Senator Lindsey Graham thinks American troops should be deployed to Syria to take out Bashar al Assad.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone, as Graham thinks American troops should be deployed to just about every hot spot on earth. But it’s Syria he’s got on the brain this week. “Assad has to go,” he said. “We’re going to have to send some of our soldiers back into the Middle East.”
Unfortunately for Graham, they may not get there in time. Right now the four-year civil war waged by Assad has battered his regime to its wobbliest point ever. The New York Times surveys the damage:
This month, government forces have crumbled or fled in areas long cited by officials as markers of enduring state control. Insurgents seized Idlib, a northern provincial capital, and the lone working border crossing with Jordan in the south. Counteroffensives failed, and advances this week have brought a newly cohesive insurgent coalition closer than ever to Mr. Assad’s coastal strongholds. The coalition consists mainly of Islamist groups that include Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front, but oppose the Islamic State.
Throughout the country, there are signs of strain that contrast with Mr. Assad’s public confidence. The government recently dismissed the heads of two of its four main intelligence agencies after they quarreled; one later died, reportedly after being beaten by the other’s guards.
Officials in provincial capitals like Aleppo and Dara’a are making contingency plans to preserve cash and antiquities and evacuate civilians. Foreign exchange reserves, $30 billion at the start of the war, have dwindled to $1 billion.
The already-crowded coastal provinces are straining with new arrivals from Idlib, with some saying officials have turned them away. In central Damascus, checkpoints are fewer and more sparsely staffed, as militiamen are sent to fight on the outskirts, and young men increasingly evade army service.
The game changer, according to the Washington Post, is the recent Saudi imperial awakening, which has seen Riyadh not only bomb the Houthi rebels in Yemen, but take a more active role in shoring up and cohering the Sunni opposition to Assad in Syria.
There’s just one problem:
The result has been an unexpectedly cohesive rebel coalition called the Army of Conquest that is made up of al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, an assortment of mostly Islamist brigades and a small number of more moderate battalions. The coalition, which launched last month, has proved more effective than expected.
As Assad steps down, the very Islamists America is supposed to be fighting step up. And then what? What happens if the regime falls and his army high-tails it out of Syria?
The Islamists won’t necessarily project a united front: though the Islamic State and al Nusra have worked together on the peripheries, their core leadership and fighters are staunchly opposed to each other, most notably because ISIS supports the wholesale destruction of Middle Eastern minorities. Syria is filled with such minorities: Alawites, Christians, and Druze who have been historically protected by the Assad regime. Community militias will be able to fight the Islamists, but they’re likely to be outgunned and outmanned.
At particular risk are the Alawites, who fall under the umbrella of Shiite Islam and form the backbone of Assad’s military. What will happen if Assad falls and their coastal strongholds are stormed? They’re heretics. The Islamic State will slaughter them, plain and simple.
And what of moderate Sunnis in the region? As the rebel groups lose their common enemy and begin to splinter, the Islamists will have the upper hand, as they already do over the moderate rebels. It may be that the best Sunnis can hope for is to live under al Nusra control; the alternative will be the crushing Sharia law of the caliphate. ISIS or al Qaeda? It’s a hell of a choice.
By all means, condemn Assad, a corrupt and barbaric autocrat who’s used some of the most horrific weapons available to man against his own people. But his regime increasingly looks like the least bad option in a Syria drowning in madness. It may be that Western officials pumping their fists at his downfall soon find themselves clutching their heads in horror.
