Will Syria Witness a ‘Triple Front’ Military Escalation?https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3667026/will-syria-witness-%E2%80%98triple-front%E2%80%99-military-escalation
Will Syria Witness a ‘Triple Front’ Military Escalation?
Labourers roast durum wheat to produce freekeh after harvesting a field on May 20, 2022, in the Syrian town of Binnish in the rebel-held province of Idlib in northwestern Syria. (Photo by OMAR HAJ KADOUR / AFP)
Will Syria Witness a ‘Triple Front’ Military Escalation?
Labourers roast durum wheat to produce freekeh after harvesting a field on May 20, 2022, in the Syrian town of Binnish in the rebel-held province of Idlib in northwestern Syria. (Photo by OMAR HAJ KADOUR / AFP)
Three indicators point to the possibility of a military escalation on more than one front in Syria. Stability along the contact lines in the three Syrian areas of influence - which has been prevailing for more than two years - is threatened by new rounds of fire. This threat does not come from local forces, but rather from abroad, specifically from countries neighboring Syria.
The Russian war in Ukraine has already produced new equations in Syria. The belief that Moscow would be militarily preoccupied with its field and political battles at home and abroad triggered a regional race to “fill the Russian vacuum” in three directions.
The first front is between Israel and Iran, as Tehran intensified its military, political, and economic efforts towards the areas controlled by the Syrian government, signed agreements and provided a financial credit line to Damascus. It has also deployed its militias and organizations in locations from which Russian elements have withdrawn or may withdraw.
Moreover, Tehran set its eyes on the Syrian factions that were supported by the Hmeimim base, after the decline in funding and monthly salaries. It also escalated its campaigns to provide weapons to the Syrian factions and Hezbollah, through traditional and new supply lines, whether by land or air.
This situation has triggered a new round of the “hidden war” between Tel Aviv and Tehran in Syria. Russia tried to assume a balanced role between the belligerents, and brandished the S-300 missile system against Israeli fighters, which had carried out raids in Syria on April 13.
However, the balance that Moscow has so far managed to maintain between Tehran and Tel Aviv is today under threat of getting out of control, especially if the race rages and the impression of “Russian drowning in the Ukrainian swamp” increases.
The second direction is between Turkey and the Kurds. The Iranian-Israeli “hidden war” is not new, as is the case with the repeated Turkish efforts to “dismember” any Kurdish entity south of the border and northern Syria.
At the end of 2016, Ankara abandoned eastern Aleppo in exchange for the establishment of the “Euphrates Shield” area to sever the link between the Kurds east and west of the Euphrates River.
At the beginning of 2018, with a green light from Russia, it launched Operation Olive Branch in Afrin, to prevent the Kurds’ access to the Mediterranean.
At the end of 2019, it cut off the links of the Kurdish entity in east of the Euphrates, by establishing the “Peace Spring” region, with the consent of President Donald Trump.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly sought to establish a “safe zone”, 30 km deep along Turkey’s borders, as well as to link the three Turkish enclaves in northern Syria. But he did not get US or Russian support. At times, his views were met with threats from Washington or Moscow.
Today, something has changed. The Ukrainian war strengthened the Turkish role. Ankara is a Russian need to break its western isolation from the Turkish gate, and a necessity for NATO to accept the membership of Sweden and Finland. Accordingly, Erdogan put the “safe zone” on the table of negotiations and direct and indirect bargains, and rallied his army and loyal Syrian factions.
In the event that a new Turkish military operation is launched, whether east of the Euphrates or north of Aleppo, the military lines will change in eastern Syria, and may open the discussions on the fate of the Idlib truce. Any military action also poses political challenges between Ankara and Washington before the NATO summit next month.
The third front is between Jordan and Iranian militias. There is no doubt that Amman was among the most excited about normalization with Damascus, on all political, military, security and economic levels.
Jordan is convinced of the new reality that Russia is a neighbor and the regime is here to stay. It was hoping that normalization would ease drug and smuggling campaigns across the border.
Jordan was also betting on Russian expansion at the expense of the Iranian incursion. But recent weeks have seen a change in the equation.
This reality is confirmed by Jordanian officials, who see a Russian military retreat in southern Syria and on the borders of Jordan, and an overt attempt for Iranian advancement.
We have heard in recent days Jordanian officials referring to a “possible escalation” on the northern border, and statements about thwarting drug smuggling attempts and implementing new “rules of engagement” that include the use of immediate fire against smugglers.
The Jordanian army spokesman, Mustafa Al-Hiyari, told an official channel: “We are facing a war on these borders. A drug war. Iranian organizations, these organizations are more dangerous because they conspire with foreign agendas and target Jordanian national security.”
The Jordanian army had previously launched raids against drug networks inside Syrian territory, but had not publicized them to avoid an escalation with Damascus.
However, the recent statements point to a new phase of Jordanian involvement in the conflict, and a possible role that the US base might play in al-Tanf, within the triangle of the Syrian-Jordanian-Iraqi border.
A Saddam Hussein mural is seen in Baghdad in 1991. (Getty Images)
People in Iraq often wonder dejectedly: What if Saddam Hussein were alive and ruling the country today? Many will reply with fantastical answers, but Saddam’s era would have responded: Iraq is isolated, either by siege or by a war that he launched or was being waged against him.
Many people cast doubt on whether actual change has been achieved in Iraq since the US invasion in 2003. The invasion ousted the Baath version of Iraq and Saddam was executed in December 2006, leaving questions to pile up over the years with no one having any answers.
After a quarter century, Iraq is accumulating questions. It casts them aside and forges ahead without addressing them. At best, it reviews itself and returns to that moment in April 2003 when the US launched its invasion. Or it asks new questions about the 2005 civil war, the armed alternatives that emerged in 2007, how ISIS swept through the country in 2014, or the wave of protests that erupted in 2019. It also asks new questions about Iran’s influence in the country that has persisted for decades.
The questions are many and none of the Iraqis have answered them.
A US marine wraps the American flag around the head of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad. (Reuters file)
Saddam and the alternative
The September 11, 2001, attacks shook the United States and the entire world. They struck fear in Baghdad. Saddam had that year claimed that he had written a book, “The Fortified Castle”, about an Iraqi soldier who is captured by Iran. He manages to escape and return to Iraq to “fortify the castle”.
The terrifying Saddam and the terrified Iraqis have long spun tales about escaping to and from Iraq. It is a journey between the question and the non-answers. That year, when Baghdad was accused of being complicit in the 9/11 attacks, Saddam’s son Uday was “elected” member of the Baath party’s leadership council. The move sparked debate about possible change in Iraq. Bashar al-Assad had a year earlier inherited the presidency of Syria and its Baath party from his father Hafez.
The US invaded Iraq two years later and a new Iraq was born. Twenty-five years later, the country is still not fully grown up. Twenty-one years ago, on April 9, 2003, a US marine wrapped the head of a Saddam statue in Baghdad with an American flag. The Iraqis asked: why didn’t you leave us this iconic image, but instead of an American flag, used an Iraqi one?
Baghdad’s question and Washington’s answer
As the Iraqis observe the developments unfold in Syris with the ouster of Bashar from power, they can’t help but ask how this rapid “change” could have been possible without US tanks and weapons. Why are the Syrians insisting on celebrating “freedom” every day? They are also astonished at the Syrians who scramble to greet Abu Mohammed al-Golani, who has not yet managed to put this image behind him and fully assume his original identity of Ahmed al-Sharaa. The Iraqis wonder how the Syrians are managing this transition so far without a bloodbath.
They ask these questions because the Iraqis view and judge the world based on their own memories. They keep asking questions and await answers from others instead of themselves.
The Iraqis recall how in August 2003, after four months of US occupation, that the Jordanian embassy and United Nations offices were attacked, leaving several staff dead, including head of the UN mission Sergio de Mello. The Americans arrested Ali Hassan al-Majid, or “chemical Ali”, Saddam’s cousin, and 125 people were killed in a bombing in al-Najaf, including Shiite cleric Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim.
During that bloody month, the Iraqis asked questions about security, forgetting about Saddam’s alternative, democracy and the promised western model. Later, the facts would answer that the question of security was a means to escape questions about transitional justice.
Sergio de Mello (r) and Paul Bremmer (second right) attend the inaugural meeting of the Iraqi Governing Council in Baghdad on July 13, 2003. (Getty Images)
The question of civil war
Paul Bremer, the American ruler of Iraq, once escorted four opposition figures to Saddam’s prison cell. They flooded him with questions. Adnan al-Pachachi, a veteran diplomat, asked: “Why did you invade Kuwait?” Adel Abdul Mahdi, a former prime minister, asked: “Why did you kill the Kurds in the Anfal massacre?” Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a former national security adviser, asked: “Why did you kill your Baath comrades?” Ahmed al-Halabi simply insulted the former president. Saddam recoiled and then just smiled.
Saddam’s opponents left the prison cell with answers that should have helped them in running the transitional justice administration, but they failed.
The following year, Washington appointed Ayad Allawi to head the interim Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) that had limited jurisdiction so that it could be free to wage two fierce battles: one in Najaf against the “Mahdi Army”, headed by Moqtada al-Sadr, and the other against armed groups comprised of “resistance fighters” and “extremists” in Fallujah.
The opposition in the IGC got to work that was already prepared by the Americans. They outlined the distribution of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds in the country, with historic questions about the majority and minority, and the “oppressed” now assuming rule after the ouster of the “oppressors”.
On the ground, the Ghazaliya neighborhood in western Baghdad with its Shiite and Sunni residents was in store for a bloodbath. On a winter night in 2005, an entire family was massacred and an enfant strangled to death. Soon after, lines drawing the Shiite and Sunni sections of the neighborhood emerged. The popular market became the tense border between the two halves. Two new rival “enemies” traded attacks, claiming several lives.
In Baghdad’s Green Zone, the IGC drew up a draft of the transitional rule. In January 2005, 8 million Iraqis voted for the establishment of a National Assembly.
Meanwhile, different “armies” kept on emerging in Baghdad. The media was filled with the death tolls of bloody relentless sectarian attacks. Checkpoints manned by masked gunmen popped up across the capital.
Those days seemed to answer the question of “who was the alternative to Saddam.” No one needed a concrete answer because the developments spoke for themselves.
Nouri al-Maliki came to power as prime minister in 2006. He famously declared: “I am the state of law” - in both the figurative and literal sense. Iraqis believed he had answers about the “state” and “law”, dismissing the very pointed “I” in his “manifesto”.
Nouri al-Maliki. (Getty Images)
The Maliki question
The American admired Maliki. Then Vice President Dick Cheney had repeatedly declared that he was committed to the establishment of a stable Iraq. Before that however, he had dispatched James Steele - who was once complicit in running dirty wars in El Salvador in the mid-1980s - to Baghdad to confront the “Sunni rebellion”. Steele set up the Shiite “death squads”. Steele was the man in the shadows behind Ahmed Kazim, then interior minister undersecretary, and behind him stood the new warlords.
In 2006, the political process was shaken by the bombing of the Al-Askari Shrine in Samarra. Questions were asked about the “need” to draw up new maps. Shiite high authority Ali al-Sistani said in February 2007 that the Sunnis were not involved in the attack. In July 2013, Maliki denied an American accusation that Tehran was behind it.
In those days, Maliki’s ego was growing ever bigger, and Steele’s death squads were rapidly growing greater in numbers.
The Iran and ISIS questions
Maliki tried to save himself as one city after another fell into the hands of ISIS. On June 9, 2014, as ISIS was waging battles in Mosul, Maliki met with senior Sunni tribal elders based on advice he had not heeded earlier and which could have averted the current disaster.
It was said that he made reluctant pledges to them and a third of Iraq later fell in ISIS’ hands. Sistani later issued a fatwa for “jihad” against the group, which later turned out not be aimed at saving the premier.
Maliki left the scene and Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force, took over. Successive prime ministers would know from then on what it is like to be shackled by Tehran’s pressure as IRGC officials made regular visits to their offices.
Soleimani reaped what Steele sowed. By 2017, armed factions were the dominant force in Iraq. Running in their orbit were other factions that took turns in “rebelling” against the government or agreeing with its choices.
Today, and after 14 years, Iran has consolidated what can be described as the “resistance playground” in Iraq that is teeming with armed factions and massive budgets.
Protesters in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square in October 2019. (AFP)
The October question
The Iraqis were unable to answer the ISIS question and the armed factions claimed “victory” against the group. Many ignored Sistani’s “answer” about whether the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) was there to protect Iraq or just its Shiites.
Exhausted Iraqis asked: “What next?”
Next came Adel Abdul Mahdi’s government in October 2018. It was weighed down by unanswered questions and a year later, thousands of youths took to the streets to protest the state of affairs in Iraq, specifically the dominance of armed groups.
They were met with live bullets. Many were abducted and others were silenced. Abdul Mehdi acquitted the killers, saying instead that a “fifth column” had carried out the bloody crackdown on protesters.
After he left office, some Iraqi politicians were brave enough to tell the truth, dismissing former PM’s acquittal and pinning blame on the factions.
Sistani called for PMF members to quit their partisan affiliations. His demand was left unheeded. Mustafa al-Qadhimi became prime minister in May 2020. He left office months later, also failing in resolving the issue of the PMF and armed factions.
By 2022, everyone had left the scene, but Iran remained, claiming the Iraqi crown for itself, controlling everything from its finances to its weapons.
Question about post-Assad Syria
On December 8, Syria’s Bashar fled the country. Everyone in Iraq is asking what happens next. The whole system in Iraq is at a loss: Do we wait for how Tehran will deal with Ahmed al-Sharaa, or do we ask Abu Mohammed al-Golani about his memories in Iraq?
The Iraqi people’s memories are what’s ruling the country, more so than the constitution, political parties and civil society because they are burdened with questions they don’t want to answer.
And yet they ask: What if we weren’t part of the “Axis of Resistance”? Iraq’s history would reply that it has long been part of axes, or either awaiting a war or taking part in them.
