Syria’s uncertain future

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Thursday, the 20th of March.

This is WORLD Radio and we thank you for listening! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Up first on The World and Everything in It: new alliances in Syria.

After rebel groups toppled the regime of Bashar al-Assad in December, Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa promised to end the violence. But conflict rages on.

REICHARD: Earlier this month, Islamist rebels carried out a brutal massacre in Syria’s northern coastal region—targeting Alawites, Christians, and other minorities.

Now, in an effort to regain control, al-Sharaa announced a deal with the Syrian Democratic Forces…a Kurdish-led group backed by the United States.

If the deal holds, what would it accomplish?

BROWN: Joining us now is David Adesnik. He’s a Senior Fellow and Vice President of Research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. A former official at the U.S. Department of Defense, he’s spent years studying Syria and Iran.

REICHARD: David, good morning.

DAVID ADESNIK: Good morning.

REICHARD: Let’s start with some background…Syria’s interim leader al-Sharaa is also the head of the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham … or HTS. This is a group with past links to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS). What’s the significance of this group making a deal with the Kurdish forces of SDF, again, that group supported by the US?

ADESNIK: Sure. I think the important thing to notice for several years, Shahra, even before he was president and the group, have tried to present themselves as moving on a moderating path and no longer being committed to global jihad. I think it's likely the case they have not directly engaged in international terrorism although they have many ties to other groups that have not repudiated those things. They've feuded with other al-Qaeda groups. They have feuded with the Islamic State rather bitterly. And they've persuaded a lot of people that they've made this move. I think there's a lot of open questions about how much they've changed. And of course now they're effectively in charge. al-Sharaa as the president, he has installed his HTS allies throughout the government, especially in the military and security services. And I think the significance of the deal is its significance in theory and not significance in fact, that it is very unlikely this will lead to an actual integration, the nominal goal of all sides is that Syria should have one national army. But the Syrian Democratic forces and their heavily Kurdish components really, I think, have very little faith in al-Sharaa that he has changed. And by the same token, Shahra will not really want to accept another group having a force that numbers perhaps as much as 100,000 operating with U.S. support on Syrian territory. So the U .S. will push this deal. It wants to avoid a bigger conflict, but it might simply be a delaying tactic until we could see more things play out in the Syrian transition.

REICHARD: Israel and Iran are watching Syria closely, for good reason, as is the rest of the world. What does Syria’s interim government and its initial actions mean in particular for Israel and Iran?

ADESNIK: Well, I think there's a deep hostility toward Iran from the new Syrian government, right? Iran backed Assad relentlessly during the civil war. They backed all of his atrocities. They helped form militias, send Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy and terrorist group in Lebanon to facilitate everything Assad was doing. And those who are on the receiving end are not likely to forget it anytime soon. Hundreds of thousands have died, tens of thousands disappeared. As for Israel, I think you could tell from some of the public statements of their leaders that they believe once someone was an al -Qaeda commander, and he was a commander for quite a long time, they have a very hard time believing that tiger has changed its stripes, that obviously part of the al-Qaeda worldview is hating Jews, hating Israel, hating America, and so of all the audiences that have been exposed to the campaign to show HTS's moderation, al-Sharaa's moderation, the Israelis are the ones buying it absolutely the least. On the other hand, what's been somewhat surprising is al-Sharaa has clearly signaled a number of times he's not looking for a fight. And I think that's likely because he's in such a weak position. He doesn't have unified control of his own country. In the final days of Assad's rule, Israel destroyed most of the weapons stores that Assad had. And then while al-Sharaa deals with other challenges, the last thing he needs is another fight, regardless of what he feels about Israel.

REICHARD: David, going back to the massacre from earlier this month, do we know who is responsible for the killings?

ADESNIK: There's certainly more to learn, but the basic narrative that most observers seem to agree on is that initially there was an attack by a pro -Assad insurgent group remnants of the regime that does not want the new government in place and that may have included some attacks on civilians but what really happened after that was an overwhelming response that included both hitting those pro -Assad insurgents as well as slaughtering a tremendous number of Alawites and then after that the Alawite pro-Assad groups retaliated killing a lot of other Syrians. So there's obviously some debate about who committed the first atrocity but it seems relatively clear that it was the government forces and I should say it's not clear they're under the government's control and that's a big part of problem. These are clearly ideal forces ideologically aligned with al-Sharaa and what he does, but he seemed to be saying, “Don’t do this. Don’t make my life harder, because my international image is going to suffer.” And these forces just wanted to go ahead and take revenge.

REICHARD: Wrapping up here…are you encouraged or concerned about the direction Syria’s taken in the months since the fall of Assad? And why?

ADESNIK: Well, I guess at the beginning there's just the encouragement that comes with the end of a very brutal regime that was advancing all of Iran's goals in the region, you know, threatening both American interests and threatening Israel. So that's encouraging. But in terms of what it could have been, I see a lot of troubling signs. The most recent one I would point to is the new constitution, or technically a declaration and interim constitution for five years. It's in a lot of ways a blueprint for dictatorship. It puts the executive power under al-Sharaa. It lets him appoint the entire legislature and it lets him appoint their Supreme Court, as well as giving him numerous other powers and saying that all civil liberties can be violated if by the government, if they believe there's a threat to public order or even public norms. So we are not seeing a state that is headed in the direction of a more tolerant, inclusive, or representative government.

REICHARD: David Adesnik is with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. David, thank you so much.

ADESNIK: Thank you.

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