It’s time for someone else to try in Syria

For Americans, the complexities of the Syrian situation have been distilled down to the picture of a soot-covered 5-year-old boy. But the humanitarian disaster in Aleppo — once Syria’s most populous city — is only a symptom of the real problem America has with the Middle East, which is that it is no longer within its purview to fix. Most likely, it never was.

{mosads}Overarching the situation is that the United States has lost its way policy-wise, and has not achieved consensus on an end game. Is the tyrannical regime of Bashar Assad the priority target, or is it Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)? Obviously, Assad has fallen to second place, because his removal, which was the original sine qua non of success, isn’t as important as his cooperation in getting rid of ISIS. Besides, Assad now has the backing of Russia, which is making U.S. involvement more problematic.

How do we handle Turkey — our NATO partner — and the Kurds of Syria, Iraq and Turkey — who have been our staunchest military allies — when they are at war with each other? What is the role of Iran, no friend of ours, but opposed to ISIS while it backs its surrogate Assad in its quest to become the regional hegemon? Do we continue to arm a nebulous group of Syrian moderate opponents to Assad when our weapons are more likely to end up with Islamic fundamentalists than to be used by the groups we’re trying to arm?

We’ve had 15 years of failure in that regard, particularly in Afghanistan, where hundreds of thousands of U.S. small arms have gone missing, but the same problem has occurred to some degree throughout the region.

Currently, it appears that the establishment of a safe zone for Syrian refugees, and preferably for Aleppo, commands our most immediate attention. Is this doable? Unlikely. The safe area would require troops and a no-fly zone for security. Neither is a reasonable likelihood. Neither the American administration nor Congress is offering troops except in a training capacity. The American public generally reviles the idea of reintroducing American troops to the region. Our allies in the region are too busy or incapable of providing support for such a mission.

What about the no-fly zone? How much of a confrontation are we willing to risk? How far would we have to go to retrieve a downed American pilot, especially as he is likely to parachute into an area where every side is hostile?

I am cynical enough to believe that the Syrian humanitarian disaster would not command the attention it does if the correlated problem of a deluge of refugees moving into neighboring countries and Europe wasn’t of pressing urgency. But it is, and we remain at a loss as to what to do about it. Already, there is danger of destabilization in Jordan and Lebanon, and Europe faces real, if underreported, assimilation problems. Whether the United States accepts 100,000 Syrians or none, it is but a facade to hide our impotence in dealing with the underlying issues.

Syria, like Iraq, is an illusory state. Real boundaries should be determined by tribal and religious agglomerations, not by imperialist powers without an understanding of regional realities. 

An Air Force colonel once told me a story from his experience in Kuwait during the first Gulf War. He met a Kuwaiti counterpart and asked him what he did when it became obvious that Iraq was attacking his country. “I ran home to my village,” was his reply. My friend was incredulous and asked why he hadn’t gotten into his airplane and prepared to fight the Iraqis. “First comes my family, then my village, then Kuwait,” was the reply.

We have never learned this simple truth that applies to all of the Middle East and South Asia. We think that Sunni ISIS’s head-chopping is unique, but forget that Shiites were using electric drills on the heads of their enemies in 2005. We are dealing with religious sects willing to blow up each other’s mosques, attack each other’s weddings and even disrupt each other’s funeral processions.

If the United States wishes to get involved, it is time to do it through the United Nations and regional surrogates. Train-and-equip missions have achieved less than we are willing to admit, so we should limit ourselves to contributing money and equipment. Honest reappraisals will show that our efforts in the region have failed in the past 13 years.

It’s time to pay someone else to try.

Blady, M.D., is a former program officer for the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and senior analyst for the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.

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