{"id":105362,"date":"2018-01-22T12:01:31","date_gmt":"2018-01-22T12:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=105362"},"modified":"2018-01-22T10:22:51","modified_gmt":"2018-01-22T10:22:51","slug":"2018-portends-intensification-of-syrias-civil-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/01\/2018-portends-intensification-of-syrias-civil-war\/","title":{"rendered":"2018 Portends Intensification of Syria\u2019s Civil War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hama, Syria<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

21 Jan 2018 – <\/em>Rather than the conventional wisdom of a \u201cwrapping up,\u201d of Syria\u2019s seven years of civil war, this observer calculates that the conflict is on a trajectory to expand during 2018.<\/p>\n

Granted, over the past six months there have been perhaps more than a dozen inflated declarations of \u201cVictory.\u201d\u00a0 Including 2 or 3 of the \u201cDevine Victory\u201d variety from three governments with deeply intrenched armed forces still fighting the insurgency. Iran, Russia, Syria. Other \u2018victory\u2019 claims that the war is over are regularly made by various proxy militia, including Hezbollah and a dozen Public Mobilization Units (PMU) from as many countries, funded, trained and armed by Iran.<\/p>\n

Rebels, many funded from the Gulf, have been largely moot on this subject as they hold maps up to the light and squint at the areas that ISIS have been expelled from which is roughly 90% of its short lived \u201cCaliphate.\u201d \u00a0The reality is that fighting continues and is spreading. Two of the last areas under the control of rebel forces, are about to be largely destroyed as their opponents conduct Raqqa and Aleppo type saturation bombings with just about every weapon their opponents have access to including, Russian and Syrian warplanes and helicopter dropped indiscriminate barrel bombs, more than 12,000 have been dropped since 2011. These locations, will be main war zones in 2018, and bombed-often indiscriminately- including rural towns and villages across rebel-held southern Idlib province. Eyewitnesses have documented, \u201cnapalm\u201d type bombs for a second day\u00a0on 1\/18\/2018, as reported by Civil Defense volunteers and residents on the ground and by Syria Direct.<\/p>\n

There will be no end to Syria\u2019s civil war in 2018 even though foreign armies and militia are still trying to end the March 2011 uprising that ignited spontaneously among teenagers and students putting up makeshift posters and writing graffiti on schoolyard walls in Deraa, south Syria. In some ways the spontaneous demonstration resembles what erupted in Iran last month. But the Iranian regime employed a more controlled reaction.\u00a0 Unlike the Gadhafi regime\u2019s February 2011 threats that it was going to crush \u201cthe rats\u201d opposition in Benghazi and sent in Libya\u2019s army causing the uprising to rapidly spread across the country and leading to his ouster and today\u2019s chaos. Unfortunately, the Syrian government repeated Gadhafi\u2019s miscalculations and the peaceful revolt quickly ignited nationwide and, predictably, foreign opportunists swarmed into the country with a range of agendas. Syria\u2019s current President will also eventually be pushed from power but the timeline is dependent on Iran\u2019s Al Quds Force leader, Qasim Soleimani, the main power-broker in Syria despite Vladimir Putin pursuing that mantle.<\/p>\n

Neither the Americans, Iranians, Russians, Syrians, Turks, Israeli\u2019s or other powers and their proxies want Syria\u2019s civil war to end soon. Unless it\u2019s on their terms with guarantees of significant benefits. And that will not happen for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

Moreover, speculation in this region that Syrian refugees will quite soon be returning to their country soon are not to be credited. Nor that Tourism is returning anytime soon. Not many Syrian refugees are likely to be returning home during 2018.\u00a0\u00a0 According to Amin Awad, the Middle East Director of UNHCR, the U.N. Refugee Agency, at least 82 percent of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries urgently want to return to their homes in Syria. \u00a0But they would only attempt a perilous return when security returns.\u00a0 600,000 who are internally displaced inside Syria have returned to cities like Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Raqqa. Deir a Zor and Daraa and other locals while only 22,000 Syrian refugees of nearly seven million from five neighboring countries have returned so far. In point of fact, Syrians daily continue to flee their country for neighboring states, often with great risk.\u00a0 On 1\/19\/2018 16 Syrians including 6 women and three children were discovered frozen to death near the Syria-Lebanon border crossing at Masnaa having been abandoned in a heavy snow storm by smugglers.<\/p>\n

Still, the UN offers impressive numbers of refugees wanting to return home when compared to others, besides Palestinians, where in Lebanon the estimate of those wanting to return to their homes in Palestine is approximately 96 %.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the UN\u2019s 82% estimate includes Syrian refugees polled in more comfortable Europe and the West thus producing a lower figure.<\/p>\n

In Lebanon, an informal poll conducted by the Meals for Syrian Refugee Children Lebanon (MSRCL)<\/em> reveals that nearly 90 % of the refugees who fled the civil war want to return to Syria.\u00a0 And with respect to the lovely Syrian refugee children in Lebanon, playing any day of the week, rain or shine, in Aleppo Park south of Ramlet el Baida beach, well, these angels regularly vote unanimously to return to Syria. They just can\u2019t stand still waiting to return to the homes, families, neighbors friends, and schools they remember and desperately want to rejoin. No one at MSRCL is inclined to challenge their dreams by presenting these innocents with gruesome details of what has become of their country. But as all parents know, kids know a lot and are ready to face seemingly unsurmountable challenges.<\/p>\n

A few thousands of the one million Syrians in Lebanon could indeed return in 2018 despite the continuing shelling and bombing. And this observer guesses that a somewhat lower percentage will return home from Jordan, Iraq or Turkey in 2018. Why the return to Syria figures for these three countries may be lower in 2018 is the fact that they treat Syrian refugees, while too often inhumanly, with rather more humanity than does deeply sectarian Lebanon given that 97% of Syrians fleeing to Lebanon are Sunni. Few, if any countries ignore the humanitarian provisions of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol than Lebanon which still refuses, seven decades following its enactment, to join the 146 countries that have obligated themselves to the Refugee Conventions humanitarian provisions.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a truism that the map of Syria’s seven-year conflict has been redrawn and currently favors the Assad government and its Russian and Iranian allies who rescued the regime over the past three years. The government has recaptured population centers in Western Syria from rebels and pushed back Daesh (ISIS) in the East. Its next objective will include tightening\u00a0 \u00a0\u201csurrender or die sieges\u201d against the civilian population that UN agencies and aid workers claim is a calculated use of starvation and withholding of medical aid as a weapon of war.<\/p>\n

Complicating this strategy in this observer\u2019s view is the fact that the main players involved in the civil war in Syria, the regime, Russia, Iran, and the US have desperate goals and increasingly since 2013, all the actors will readily work in 2018 with rebel\u2019s forces, even with ISIS and Al-Qaida to advance their short and long-term battlefield objectives, finances, local security and immediate survival prospects. ISIS and friends will play one off against the others as it has been doing with respect to arms, stolen antiquities, drugs, oil and other natural resources.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been common practice for years in Syria that whether at check points, starve or surrender sniper positions, and military posts, blocking medical supplies and food and water to seriously ill and starving civilians in many areas, that pro-regime and \u201cterrorists\u201d often get along better than do the Russian and Syrian armies with various Iranian forces, who are detested by both for many reasons. In Syria, battle lines are becoming amorphous at the beginning of 2018 as the various proxies pursue their own objectives.<\/p>\n

The CIA\u2019s recent release of documents seized during the 2011 raid that assassinated al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden claims that Iran supported al-Qaida leading up to the Sept. 11 terror attacks. U.S. prosecutors have long argued that Iran formed loose ties starting in 1991, as noted in a 19-page al-Qaida report in Arabic that was included in the recent release of some 47,000 other documents by the CIA. \u201cAnyone who wants to strike America, Iran is ready to support him and help him with their frank and clear rhetoric,<\/em>\u201d the report reads. The report is dated in the Islamic calendar year 1428 \u2014 2007 and offers a history of al-Qaida\u2019s relationship with Iran. It says Iran offered al-Qaida fighters \u201cmoney and arms and everything they need, and offered them training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in return for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Assad regime most of all wants to stay in power, but to do so they will need to convince the Iranians. \u00a0The Syrian regime is impotent to impose control over the country because it dependent on decisive military support from Iran and Russia. Syria\u2019s President is arguably no longer sovereign. His regimes ability to take and hold terrain depends on how much military aid, cash, and neglect of Iran\u2019s people and local economies and casualties Iran and Russia are willing and able to accept.<\/p>\n

According to Jennifer Cafarella, senior intelligence planner at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C., the Russians are more concerned than Syrian President Assad about reaching a diplomatic settlement to the war that allows Putin to claim victory and gain international acceptance. Neither Russia nor Assad intends to grant meaningful concessions to the Syrian opposition in 2018 that would weaken the Syrian regime. Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks a diplomatic deal that he can use to claim to be the peacemaker in Syria. Assad would accept a deal that preserves his regime, and is therefore willing to support the process so long as it continues to protect him. He has even rejected Russian proposals to consider concessions for detainee releases.\u00a0 But Russian-Syrian tensions seem to be under control entering 2018. Both Russia and Assad appear willing to work closely together to beef up Assad\u2019s ability to preserve his regime. Their military operations will continue the charade of countering terrorism whether there is diplomatic progress.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in 2018, Jihadis will try to maximize the cost of fighting in Syria to exploit this vulnerability and will likely retake terrain. Even if they lose it and retake it again. They are in this war against infidels for as long as its takes to honor their commitments to the Koran, one young jihadist explained to this observer earlier this week.<\/p>\n

The Russians intend to keep their air and naval bases, seeking to be recognized as the \u2018peacemakers\u2019 and benefit from securing a major chunk of Syrian reconstruction projects over the coming. Decades. The Iran regime will continue to colonize Syria which Tehran accurately understands is a precondition for Tehran\u2019s regional projects.<\/p>\n

Iran also calculates that during 2018 it can likely contain the unrest among its own population while it gains ever more control of Syria-politically, economically, militarily, demographically and security wise. Applying the \u201cLebanon Model\u201d that allowed Iran within barely three decades to essentially colonize Lebanon. Syria, Iraq, and Yemen are next on its agenda many in this region believe.<\/p>\n

Iranian officials estimate that they need 1 million new jobs per year to dry up the 3.4 million unemployed people. Iran has been missing its earlier targets of 350,000 new jobs per year. Renewed and increased sanctions on Iran, Lebanon, and Syria are unlikely to produce compromise and agreement. Rather, they\u00a0will produce escalation and entrenchment. The human misery of the region will increase.<\/p>\n

Until recently, Iran believed that it had \u201cwon\u201d the northern Middle East by securing victory for Hezbollah, the Assad regime, and the Shiites\u00a0of Iraq\u00a0against ISIS and the Sunni Arab rebels of Syria and Iraq. Nasrallah, Assad and Iraq\u2019s Abadi have all been crowing about illusional long term victories. They believed that they have weathered the storm\u00a0and will construct a new security paradigm in the Levant that connects pro-Iranian Arab states as part of creating a juggernaut against their Sunni, Israeli, and American nemeses.<\/p>\n

As for the US, the Trump administration intends to maintain a military presence in Syria in 2018 by continuing to support its Kurdish allies and, so it claims, to block the re-emergence of IS. It is a long-term open-ended project and one that is concerning American taxpayers.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration believes it can handle the Russians and is now focused mainly on containing Iran. Yet Washington understands Russia is not vacating its bases in Syria any time soon.<\/p>\n

The renewed US offensive is not so much\u00a0about Iran\u2019s nuclear capability or even its missile program. It is about\u00a0Iran\u2019s rollback and destroying its economy. The more money Iran has, the more it can consolidate the gains of its Shiite allies in the region including Hezbollah, the Syrian government and the Iraqi government. The US sanctions regime will also go a long way to turn Syria into a liability for both Iran and Russia rather than an asset. And as with all sanctions the Syrian people, not political leaders will suffer deeply.<\/p>\n

In this observer\u2019s opinion, in 2018 Washington will increasingly focus on keeping Damascus weak and divided, presenting Russia and Iran with many economic negatives stemming from their oft-declared \u201cvictories.\u00a0 A staffer on the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee advises that what Trump has is mind, with the help of regional and EU allies, is controlling roughly half of Syria\u2019s energy resources, the Euphrates dam at Tabqa, as well as much of Syria\u2019s most fertile and productive agricultural land. Part of a broader project to keep Syria poor and the Assad regime desperate for natural resources. Keeping Syria poor and unable to finance reconstruction suits short-term US objectives because it will drain Iranian and Russian resources, on which Syria must rely as it struggles to reestablish state services and rebuild when the war winds down.<\/p>\n

During his 1\/17\/2018 speech at Stanford University, Secretary of State Tillerson said the US needs “five key end states for Syria” <\/em>in 2018 before US troops are withdrawn. These are:<\/p>\n