had just deployed a team of chemical weapons experts to investigate previous attacks. Some experts say the attack may not have been approved from the top. Others suggest that they meant to use chemical weapons, but accidentally killed more people than they intended. What is clear, however, is Assad has been perfectly willing to kill civilians indiscriminately in a myriad of ways, and there have been little international repercussions for doing so thus far. So the fact he's willing to gas his own people is, sadly, not shocking. For what it's worth, the regime has denied responsibility and said it was the rebels who used chemical weapons. 

President Obama warned Syria last year that the use of chemical weapons was a red line that would fundamentally change our approach to the conflict. From an early stage of the revolution, the US said Assad should step aside to allow a political resolution. As the revolution turned violent, the administration resisted pressure to arm the Syrian rebels, claiming that their disunity would make it impossible to prevent arms from falling into extremist hands. After Assad first used chemical weapons earlier this year, the administration decided to finally arm the rebels, even though those very extremists are even more powerful than before. No weapons have yet been delivered in any sizable amount, but we have provided training to armed opposition groups and likely have provided other logistical support.

Unlike the US, Russia has not hesitated to provide substantial military and economic support to the side it supports: Assad. Russia, along with China, has consistently stymied every move at the UN to condemn and punish the Assad regime.

The latest chemical attack will likely push the US to respond with military force. The goal will not be regime change like in Libya, but to punish Assad for crossing our red line and for violating the international norm against using chemical weapons. We will likely target a few military installations and other key infrastructure, causing enough damage to make it hurt but not so much to force Assad to retaliate. It is unlikely we will risk flying our own planes over Syria, so we will instead rely on cruise missiles.  

For his part, Assad has threatened retribution against anyone who supports a military strike by the West. Fighting for his literal survival, it is unclear if any amount of cruise missiles will force him to abandon his murderous path.

Our European allies, and especially Great Britain, will stand with us politically and in a few cases militarily. Arab states seem hesitant to provide political support, especially after a July 3 coup in Egypt removed the pro-opposition president Mohamed Morsi. Unlike in Libya, the Security Council will not approve any military action, because Russia and China will veto any measure authorizing the use of force. They say it’s because they’re angry with NATO for overstepping its mandate in Libya by taking a mandate to protect civilians and using it to overthrow the Muammar Qaddafi regime. But in reality, they just care for what they perceive are their national interests. The US will instead look to build an ad hoc coalition to try to give our intervention the veneer of international legitimacy. 

There is now little hope in Syria, and our bombs falling on Assad targets will be lost in the noise of violence that has engulfed the country. Even if Assad were to fall tomorrow, the violence he has unleashed will continue for years to come. Worse, there are fewer and fewer good guys to support as extremists take control across the political spectrum. We can only hope to try to curb the worst excesses of violence within the country and try and prevent it from engulfing the rest of the region.

UPDATE: I added a few lines about why Assad may have used chemical weapons.

Why I Won't Write about Bin Laden

I'm a member of the 9/11 generation. Like all Americans, we can remember exactly where we watched the Towers fall. For me, it was Mr. Flynn's world history class. But unlike all Americans, my generation was uniquely shaped by the horrors that day.We were old enough to comprehend the gravity of the attacks, but young enough that 9/11 would serve as the foundational moment of our lives.

Unlike our parents and grandparents, we could not compare what we saw and experienced that day to the other seminal moments of American and world history. Sure, we could draw facile connections to obvious analogies. But but we had no personal experience to draw upon. We were on our own to wrangle with and contextualize the raw emotions we felt.

Like many of my generation, we channeled those emotions into a desire to enter a life of public service. Some like myself focused specifically on the Middle East. We began to study Arabic, read about Islam and travel abroad in the Arab world. We did so for instrumental reasons. We wanted to learn what caused people like Osama bin Laden to murder so many innocent lives. More importantly, we wanted to help bring him to justice.

That's why, as an undergraduate, I hoped to one day become a counterterrorism intelligence analyst. I wanted to use my knowledge of the Middle East to protect the homeland. And as such, I viewed the Arab world largely as a security problem to be solved. But something unexpected happened: my interest in terrorism and Bin Laden faded.

I instead became fascinated for the Middle East for what it is: an immensely complex and diverse conglomeration of peoples, histories, religions and cultures. Terrorism may have brought me to the Middle East, but I have remained for wholly different reasons. I stayed partially because I thought I could help create a new beginning between the United States and the Arabic-speaking world. But in reality I stayed because I fell in love with the region - with the food, with the history, with the culture, and most of all with the people.

While the region is confronted by a host of profound problems, I have learned the region itself is not a problem to be solved. Rather, it is a wealth of potential to be activated. That's the main lesson we've learned from the Arab revolutions over the past few months.

That's also why I haven't written much about Al Qaeda previously on this blog and why I don't plan to start anytime soon. Others have dedicated their careers to solving the problem of Al Qaeda - and they deserve to be praised for their efforts to protect our immediate security. I, however, have turned my attention to how the U.S. can help the Middle East realize its full potential. It also just so happens that I believe that only then will the long-term threat of religious extremism  be no more.

Two years ago, I remember walking through a Muslim slum in Cairo when I spotted a faded picture of Bin Laden sticking out from a heap of garbage. Arabs have long ago thrown Al Qaeda into the refuse pile of history. They have shunned his murderous ideology for an entirely different narrative of hope, of pride, and of freedom. As we have seen these past few months, they are fighting bravely to actualize the vast potential of the region. In the words of Rachid Ghannouchi, a leading Islamist in Tunisia, on Al Jazeera today: "Bin Laden died in Tunisia before dying in Pakistan."

It is that struggle that will be the focus of this blog. Hopefully, it will also play a central role in my career. I cannot think of a better way to honor those lost on September 11th than by helping Arabs realize their inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Such an achievement will ensure that Bin Laden's photograph will forever remain rotting in that Cairo trash heap where it belongs.

Conceptualizing the War on Terror

I just got back from an event at AEI on the release of a new report, "Al Qaeda's Operating Environments: A New Approach to The War on Terror."

With the caveat I haven't read the full report yet, it argues that we must develop a better understanding of how AQ operates in different kinds of physical and human terrains. It conceptualizes three kinds of terrains: the Islamist Quasi State (e.g. Somalia), the Limited Safe Haven (e.g. FATA in Pakistan), and the Distressed Zone (e.g. Iraq). These different categories are divided based on how much freedom AQ has to operate. The ultimate point is that fighting AQ in these different terrains require different strategies.

While I agree it's essential to disaggregate AQ in order to fight them more effectively, I have two critiques. First, the threat of anti-American terror extends beyond AQ. By focusing on AQ, we not only risk missing other threats, but we are also prone to conflating different threats as all AQ. But that doesn't present a problem for the main thrust of the report, and in fact it makes disaggregation of these different terrains all the more important.

Second, I believe the report is missing two other terrain categories. The first, as Michael O'Hanlon pointed out, is an urban terrain like Karachi that offers ripe opportunities for AQ despite government control. The other is enemy terrain (i.e. the US and the EU). Even though the report focuses on foreign policy, I pushed the authors to explain in the Q&A why they leave out enemy terrain as a key operating environment for AQ. They responded that the financing, planning, and training for attacks all occur overseas, and therefore once the threat resides in the homeland, it's too late.

I think this is a mistake for a few reasons. One, we've seen violent extremists use the US and EU as safe havens in the past. Most notably, the Islamic Group's Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman helped plan the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and was stopped from launching more attacks shortly thereafter. Just because it's easier to fundraise, organize, and train abroad currently, doesn't mean that they can't or won't find ways of doing so here.

Two, even after the financing, planning and training have all taken place, there are still many opportunities to thwart terror attacks in the target country. It's not ideal to having to foil individual plots versus stopping them at their source, but that doesn't mean we should ignore the homeland as an essential operating environment of violent extremists.

Three, AQ clearly wants to turn the US and Europe into a new operating environment on the model of Nidal Hassan. It'd be a mistake to exclude this terrain in our analysis just because it's downstream or because it's the most restrictive for AQ. The framework should include the entire spectrum of environments violent extremists can and do operate in. Otherwise we're allowing a potentially vulnerable blind spot to go unstudied.

Fourth and finally, as we place more pressure on AQ's operating environments abroad (which is the ultimate goal of this report), there will be greater incentive for AQ to seek operational capabilities within the US and EU. In fact, some believe AQ has been forced to give up on large scale attacks due to US pressure, instead opting for smaller, more amateurish attacks in recent years that rely upon citizens and residents of the target countries.

In short, this report aims to take a step back and reconceptualize the war on terror in broad terms. Yet it needlessly limits itself to one particular group and three particular terrains that, while obviously presenting the greatest threats, do not constitute the entire universe of violent extremism that endangers our national security.

Update: Here is video of the event. I ask my question at 57:30.

No Longer the Greatest Great Satan

Is America no longer the greatest Great Satan? While Iran’s Supreme Leader still froths at the mouth, the Iranian people has had enough with his hate speeches. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda is now spewing their spiteful rhetoric at someone else besides America for once. This week, the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared Shi’ite Iran a greater threat than either the Jews or Christians. But most intriguingly, Al Qaeda has also set its sight on a new, rising threat: China.

This past year, the Chinese government has cracked down on their Uighur population, a Muslim minority group several million strong. This brutal treatment of Muslims provoked a surge of angry reactions throughout the Muslim world. The plight of the Uighurs cuts particularly deep for historical and ideological reasons.

Historically, China hosts a long and storied Muslim tradition, beginning when the Caliph Uthman sent an emissary to the Chinese Emperor in 650 AD, only 18 years after the Prophet Mohammed's death. In fact,while touring Xi’an, I spoke Arabic with several Chinese Muslims in a famous mosque built in the early 8th century. Eventually, Muslims ascended to high positions of power, such as the renown Muslim explorer Zheng He. Thus for Chinese Muslims to be persecuted in the 21st century is especially bitter.

Ideologically, Chinese Communism (or Red Capitalism if you prefer) is nothing short of morally bankrupt in the Muslim point of view. The Chinese ideological system is founded entirely upon material wealth and the physical world. Islam, on the other hand, shirks physical goods in favor of the spiritual hereafter. After all, what is this life worth when the Garden is promised in the next? Worse yet, not only do the Chinese worship the false idol of money, they are irrevocably atheistic. While Islam sets aside a special place for the monotheistic faiths of Judaism and Christianity, Eastern faiths are utter anathema.

In comparison, the United States boasts five million Muslims citizens who share equal rights, expounds Islamic-friendly principles like freedom, equality and justice to temper the excesses of capitalism, and remains a deeply religious, monotheistic country. For every complaint Al Qaeda harbors against America – our abuse of Muslims, our worship of money and our general godlessness – China commits the same sins to an even greater extreme. Thus it is no surprise that Al Qaeda leaders have declared jihad against Beijing.

The ultra-nationalistic Chinese were likely taken aback by this declaration of universal holy war. The government in Beijing believes, as they only source of legitimate authority within China, that they have the political prerogative to treat their citizens as they please. Any international forces, whether it be Al Qaeda or the UN, have no business intruding upon Chinese sovereignty. But no matter how hard China strains to maintain their sovereignty, they will eventually have to accept that in a globalizing world, there is no longer such a thing as a purely internal matter.

This new fact of life will grow increasingly important as China seeks a greater economic role in the Middle East. According to Ambassador Chas Freeman, by 2020 China will conduct $350-500 billion in trade annually with the region (the U.S. currently does $70 billion). With an increased economic role, politics will inexorably follow.

I would recommend that all Chinese leaders (and you too) should read Michael Oren’s Power, Faith and Fantasy on the history of American foreign policy in the Middle East. As a new player in the Middle East, the United States originally enjoyed both popularity and trust. But as we grew increasingly entangled economically and politically, we inevitably lost our luster. China should take heed. Al Qaeda already has.

Sanctioning Shalom

According to Deena Jawhar in the Middle East International, Bahrain's elected lower house of parliament has unanimously passed a bill sanctioning all contact with Israelis. If also passed by the upper house, a simple Shalom could result in fines up to $25,000 or five years of imprisonment.

Jawhar explains that while Bahrain's government (read: King Hamad) does not officially recognize Israel, it has taken several measures in recent years such as

the closure of an Israel boycott office in 2005; a proposal by the foreign minister last year to establish a regional forum including Israel; a call for dialogue with Israelis made by Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin-Hamad in a Washington Post article published in July; and King Hamad's regular meetings with pro-Israel groups during trips abroad.

As such, the King views the bill as an affront to his prerogative to formulate foreign policy. In fact, the crown prince has argued that normalisation with Israel could bring economic benefits to the country - an argument to which the lower house of parliament and its constituents obviously don't give much credence. However, the upper house may have little choice but to follow the government's line, given that they are appointed by the King himself. Therefore, it is unlikely the bill will ever become a law.

This episode serves as a reminder about how deeply and pervasively hatred towards Israel flows through the Arab world. I can understand why Arabs feel so strongly about the plight of the Palestinian people. I can even comprehend why, at the cost of their own economic welfare, the Bahraini parliament is willing to shoot symbolic salvos at Tel Aviv. But what I don't understand - and what I don't think they have considered - is how their anger also hurts the very people they ostensibly seek to help.

An Israel that feels under siege will not and cannot make peace. Nor is there any shortage of reasons for Israel to feel in danger. If not Hamas, then Hezbollah. If not Hezbollah, then Iran. Then let's not forget Syria. Oh, and al Qaeda-inspired Sunni splinter groups. So does Israel need to feel threatened by Bahrain's lower house of parliament? No, but it's just simply one more excuse to retreat into a psychological bunker.

For there to be a political peace, there must first be a minimum level of mutual trust and mutual confidence. And there can be neither trust nor confidence without contact between the Arabs and Israelis. That is why it is so essential, as President Obama has urged, for both sides to offer gradual confidence-building measures to undergird any political negotiations.

But episodes like these make me wonder whether the anger is simply too great right now to move forward. While President Obama was correct to make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a top priority from the get-go, it might now be better for everyone to take a breather and try again after tempers have cooled.

Runoff in Afghanistan?

According to The New York Times, the Afghan ambassador to Washington, Said Tayeb Jawad, said that a runoff election between Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah appears likely.

This is obviously big news. Until today, no one close to Karzai suggested any possibility of a second round of elections. So when Jawad says a runoff is likely, we should understand they are a near certainty.

But is it good news? That depends on what happens next.

On one hand, Abdullah has previously suggested he may not be able to control his followers if the fraud is not properly corrected, despite attempts to calm emotions. A runoff would prevent likely violent protests in the streets, as feared by Juan Cole. Besides, there is a strong moral argument that Afghans deserve a legitimate election to let their true voices be heard.

But the question is whether a runoff will turn out any better than the first round. There is good cause for doubt. To avoid the harsh Afghan winter, a runoff will have to take place within the next two weeks or so - hardly enough time to make necessary reforms that would prevent another fraud-ridden vote. In addition, it is unlikely Karzai was directly responsible for most of the fraudulent votes in his name. Even if he wants an honest vote, it would be hard for Karzai to effectively crack down on his warlord and drug dealer cronies. In short, the only thing worse than a fraudulent election would be a fraudulent runoff that costs extra money and lives while simultaneously decimating any remaining Afghan hope for justice.

In a second scenario, elections are put off until the spring, allowing time for necessary reforms. While I think getting the runoff right is more important than conducting it quickly, this path would place Afghanistan in constitutional limbo. To bridge the gap, some sort of transitional government would have to be put in place, as suggested by Abdullah. But actually doing so would prove tricky and, if done wrong, the risk of violence would be quite high.

The best outcome would be some sort of power-sharing arrangement between Karzai and Abdullah, as suggested by Fareed Zakaria and others. While Abdullah has emphatically rejected that idea before, he may be more amenable if a runoff is declared. Per the Times article today, some experts believe Abdullah is waiting for the final verdict on fraud, hoping his bargaining position will strengthen after any announcement. If he feels he can gain the upper hand in negotiations with Karzai, then power-sharing might not sound so bad after all.

In sum, a Karzai-Abdullah deal would minimize the risk of violence, provide definitive, immediate closure and confer much needed legitimacy on the Afghan government. Only then will the U.S. have the partner it needs to conduct an effective campaign against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.