Damascus, 31 October، 2019

SANA-President Bashar al-Assad stressed that the scenario broadcast by the US about the killing operation of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of Daesh organization, is part of the US tricks and we should not believe what they say unless they give the evidence.

The President added in an interview given to Al-Sourea and al-Ikhbariya TVs on Thursday, that the Russian-Turkish agreement on northern Syria is temporary one, and it reigns in Turkish aspirations to achieve more damage through occupying more Syrian territories and cut the road in front of the US.

President Al-Assad affirmed that the entrance of the Syrian Arab Army into regions of northern Syria is an expression of the entrance of the Syrian State with all services it offers, adding that the army has reached the majority of the regions, but not completely.

The President underlined that Syria hasn’t offered any concessions regarding the formation of the committee of discussing the constitution.

Following is the full text of the interview:

Journalist: Hello and welcome to this special interview with the President of the Syrian Arab Republic, His Excellency Dr Bashar al-Assad. Thank you for receiving us Mr President. Your last interview with Syrian media was several years ago and therefore we have a lot of questions. We will begin with political questions and then move into internal issues.

President Assad: You are welcome, and as always let us speak with full openness.

Journalist: Mr President, thank you very much for receiving us. Since the political issues are pressing at the moment we will start with politics, Mr President. The United States announced a few days ago that the leader of the terrorist organization ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed. And it thanked Russia, Syria, Iraq, the Turks and the Kurds for helping kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Trump thanked Syria, but we have not heard any comment from Damascus. What is your take on Trump thanking Syria? Did Syria really take part in this operation?

President Assad: Absolutely not, we heard about this only through the media. Maybe, the reason behind including a number of countries as participants in this operation is to give it credibility so these countries will feel not embarrassed, but have the desire to be that they are part of a “great” operation, as the Americans have tried to portray it. And in this way, they are credited with fighting terrorism. We do not need such credit. We are the ones fighting terrorism. We have no relations and have had no contact with any American institutions.

More importantly, we do not really know whether the operation did actually take place or not. No aircraft were detected on radar screens. Why were the remains of Baghdadi not shown? This is the same scenario that was followed with Bin Laden. If there are going to use different pretexts in order not to show the remains, let us recall how President Saddam Husain was captured and how the whole operation was shown from A to Z; they showed pictures and video clips after they captured him. The same happened when they killed his sons several months later; they showed the bodies. So, why did they hide everything about the Bin Laden operation and now also the Baghdadi operation? This is part of the tricks played by the Americans. That is why we should not believe everything they say unless they come up with evidence. American politicians are actually guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around.

Journalist: Mr President, if Baghdadi has actually been killed, does it mean the end of his organization, or is it as usual that there will be new leaders and new organizations which are being prepared for the moment when the cards of their predecessors have been burned out?

President Assad: First, Baghdadi represents ISIS, and ISIS represents a type of doctrine, which is the extremist Wahhabi doctrine. This type of thought is more than two centuries old. As long as this thought is alive and has not receded, this means that the death of Baghdadi, or even the death of ISIS as a whole, will have no effect on this extremist thought.

Regarding Baghdadi as an individual, it is well-known that he was in American prisons in Iraq, and that they let him out in order to play this role. So, he is someone who could be replaced at any moment. Was he really killed? Was he killed but through a different method, in a very ordinary way? Was he kidnapped? Was he hidden? Or was he removed and given a facelift? God only knows. American politics are no different from Hollywood; it relies on the imagination. Not even science fiction, just mere imagination. So, you can take American politics and see it in Hollywood or else you can bring Hollywood and see it through American politics. I believe the whole thing regarding this operation is a trick. Baghdadi will be recreated under a different name, a different individual, or ISIS in its entirety might be reproduced as needed under a different name but with the same thought and the same purpose. The director of the whole scenario is the same, the Americans.

Journalist: Questions have been raised about the Russian-Turkish agreement, particularly the item related to maintaining the status quo in the region which was subject to the Turkish aggression, Tal Abyadh and Ras al-Ain with a depth of thirty-two kilometers. What some people understood from this was that it legitimized the Turkish occupation, particularly that the agreement did not include any Syrian role within these areas which were discussed in the agreement. What is your response to that?

President Assad: First, the Russian principles have been clear throughout this war and even before the Russian base that started supporting the Syrian army in 2015. These principles are based on international law, Syrian sovereignty and Syria’s territorial integrity. This has not changed, neither before, nor after, nor with changing circumstances. However, Russian policy deals with the realities on the ground. These realities on the ground have achieved two things; the withdrawal of armed groups from the north to the south in coordination with the Syrian Army, and as such the advance of the Syrian Army to the north, to the area not occupied by the Turks. These two elements are positive, but they do not cancel out the negative aspects of the Turkish presence until they are driven out one way or another. This agreement is a temporary one, not permanent. If we take for example the de-escalation areas at a certain period of time, some people believed that they were permanent and that they will give terrorists the right to remain in their areas indefinitely. The fact was that it was an opportunity to protect civilians, and also to talk to the terrorists with the objective of driving them out later. So, we have to distinguish between ultimate or strategic goals on the one hand, and tactical approaches on the other.

In the short term, it is a good agreement – and let me explain why; the Turkish incursion, not only reflects Turkey’s territorial greed but also expresses American desire. The Russian relationship with Turkey is positive because it reigns in Turkish aspirations. On the other hand, it outmaneuvers the American game in the north. Let me explain this. The recent German proposal which was immediately supported by NATO – and the Germans would not make this except on behalf of the Americans, NATO is the same thing as America. The proposal talked about restoring security to this region under international auspices. This means that the area would be outside the control of the Syrian state and thus making separation a reality on the ground. Through this agreement, the Russians reigned in the Turks, outmaneuvered the Americans and aborted the call for internationalization which was proposed by the Germans. That is why this agreement is a positive step. It does not achieve everything, in the sense that it will not pressure the Turks to leave immediately. However, it limits the damage and paves the way for the liberation of this region in the future, or the immediate future, as we hope.

Intervention: God willing

Journalist: Since you described the agreement as temporary, but Turkey, as we have known it, does not abide by agreements. Consequently, the question is what if Turkey continued to occupy the areas which it has controlled as a result of its recent aggression? You said repeatedly that the Syrian state will use every possible means to defend itself. But practically, did not the Russian-Turkish agreement prevent the ability to try and use such means?

President Assad: Let us take another example, which is Idlib. There is an agreement through the Astana Process that the Turks will leave. The Turks did not abide by this agreement, but we are liberating Idlib. There was a delay for a year; the political process, the political dialogue, and various attempts were given an opportunity to drive the terrorists out. All possibilities were exhausted. In the end, we liberated areas gradually through military operations. The same will apply in the northern region after exhausting all political options.

We must remember that Erdogan aimed, from the beginning of the war, to create a problem between the Syrian people and the Turkish people, to make it an enemy, which will happen through a military clash. At the beginning of the war, the Turkish Army supported the Syrian Army and cooperated with us to the greatest possible extent, until Erdogan’s coup against the Army. Therefore, we must continue in this direction, and ensure that Turkey does not become an enemy state. Erdogan and his group are enemies, because he leads these policies, but until now most of the political forces in Turkey are against Erdogan’s policies. So, we must ensure not to turn Turkey into an enemy, and here comes the role of friends – the Russian role and the Iranian role.

Journalist: Picking up on this idea, Mr President, the actions taken by the Turks recently, and by Erdogan, in particular, like Turkishization, building universities, imposing the use of certain languages. These are actions taken by someone who is not thinking of leaving – just a follow up on your idea, since you said that they will leave sooner or later. What about these actions?

President Assad: If he was thinking of getting out, he would have left Idlib. You might say that there is no Turkish army, in the technical sense in Idlib. But we are in one arena, the whole Syrian arena is one – a single theatre of operations. From the furthest point in the south to the furthest point in the north Turkey is the American proxy in this war, and everywhere we have fought we have been fighting this proxy. So, when he does not leave after we exhaust every possible means, there won’t be any other choice but war, this is self-evident. I am saying that in the near future we must give room to the political process in its various forms. If it does not yield results then this is an enemy and you go to war against it; there is no other choice.

Journalist: Nevertheless, some people said that the American withdrawal from northern Syria, after which came the Turkish aggression, and then the Russian-Turkish agreement. All of that came within an American-Russian-Turkish agreement. What do you say to that?

President Assad: This was meant to show that Russia accepted the Turkish incursion, or that Russia wanted to turn a blind eye in the fact that. In fact, it is not true. For over a year, the Russians were concerned about the seriousness of such a proposition. We all knew that the Turkish proposition was serious, but it was shackled by American orders or desires. Some people might criticize the Russians for this outcome, due to their position at the United Nations. As I said a short while ago, the Russians deal with realities on the ground, consequently, they try to ensure that all political conditions are in place in order to pave the way for their departure from Syria and limit the damage by the Turks or reign in the Turkish recalcitrance aimed at inflicting more damage and occupying more land. But the Russians were certainly not part of this agreement – Russian agreements are always public. The Russian-Turkish agreement was announced immediately, with all its items; the agreement between us and the Kurds, with Russian mediation and support was also made public right from the very beginning. There is no hidden agenda in Russian policies, which gives us assurances.

Journalist: But the American-Turkish meetings are not announced. You said repeatedly that Erdogan’s objective, or creating the buffer zone, was Erdogan’s main objective from day one of the war on Syria. President Obama refused to accept this buffer zone, while today we are seeing certain actions on the ground. Does this mean that Obama was better than Trump?

President Assad: We should not bet on any American President. First, when Erdogan says that he decided to make an incursion or that they told the Americans, he is trying to project Turkey as a super power or to pretend that he makes his own decisions; all these are theatrics shared between him and the Americans. In the beginning, nobody was allowed to interfere, because the Americans and the West believed that demonstrations will spread out and decide the outcome. The demonstrations did not spread as they wanted, so they shifted towards using weapons. When weapons did not decide the outcome, they moved towards the terrorist extremist organizations with their crazy ideology in order to decide the outcome militarily. They were not able to. Here came the role of ISIS in the summer of 2014 in order to disperse the efforts of the Syrian Arab Army, which it was able to do, at which point came the Russian intervention. When all bets on the field failed, it was necessary for Turkey to interfere and turn the tables; this is their role.

As for Trump, you might ask me a question and I give you an answer that might sound strange. I say that he is the best American President, not because his policies are good, but because he is the most transparent president. All American presidents perpetrate all kinds of political atrocities and all crimes and yet still win the Nobel Prize and project themselves as defenders of human rights and noble and unique American values, or Western values in general. The reality is that they are a group of criminals who represent the interests of American lobbies, i.e. the large oil and arms companies, and others. Trump talks transparently, saying that what we want is oil. This is the reality of American policy, at least since WWII. We want to get rid of such and such a person or we want to offer a service in return for money. This is the reality of American policy. What more do we need than a transparent opponent? That is why the difference is in form only, while the reality is the same.

Journalist: The leader of the dissolved Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abdi, made statements to the media in which he said that Trump promised them that before withdrawal he will contact the Russians to find a solution to the Kurdish question by making an agreement with the Russians and the Syrian state to give the Kurds an opportunity to defend themselves. Was there really such an agreement, and what is the fate of non-border regions in the Syrian Jazeera, the regions which were under the control of the armed militias called SDF? Have these regions been handed over to the Syrian state, and if so in what way? Is it only in the military sense; or ultimately has the return of the Syrian institutions to these regions taken place?

President Assad: Do you mean an American-Kurdish agreement?

Journalist: The Americans promised the Kurds to find a solution to their cause by influencing the Russians to reach an understanding with the Syrian state to give them an opportunity to defend themselves.

President Assad: Regardless of whether contact has been made or not, as I said before what ever the Americans say has no credibility, whether they say that to an enemy or a friend, the result is the same – it is unreliable. That is why we do not waste our time on things like this. The only Russian agreement with the Kurds was what we talked about in terms of a Russian role in reaching an agreement with Kurdish groups – we should not say with the Kurds, because this is inaccurate and we cannot talk about one segment – the groups which call themselves SDF with the Syrian Army to be deployed. Of course, the Syrian Army cannot be deployed only to carry out purely security or military acts. The deployment of the Syrian Army is an expression of the presence of the Syrian state, which means the presence of all the services which should be provided by the state. This agreement was concluded, and we reached most regions but not completely. There are still obstacles. We intervene because we have direct and old relations – before the Turkish incursion – with these groups. Sometimes they respond, in other places they don’t. But certainly, the Syrian Arab Army will reach these areas simultaneously with full public services, which means the return of full state authority. I want to reiterate, that this should take place gradually. Second, the situation will not return as before. There are facts on the ground which need to be addressed, and this will take time. There are new facts related to people on the ground which took place when the state was absent. There are armed groups; we do not expect them to hand over their weapons immediately. Our policy should be gradual and rational, and should take the facts into account. But the ultimate goal is to return to the situation as it used to be previously which is the full control of the state.

Journalist: After everything that happened: they targeted the Syrian state, Syrian citizens, the Syrian Arab Army. Throughout the war years, they played a bad role and were American proxies, after all this, are we as Syrians able to live with the Kurds once again?

President Assad: To be accurate, this issue is raised repeatedly, and sometimes in private gatherings. And I know that part of your role is to repeat what you hear, regardless of personal conviction. What happened during this war is a distortion of concepts; to say that this group has a certain characteristic, negative or positive, is neither objective nor rational. It is also unpatriotic. Among the Kurds there were people who were American agents or proxies. This is true, but among the Arabs there were similar cases in the Jazeera area and in other areas in Syria. This applies to most segments of Syrian society. The mistake which was made was that this action was made by a group of Kurds who made themselves representatives, not only of the Kurds, but of the Arabs and others segments of society in al-Jazeera region. The Americans, through their support with weapons and money – of course the money is not American, it comes from some gulf Arab states – helped establish the authority of these groups over all segments of the society, leading us to believe that those in the area were all Kurds. So, we are actually dealing with the various Kurdish parties. As for the Kurds themselves, most of them had good relations with the Syrian state, and they were always in contact with us and proposed genuine patriotic ideas. In some of the areas we entered, the reaction of the Kurds was no less positive, or less joyful and happy than the reaction of other people there. So, this evaluation is not accurate. Yes, very simply, we can live once again with each other. If the answer were no, it means that Syria will never be stable again.

Journalist: But what is the problem with the Kurds, even before the war? Where does the problem with them lie?

President Assad: Although we stood with these groups for decades, and we could have paid the price in 1998 through a military clash with Turkey because of them, we stood with them based on the cultural rights of these groups or of this segment of Syrian society. What do they accuse the Syrian state of? They accuse it of being Chauvinistic, and sometimes they accuse the Ba’th Party of being a Chauvinistic party although the census conducted in 1962 was not under the Ba’th Party, because it was not in power at the time. They accuse us of depriving this group of their cultural rights. Let us presume that what they say is correct. Can I, as an individual, be open and close-minded at the same time? I cannot. Can the state be open or tolerant and intolerant and close-minded at the same time? It cannot. If we take an example of the latest group which joined the Syrian fabric, the Armenians. The Armenians have been a patriotic group par excellence. This was proven without a shadow of doubt during the war. At the same time, this group has its own societies, its own churches and more sensitively, it has its own schools. And if you attend any Armenian celebration, a wedding, or any other event – and I used to attend such events because I used to have friends among them previously – they sing their traditional songs but afterwards they sing national, politically-inclined songs. Is there any form of freedom that exceeds this? The Syrian Armenians are the least, among other Armenians of the world, dissolved in society. They have integrated, but not dissolved into Syrian society. They have maintained all their characteristics. Why should we be open here and unopen with others? The reason is that there are separatist propositions. There are maps showing a Syrian Kurdistan as part of a larger Kurdistan. Now, it is our right to defend our territorial integrity and to be wary of separatist propositions. But we do not have a problem with Syrian diversity. On the contrary, Syrian diversity is rich and beautiful which translates into strength. We do not have an adverse view of this; but richness and diversity are one thing and separating and fragmenting the country is something else, something contrary. That is the problem.

Journalist: Just to pick up on this idea, Mr President, living with each other. In your answer, you said that we must ultimately live with each other. The problem here is not only with the Kurdish component. There were groups of the population who lived in different areas outside the control of the Syrian state for years. What about those? What is the state’s plan to reintegrate them under the idea of living together, particularly the children among them, because with children we are talking about Syria’s future generation? What is the plan for these people?

President Assad: Actually, the problem is primarily with children and then with young people in the second instance. There are several issues, one of which is that this generation does not know the meaning of the state and the rule of law. They have not lived under the state, they have lived under armed groups. But the worst and most dangerous impact is on the children, who in some areas have not learned the Arabic language, and others who have learned wrong concepts – extremist concepts or concepts against the state or the homeland and other concepts which were proposed from outside Syria and taught to them in formal school curricula. This was the subject of discussion during the past few weeks, particularly during the past few days, because the deployment of the Syrian Army in large areas in the northern regions highlighted this problem on a large scale. Currently ministries, particularly the Ministry of Education and also the Ministries of Defence and the Interior are studying this issue. I believe there will be a statement and a solution proposed shortly, albeit general in the first phase which will be followed by administrative measures in order to assimilate these people within the system of the Syrian state. For instance, who will enroll in the Syrian Army, who will enroll in the police, who will enroll in schools? Somebody who is twelve years old: how will they integrate into the Syrian school system if they know nothing of the curriculum? The same applies to those who are in primary schools. I believe the solution is to assimilate all within the national system, but there should be special measures in order to reintegrate them into this system, and I believe in the next few days we will have a final picture of this.

Journalist: returning to politics, and to the United States, in particular, President Donald Trump announced his intention to keep a limited number of his troops in Syria while redeploying some of them on the Jordanian borders and on the borders of the Israeli enemy, while some of them will protect the oil fields. What is your position in this regard, and how will the Syrian state respond to this illegitimate presence?

President Assad: Regardless of these statements, the reality is that the Americans are occupiers, whether they are in the east, the north or the south, the result is the same. Once again, we should not be concerned with his statements, but rather deal with the reality. When we are finished with the areas according to our military priorities and we reach an area in which the Americans are present, I am not going to indulge in heroics and say that we will send the army to face the Americans. We are talking about a super power. Do we have the capabilities to do that? I believe that this is clear for us as Syrians. Do we choose resistance? If there is resistance, the fate of the Americans will be similar to their fate in Iraq. But the concept of resistance needs a popular state of mind that is the opposite of being agents and proxies, a patriotic popular state which carries out acts of resistance. The natural role of the state in this case is to provide all the necessary conditions and necessary support to any popular resistance against the occupier. If we put to one side the colonial and commercial American mentality which promotes the colonization of certain areas for money, oil and other resources, we must not forget that the main agents which brought the Americans, the Turks and others to this region are Syrians acting as agents of foreigners – Syrian traitors. Dealing with all the other cases is just dealing with the symptoms, while we should be addressing the causes. We should be dealing with those Syrians and try to reformulate the patriotic state of the Syrian society – to restore patriotism, restore the unity of opinion and ensure that there are no Syrian traitors. To ensure that all Syrians are patriots, and that treason is no longer a matter of opinion, a mere difference over a political issue. We should all be united against occupation. When we reach this state, I assure you that the Americans will leave on their own accord because they will have no opportunity to remain in Syria; although America is a superpower, it will not be able to remain in Syria. This is something we saw in Lebanon at a certain point and in Iraq at a later stage. I think this is the right solution.

Journalist: Last week, you made a tour of the front lines in Idlib with which you surprised the Syrians and the world. Addressing the soldiers of the Syrian Arab Army, you said that the battle is in the east, but Idlib is an advanced outpost of the enemy in the west which aims at dispersing the forces of the Syrian Army. Some saw the visit as the go-ahead sign, or the zero hour for the coming battle of Idlib. Is it so?

President Assad: No, there was no link between my visit and the zero hour. First, I conduct tours every so often to the areas which are considered hot spots and dangerous, because these heroes are carrying out the most difficult of tasks, and it is natural for me to think of visiting them. This has been common practice for me; the visit to Idlib in particular was because the world perhaps believed that the whole Syria question is summed up in what is happening in the north, and the issue has now become a Turkish Army incursion into Syrian territory, and forgetting that all those fighting in Idlib are actually part of the Turkish Army, even though they are called al-Qaeda, Ahrar al-Sham and other names. I assure you that those fighters are closer to Erdogan’s heart than the Turkish Army itself. We should not forget this, because politically and in relation to Turkey in particular, the main battle is Idlib because it is linked to the battle in the north-eastern region or the Jazeera region. This is the reason – I wanted to stress that what is happening in the Jazeera region, despite its importance and despite the wide area of operations does not distract us from the significance of Idlib in the overall battle.

Journalist: You say, Mr President, that there is no link between your visit to Idlib and the zero hour but is there a link between your visit to Idlib and the meeting which took place on the same day between Turkey and Russia?

President Assad: Actually, when I was there, I had forgotten completely that a summit was being held on the same day. I did not remember that. I knew that a summit would be taking place and that it would be on Tuesday but…

Journalist: But your statements gave the impression that it was a preemptive rejection or something against the meeting.

President Assad: That is true.

Journalist: Or against this meeting.

President Assad: Some articles and comments even said that there was a feeling of anger against the summit, and that the summit was against us. The fact is that I was not angry, and my statements against Erdogan are continuous. I said that he was a thief, and from the first days he started stealing everything related to Syria. So, he is a thief. I was not calling him names; I was describing him. This is an adjective and this description is true. What do you call somebody who steals factories, crops and finally land? A benefactor? He is a thief, there is no other name. Previously in my speech before the People’s Assembly, I said that he is a political thug. He exercises this political thuggery on the largest scale. He lies to everyone, blackmails everyone. He is a hypocrite and publicly so. We are not inventing an epithet; he declares himself through his true attributes. So, I only described him

As to the agreement, as I said a while ago, we believe that Russian involvement anywhere is in our interest, because our principles are the same and our battle is one. So, Russian involvement will certainly have positive results and we started to see a part of that. Contrary to what you said, we were happy with this summit, and we are happy with the Russian-Turkish relationship in general, contrary to what some people believe, that the Russians are appeasing the Turks. It does not matter whether the Russians are appeasing the Turks or not or whether they are playing a tactical game with them. What is important is the strategy. That is why I can say that there is no link at all between my statements and the summit.

Journalist: Remaining with Idlib, but from a different perspective, the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, and in an interview with a newspaper about the situation in Idlib, described it as complicated, and I’ll mention the points he made: he called for a solution which guarantees the security of civilians. He also talked about the presence of terrorist organizations and the importance of avoiding an all-out military campaign which, in his opinion, will, far from solving the problem, have a serious humanitarian consequence. What do you think of what he said, and will the operation be postponed or stopped because of international pressure or based on Pedersen’s remarks?

President Assad: If Pedersen has the means or the capacity to solve the problem without an all-out military operation, it will be good. Why does he not solve the problem? If he has a clear plan, we have no objection. It is very simple. He can visit Turkey and tell the Turks to convince the terrorists, or ask Turkey to separate the civilians from the militants. Let the civilians stay in one area and the militants in another. It would be even easier if he could identify who is a militant and who is not. Fighting terrorism is not achieved by theorizing, making rhetorical statements or by preaching. As for postponing, had we waited for an international decision – and by international decision I mean American, British, French and those who stand with them – we would not have liberated any region in Syria since the first days of the war. These pressures have no impact. Sometimes we factor in certain political circumstances; as I said, we give political action an opportunity so that there is no pretext, but when all these opportunities are exhausted, military action becomes necessary in order to save civilians, because I cannot save civilians when they are under the control of the militants. Western logic is an intentionally and maliciously up-side-down logic. It says that the military operation should be stopped in order to protect civilians, whilst for them the presence of civilians under the authority of terrorists constitutes a form of protection for the civilians. The opposite is actually true. The military intervention aims at protecting the civilians, by leaving civilians under the authority of terrorists you extend a service to terrorists and take part in killing civilians.

Journalist: You are not waiting for an international decision but are you waiting for a Russian one? Can the Russians delay the beginning of the military operation? We saw earlier that military operations were stopped in Idlib, to the extent that some people said that the Russians put pressure every time to stop the operations as a result of special understandings with the Turks. Is that true?

President Assad: “Pressure” is not the right word. We, the Russians and the Iranians are involved in the same military battle and the same political battle. We are always in talks with each other to determine the circumstances which allow for an operation to go ahead. On several occasions, we agreed on a specific timing for a certain operation, which was later postponed because of military or political developments. This dialogue is normal. There are issues we see on the internal arena, and there are issues seen by Iran on the regional arena and there are those issues seen by the Russians on the international arena. We have an integrated approach based on dialogue. In the past month, I have held five meetings with Russian and Iranian officials, so less than a week apart. Between each two meetings there were military and political developments such that what had been agreed in the first meeting was then changed or modified in the second, third and fourth meetings and the last of which was yesterday. The fast pace of developments makes it necessary sometimes to postpone operations. On the other hand, we have contacts with civilians in those areas. We really try hard to make it possible for civilians to move from those areas into our areas in order to save lives; moreover, if a political solution was possible, and sometimes we succeeded in finding such a solution, it would save the lives of Syrian soldiers, which is a priority that we should not ignore. So, there are many elements, which are difficult to go into now, which affect this decision and postpone it; it is not a matter of pressure. The Russians are as enthusiastic about fighting terrorism as we are, otherwise why would they send their fighter jets? The timing depends on dialogue.

Journalist: But President Putin announced the end of major military operations in Syria. Would Russia be with us in Idlib? Would it take part in the military operation?

President Assad: Russia was with us in liberating Khan Skeikhoon and its environs; announcing an end to military operations does not mean an end to fighting terrorism. Indeed, the major battles have almost finished, because most areas either surrender voluntarily or are subject to limited operations. The Khan Sheikhoon operation might look on the map as a major battle, but there was in fact a collapse on the part of the militants. So, maybe this is what was meant by the end of the major operations. Their statements that Idlib should return under the control of the Syrian state and their determination to strike at terrorism have not changed.

Journalist: Remaining in Idlib and on the same point, because there is a lot being said about this. Concerning the terrorists in Idlib, and they are the same terrorists Pedersen talked about, how are they going to be handled? Are they going to be deported? There have been cases like this before: terrorists being deported from different regions in Syria to Idlib. Now, terrorists are in Idlib. Would the Turks accept the terrorists to be deported to Turkey, or how are they going to be dealt with?

President Assad: If Turkey does not accept that, it is Turkey’s problem and it does not concern us. We are going to deal with them in the same way we have in the past. Some might ask: in the past there were areas to which terrorists were permitted to retreat to, but now there is no other place to which terrorists might be sent from Idlib. So, where should they go? If they do not go to Turkey, they have two options: either return to the Syrian state and resolve their issues or face war. There is no other choice, neither for us nor for them. These are the two only options.

Journalist: Some media outlets have circulated leaks about meetings with the Turks. Is that true, on what level, and what was the outcome of those meetings, if they had taken place?

President Assad: All those meetings were held between security officers but at different levels. Few meetings, probably two or three, were held in Kasab inside the Syrian borders or close to the joint borders, and one or more meetings were held in Russia. I do not recall the number exactly, because they took place in the space of the past two years. But there have been no real results. At least we had expected to reach a solution concerning the withdrawal agreed upon in Astana for fifteen kilometers west and north in the de-escalation zone in Idlib. It did not happen.

Journalist: So, you confirm that there have been meetings with the Turkish side, but that was before the agreement…

President Assad: Of course, there were tripartite meetings with Russian mediation and Russian presence. We insisted on the Russian presence because we do not trust the Turks, so that there are witnesses.

Journalist: not bilateral meetings?

President Assad: No, trilateral meetings.

Journalist: Trilateral, with the Russians present? Was that before the last Russian-Turkish meeting?

President Assad: Of course.

Journalist: Are you prepared today to sit with the Turks after the aggression and after the agreement?

President Assad: If you are asking me how would I feel if I, personally, had to shake hands with a person from the Erdogan group, or someone of similar leanings or who represents his ideology – I would not be honoured by such a meeting and I would feel disgusted. But we have to put our personal feelings aside when there is a national interest at stake. If a meeting would achieve results, I would say that everything done in the national interest should be done. This is the responsibility of the state. I do not expect a meeting to produce any results unless circumstances change for the Turks. And because the Erdogan-type Turks are opportunists and belong to an opportunist organization and an opportunist ideology, they will produce results according to changing circumstances, when they are under pressure, depending on their internal or external circumstances or maybe their failure in Syria. Then, they might produce results.

Journalist: The sensitive question in this regard is: the Turks are occupiers, so if I am willing, or if I have the chance, or if I believe that I might meet the Turks, the Turks are occupiers, exactly like Israelis, so it would be possible to meet the Israelis. This is a sensitive issue, but it is being raised.

President Assad: It was actually raised when we started these meetings: how can we meet occupiers in Afrin or other areas, even if there are not occupiers, they support terrorism; they are enemies in the national sense. The difference between them and Israel is that we do not recognize the legitimacy of its existence as a state. We don’t recognize the existence of the Israeli people. There is no Israeli people except the one that existed for several centuries BC, now they are a diaspora who came and occupied land and evicted its people. While the Turkish people exist, and they are a neighbouring people, and we have a common history, regardless of whether this history is good or bad or in between; that is irrelevant. Turkey exists as a state and it is a neighbouring state. The Alexandretta issue is different from the situation in which a people without land replace a land and a people; the comparison is not valid. Even when we negotiated with Israel in the 1990s, we did not recognize it. We negotiated in order to achieve peace. If this was achieved and the rights were returned, we would recognize it; as I said, the comparison is invalid. Turkey will continue to exist and the Turks should remain a brotherly people. Erdogan was betting at the beginning to mobilize the Turkish people behind him in order to create hostility with the Syrian people, and consequently be given a free hand. We have to be careful not to look at things in the same way. I stress again that some people, not the political forces, but within the Turkish Army and security institutions are against Erdogan. This was the reason behind our drive to meet them.

Furthermore, and this was the subject of discussion with our Russian and Iranian friends – who said that yes, we are defending you, but in the end, you are the owners of the cause. This is true, the land is ours, and the cause is ours and so we have a duty to carry out by meeting them directly, even if we do not expect results. Maybe there will come a day when we can achieve results, particularly with changing circumstances inside Turkey, in the world and within Syria.

Journalist: Concerning Israel, some people describe it as the absent present in the events in Syria, the greatest beneficiary of what happened in Syria. Indeed, it is more comfortable now than in any other time before in comparison with weakening Syria, Hizbollah and Iran, as analysts say.

President Assad: It is the always-present. It has never been absent. It might be absent in terms of language, because we fight its proxies, agents, flunkies or tools, in different ways, some military some political. They are all tools serving Israel directly or through the Americans. Since the battle on the ground is with these forces, it is normal that the terminology describes these forces and not Israel. Israel is in fact a main partner in what is happening, and as an enemy state, that is expected. Will it stand by and watch? No. it will be proactive, and more effective in order to strike at Syria, the Syrian people, the Syrian homeland and everything related to Syria.

Journalist: Benefiting practically from what happened?

President Assad: This is self-evident. Even if we do not discuss it, it is one of our national givens in Syria.

Journalist: After all the aggressions carried out by the Israeli enemy on Syria, we have never seen an Arab position, and the Arab League has never moved. When the Turkish aggression started, the Arab League met at the level of Foreign Ministers. The first impressions were good, and the final communique was described as positive. In return, we have not heard a statement from the Syrian state.

President Assad: Do you recall when Syria’s membership in the Arab League was frozen? Did we issue a statement? We did not. So, if we did not issue a statement as a result of Syria’s departure from the Arab League, why would we issue one when they started discussing Syria’s return to the Arab League? I think the implications of my answer are clear for all those who want to understand. I do not think that your viewers believe that raising this issue merits more than the few sentences I have just said.

Journalist: True. If we move to pure politics concerning the constitutional committee. What is your explanation of the criticism made by the other side to this committee, although it has been one of their demands for years?

President Assad: Very simply, they believed that we would reject the formation of this committee, and maybe they were shocked that we were able to form it, because they used to raise obstacles and blame the Syrian government. We dealt with these obstacles in a specific diplomatic manner, not making concession on fundamental issues, but on some issues which we consider related to form. They were shocked in the end, and that is why they launched a severe attack on it. That is what happened, in brief.

Journalist: The Syrian state made no concessions under Russian or Iranian pressure?

President Assad: No. Had we made real concessions, they would not have attacked it. They would have praised the formation of the committee. Their attack shows that we have not made any concessions and no concessions can be made. The constitutional committee and the outcomes it might produce later would be used as a launching pad to attack and strike at the structure of the Syrian state. This is what the West has been planning for years, and we know this. That is why it was not an option to concede on fundamentals and particular stances related to Syria’s interest. There were other details which were insignificant, like the fact that they camouflaged themselves under the umbrella of the so-called moderate opposition. In many instances, they proposed names affiliated to al-Nusra Front, which we rejected because of this affiliation.

Journalist: Terrorists?

President Assad: They are terrorists. In the end we agreed to a number of those, which might have come as a surprise. We determined that the result would be the same regardless: the same background, the same affiliation, the same master.

Journalist: True

President Assad: And decision maker, and so the signal for the decision would be from the same source. So, what difference does it make?

Journalist: Puppets, no more.

President Assad: Exactly. We agreed. This is only an example. There are many other details, but this is what surprised them. We have not made any concession on fundamental issues.

Journalist: Pedersen talked about meetings of the constitutional committee in Geneva saying that it would open the door to reaching a comprehensive solution to the Syrian crisis, and in his view, that solution includes holding parliamentary and presidential elections under the supervision of the United Nations and in accordance with Security Council Resolution 2254. He also talked about ensuring the participation of Syrian expatriates. Would you accept international supervision on parliamentary and presidential elections? And is this issue within the preview of this committee? And who has the right to vote, practically?

President Assad: For him to say that this committee prepares the ground for a comprehensive solution, this is not true. It provides part of the solution, maybe. But by saying this he ignores the presence of the terrorists. A constitutional committee while the terrorists are still there will solve the problem – how? This is impossible; it is rejected. The solution starts by striking at terrorism in Syria. It starts by stopping external interference in Syria. Any Syrian-Syrian dialogue complements, contributes and plays a certain role, but it does not replace the first and second elements. I am saying this in order not to leave part of the statement as if we have agreed to it.

If he believes that Resolution 2254 gives the authority to any party, international or otherwise, to supervise the elections, this means that they are returning to the era of the mandate. I would like to recall that the first part of the resolution refers to Syria’s sovereignty, which is expressed by the Syrian state alone and no one else. The elections that will be held will be under the supervision of the Syrian state from A to Z. If we want to invite any other party – an international body, certain states, organizations, societies, individuals or personalities, it will still be under the supervision of the Syrian state and under the sovereignty of the Syrian state. The constitutional committee has nothing to do with the elections it is only tasked with the constitution. If they believe that they will return to the days of the mandate, then that would only be in their dreams.

Journalist: Again, on Pedersen’s statements, he said that the mere acceptance to form the constitutional committee is an implied acceptance of the other side and constitutes a joined commitment before the Syrian people to try and agree, under the auspices of the United Nations, on the constitutional arrangements for Syria. Some people objected to this implied acceptance of the other side by the committee, since it does not represent the Syrian people and is not elected by the Syrian people. What is your response to that?

President Assad: All your questions are valid, at least from a legal perspective. First, let us identify the first party and the second; some people believe the first party is the Syrian state or the Syrian government. No, this is not the case, the first party represents the viewpoint of the Syrian government, however the Syrian government is not part of these negotiations nor of these discussions.

Journalist: The first party is supported by the Syrian government.

President Assad: Exactly. The government supports this party because we believe that we share the same viewpoint. They are people who belong to the same political climate of the Syrian government. This does not imply that the government is part of the negotiations. Legally, we are not a part of the constitutional committee and this does not imply the government’s recognition of any party; this issue is should be clear. So, he is referring to a side which represents the viewpoint of the Syrian government. Here we have to question: what does he mean by “implied acceptance,” what is it we are accepting?

The first party initially accepted to be part of Sochi and to sit down with the second party in Sochi; it later accepted to set up a constitutional committee and discuss ideas regarding the constitution. Accepting to sit down with them, does not imply that we accept their nature. The first party exists in Syria, lives in Syria, belongs to all segments of the Syrian people; similarly, there is a state which has the same viewpoint, is elected by the Syrian people and enjoys the support of the majority of people. The second party is appointed by whom? It is appointed by Turkey. Why was the formation of the constitutional committee delayed? For a whole year, we have been negotiating with Turkey via the state-guarantors, Russia and Iran. The second party was not appointed by any Syrian side; a few represent the terrorists and the majority represent the states which imposed them; it is exclusively Turkey, and of course those standing in the background, the Americans and others. And there is the other party, which, as I said, represents the terrorists. So, what is it I am accepting? I accept the terrorist to be a patriot, or I accept those appointed by others, or I accept agents to be patriots. Let us speak frankly. Why should we lie and speak diplomatically? The reality is that there is a patriotic party dealing with a party which is an agent and a terrorist, its as simple as that. But in order to be diplomatic and to not anger everyone, I will call it a Syrian-Syrian dialogue, but only in terms of an identity card, passport and nationality. But as for belonging, that is a different discussion, to which we all know the answer too aside from the diplomatic discourse.

Journalist: Pedersen considered that the launch of the work of the committee is actually a return to Geneva. Have we returned to Geneva after four years? And what about Sochi and Astana?

President Assad: No, we have returned to Geneva only geographically, whereas politically, we are part of Sochi, and everything that is happening has its frame of reference as Sochi and is a continuation of it. There is no Geneva, it is not part of this process. The fact that the UN is represented and participates in Sochi gives it an international dimension, which is necessary; but it does not mean that Geneva undercuts Sochi. There is no Geneva.

Journalist: Could Pedersen’s statements, all the statements we have reviewed here, aim at preempting the work of the committee, or are they completely outside the context of its work? And concerning the constitution, in particular, is what is happening a complete change of the constitution, a discussion on the constitution, or the amendment of some provisions of the constitution?

President Assad: There will be an attempt to direct the work of the committee in a certain direction. This is for sure, and we are fully aware of this and won’t allow it. That is why everything announced outside the committee has no value; it is absolute zero, as simple as that. Therefore, we should not waste our time on such statements or give it any importance. What is the second point?

Journalist: About the nature of the committee’s work: is it discussing the provisions of the constitution, amending some provisions or a complete change of the constitution?

President Assad: This constitutes a large part of the discussion on setting up the constitutional committee: shall we amend the constitution or have a new constitution? Our position was that when we amend a provision of the constitution and put it to a referendum, it becomes a new constitution. So, there is no real difference between amending the constitution or having a new one, because there is nothing to define the new constitution, a completely new constitution. This is all theoretical and has no real meaning. What concerns us is that everything produced by the meetings of this committee and is in line with national interest – even if it is a new constitution from A to Z, we shall approve. And if there is an amendment of a single provision in the constitution, which is against national interest, we would oppose it. So, in order not to waste our time in such sophistry, we should focus on the implications. We are fully aware of the game they are going to play. They aim to weaken the state and transform it into a state which cannot be controlled from within and, consequently is controlled from the outside. The game is clear, as is happening in neighboring countries which we don’t need to mention. This is not going to happen; but they will try and we will not accept. This is the summary of months of future dialogue, and maybe longer, I don’t know. Of course, I mean future dialogue.

Journalist: We discussed at length the constitutional committee and all the statements made about it. I will move to talking about the internal situation in Syria, since we are talking about attempts to influence, what matters is the internal situation. During the war years, the Syrian’s suffered from high prices, lack of production, shortage of job opportunities, many consequences of terrorism, the sanctions, and the difficult military situation over large parts of the Syrian territory. The natural outcome was a deterioration in the living conditions of Syrian families. But now, conditions on the ground militarily have improved, most of the land has returned to the control of the Syrian state. What about the living conditions? Are there signs of an improvement of this situation, or will the situation remain as it is until all Syrian territory is liberated?

President Assad: If the cause was only due to the situation on the ground, terrorism, etc., then yes, it is better to wait. But this does not make sense. As you know, some people tend to blame everything on the security situation and whilst there is no doubt that it has a great impact, but it is not absolute. This answers the last part of the question. Do we wait? No, because if we were to wait, even if the situation on the ground changed, living conditions would not improve. Living conditions will not improve unless we move, very simply, as a state and as a society on all levels. Liberating some areas might have an impact on the economic situation if these areas were employed and integrated into the development and economic cycle in Syria.

Journalist: Areas in which there are resources in particular.

President Assad: There might be resources, or it might be a tourist area. Currently there is no tourism, so this area will not have an impact on the economic situation, but an agricultural area like the northern regions, this is essential; today we import some of the things which we used to export and because they are imported in a round-about way in order to circumvent the sanctions, we are paying more for them. If we take Aleppo for instance, it is the heart of Syrian industry, and with Damascus they are the centre of the Syrian economy. So, areas are different but if we liberate areas without taking the necessary measures to invigorate the economy, things will not improve. So, as a state, we need to accelerate the rebuilding of infrastructure – like restoring electricity and other utilities, and the role of state institutions, in order to facilitate the return of the productivity cycle. Here I am not referring to major industries and large projects. Even before the war, we had the view that large projects are important but they are not the solution. For a country like Syria, the strength of its economy lies in small and medium-sized enterprises. This will help invigorate the economy. The problem is that some people wait; they say that let us wait to see what happens. If we are to wait, then we should not expect to see the signs that you referred to. Are there signs? Yes, of course, there are improvements, there are industries which have emerged, workshops that have returned to work. The number of people who have returned to the country is higher than the development of the economy, and consequently some might say these improvements are intangible, this is correct. The challenge now is to integrate these people into the economic cycle. The answer to the question: (can we do it?) of course, we can. We should not say that circumstances prevent us, no; we have some laziness, we have some dependencies and sometimes we do not have the vision of how to move. And by we, I mean all of us as a society, as a state and as citizens. The state is responsible to provide the necessary conditions and the infrastructure, but it cannot open all the shops, workshops, and industries.

Journalist: If we can, why do we not see a real response by the government to your continued directives to the ministers to deal transparently with the citizens. Why is this indifference and improvisation in the work of government institutions and the absence of any planning or a preemptive alternative, as some people say, some people who hold the government responsible directly for squandering the blood of the martyrs and the wounded and the sacrifices of the Syrians.

President Assad: First, if we want to address government institutions, and in order to be objective, I cannot talk about them collectively; there are those ministries that are working, while there is laziness and inefficiency in others. Within ministries, there are institutions which are functioning properly and others which are not fulfilling their duties. So, if we want to talk objectively, we need to identify specific sectors in order to distinguish between them; any generalities do not properly reflect reality. In our own private discussions, we can talk in general terms – the state is not functioning, the government is not functioning etc., but I am an official and I cannot but speak in a scientific, objective and tangible manner. In reality, there are cases of negligence and there is the opposite. If I look at the positive aspects, if all the institutions are not working, where are we getting salaries from? How do students go to school? There are martyrs in the education and electricity sectors. Electricity plants were targeted and then problems solved and solutions found. Despite the difficulties due to the sanctions, we are able to provide basic commodities like oil, wheat and others. So, there is work being done. Of course, you will tell me that it is only normal for talk about pain. This is natural and I do not expect people to refer to the positives. It is human nature to talk about pain. When I am healthy, I do not talk about being in good health every day, but when I’m sick, I will talk about my illness; again, this is only natural. But in order to evaluate properly the situation we should consider all angles. As to the negatives, the challenge lies in distinguishing between causes related to the crisis and the war and causes related to our dereliction? When people criticize the state, they speak as if there is no war. Similarly, when an official speaks, they often blame everything on the war; the challenge is how to separate the two. This is what we are doing now. When we had the gasoline and diesel crisis, the problem was indeed caused by the sanctions and our ability to provide these resources. The problem is that the state itself is under sanction, so it cannot import. It imports using other channels, which I won’t divulge, to source these resources. Most of the time we succeed, but other times we do not; these latter cases are beyond our control. As for electricity, the plants and infrastructure are continuously targeted, do we hold the officials responsible for the terrorist rockets? We need to be objective about certain issues, for example we were able to reclaim some gas wells, which improved the electricity situation, but the needs of the returnees and the workshops which have reopened are much larger than the electricity we were able to restore. We need to see all these issues. So, we are able to produce, but we go back to the same question: how do we distinguish between dereliction and valid causes. This is what we should be considering, but we are not discussing the situation from this perspective. At the level of the state, we are trying to reach these results, and we have been able to reach them in relation to dereliction. Officials who do not fulfill their duties should be removed; dereliction should not be given an opportunity to continue. There is also the issue of corruption. Dereliction of duty is one thing and corruption is something else. The outcome may be the same sometimes, but here I am referring to an official who is not corrupt but is either unable to carry out their duty or does not have a clear vision. When it becomes apparent that they do not have either of these qualities, then they should leave immediately.

Journalist: On this subject of having a clear vision, if we talk about the rate of exchange for the dollar, it is logical that during the war the exchange rate increases if not as a result of the war itself, as a result of the embargo and the economic sanctions on our country, but recently rises are incomprehensible and affect the details of the daily life. What is your explanation of this incomprehensible rise?

President Assad: As I said some issues are self-evident, first, sanctions have an impact on state revenues in dollars or hard currency in general. This affects the exchange rate, which in turn affects prices. State revenues have also receded as a result of fewer exports and the lack of tourism; no tourists will visit a country during a war. Countries that we depend on for exports are contributing to the sanctions in one way or another. Nonetheless, we have managed to identify unofficial channels for exports, which has contributed to the inflow some hard currency. There is also the speculation game, some of which happens inside Syria and some of which happens outside; additionally, there is speculation on social media, which we get dragged into.

The most dangerous of these factors is the psychological. When we hear that the Syrian pound has dropped, we rush to buy dollars. We believe in this way that we have saved money by turning our pounds into dollars, but as a consequence, the exchange rate drops in a severe and accelerated manner and consequently prices rise significantly; what citizens have saved by converting pounds to dollars they have lost due to higher prices. There are many aspects to this issue. Now, can the state intervene? Yes it can, but with limited revenues and tremendous demand – due to higher prices of basic commodities like wheat, oil, fuel and others, there is a trade off between exhausting dollars on speculation or spending on basic needs. If dollars are exhausted, this will mean we will have no wheat and oil; this is our reality. Our revenues are not what they used to be and as such our priorities have been on focused on arms and ammunition and squeezing what we can in order to provide the necessary weapons.

Journalist: Are there no measures that the state can take to control the rate of the exchange?

President Assad: Of course, there are. If you compare our situation with other countries in our region, when the dollar exchange rate is affected, you find that it increases multiple times in a matter of days. So, it is a miracle that the exchange rate, which was in the upper forties or fifties before the war, is still around six hundred nine years on. This does not make sense; the pound was expected to collapse at the end of 2012. Had it not been for particular methods, which unfortunately I cannot divulge due to their covert nature, the pound would have collapsed. Let me give you an example: one factor which people are not aware of, is that the liberation of an area does not necessarily serve the Syrian Pound, because by liberating an area, we are removing its access to dollars which were paid to the terrorists to cover their needs and expenses. This is one of the tools we benefited from. I mean that things are not absolute, and we cannot say that terrorists were serving us in this regard. Not every positive step has a positive impact. That is why I am saying that the issue is complicated. Some experts say that there is a process of drying the region up of dollars and the whole region is paying the price of the dollar. But notice the difference between us and neighbouring countries. The Turkish Lira, for instance, lost about two percent of its value in the last few days; yesterday I believe, due to a decision taken by the American Congress. Countries are totally subject to these fluctuations. Despite our circumstances, we do not succumb entirely – we suffer, we defend, we fight all the whilst having a war waged against us. Whereas these other countries do not have a war waged against them, yet they can barely support their currency, and moreover, the currency is supported by external financial and political measures. So, there are challenges but once again the solution is not difficult. The solution is not the dollar game, but an economic game. If we go back to your first question and start to look at the economic cycle as being the foundation, not speculation. If we are able to get the economic cycle moving, then we can create more tools for the monetary authorities and for society to improve the economic conditions and reduce dependency on the dollar. Small or medium-sized industries help us reduce our dependency on importing materials and hence reduce the pressure on the Syrian Pound. We have many tools which we can use, but the speculation game is not the solution. This is what I believe.

Journalist: So, I understand from what your excellency said that these policies or measures might take a longer time to produce results, but they are more effective and successful.

President Assad: What I want to say in answer to all economic questions is that the solution is there. There are those who say that when I present all these factors, it is because we do not have a solution. No, solutions do exist and are not impossible and what we have done proves that they are not impossible; but this does not mean that we have done our best. This is the starting point and this requires an economic dialogue, I am presenting the larger headlines that we are capable of achieving. Actually, the dollar, the economy and the living conditions are all part of one cycle. They are not separate parts. The solution lies in accelerating state services and facilities to push projects forward and this is what we are doing; we are waiting for a response, because there is a lot of pressure on foreign investors not to invest in Syria.

Journalist: And the solution also lies in fighting corruption. There is a lot of talk about that now. There is talk about a wide-ranging campaign which included a number of business men and officials who are suspected of corruption. Is that true, Mr President? Is this campaign part of the measures taken to combat corruption, and would it include other individuals?

President Assad: That is true, but it is not a campaign, because the word “campaign” gives the impression that we have just started, because a campaign has a beginning and an end, and is temporary. This is not true, for either we used to accept corruption and suddenly we don’t accept it any longer, or we did not acknowledge it. No, it is visible, and the beginning is now over three years old. Why? Because at the start of the war the internal situation was not a priority at all. We used to think of providing our basic needs, just to live, but there was process of tearing up the state and the homeland by terrorists and, on a larger scale, by the corrupt. That was the problem. The country cannot stand it and the state cannot stand it.

Journalist: We just wanted to stay alive.

President Assad: In the first years. Afterwards when the tearing up increased, we returned to fighting corruption which we had started before, but the circumstances were different before the war, and priorities were different. Now fighting corruption was given priority because of the economic conditions we are living and because this reservoir, which is the state, is punctured in many places, so any revenues going into it were syphoned out and so we were not able to benefit from them. Where did we start? We started with the military establishment. No state starts accountability at the heart of the military establishment during a war; this institution is sacred. However, because it is sacred especially during the war, and because it stands for discipline, this establishment doe not allow itself to be, at the same time, be a symbol of corruption. So, accountability started in the military establishment and many high-ranking officers were put in jail with other officers at different levels. Those who were proven innocent were released and there are those who are still being tried up till now and after many years; so, there was no favouritism. The question was raised: is it possible while the military establishment is involved in a war. We said that the military establishment is fighting terrorism and fighting corruption. It fights everything, and because it is the military establishment it should be at the forefront in everything. The same process was also followed in the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Telecommunications. Many institutions were involved. But, the issue was raised because there are aspects of society, personalities and institutions which are the subject of people’s attentions, in the spotlight of society, the issue was given prominence, while in actual fact, there is nothing new. As to accountability, it is an ongoing process. In answer to your question, yes, it is ongoing.

Journalist: Are we going to see other individuals brought to account?

President Assad: As long as there is corruption, fighting it we will continue. That’s for sure. In these circumstances and in other circumstance. This is part of developing the state. We cannot talk about developing the state in terms of administration and other aspects without fighting corruption. This is self-evident.

Journalist: there are those who floated the idea that the state needed money, or that our allies asked the state to pay for debts, so the state appropriated money from merchants, in a vengeful way, to the extent that some people described it as Ritz Carlton Syria. How do you comment on this?

President Assad: They always describe Syria as a regime. They do not say a state. Their objective by saying so is to make us appear as a gang, a junta, etc. Whereas the state has basic principles, a constitution, regulations, clear controls. We are a state, not a sheikhdom as is the case in some countries. The state has a constitution and a law. The first thing in the constitution, or one of its most important provisions, is the protection of private property. We cannot tell somebody, under any title, we take this property. There are many appropriations of properties belonging to terrorists, which have been appropriated temporarily, but they have not become state property, because there is no court decision, although these individuals are terrorists, there is still a need for a court decision. It doesn’t mean that this property goes automatically to the state. It needs a court decision. In this framework, the state cannot say, under any title, “you are corrupt, so give me your money.” This is at odds with the basic principles of the state.

Journalist: These are measures taken on legal grounds.

President Assad: Of course. There are many cases which people confuse. There was a meeting between a group of business men and state officials in order to support the Syrian Pound when it started to drop quickly because of the state of fear and anxiety. Otherwise, there was no economic cause for the collapse of the Syrian pound. They were asked to help state institutions, particularly the Central Bank, and they did it. This does not mean that they made donations to the state, they contributed hard currencies and took Syrian Pounds in return. Nobody offers the state anything for free.

Journalist: Just moving the economy.

President Assad: Yes, in a certain way and according to a certain agreed plan. They did it and it gave quick results. There is also corruption fighting which you asked about a short while ago. There are officials and individuals in the private sector, because corruption is done in partnership. In the private sector, all those who squandered state money were asked to return it because the objective is to get the money without necessarily being vindictive, before we prosecute and go to the courts for years. There are documents. Are you prepared to return state money? Many of them expressed a willingness to do so. So, there are aspects to the issue.

Journalist: But why was the issue promoted, or people understood sometimes the reasons you mentioned to mean that prosecution or accountability targeted business men only, but we have not heard about officials. We heard only about merchants or business men.

President Assad: And that is why I said that accountability started in the army, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Transport and other institutions and it is still ongoing, all of this targeted officials in the firs place. And all those in prison are state officials at different levels. You cannot prosecute one party when they have another partner. There is always a partnership, but sometimes the name of official is not mentioned because people are not interested or the name of the person from the private sector is not mentioned because people don’t know this individual. The question is that of media marketing, and we have never relied, and will never rely, on media marketing or propaganda to say that we are fighting corruption. We are more interested in actually fighting corruption rather than making a big fuss abut it.

Journalist: That is why there is talk of a law on disclosure of financial assets of all those working in the public sector.

President Assad: Discussions started a few months ago, and there was a workshop last week under the auspices of the Ministry of Administrative Development. It is an important law. In fact, this is not new. It was raised a year before the war but at that time it was not formulated as a law. It was rather in the form of a decision for any individual employed by the state to disclose their financial assets so that this declaration becomes a frame of reference for the assets he gains during his employment. Many people were asking why state officials were not being asked about their assets and how they were acquired. To do so, would require a legal framework and that is what we are doing at the moment. The essence in fighting corruption lies in the laws. By disclosing financial assets means this law which will constitute an important reference for any person employed by the state; after one year or twenty years you can ask them how they acquired their assets.

Journalist: What are the measures that will be taken in this regard?

President Assad:

The law for the disclosure of financial assets is part of it, prosecuting corrupt individuals for certain wrongdoings is another. However, if you go back to the discussion about corruption, particularly on social media, people talk about everything except the source of corruption. In our case, the source lies in the laws and the related executive decrees and measures etc. The legal structure of corruption is the problem, most of the cases referred to the courts are found to be an implementation of the law, which is very vague and has many loopholes. As long as this is the case, even if you are fully-convinced that they are corrupt, they are legally innocent, because they have ‘implemented the law.’ Our laws give far reaching authorities, and allow for many exemptions. This is why in my previous meeting with government, after the reshuffle, I talked about setting up a committee to amend the laws and in particular cancelling exceptions. Exceptions are not necessarily in the form of allowing for officials to issue them but also in the form that they may implement in various manner at their own discretion. I might implement it in good faith and create discrepancies between people, and I might implement it in bad faith and receive money and consequently become corrupt in the financial sense of the word. That is why we started by focusing on the exceptions given to the President of the Republic. By allowing for exceptions, if I wanted to implement the law fairly, I cannot because I will give you the opportunity to implement the provision in a certain way while somebody else is deprived of this possibility, because I did not encounter him or he did not have access to me. As I said we started by canceling the exceptions of the President of the Republic. Furthermore, any exceptions that are required in particular areas, for example the Customs Law; in these instances, there should be clear boundaries and controls over these exceptions. They should not be left to the discretion of any official regardless of their seniority. So, we used to have so many exceptions without any controls, including in employment and other areas. Again, our laws are full of loopholes which need to be fixed by passing new laws. This has already begun, particularly with local administration laws because the violations we see everywhere are partly legal. This is what we need to do. We are focusing on the anti-corruption law because what we are doing now in terms of fighting corruption is merely addresses the symptoms but does not solve the problem.

Journalist: So, it is about fighting the corrupt environment and not the corrupt individuals.

President Assad: Exactly.

Journalist: And here I ask about our role in the media, finally, and thank you for your patience with us, Mr President, and for answering all these questions.

Mr President: Not at all, you are welcome.

Journalist: As the media, within the framework of fighting the corrupt environment, do we have a role and how do you see it?

President Assad: You have a crucial role in two areas. By the way, my last meeting with the government was dedicated solely to the role of the media. First because I know that the media will have many enemies from within the state, especially when it addresses the question of corruption. This is for many reasons, not only because of interests but also because it is our nature and our culture that we do not like criticism. Even when it is general, we turn it into something personalized, and reactions start to appear, which create a great number of problems – either through fighting the media in principle or fighting the information which you need in order to do your job in this case.

So, the meeting was dedicated to advancing the state media; first because it constitutes the most important tool in fighting corruption. Corruption is wide-ranging and includes many sectors, the relationship between people and the state, the relationship of different sectors within the state is not only a daily relationship, it is manifested on an hourly basis. Consequently, we cannot, using any mechanism, follow up on all these cases. Here comes the role of the media, since the media are supposed to be in all corners of society. So, it constitutes a major auxiliary instrument to expose cases of corruption. The more important point which I touched on earlier when I referred to the laws, is the environment which needs radical reform. The media should lead the dialogue around this reform. The state has brought in legal experts to study the flaws, but legal experts do not necessarily have the vision.

Lawyers can formulate the laws, which is only part of the process. The other part is the vision. Who has this vision? The officials alone – no. There are details that officials, in their experience and position do not see. And every individual in society, by virtue of their presence in a certain domain cannot see the whole solution, they can see part of the solution. The media can bring us together to discuss this solution. From another perspective, we are seeing the chaos of discussion on social media. Here is the role of the national media to shift this discussion from superficiality, personalization, gloating, revenge and manipulation from the outside, even unknowingly. The media can create a real methodology for a serious dialogue, a mature dialogue, a national and consequently productive dialogue. In fact, there are great hopes pinned on you, although you are still at the beginning through the programmes which you have started recently. The opportunity to upgrade this dialogue, to fight corruption, address the laws, and the corrupt – the horizons for you are broad and open for you to play an important role. I personally pin great hopes on you and support the official media in this regard.

Journalist: Thank you for your support, Mr President, which is practically empowering but also entrusts us with a great responsibility.

President Assad: Thank you. I am happy to have this dialogue with two important and major national media institutions. No doubt people have high hopes on the role of officials and the state in the future of Syria, whether in fighting corruption, fighting terrorism or the many other issues which you have tried to pass through the views of the Syrian citizens; In turn we pin our hopes on you in the media to be – as you have been – part of the battle against terrorism, against corruption and against any flaw which might take the country backward instead of moving it forward.

You are welcome.

Journalist: Thank you, Mr President.

Ladies and gentlemen, this brings to an end this interview. Thank you very much.

The ceasefire agreement brokered by Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday accomplishes very little outside of putting window dressing on a foregone conclusion. Simply put, the Turks will be able to achieve their objectives of clearing a safe zone of Kurdish forces south of the Turkish border, albeit under a U.S. sanctioned agreement. In return, the U.S. agrees not to impose economic sanctions on Turkey.

So basically it doesn’t change anything that’s already been set into motion by the Turkish invasion of northern Syria. But it does signal the end of the American experiment in Syrian regime change, with the United States supplanted by Russia as the shot caller in Middle Eastern affairs.

To understand how we got to this point, we need to navigate the four A’s that underpin America’s failed policy vis-à-vis Syria—Afghanistan, Astana, Adana, and Ankara.

The first, Afghanistan, represents the epitome of covert American meddling in regional affairs—Operation Cyclone, the successful CIA-run effort to arm and equip anti-communist rebels in Afghanistan to confront the Soviet Army from 1979 to 1989. The success of the Afghanistan experience helped shape an overly optimistic assessment by the administration of President Barack Obama that a similarly successful effort could be had in Syria by covertly training and equipping anti-Assad rebels.

The second, Astana, is the capital city of Kazakhstan, recently renamed Nur Sultan in March 2019. Since 2017, Astana has played host to a series of summits that have become known as “the Astana Process,” a Russian-directed diplomatic effort ostensibly designed to facilitate a peaceful ending to the Syrian crisis, but in reality part of a larger Russian-run effort to sideline American regime change efforts in Syria.

The Astana Process was sold as a complementary effort to the U.S.-backed, UN-brokered Geneva Talks, which were initially convened in 2012 to bring an end to the Syrian conflict. The adoption by the U.S. of an “Assad must go” posture doomed the Geneva Talks from the outset. The Astana Process was the logical outcome of this American failure.

The third “A”—Adana—is a major city located in southern Turkey, some 35 kilometers inland from the Mediterranean Sea. It’s home to the Incirlik Air Base, which hosts significant U.S. Air Force assets, including some 50 B-61 nuclear bombs. It also hosted a meeting between Turkish and Syrian officials in October 1998 for the purpose of crafting a diplomatic solution to the problem presented by forces belonging to the Kurdish People’s Party, or PKK, who were carrying out attacks inside Turkey from camps located within Syria.

The resulting agreement, known as the Adana Agreement, helped prevent a potential war between Turkey and Syria by formally recognizing the respective sovereignty and inviolability of their common border. In 2010, the two nations expanded the 1998 deal into a formal treaty governing cooperation and joint action, inclusive of intelligence sharing on designated terrorist organizations (i.e., the PKK). The Adana Agreement/Treaty was all but forgotten in the aftermath of the 2011 Syrian crisis, as Turkey embraced regime change regarding the Assad government, only to be resuscitated by Russian President Vladimir Putin during talks with Erdogan in Moscow in January 2019. The re-introduction of the moribund agreement into the Syrian-Turkish political dynamic successfully created a diplomatic bridge between the two countries, paving the way for a formal resolution of their considerable differences.

The final “A”—Ankara—is perhaps the most crucial when it comes to understanding the demise of the American position in Syria. Ankara is the Turkish capital, situated in the central Anatolian plateau. In September 2019, Ankara played host to a summit between Erdogan, Putin, and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani. While the ostensible focus of the summit was to negotiate a ceasefire in the rebel-held Syrian province of Idlib, where Turkish-backed militants were under incessant attack by the combined forces of Russia and Syria, the real purpose was to facilitate an endgame to the Syrian crisis.

Russia’s rejection of the Turkish demands for a ceasefire were interpreted by the Western media as a sign of the summit’s failure. But the opposite was true—Russia backed Turkey’s demand for a security corridor along the Turkish-Syrian border, and accepted Ankara’s characterization of the American-backed Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) as “terrorists.” This agreement, combined with Turkey’s willingness to recognize the outcome of Syrian presidential elections projected to take place in 2021, paved the way for the political reconciliation between Turkey and Syria. It also hammered the last nail in the coffin of America’s regime change policy regarding Bashar al-Assad.

There is little mention of the four A’s in American politics and the mainstream media. Instead there’s only a skewed version of reality, which portrays the American military presence in Syria as part and parcel of a noble alliance between the U.S. and the Kurdish SDF to confront the ISIS scourge. This ignores the reality that the U.S. has been committed to regime change in Syria since 2011, and that the fight against ISIS was merely a sideshow to this larger policy objective.

“Assad must go.” Those three words have defined American policy on Syria since they were first alluded to by President Obama in an official White House statement released in August 2011. The initial U.S. strategy did not involve an Afghanistan-like arming of rebel forces, but rather a political solution under the auspices of policies and entities created under the administration of President George W. Bush. In 2006, the State Department created the Iran-Syrian Operations Group, or ISOG, which oversaw interdepartmental coordination of regime change options in both Iran and Syria.

Though ISOG was disbanded in 2008, its mission was continued by other American agencies. One of the byproducts of the work initiated by ISOG was the creation of Syrian political opposition groups that were later morphed by the Obama administration into an entity known as the Syrian National Council, or SNC. When Obama demanded that Assad must step aside in August 2011, he envisioned that the Syrian president would be replaced by the SNC. This was the objective of the Geneva Talks brokered by the United Nations and the Arab League in 2011-2012. One of the defining features of those talks was the insistence on the part of the U.S., UK, and SNC that the Assad government not be allowed to participate in any discussion about the political future of Syria. This condition was rejected by Russia, and the talks ultimately failed. Efforts to revive the Geneva Process likewise floundered on this point.

Faced with this diplomatic failure, Obama turned to the CIA to undertake an Afghanistan-like arming of Syrian rebels to accomplish on the ground what could not be around a table in Geneva.

The CIA took advantage of Turkish animosity toward Syria in the aftermath of suppression of anti-Syrian government demonstrations in 2011 to funnel massive quantities of military equipment, weapons, and ammunition from Libya to Turkey, where they were used to arm a number of anti-Assad rebels operating under the umbrella of the so-called “Free Syrian Army,” or FSA. In 2013, the CIA took direct control of the arm and equip program, sending teams to Turkey and Jordan to train the FSA. This effort, known as Operation Timber Sycamore, was later supplemented with a Department of Defense program to provide anti-tank weapons to the Syrian opposition.

American efforts to create a viable armed opposition ultimately failed, with many of the weapons and equipment eventually falling into the hands of radical jihadist groups aligned with al-Qaeda and, later, ISIS. The emergence of ISIS as a regional threat in 2014 led to the U.S. building ties with Syrian Kurds as an alternative vector for implementation of its Syrian policy objectives.

While the fight against ISIS was real, it was done in the context of the American occupation of fully one third of Syria’s territory, including oil fields and agricultural resources. As recently as January 2019, the U.S. was justifying the continued presence of forces in Syria as a means of containing the Iranian presence there; the relationship with the SDF and Syrian Kurds was little more than a front to facilitate this policy.

Turkish incursion into Syria is the direct manifestation of the four A’s that define the failure of American policy in Syria—Afghanistan, Astana, Adana and Ankara. It represents the victory of Russian diplomacy over American force of arms. This is a hard pill for most Americans to swallow, which is why many are busy crafting a revisionist history that both glorifies and justifies failed American policy by wrapping it in the flag of our erstwhile Kurdish allies.

But the American misadventure in Syria was never going to end well—bad policy never does. For the American troops caught up in the collapse of the decades-long effort of the United States to overthrow the Assad government, the retreat from Syria was every bit as ignominious as the retreats of all defeated military forces before them. But at least our forces left Syria alive, and not inside body bags—which was an all too real alternative had they remained in place to face the overwhelming forces of geopolitical reality in transition.

Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of several books, most recently, Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West’s Road to War (2018).

“It’s a quadruple win. The U.S. performs a face saving withdrawal, which Trump can sell as avoiding a conflict with NATO ally Turkey. Turkey has the guarantee – by the Russians – that the Syrian Army will be in control of the Turkish-Syrian border. Russia prevents a war escalation and keeps the Russia-Iran-Turkey peace process alive. And Syria will eventually regain control of the entire northeast.”

Syria may be the biggest defeat for the CIA since Vietnam.

Yet that hardly begins to tell the whole story.

Allow me to briefly sketch in broad historical strokes how we got here.

It began with an intuition I felt last month at the tri-border point of Lebanon, Syria and Occupied Palestine; followed by a subsequent series of conversations in Beirut with first-class Lebanese, Syrian, Iranian, Russian, French and Italian analysts; all resting on my travels in Syria since the 1990s; with a mix of selected bibliography in French available at Antoine’s in Beirut thrown in.

The Vilayets

Let’s start in the 19thcentury when Syria consisted of six vilayets — Ottoman provinces — without counting Mount Lebanon, which had a special status since 1861 to the benefit of Maronite Christians and Jerusalem, which was a sanjak (administrative division) of Istanbul.

The vilayets did not define the extremely complex Syrian identity: for instance, Armenians were the majority in the vilayet of Maras, Kurds in Diyarbakir – both now part of Turkey in southern Anatolia – and the vilayets of Aleppo and Damascus were both Sunni Arab.

Nineteenth century Ottoman Syria was the epitome of cosmopolitanism. There were no interior borders or walls. Everything was inter-dependent.

Ethnic groups in the Balkans and Asia Minor, early 20th Century, Historical Atlas, 1911.

Then the Europeans, profiting from World War I, intervened. France got the Syrian-Lebanese littoral, and later the vilayets of Maras and Mosul (today in Iraq). Palestine was separated from Cham (the “Levant”), to be internationalized. The vilayet of Damascus was cut in half: France got the north, the Brits got the south. Separation between Syria and the mostly Christian Lebanese lands came later.

There was always the complex question of the Syria-Iraq border. Since antiquity, the Euphrates acted as a barrier, for instance between the Cham of the Umayyads and their fierce competitors on the other side of the river, the Mesopotamian Abbasids.

James Barr, in his splendid “A Line in the Sand,” notes, correctly, that the Sykes-Picot agreement imposed on the Middle East the European conception of territory: their “line in the sand” codified a delimited separation between nation-states. The problem is, there were no nation-states in region in the early 20thcentury.

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The birth of Syria as we know it was a work in progress, involving the Europeans, the Hashemite dynasty, nationalist Syrians invested in building a Greater Syria including Lebanon, and the Maronites of Mount Lebanon. An important factor is that few in the region lamented losing dependence on Hashemite Medina, and except the Turks, the loss of the vilayet of Mosul in what became Iraq after World War I.

In 1925, Sunnis became the de facto prominent power in Syria, as the French unified Aleppo and Damascus. During the 1920s France also established the borders of eastern Syria. And the Treaty of Lausanne, in 1923, forced the Turks to give up all Ottoman holdings but didn’t keep them out of the game.

Turkish borders according to the Treaty of Lausanne, 1923.

The Turks soon started to encroach on the French mandate, and began blocking the dream of Kurdish autonomy. France in the end gave in: the Turkish-Syrian border would parallel the route of the fabled Bagdadbahn — the Berlin-Baghdad railway.

In the 1930s France gave in even more: the sanjak of Alexandretta (today’s Iskenderun, in Hatay province, Turkey), was finally annexed by Turkey in 1939 when only 40 percent of the population was Turkish.

The annexation led to the exile of tens of thousands of Armenians. It was a tremendous blow for Syrian nationalists. And it was a disaster for Aleppo, which lost its corridor to the Eastern Mediterranean.

Turkish forces under entered Alexandretta on July 5, 1938.

To the eastern steppes, Syria was all about Bedouin tribes. To the north, it was all about the Turkish-Kurdish clash. And to the south, the border was a mirage in the desert, only drawn with the advent of Transjordan. Only the western front, with Lebanon, was established, and consolidated after WWII.

This emergent Syria — out of conflicting Turkish, French, British and myriad local interests —obviously could not, and did not, please any community. Still, the heart of the nation configured what was described as “useful Syria.” No less than 60 percent of the nation was — and remains — practically void. Yet, geopolitically, that translates into “strategic depth” — the heart of the matter in the current war.

From Hafez to Bashar

Starting in 1963, the Baath party, secular and nationalist, took over Syria, finally consolidating its power in 1970 with Hafez al-Assad, who instead of just relying on his Alawite minority, built a humongous, hyper-centralized state machinery mixed with a police state. The key actors who refused to play the game were the Muslim Brotherhood, all the way to being massacred during the hardcore 1982 Hama repression.

Secularism and a police state: that’s how the fragile Syrian mosaic was preserved. But already in the 1970s major fractures were emerging: between major cities and a very poor periphery; between the “useful” west and the Bedouin east; between Arabs and Kurds. But the urban elites never repudiated the iron will of Damascus: cronyism, after all, was quite profitable.

Damascus interfered heavily with the Lebanese civil war since 1976 at the invitation of the Arab League as a “peacekeeping force.” In Hafez al-Assad’s logic, stressing the Arab identity of Lebanon was essential to recover Greater Syria. But Syrian control over Lebanon started to unravel in 2005, after the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, very close to Saudi Arabia, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) eventually left.

Bashar al-Assad had taken power in 2000. Unlike his father, he bet on the Alawites to run the state machinery, preventing the possibility of a coup but completely alienating himself from the poor, Syrian on the street.

What the West defined as the Arab Spring, began in Syria in March 2011; it was a revolt against the Alawites as much as a revolt against Damascus. Totally instrumentalized by the foreign interests, the revolt sprang up in extremely poor, dejected Sunni peripheries: Deraa in the south, the deserted east, and the suburbs of Damascus and Aleppo.

Protest in Damascus, April 24, 2011. (syriana2011/Flickr)

What was not understood in the West is that this “beggars banquet” was not against the Syrian nation, but against a “regime.” Jabhat al-Nusra, in a P.R. exercise, even broke its official link with al-Qaeda and changed its denomination to Fatah al-Cham and then Hayat Tahrir al-Cham (“Organization for the Liberation of the Levant”). Only ISIS/Daesh said they were fighting for the end of Sykes-Picot.

By 2014, the perpetually moving battlefield was more or less established: Damascus against both Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS/Daesh, with a wobbly role for the Kurds in the northeast, obsessed in preserving the cantons of Afrin, Kobane and Qamichli.

But the key point is that each katiba (“combat group”), each neighborhood, each village, and in fact each combatant was in-and-out of allegiances non-stop. That yielded a dizzying nebulae of jihadis, criminals, mercenaries, some linked to al-Qaeda, some to Daesh, some trained by the Americans, some just making a quick buck.

For instance Salafis — lavishly financed by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — especially Jaish al-Islam, even struck alliances with the PYD Kurds in Syria and the jihadis of Hayat Tahrir al-Cham (the remixed, 30,000-strong al-Qaeda in Syria). Meanwhile, the PYD Kurds (an emanation of the Turkish Kurds’ PKK, which Ankara consider “terrorists”) profited from this unholy mess — plus a deliberate ambiguity by Damascus – to try to create their autonomous Rojava.

A demonstration in the city of Afrin in support of the YPG against the Turkish invasion of Afrin, Jan. 19, 2018. (Voice of America Kurdish, Wikimedia Commons)

That Turkish Strategic Depth

Turkey was all in. Turbo-charged by the neo-Ottoman politics of former Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the logic was to reconquer parts of the Ottoman empire, and get rid of Assad because he had helped PKK Kurdish rebels in Turkey.

Davutoglu’s Strategik Derinlik (“Strategic Depth’), published in 2001, had been a smash hit in Turkey, reclaiming the glory of eight centuries of an sprawling empire, compared to puny 911 kilometers of borders fixed by the French and the Kemalists. Bilad al Cham, the Ottoman province congregating Lebanon, historical Palestine, Jordan and Syria, remained a powerful magnet in both the Syrian and Turkish unconscious.

No wonder Turkey’s Recep Erdogan was fired up: in 2012 he even boasted he was getting ready to pray in the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, post-regime change, of course. He has been gunning for a safe zone inside the Syrian border — actually a Turkish enclave — since 2014. To get it, he has used a whole bag of nasty players — from militias close to the Muslim Brotherhood to hardcore Turkmen gangs.

With the establishment of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), for the first time Turkey allowed foreign weaponized groups to operate on its own territory. A training camp was set up in 2011 in the _sanjak_of Alexandretta. The Syrian National Council was also created in Istanbul – a bunch of non-entities from the diaspora who had not been in Syria for decades.

Ankara enabled a de facto Jihad Highway — with people from Central Asia, Caucasus, Maghreb, Pakistan, Xinjiang, all points north in Europe being smuggled back and forth at will. In 2015, Ankara, Riyadh and Doha set up the dreaded Jaish al-Fath (“Army of Conquest”), which included Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Qaeda).

At the same time, Ankara maintained an extremely ambiguous relationship with ISIS/Daesh, buying its smuggled oil, treating jihadis in Turkish hospitals, and paying zero attention to jihad intel collected and developed on Turkish territory. For at least five years, the MIT — Turkish intelligence – provided political and logistic background to the Syrian opposition while weaponizing a galaxy of Salafis. After all, Ankara believed that ISIS/Daesh only existed because of the “evil” deployed by the Assad regime.

The Russian Factor

Russian President Vladiimir Putin meeting with President of Turkey Recep Erdogan; Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov standing in background, Ankara, Dec. 1, 2014 Ankara. (Kremlin)

The first major game-changer was the spectacular Russian entrance in the summer of 2015. Vladimir Putin had asked the U.S. to join in the fight against the Islamic State as the Soviet Union allied against Hitler, negating the American idea that this was Russia’s bid to restore its imperial glory. But the American plan instead, under Barack Obama, was single-minded: betting on a rag-tag Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a mix of Kurds and Sunni Arabs, supported by air power and U.S. Special Forces, north of the Euphrates, to smash ISIS/Daesh all the way to Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor.

Raqqa, bombed to rubble by the Pentagon, may have been taken by the SDF, but Deir ez-Zor was taken by Damascus’s Syrian Arab Army. The ultimate American aim was to consistently keep the north of the Euphrates under U.S. power, via their proxies, the SDF and the Kurdish PYD/YPG. That American dream is now over, lamented by imperial Democrats and Republicans alike.

The CIA will be after Trump’s scalp till Kingdom Come.

Kurdish Dream Over

Talk about a cultural misunderstanding. As much as the Syrian Kurds believed U.S. protection amounted to an endorsement of their independence dreams, Americans never seemed to understand that throughout the “Greater Middle East” you cannot buy a tribe. At best, you can rent them. And they use you according to their interests. I’ve seen it from Afghanistan to Iraq’s Anbar province.

The Kurdish dream of a contiguous, autonomous territory from Qamichli to Manbij is over. Sunni Arabs living in this perimeter will resist any Kurdish attempt at dominance.

The Syrian PYD was founded in 2005 by PKK militants. In 2011, Syrians from the PKK came from Qandil – the PKK base in northern Iraq – to build the YPG militia for the PYD. In predominantly Arab zones, Syrian Kurds are in charge of governing because for them Arabs are seen as a bunch of barbarians, incapable of building their “democratic, socialist, ecological and multi-communitarian” society.

Kurdish PKK guerillas In Kirkuk, Iraq. (Kurdishstruggle via Flickr)

One can imagine how conservative Sunni Arab tribal leaders hate their guts. There’s no way these tribal leaders will ever support the Kurds against the SAA or the Turkish army; after all these Arab tribal leaders spent a lot of time in Damascus seeking support from Bashar al-Assad. And now the Kurds themselves have accepted that support in the face of the Trukish incursion, greenlighted by Trump.

East of Deir ez-Zor, the PYD/YPG already had to say goodbye to the region that is responsible for 50 percent of Syria’s oil production. Damascus and the SAA now have the upper hand. What’s left for the PYD/YPG is to resign themselves to Damascus’s and Russian protection against Turkey, and the chance of exercising sovereignty in exclusively Kurdish territories.

Ignorance of the West

The West, with typical Orientalist haughtiness, never understood that Alawites, Christians, Ismailis and Druze in Syria would always privilege Damascus for protection compared to an “opposition” monopolized by hardcore Islamists, if not jihadis. The West also did not understand that the government in Damascus, for survival, could always count on formidable Baath party networks plus the dreaded mukhabarat — the intel services.

Rebuilding Syria

The reconstruction of Syria may cost as much as $200 billion. Damascus has already made it very clear that the U.S. and the EU are not welcome. China will be in the forefront, along with Russia and Iran; this will be a project strictly following the Eurasia integration playbook — with the Chinese aiming to revive Syria’s strategic positioning in the Ancient Silk Road.

As for Erdogan, distrusted by virtually everyone, and a tad less neo-Ottoman than in the recent past, he now seems to have finally understood that Bashar al-Assad “won’t go,” and he must live with it. Ankara is bound to remain imvolved with Tehran and Moscow, in finding a comprehensive, constitutional solution for the Syrian tragedy through the former “Astana process”, later developed in Ankara.

The war may not have been totally won, of course. But against all odds, it’s clear a unified, sovereign Syrian nation is bound to prevail over every perverted strand of geopolitical molotov cocktails concocted in sinister NATO/GCC labs. History will eventually tell us that, as an example to the whole Global South, this will remain the ultimate game-changer.

Pepe Escobar, a veteran Brazilian journalist, is the correspondent-at-large for Hong Kong-based Asia Times. His latest book is “2030.” Follow him on Facebook**.**

Last Friday a 155 mm artillery shell landed 300 metres from a US command post near the Syrian bordering city of Ayn al-Arab (known by the Syrian Kurds as “Kobane”) during an ongoing operation carried out by Turkey – a NATO and a US ally. This operation aimed to dislodge, at a distance of 30-35 kilometres from the border, the US-backed Kurdish militants known as the YPG, the Syrian branch of the US-EU-NATO designated terrorist group, the “Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The Turkish troops backed by Syrian proxies had rapidly advanced in the first week of the military operation into US-occupied Syrian territory, cutting the main roads and attempting to isolate their enemies.

These two swift events were enough to ring the alarm bells and straightaway pushed the US administration to announce, via the Secretary of Defence Mark Esper, the withdrawal of approximately 1,000 US troops from north-east Syria (NES). The killing of any US soldier in Syria would effectively have been a nail in the coffin of the US President Donald Trump’s electoral campaign in 2020. France and Britain, who maintain Special Forces in NES, will follow the US forces out of Syria.

The Syrian forces were given orders to deploy in NES following a deal between Russia and Turkey, and between Russia and the Syrian officials, to guarantee the safety of the separatist Syrian Kurds.

The Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed to guarantee the safety of the Kurds as long as these become part of the National Security Forces. No other conditions were put forward by the Kurds, who have lost momentum with the sudden US withdrawal. Damascus promised there will be no revenge or resentment measures towards the Kurds who have, for years, acted as human shields to protect the US occupation forces which remained in Syria notwithstanding the defeat of ISIS.

Screenshot 2019-10-14 at 21.05.10

The Russian-Kurdish deal consists of the deployment of the Syrian army on all borders with Turkey and the return of all sources of energy (gas and oil) to the Syrian government-controlled forces. These sources of energy are vital to the Syrian government, which has been suffering under heavy US-EU sanctions. Any delivery of oil was blocked, except the crude oil from Iran, whose supertanker managed to breach the siege.

The initial agreement between the Kurds and Damascus (via Russia) consists in the ending of the self-administration of NES, the integration of the Syrian Kurds under the command of the Syrian Army, and the persecution and destruction of all ISIS forces.

A US withdrawal from the al-Tanaf border crossing between Iraq and Syria is also expected when a solution is found for the 64,000 refugees at the Rukhba camp.

All motivation and benefits offered to the US to maintain occupation forces in Syria have ceased: the “Iranian danger” is no longer on the table following the re-opening of al-Qaem border crossing. Therefore, to maintain US forces on the borders when no more “adverse” forces will remain in the country will needlessly cost Trump more money and engage responsibility uselessly.

Clearly the motive to keep US forces in Syria until a new constitution is agreed no longer interests or concerns the US. Trump is leaving this problem to Russia and Turkey to sort out (with the support of Iran!) with President Assad.

Imposing sanctions on Syria is meaningless now and preventing the Arabs’ rapprochement no longer holds any justification. All Arab countries – with the exception of Qatar – expressed solidarity with President Assad and condemned the Turkish invasion. The return of the Arabs will construct a robust base for the reconstruction of Syria. The Syrian market is attractive to Arab countries, and this commercial contact will bring also their influence back to the Levant. President Assad doesn’t mind closing the pages of war and starting a new and positive relationship with the Middle Eastern countries, and he will allow these to enjoy some influence, as was the case before 2011.

Sanctions on Iran have lost their meaning and purpose when al-Tanaf regains its activity, with al-Qaem. Iranian goods will find their way into the Syrian market and vice versa. The Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Lebanon road is expected to regain strength and significance.

Trump announced his withdrawal without informing his allies. The US-EU partnership on the ground has fallen apart. US credibility is at its lowest level following its attitude towards the Kurds who had defended the Trump forces in exchange for a State, “Rojava”.

The US sanctions on Turkey were simple words without foundation. Trump threatened to impose sanctions on Turkey if it crossed the red line, beyond 35 kilometres- only to call for a total withdrawal two days later.

The US elite’s attempt to demonise Russia has fallen apart: Moscow is the saviour of the Kurds, betrayed by the US. The supporters of the Kurds were fanatically supporting the Kurds and asking to avoid their extermination by Turkey: now they can no longer turn their guns and pens against Russia. Here comes Russia, with Assad moving in to save them.

The Kremlin is gaining ground in the Middle East, perfecting its diplomacy in a very complicated area of the world: the US is running away from it. Moscow took in its arms these same Kurds who had chosen to stay for years in US arms. President Vladimir Putin has skilfully managed to establish a good relationship with both Iran and Saudi Arabia, with Assad and Israel, with Hezbollah, and with the Syrian rebels: even with Turkey.

There are many winners in Syria today, and these include Trump- who is running away to avoid human casualties (as he promised in his campaign). The Kurds are the only real losers as they have lost 11,000 people for a State they only dreamt would materialise one day. Although they bet disastrously on the wrong (American) horse, in the end, they saved their lives by switching mentors.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced the commencement of “Operation Peace Spring,” a military incursion by the Turkish armed forces into northern Syria. The target of the offensive, according to Erdogan, are “terrorists” from the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is comprised of Turkish Kurds fighting for independence from Turkey, and Syrian Kurds from the YPG, or People’s Protection Units. Erdogan is also pledging to combat residual ISIS elements.

The Turkish move comes with an ostensible green light from President Trump, who cleared the way for the Turkish action by precipitously ordering the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the area.

Trump’s actions have been widely condemned as a betrayal of the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, an American-trained and -equipped force of Syrian Kurds who played a lead role in the fight against ISIS in Syria, suffering thousands of casualties in the process. That Turkey, an American NATO ally, is waging war against the SDF (which the Turks label as YPG/PKK—more on that later), while at the same time targeting ISIS, the archenemy of the all these Kurdish groups, underscores the complexity of the regional politics at play in northern Syria today. Deciphering this alphabet soup goes a long way towards explaining why the Turkish actions are justified and why President Trump will ultimately be vindicated for pulling the troops out.
Truly understanding the complex history of the Kurds in the Middle East would require several Ph.D.’s worth of research, and even then questions would remain. My own opinions are, in large part, shaped by personal experience.

...

The complexity of inter-Kurdish politics was driven home when, in 1992, I led a team of UN weapons inspectors to inspect the area around the Bekhme Dam, located some 40 miles northeast of the city of Irbil, considered to be the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. At that time, Iraqi Kurdistan had freed itself from Iraqi governmental control, and Irbil was controlled by a faction of Iraqi Kurds known as the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK. The territory around Irbil was contested between the PUK and another Kurdish faction, the Kurdish Democratic Party, or KDP. These two factions did not get along.

...

Trump’s decision to withdraw American forces from the Syrian border zone makes perfect sense: it avoids a damaging conflict with Turkey, a strategic NATO ally, and sidesteps a potential major power confrontation with Russia. This was always in the cards, since the United States was never a guarantor of the Syrian Kurds’ objective of autonomy. But the precipitous way that the American redeployment was announced, and the fact that it was done void of any coordination with either the Kurds or other U.S. regional allies, sets the stage for more geopolitical chaos in a region already wracked by conflict.

For five years, Russia has been multiplying its approaches in order to re-establish international Law in the Middle East. It has relied in particular on Iran and Turkey, whose manner of thinking it does not really share. The first results of this patient diplomatic exercise are redefining the lines of division existing at the heart of several conflicts.

New balances of power and a new equilibrium are being set up discreetly in the Nile valley, in the Levant and the Arab peninsula. On the contrary, however, the situation is blocked in the Persian Gulf. This considerable and coordinated change is affecting different conflicts which in appearance have no connection with one another. It is the fruit of patient and discreet Russian diplomacy and, in some cases, the relative good will of the USA.

Unlike the United States, Russia is not seeking to impose its own vision on the world. It begins on the contrary with the culture of its interlocutors, which it modifies by small touches at its contact.

...

Conclusion

With time, the objectives of each protagonist have been organised into a hierarchy and are becoming clearer.

In conformity with its tradition, Russian diplomacy, unlike that of the United States, is not attempting to redefine frontiers and alliances. It is working to untie the contradictory objectives of its partners. Thus it helped the ex-Ottoman Empire and the ex-Persian Empire distance themselves from their religious definition - (the Muslim Brotherhood for the former, and Chiism for the latter - and return to a post-Imperial national definition. This evolution is clearly visible in Turkey, but supposes a change of leaders in Iran in order to become operational. Moscow is not seeking to « change the régimes », but to change some aspects of the mentalities.

In September the Astana agreement between Turkey, Russia and Iran was the basis of a ceasefire in Idleb governorate. Turkey was supposed to cleanse the area of HTS and other terrorist groups. It deployed soldiers to fortified observation posts around the region but did little else to fulfill the agreement.

Turkey is not only dragging its feet on Idleb but allows new foreign fighters to go there:

According to local sources in the province cited by Sputnik, around 1500 terrorists crossed the Turkish border into Idleb under the cover of the Turkish authorities supported by Turkish agents and directly supervised by the Turkish Gendarmerie (Jandarma) that is affiliated to the Turkish army.
...
The sources mentioned that the terrorists are of Western nationalities, in addition to others who hold nationalities of East Asian and Arab countries, who were transported towards Jisr al-Shughour area that is under the control of terrorists from China and Turkistan, while the other foreign terrorists were transported to camps of Jabhat al-Nusra and Hurras Eddin in the southern and southeastern countryside of Idleb.

It is likely that many of these new arrivals are ISIS terrorist who fled from east Syria to Turkey and were then routed towards Idleb. The terrorist in Idleb governorate continue to attack Syrian troops around them. They use up quite a lot of ammunition and must have supply lines from Turkey to sustain the fighting.

Another recent meeting in the Astana format with Russia, Iran and Turkey confirmed the basic agreement but did not achieve a common position on how to proceed.

The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet just published an interview with Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. On Idelb he said:

Q: Should we expect an operation into Idlib in the short term?
A: We should leave that to our military experts. We do need an operation, but we have to decide on whether it will be Turkey’s operation or some other countries’. We should not hope to make a deal with the children of Ahrar al-Sham. That is a false hope, they are terrorists, they are al-Nusra, they are the children of al-Qaeda.

At the recent security conference in Munich Russia's Foreign Minister Sergej Lavrov also mentioned (vid @~15:00min) the situation in Idleb. He said that there would be common Russian and Turkish patrols in some areas of Idleb governorate but provided no details.

For now everyone waits for the U.S. to retreat from northeast Syria as Trump has ordered. Idleb will only be attacked when that proceeded.

The Islamic State as a territory holding entity is finished. It will continue to exist for some time as an underground terrorist movement in Syria and Iraq and as a brand that local groups elsewhere will use for their misdeeds.

Since the end of last week the last holdout of ISIS is down to a few thousand square meters. The U.S. is now again negotiating with the terrorists instead of finishing them off:

More than 300 Islamic State militants surrounded in a tiny area in eastern Syria are refusing to surrender to U.S.-backed Syrian forces and are trying to negotiate an exit, Syrian activists and a person close to the negotiations said Monday.
...
The DeirEzzor 24, an activist collective in eastern Syria, said several trucks loaded with food stuff entered IS-held areas in Baghouz in Deir el-Zour on Monday morning. The group also reported that ISIS released 10 SDF fighters Sunday without saying whether the supplies of the food stuff were in return for the release.
DeirEzzor 24 said that the truce reached between ISIS and the SDF last week has been extended for five more days as of Sunday.

A French colonel who led an artillery group in the fight against ISIS criticized the U.S. way of fighting that war:

Colonel Francois-Regis Legrier, who has been in charge of directing French artillery supporting Kurdish-led groups in Syria since October, said the coalition's focus had been on limiting its own risks and this had greatly increased the death toll among civilians and the levels of destruction.
"Yes, the Battle of Hajin was won, at least on the ground but by refusing ground engagement, we unnecessarily prolonged the conflict and thus contributed to increasing the number of casualties in the population," Mr Legrier wrote in an article in the National Defence Review.

"We have massively destroyed the infrastructure and given the population a disgusting image of what may be a Western-style liberation leaving behind the seeds of an imminent resurgence of a new adversary," he said, in rare public criticism by a serving officer.

French artillery in northeast Syria

Note the mix of LU107 high explosive and LU214 white phosphorus grenades (Nexter catalog) which together can be used to "shake 'n bake" the enemy forces. The tactic is highly controversial.

Several times during the last months bad weather prevented the use of aerial bombing and artillery fire against ISIS. The terrorists always used these pauses to counterattack. The poorly armed and led Kurdish/Arab SDF suffered a lot of casualties because of these. The colonel opines that a well armed professional ground force would have shortened the conflict with less casualties and much less damage.

The original essay by the soon to be former colonel was taken down from the web. It is available in French on page 65 of this pdf.

It is still not clear if or when the U.S. forces will leave northeast Syria. President Trump had asked Turkey to take over the area but Syria, Russia, Iran and the Kurdish forces the U.S. used as proxies against ISIS are against this. A U.S. attempt to recruit British, German or French forces to occupy the area failed.

The Syrian ground must obviously be turned back to the Syrian government. The Kurdish forces, controlled by the anarcho-marxist PKK/YPG which Turkey and others designate as terrorists, use their current position to demand political autonomy in the area they now control. The Syrian government is strongly against this. Any federalization of Syria would be the beginning of its end.

Yesterday the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad offered a compromise to the Kurds. In a speech in front of the heads of local councils he announced local council elections and the decentralization of some political decisions. The required law 107 is already in place but its implementation was held up by the war:

[Assad] said that the essence of the local administration law is achieving balance in development across all areas by giving local administrative units the authority to develop their areas in terms of economy, urban development, culture, and services, thereby improving citizens’ living conditions by launching projects, providing job opportunities, and providing services locally, particularly in remote areas.
President al-Assad said it is no longer practical to manage the affairs of the society and state and achieved balanced development in the same centralized way that had been used for decades, noting that the population of Syria in 1971 when the previous law was issued was around 7 million, while the population in 2011 when law 107 was issued had reached around 22 million.

That the implementation of elected local administrations is offered now is a clear sign to the Kurds that they can get some autonomy but not the wide ranging one that they ask for. While they can have local elections, councils and administrations as all other areas will have, there will be no separate armed force, police of judicative in Kurdish majority areas.

Several times over the war the Kurds overreached, made too large demands and lost because of it. Turkey took the Afrin area and the Kurdish population had to flee because the Kurdish leadership did not want the Syrian army to take over control. In a later part of the speech Assad again addressed the Kurds without specifically naming them. He warned:

“The Americans will not protect you… you will be a bargaining chip in their pocket along with the dollars they have, and they have already started bargaining. If you don’t prepare yourselves to defend your country, you will be mere slaves for the Ottomans. Only your state will protect you and only the Syrian Arab Army will defend you when you join it and fight under its banner.
“When we stand in one position and in the same trench, face a single enemy, and aim in the same direction instead of aiming at each other, there will be no worry of any threat no matter how big, His Excellency said.

President al-Assad said the time has come for those groups to decide how history will judge them, and that they have a choice: to be masters in their own land, or slaves and pawns in the hand of occupiers.

The offer is quite clear and the consequences of not accepting it would be harsh. The Kurds and the area they hold must come back under Syrian government control or Turkey will grab it and will put the Kurds under its boots. The pigheadedness of their leadership could easily lead to that. In his speech Assad already predicts that they will reject his offer before - maybe - accepting it.

“As you noticed, I will not name these groups, but as usual, for a few hours or maybe for a few days, they will issue statements attacking this speech, then you will know who I’m talking about,” he added.

A few hours after Assad's speech the Kurdish commander of the SDF was again begging the U.S. to keep 1,500 of its troops there.

Mazloum Kobani, commander-in-chief of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), called on international coalition allies to keep 1,000-1,500 troops in Syria.
...
“We would like to have air cover, air support and a force on the ground to coordinate with us,” Kobani told reporters at an undisclosed airbase in northeast Syria, Reuters reports.
It is very unlikely that Trump will change his position. The U.S. troops will leave. Only the Syrian government can give the Kurds the protection they need.

How many more Kurds will have to die until their leadership finally accepts that?

On Sunday National Security Advisor John Bolton tried to set conditions for a U.S. retreat from Syria:

Bolton, on a trip to Israel and Turkey, said he would stress in talks with Turkish officials, including President Tayyip Erdogan, that Kurdish forces must be protected.
...
Asked whether a U.S. withdrawal would not take place in Syria until Turkey guaranteed the Kurdish fighters would be safe, Bolton said: “Basically, that’s right.”
...
"We don’t think the Turks ought to undertake military action that’s not fully coordinated with and agreed to by the United States at a minimum,” Bolton said, “so they don’t endanger our troops, but also so that they meet the president’s requirement that the Syrian opposition forces that have fought with us are not endangered.”
Turkey was not amused. The YPG Kurds, which the U.S. uses in Syria as cannon fodder to fight the Islamic State, are the same organization as the PKK which acts as a terrorist group in Turkey. Turkey can not allow that group to exist on its border as an organized military force.

When Bolton landed in Turkey today he received a very cold welcome. The planned meeting with the Turkish President Erdogan did not take place. The meeting John Bolton, Joint Chief of Staff Joe Dunford and Syria envoy James Jeffrey held with the Turkish National Security Advisor Ibrahim Kalin was downgraded and took less than two hours. A planned joint press conference was canceled.

The U.S. delegation did not look happy, or even united, when it left the presidential compound in Ankara.

Shortly after Bolton's meeting Erdogan held a speech to his parliament group. It was a slap in Bolton's face. Via Raqip Solyu:

Erdogan says he cannot accept or swallow the messages given by US National Security Advisor Bolton in Israel.
Erdoğan, “YPG/PKK are terrorists. Some say ‘don’t touch them because they are Kurds’. This is unacceptable. Everyone can be a terrorist. They could be Turkmans. Their ethnicity doesn’t matter. Bolton made a big mistake by his statements”

Erdogan on the Syria policy chaos in Washington: "As it happened in the past, despite our clear agreement with Trump on US withdrawal from Syria, different voices started to come out from different levels of the American administration."

Erdogan says Turkey continues to rely on Trump’s view on Syria and his decisiveness on the pullout. "We, largely, completed our military preparations against ISIS in accordance with our agreement with Trump"

"Saying that Turkey targets Syrian Kurds, which is a lie itself, is the lowest, most dishonorable, ugliest, most banal slander ever" Erdogan added.

Erdogan's communication director gave the last kick:

Fahrettin Altun @fahrettinaltun - 14:17 utc - 8 Jan 2019
U.S. National Security Adviser @AmbJohnBolton held talks with his Turkish counterpart @ikalin1 at the Presidential Complex in Ankara today.
I hope that he got a taste of the world famous Turkish hospitality during his visit.

An editorial in the Erdogan aligned Daily Sabah called Bolton's ideas a soft coup against Trump.

And with that, Bolton was humiliated and the issue of the U.S. retreat from Syria kicked back to Trump.

Peter Ford, former British Ambassador to Bahrain (1999–2003) and Syria (2003–2006), offers the following assessment.

At the start of the year the horizon seems to be dominated by the issue of the possible withdrawal of US troops. In reality however the more important action is elsewhere.

US withdrawal: on or not?

Every day that passes seems to bring fresh evidence that Trump’s decision is being walked back. But appearances can be misleading.

Trump’s ultra-hawkish National Security Adviser, John Bolton, is touring the Middle East apparently setting new conditions for the withdrawal with every stop he makes. We are currently told that the troops will not leave until the remnants of ISIS are mopped up, until there is certainty they cannot remerge, until Erdogan promises not to slaughter the Kurds, and until Israel’s security is absolutely assured.

It is certainly true that crushing those ISIS remnants could take some time, and as for ensuring that ISIS can never re-form that is a recipe for a never-ending US presence. The US allies, the Kurdish-dominated SDF, are currently retreating from parts of Eastern Deir Ez Zor because they are meeting hostility from Arab villagers, who resent the abduction of their young men and even children into the ranks of the SDF. While the departure of the sprinkling of 2000 US troops will hardly leave a vacuum as far as the fight against ISIS is concerned the departure of the SDF from certain areas certainly will. Only the government’s Syrian Arab Army (SAA) could enter these Arab areas, and that is precisely what some clan leaders are calling for (calls ignored of course by our media).

Extracting assurances from Erdogan is also likely to prove difficult, especially if (like Bolton, no doubt) you will perhaps not strain every sinew to extract them. Erdogan however has already said that he will have no need to invade if the Syrian Army interposes itself in a 40 mile deep buffer zone. To guard against this possibility of receiving yes for an answer Ambassador James Jeffrey, presidential envoy for Syria, is being despatched to talk to the Kurds and deter them from pacting with Assad and the Russians.

The irony here is that it is the very presence of the US (and UK) forces which prevents the US conditions for withdrawal being met. While the US refuses to cooperate with the Syrian Army and Russia in fighting ISIS the holy warriors will always have somewhere to hide. And while the US keeps promising protection to the Kurds, and the Kurds believe them, then the YPG will go on infuriating the Turks and the Turkish threat will not go away.

But will the Kurds believe Jeffrey? Will they put their entire existence at the mercy of Trump’s whims and a frayed US tripwire? It seems not, at least to judge by reports that Kurdish negotiations with Damascus and the Russians are well advanced.

In this game for the prize of Kurdish affections Damascus holds most of the cards. To begin with the Kurds have never fought or wanted to fight the SAA and never wanted independence. They do want a measure of autonomy which they would like to see guaranteed in a new federal constitution. Damascus will have difficulty swallowing that, not least because other restive areas like the South might also want autonomy. Assad will probably reckon that he can clinch a deal with a few concessions rather than a federal constitution: use of Kurdish language in schools, incorporation of the peshmerga into the SAA. He can afford to sit on his hands indefinitely: the small US presence in the remote Syrian Far East is no existential strategic threat to him, while the endless lingering will be a constant embarrassment to Trump. Most crucially of all, the Kurds know now, if they hadn’t realised it before, that one day the US tripwire will indeed be removed and they will get no deal at all from Damascus if they do not strike one now.

President Trump's strategic decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria creates some significant fallout. The U.S. and international borg is enraged that Trump ends an occupation that is illegal under international as well as U.S. domestic law. "That's un-American!"

Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis resigned from his position effective February 28. He disagreed with the president's decision. It was the second time in five years that an elected commander in chief had a serious conflict with Mattis' hawkishness. President Obama fired him as Central Command chief for urging a more aggressive Iran policy. Mattis is also extremely hawkish towards Russia and China.

President Trump campaigned on lessening U.S. involvement in wars abroad. He wants to get reelected. He does not need a Secretary of Defense that involves him in more wars that have little to none defined purpose. Mattis is an ingrained imperialist. He always asked for more money for the military and for more meddling abroad. One of Mattis' little notice acts as Defense Secretary was a unannounced change in the mission of the Pentagon:

For at least two decades, the Department of Defense has explicitly defined its mission on its website as providing "the military forces needed to deter war and to protect the security of our country." But earlier this year, it quietly changed that statement, perhaps suggesting a more ominous approach to national security.
...
The Pentagon's official website now defines its mission this way: "The mission of the Department of Defense is to provide a lethal Joint Force to defend the security of our country and sustain American influence abroad."
The Pentagon no longer "deters war" but provides "lethal force" to "sustain American influence abroad." There was no public nor congressional debate about the change. I doubt that President Trump agreed to it. Trump will now try to recruit a defense secretary that is more aligned with his own position.

The White House also announced that 7,000 of the 14,000 soldier the U.S. has in Afghanistan will withdraw over the next few months. The war in Afghanistan is lost with the Taliban ruling over more than half of the country and the U.S. supported government forces losing more personal than they can recruit. It was Mattis who had urged Trump to increase the troop numbers in Afghanistan from 10,000 to 14,000 at the beginning of his term. There are also 8,000 NATO and allied troops in Afghanistan which will likely see a proportional withdrawal.

The Associated Press has a new tic toc of Trump's decision to withdraw from Syria:

Trump stunned his Cabinet, lawmakers and much of the world with the move by rejecting the advice of his top aides and agreeing to a withdrawal in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week, two officials briefed on the matter said.
...
“The talking points were very firm,” said one of the officials, explaining that Trump was advised to clearly oppose a Turkish incursion into northern Syria and suggest the U.S. and Turkey work together to address security concerns. “Everybody said push back and try to offer (Turkey) something that’s a small win, possibly holding territory on the border, something like that.”
Erdogan, though, quickly put Trump on the defensive, reminding him that he had repeatedly said the only reason for U.S. troops to be in Syria was to defeat the Islamic State and that the group had been 99 percent defeated. “Why are you still there?” the second official said Erdogan asked Trump, telling him that the Turks could deal with the remaining IS militants.
...
Erdogan’s point, Bolton was forced to admit, had been backed up by Mattis, Pompeo, U.S. special envoy for Syria Jim Jeffrey and special envoy for the anti-ISIS coalition Brett McGurk, who have said that IS retains only 1 percent of its territory, the officials said.
...
Bolton stressed, however, that the entire national security team agreed that victory over IS had to be enduring, which means more than taking away its territory. Trump was not dissuaded, according to the officials, who said the president quickly capitulated by pledging to withdraw, shocking both Bolton and Erdogan. Trump did not "capitulate". He always wanted to pull the U.S. troops out of Syria. He said so many times. When he was finally given a chance to do so, he grabbed the opportunity. Erdogan though, was not ready for that:

Caught off guard, Erdogan cautioned Trump against a hasty withdrawal, according to one official. While Turkey has made incursions into Syria in the past, it does not have the necessary forces mobilized on the border to move in and hold the large swaths of northeastern Syria where U.S. troops are positioned, the official said.

The call ended with Trump repeating to Erdogan that the U.S. would pull out, but offering no specifics on how it would be done, the officials said.

The day of November 11th is celebrated as a Day of Armistice or a day when the WWI ended in 1918. This year we are celebrating exactly hundred years of the end of the Great War – a greatest and bloodiest military conflict up to that time in world history. This conflict is, unfortunately, not properly investigated and, therefore, there are many “hidden microhistories” within a wider history of the WWI. Only one of them is the Armenian Genocide (better to say ethnocide) on the territory of the Ottoman Empire accompanied by Greek and Assyrian Genocides committed by the WWI Ottoman authorities. It is obvious and clear that there are today many opposite explanations about this historical event colored by ethnic, confessional, national, political or ideological backgrounds of the authors. Nevertheless, there are as well as considerable number of attempts to bring a realistic light to this event as, for instance, on May 6th, 2016 appeared on Foreign Policy Journal’s website an article on the 1915−1916 Armenian Genocide (Metz Yeghern) in the Ottoman Empire[1] written by Raffi K. Hovannisian, an independent Armenia’s first minister of foreign affairs, currently chairs the opposition Heritage Party and directs the Armenian Center for National and International Studies in Yerevan which once again launched the public debate on responsibility of those who did it and a compensation to the coming generations of those who perished in the genocide. It also rose the question of collective responsibility of the nation (the Turks and the Kurds) to which the perpetrators belonged as well as of the state that is a legal successor (Turkey) of that one in which the genocide (the Ottoman Empire) occurred.

Nevertheless, we believe that many new facts and proves on this issue are going to reach the public audience soon as the Catholic church recently reveals unpublished Armenian Genocide documents from its secret Archives in the Vatican. The 1915−1916 Armenian Metz Yeghern is a case of genocide that is requiring the implementation and further development of the international norms on human and minority rights.[2] Finally, we cannot forget and the Great Catastrophe or the genocide of the Ottoman Greeks from 1914 to 1923 organized and committed by the same authority as the Armenian one.

For years, Turkey and Qatar were at the vanguard of the western imperial project in the Middle East. Having had their fingers burnt in Syria, however, they are now refusing to facilitate Washington’s Iran plans – and paying the price.

Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia in May last year – his first foreign trip as President – was significant for two main reasons: first, the $110 billion arms deal it produced, and secondly, the regional blockade of Qatar it heralded – widely seen as having been greenlighted by Trump during his visit. The impact of the blockade – implemented by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt – was, however, immediately mitigated by increased trade with Iran and Turkey in particular, limiting its overall impact. 

This month’s attack on the Turkish economy, however, has had far more devastating results. Trump’s tweet on Friday August 10th – announcing a doubling of steel and aluminium tariffs on an economy already hit hard by his trade war – sent the Turkish currency into freefall. By the end of the day’s trading, it had lost 16% of its value, reaching a nadir of 7.2 to the dollar two days later; before his tweet, it had never fallen below 6 to the dollar. Trump’s move came on the back of Federal Reserve policies that were already threatening to provoke financial crises in over-indebted emerging markets such as Turkey. These are harsh punishments for countries long considered prime US allies in the region. 

A NATO member since 1952 (following Turkish involvement in the Korean war on the side of the US), Turkey has hosted a major US airbase at Incirlik since 1954, essential to US operations in the region, and even housed the US nuclear missiles which triggered the Cuban missile crisis. Incirlik was crucial to the US-UK terror bombing of Iraq in 1991, and, although the Turkish parliament narrowly prevented its use for the 2003 redux, Turkey has been the launchpad for subsequent US strikes both in Iraq and in Afghanistan. 

Qatar, meanwhile, is, to this day, run by the family – the al-Thanis – appointed as Britain’s proxies in the nineteenth century. Granted formal independence only in 1971, the country has remained deeply tied into western foreign policy since then. Both its ‘post-independence’ rulers were educated at the UK’s Sandhurst military academy, and it, like Turkey, hosts a major US base, whilst it’s ruling family, like those of the other Gulf monarchies, are dependent on western arms transfers to maintain their power. In 2011, Qatar played a major role in NATO’s Libya operation, providing airstrikes, military training, $400million of funding to insurgent groups, and even ground forces – not to mention the major propaganda role played by the Qatari-owned network Al Jazeera.

In fact, according to well-informed sources, there are regular meetings on political and military levels taking place in the Middle East, to discuss and plan the next military action and to study war scenarios against Iran and its allies. These scenarios are discussed, much beyond dozens of cruise missiles: a much larger war hitting Iran first and then turning against Damascus. This is all because the “regime change” fans refuse to accept the reality of facts and “give up” the Levant to Russia and the “axis of the Resistance”.

As quoted above, there are over 150,000 militants, armed, in the north and east of Syria, ready to re-engage and start all over again when Iran – and most probably Hezbollah – are under direct attack, incapable of defending their Syrian ally, believe the planners. It could be that the forces under Turkish control may be preparing to attack the Kurds or expand their perimeter of control to reach Aleppo. Nothing is certain in the Levant but one thing: it is not yet over.

This is the most pessimist scenario to apply in Lebanon, Syria and Iran to impose a “new Middle East” and defeat Russia indirectly. The US will be the biggest participant with its military machine – along with Israel – while Middle Eastern countries are happy to finance this campaign. In fact, Trump’s recent decisions against Iran raised the price of oil that is reaching its highest level in the last 4 years. This is providing additional finance to all countries ready to engage in a new war, even if Iran and Russia benefit also from the increase in oil price.

However, such a possible war scenario will fall heavily on the Middle Eastern (including Iran) and the European populations because the war will definitely – in this case – include maritime and air blockage, hitting the straits of Hormuz (or seizing ships) where almost 20% of the world oil trade flows. In 1988, 2007 and 2008, the straits observed a battle between the US and Iran.Any closure of the straits would affect world trade and price of goods worldwide.

No! No force is expected to pull out of Syria. President Putin can only wish, wanting to embark everyone involved in a political settlement, but knowing that he has no control over the players. Putin has no intention of being dragged into a wider war with any of the countries occupying territory in Syria. Therefore, he has no leverage to convince these countries to pull out.

Damascus and Tehran have the same realistic understanding of the rules of the game, while Putin’s wishes are unrealistic and far from being feasible at the moment.

The “game of the nations” is getting hotter, peace talks are still out of reach. The drums of war are still heard all over the Middle East…and maybe beyond.

It seems that every time a chapter in the war on Syria comes to an end, a new factor surfaces. Just like the 1975-1989 civil war in Lebanon before it, and which started off with a clash between the PLO and the Lebanese rightwing Phalangist militia and then ended up with an Israeli invasion and its aftermath, the war on Syria is now a totally different war from the one that started seven years ago.

With other players gone or having their roles changed, the only persisting player is the Syrian Army of course, fighting here for the integrity and sovereignty of Syria. We cannot include its allies, because even its allies have changed. There is much speculation about recent events, a lot of war and fear-mongering, but if all elements of the current powers on the ground are dissected and analyzed, it becomes very easy to see what is going on and who is doing what.

Before we try to understand who is doing what and why, let us first identify who are the main players on the ground and behind the scenes; past and present. This is a short list:

Syria of course,
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kurds, Turkey, Iran, Hezbollah, Israel, the USA and Russia.

Notwithstanding the inevitable continuing role and presence of Syria and popular national Syrian allied forces in the war against her, we must acknowledge that Saudi Arabia and Qatar have already played their role and walked away as losers. For the sake of historic documentation, this had to be mentioned even though they do not have much of an influence and clout at all at present.

A television interview of a top Qatari official confessing the truth behind the origins of the war in Syria is going viral across Arabic social media during the same week a leaked top secret NSA document was published which confirms that the armed opposition in Syria was under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the conflict.

And according to a well-known Syria analyst and economic adviser with close contacts in the Syrian government, the explosive interview constitutes a high level "public admission to collusion and coordination between four countries to destabilize an independent state, [including] possible support for Nusra/al-Qaeda." Importantly, "this admission will help build case for what Damascus sees as an attack on its security & sovereignty. It will form basis for compensation claims."

A 2013 London press conference: Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al Thani with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. A2014 Hillary Clinton email confirmed Qatar as a state-sponsor of ISIS during that same time period. 

As the war in Syria continues slowly winding down, it seems new source material comes out on an almost a weekly basis in the form of testimonials of top officials involved in destabilizing Syria, and even occasional leaked emails and documents which further detail covert regime change operations against the Assad government. Though much of this content serves to confirm what has already long been known by those who have never accepted the simplistic propaganda which has dominated mainstream media, details continue to fall in place, providing future historians with a clearer picture of the true nature of the war.

This process of clarity has been aided - as predicted - by the continued infighting among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) former allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with each side accusing the other of funding Islamic State and al-Qaeda terrorists (ironically, both true). Increasingly, the world watches as more dirty laundry is aired and the GCC implodes after years of nearly all the gulf monarchies funding jihadist movements in places like Syria, Iraq, and Libya.

The top Qatari official is no less than former Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, who oversaw Syria operations on behalf of Qatar until 2013 (also as foreign minister), and is seen below with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in this Jan. 2010 photo (as a reminder, Qatar's 2022 World Cup Committee donated $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation in 2014).

In an interview with Qatari TV Wednesday, bin Jaber al-Thani revealed that his country, alongside Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States, began shipping weapons to jihadists from the very moment events "first started" (in 2011).