PHOTO: Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama confer:


Thanassis Cambanis writes for The Century Foundation about “The Case for a More Robust U.S. Intervention in Syria”:

America stands to reap strategic dividends from greater involvement in the Syrian war. But there is a moral argument as well: being more involved is the right thing to do. America created the state collapse in Iraq, sparking a long war that has engulfed Iraq and Syria, and promises to last at least a generation (it has been flaring, full force, for thirteen years already). The United States has a responsibility to try to manage the results of this meltdown, and gains moral and political credibility by doing its best to protect civilians and promote state stability and good governance, even when those efforts only achieve partial results.

An abridged version of the analysis:


The Actors

….Assad’s government remains an extreme exemplar of one-man rule, a regime that relies less on one sect (the Alawites) or one clan than it does on the single person of Bashar al-Assad. Assad rules through relatives, his clan, mafia-like groupings in the business and intelligence spheres, and even through sectarian loyalty. But students of the regime are hard-pressed to discern independent structures or decision-makers that entail a state apparatus independent of the ruler himself. Hence the slogan of regime supporters: “Assad or we burn the country.”

Assad’s style of rule makes it difficult to gauge the alternatives that could replace him within his own constituency. The secret police still aggressively patrol any hint of dissent from within government-controlled Syria, and even supporters of Assad say they live in fear that male relatives will be press-ganged into military service or that family members will be taken prisoner and held for ransom by unaccountable fighters. While at the top, regime control is ever-more consolidated in Bashar al-Assad after the deaths of key senior officials, on the ground government-held Syria is more and more fragmented. The war is being fought by troops from Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, commanded or advised by officers from Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Russia, at a minimum. Multiple chains of command overlap pro-government forces, including the official military, the state-sanctioned National Defense Forces, smaller militias arranged on sectarian, clan, or ideological basis, and foreign militias. Local bosses wield more authority than ever before. The regime’s many competing intelligence forces face more threats than they are able to process, and have proven more effective at jailing civilians than stopping car bombs. Fragmentation and manpower shortages impose crucial limits on the state’s reach.

But Assad’s state also possesses significant wells of legitimacy. How deep that legitimacy runs is an open question—one on which Assad has staked his survival—but his rule has maintained some degree of buy-in from millions of Sunni Arabs, as well as thousands of Kurds. Although it is impossible to measure public opinion in a society as repressive as government-controlled Syria, there seem to be a considerable number of citizens who support Assad. Conversations suggest there are plenty more, perhaps numbering in the millions, who do not like the way Assad runs Syria but prefer his secular, pluralistic dictatorship to the alternative they believe the rebellion offers: violence, anarchy, or a Sunni theocracy. Many of these fence-sitters have been convinced by government propaganda, or information about life in rebel-held areas, that the anti-Assad forces are dominated by Sunni triumphalists obsessed with an austere vision of religious law. Their assessment would shift if they were to be convinced that governance under anti-Assad forces would be less abusive than their status quo under Assad. In private, some members of minority groups (Alawites, Christians, Shia) as well as secular Sunnis say that, despite its routine practice of torture and detention, they reluctantly prefer Assad’s police state, which has a comparatively less sectarian and more class-based approach; the alternative, in their view, is the kind of unchecked sectarianism they have heard about in areas controlled by Islamic State, Nusra, Ahrar, the Islam Army in Eastern Ghouta, even supposedly moderate Free Syrian Army-branded groups.

For all the evidence that it is a fragmenting state on the verge of dissolution, Syria remains a state. Its pre-2011 borders remain its recognized international frontier. Great portions of the country have slipped out of government control into the hands of rebels, and yet, in many of those areas, the government still pays public sector salaries and engages in trade or other dealings with its enemies to maintain basic services such as telecommunications, electricity, water, and fuel supply. The government is too weak to overtake the Free Syrian Army, Ahrar, Nusra, Islamic State, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (known by their Kurdish acronym YPG), and the many other smaller armed factions, or even reassert control over its putative allies in secure areas—and yet, in many rebel-held areas the rebels cannot maintain the infrastructure of life without the government (and in many cases, without cooperating with their own detested rivals within the rebellion). Weak as it is, the Syrian state is more intact than, for example, the Iraqi central government under U.S. occupation in 2003–04; in terms of raw administrative capacity, the Syrian state in the midst of a devastating civil war is more of a state than Lebanon’s is, 25 years after fighting there has ended.

REBELS ASSAD STATUE IDLIB

Rebels atop a defaced statue of Hafez al-Assad, Idlib city, March 2015

Meanwhile, rebel-held Syria remains a kaleidoscope of fractured militias, characterized by a chaotic mashup of ideologies, interests, and sponsors. The only unitary actors with discernible chains of command are the Islamist-jihadist hard-line groups: Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra, and Ahrar el Sham. All three groups have coherent military and political leadership, all have reliable funding sources, and all three have managed to take and hold territory. To varying degrees, however, all have extremist, sectarian beliefs at their core. Their project to establish Islamic rule in territory under their control is anathema to any Syrians of secular or non-Islamist bent. Some analysts of takfiri ideology (the practice of some Salafi-jihadists of declaring other Muslims apostates) have parsed the considerable differences between the three groups. Islamic State has declared a caliphate and staunchly opposes modern national borders, already ruling a vast, oil-rich state straddling Iraq and Syria. Nusra brands itself as a franchise of Al Qaeda, although it is unclear whether any Al Qaeda leaders exert authority over Nusra. Nusra has not yet declared a caliphate, and has recruited considerably among Syrians who want to wage a jihadist struggle within the national borders of Syria. As a result, Nusra has taken much more pains than Islamic State to win local loyalty in Syria, but there is no evidence to suggest it is a nationalist organization or that it will tolerate pluralism or dissent.

Among the jihadists, Ahrar el Sham, backed generously by the government of Turkey, has leaned closest to the non-jihadist opposition, going so far in December to ambivalently endorse rebel negotiation with the Damascus government. Ahrar, like Nusra, fights in tandem with Free Syrian Army-branded groups, fruitfully partnering in some battles with militias funded and armed by the CIA. Unlike Nusra, which has also crushed Free Syrian Army groups in local power struggles, Ahrar has so far protected its nationalist junior partners. Ahrar has developed some pragmatic modes of negotiating with other rebel groups and with foreign governments, but locally, inside Syria, it implements a version of religious rule that makes it inimical to concepts like a secular state, or a genuinely pluralistic polity. Some close analysts of Ahrar emphasize the pragmatic nature of the group’s leadership, which has shifted to less rigid positions on religion and on political negotiations over the last year. Ahrar ties to act as bridge between Jihadist and nationalists. If forced to choose between Free Syrian Army allies and Nusra, in an outright confrontation, it’s unclear which way Ahrar would go—especially if the Free Syrian Army groups remain as weak, fractured and erratically supported as they are today.

The Kurds are a complex group. Their dominant militia today, the YPG, has fashioned itself into the premier “reconcilable” faction—a group that can do business with the U.S. but can also negotiate with Assad. Most opposition groups do not consider the YPG a rebel group at all; many Free Syrian Army factions list the YPG along with Assad and Islamic State as existential threats. In some of the area under its control, the YPG has allowed Assad’s government to maintain a security presence, one of many pieces of evidence that lend credence to the notion that there is an understanding between the YPG and the Syrian government. The YPG has won direct military support from the United States, political support from Russia, and reluctant support from Iraqi Kurds and from a limited number of Arab tribal militias from northern Syria who are fighting Islamic State. In fact, the most vociferous opposition to the YPG comes from Turkey, which understands the YPG as a faction of the PKK, which has been engaged in an off-and-on decades-long separatist struggle against the Turkish central government and which is considered a terrorist cult by the government in Ankara.

The Army of Islam, which until recently was the dominant rebel group in the environs of Damascus, controlled Eastern Ghouta with an iron fist until the end of 2015. It has been linked to many war crimes and the disappearance of prominent secular opposition dissidents, most notably human rights activist Razan Zeitouneh. Army of Islam founder Zahran Alloush ran his zone of control with a distinctly Islamist tone, but he projected a nationalist image and kept jihadist groups at bay. Since his death in a Russian airstrike, his movement has lost dominance and the Syrian government has made inroads into Eastern Ghouta. A representative — Mohammed Alloush, a relative of Zahran — of the Army of Islam led the rebels’ High Negotiations Committee to the Geneva peace talks, until his resignation in May 2016. The Army of Islam, like Ahrar el Sham, has tried to split the difference and create an Islamist-nationalist hybrid model, but its rhetoric and governance have failed to win the trust of secular and non-Muslim Syrians. It is also a force in decline, with a single geographical base of operations in which its authority has fragmented since the demise of its founder. The Army of Islam is undeniably part of the landscape, like hardcore supporters of Bashar al-Assad, but does not present a template for reconciliation or inclusive governance in post-war Syria. However, like Ahrar, the Army of Islam’s coherence and discipline make it an attractive proxy partner for outside interveners.

Finally, there are the Free Syrian Army-brand rebels, the beneficiaries of a great deal of investment over the course of the war by Friends of Syria, the pro-rebel, anti-Assad, group of nations that includes the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The Free Syrian Army groups emerged from various militias that sprang up when Assad’s security forces confronted the nonviolent uprising in 2011. Free Syrian Army brigades evolved from many entities, including citizens’ militias, local mafia and gangster groupings, and semi-professional forces led and staffed by defectors from the Syrian military.

Opposition politicians, ever-more detached from the fight on the ground, seem to float in an acronym soup. The Free Syrian Army was supposed to provide a nationalist alternative to Assad, and to serve as a centrally controlled rebel army under the political leadership of the Syrian National Council (SNC), another entity cobbled together under the aegis of Friends of Syria. Today both the SNC and FSA still exist, but their promise never materialized. Today the official opposition body backed by the West is called the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces.

During the last round of peace talks, yet another expanded grouping, the ad hoc High Negotiation Committee (HNC), represented the opposition. For the time being the HNC remains the most relevant opposition entity, until, presumably, it is supplanted by yet another grouping. There have been glimmers of unity and coordination, such as the coordinated compliance of Free Syrian Army brigades with the spring 2016 cessation of hostilities. But when it comes to merging command structure, the Free Syrian Army brigades remain as bitterly fragmented today as they were in 2011–12—perhaps even more so. No amount of cajoling by the United States and other sponsor nations working through the Military Operations Center (MOC) in southern Turkey has persuaded even the most minute brigades to submit to an umbrella command. Opacity and fragmentation characterize all sides of the conflict, including allies and sponsors of the government in Damascus. The difficulty of coordinating positions or enforcing major decisions, such as ceasefires or aid deliveries, suggests caution and humility when setting expectations for the future. In such circumstances, conflict management, containment, and mitigation are wiser aims than outright resolution.

HIGH NEGOTIATIONS COMMITTEE 03-16

Senior members of the High Negotiations Committee in Geneva, March 2016

A Fragmented War

Every battle, it seems, requires renewed negotiations between rebel groups. One day, factions might join forces against the regime; the next, they are just as likely to be fighting each other. The MOC groups, as they are known in shorthand, are vetted battalions that are allowed to apply to the MOC for weapons and support. In practice, most of the surviving groups that self-identify as Free Syrian Army have been vetted and operate under the MOC umbrella, with some exceptions, such as the Nour al Din al-Zinky Movement, which was expelled from the MOC. Some of the Free Syrian Army groups are more religious, some more secular, some more urban, some more rural, but none of them has the ability to wage a major operation alone. Many Free Syrian Army groups have been guilty of corruption, brutality, torture, and other crimes. Equally, most have proven incapable of sustaining power beyond their home-base towns or expanding their ranks of fighters. In most of rebel-held northern Syria, the Free Syrian Army groups exist largely at the pleasure of Ahrar or Nusra, and in some areas face the specter of destruction by Islamic State. Ahrar and Nusra enjoy benefits by allowing the MOC groups to operate in their spheres of influence. The larger Islamist-jihadist groups can demand a share of weapons from the MOC groups, an arrangement confirmed by many commanders. In battles, the MOC groups contribute key tactical capabilities, such as anti-tank missiles, which complement the infantry deployed by Ahrar and Nusra, along with Nusra’s suicide bombers. This sort of partnership, in fact, allowed a temporary rebel alliance called the Army of Conquest to take over most of Idlib province in the spring of 2015, before the regime’s renewed advance.

After five years of heavy supervision, the Free Syrian Army commanders have taken a few suggestions from their sponsors. Today, most brigades have a full-time political officer charged with negotiating with other militias and with political leaders, and with communicating to outsiders. Commanders have slowly learned the rhetoric of pragmatism, now making routine if perfunctory rhetorical nods to the need to protect minorities in a post-Assad Syria. They are frank about their weakness in the face of the jihadist factions, and increasingly, honest about their reliance on foreign sponsorship. They believe that their fighters can go on indefinitely, in limbo between outright victory and defeat, but that civilians in “liberated Syria” have suffered more than a population can endure. They also understand that they are outgunned and trapped between three different enemies: Assad, Islamic State, and the Kurds. They know, too, that an open rupture is likely to come with Nusra.

Ideologues on all sides misrepresent this meddled state of play. Supporters of the Assad regime pretend that it is possible for the Syrian state to re-extend its writ over the entire national territory, under the leadership of Bashar al-Assad. Such a claim ignores the tenuous state of the government, even as it advances; long ago it maxed-out on its own resources and manpower, and relies almost entirely on foreign fighters and firepower to make a military advance that, if successful, would only restore the status quo of early 2015. Even with full Russian engagement, greater than any seen so far, the demographics of the conflict run overwhelmingly against the government. Russian air power has shifted the momentum of the conflict, but there’s no evidence that the government could achieve a full victory without the unlikely deployment of Russian ground troops.

Assad’s ambitions also ignore the implications of his government’s brutal scorched-earth tactics, with friends as well as foes. In government territory, Assad exerts control through a vast machine of torture, surveillance, and detention. In battles against rebel areas, Assad’s strategy has first and foremost been to make civilians pay, whether through starvation sieges, targeting of medical personnel, and indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas. Opposition sympathizers have ample reason to believe that they will face retribution or death if the government retakes their areas. As a result, a major share of the country—for instance, rebel-held Aleppo, and before it, Old Homs—has preferred starvation or slaughter to surrender to Assad’s forces.

Opponents of Assad, on the other hand, avoid the ugly state of affairs on the opposition side. Islamic State, Nusra, and Ahrar are strong not only because of their funding sources, but because they have persuaded important Syrian constituencies to their side, whether for reasons of ideology, self-interest, or a mix of the two. There is no sizable “moderate,” nationalist, or secular faction that could lead a military offensive, much less claim to represent the opposition in a negotiating setting. Any anti-Assad intervention will, in the short-term, benefit the most powerful factions on the ground—the extremists and the jihadists. Necessary interventions, such as shooting down helicopters that drop barrel bombs, or jets that bomb hospitals, will as a collateral benefit help Nusra and similar groups. That is not a reason to avoid protecting civilians, but it is a consequence that must be acknowledged, managed, and in the long-term, obviated by expanding the intervention to roll back jihadists from non-regime Syria.

Syria has fragmented almost beyond repair. It is not impossible to reverse course and to buttress a centralized state, but it will be a messy process. The status quo, however, is at least as messy, and far more hopeless; today, Syria’s implosion has poisoned the lives of most of Syria’s 26 million inhabitants, while spreading the specter of violence and sectarianism deep into neighboring countries. The war in Syria today is a war that spans Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Lebanon as a hot war, and which is indelibly linked to cold and hot wars in the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. The accelerated collapse of this pivotal Arab state continues to have massive tactical and strategic consequences. Any serious intervention will carry real risks and if successful will bring halting, perhaps incremental dividends. The scope and value of an intervention must be measured against a status quo that is catastrophically destabilizing and toxic to the entire Arab region as well as to core American national security interests.

A 3-Pronged US Strategy

American engagement should revolve around three imperatives: assist, protect, pressure. On assistance, the United States is already the biggest single financial donor to Syrian aid. But it is more than just dollars that matter; total American aid to refugees and other victims of conflict—including support for resettlement, health care, and education—should equal that of major donors such as Turkey and Europe. America has been generous, but it should achieve more in effective help than any other state, in order to justify its role as honest broker.

On protection, U.S. military force should quickly and decisively be brought to bear to protect vulnerable civilian populations and infrastructure. As a first step, protection requires using military force to prevent or retaliate for some of the most egregious and indiscriminate attacks on civilians. Protection actions would include shooting down some helicopters and planes, in order to reduce the amount of barrel bombs and conventional bombs dropped on civilian, rebel-held areas; retaliating against sources of fire on medical facilities, markets, schools, and civil defense facilities; and quick, decisive strikes against government forces or their allies who are besieging civilians or interfering with the flow of humanitarian aid.

On pressure, America should push the Damascus government and its opponents to engage in serious negotiations, using military action and the White House’s bully pulpit. Serious talks require major concessions, which are more likely if the United States uses its considerable influence to make sure that all the potential spoilers (including Assad, Islamic State, and Nusra) know the United States will prevent them from achieving outright victory. The thrust of U.S. escalation is that it might produce, in the long run, a significant de-escalation of the entire Syrian conflict. And if it does not, the United States at least will be able to save and protect many civilian lives, and to reap strategic and political benefits throughout the region from having taken a more active role in Syria’s fate. It will also shift the burden of the war to be more equitably shared by the government and its forces, and not, as is currently the case, overwhelmingly by civilians in rebel-held area. A wise U.S. president need not be locked into further escalation; limited military intervention is only a slippery slope if the United States fails to exercise discipline.

The military, political, and humanitarian investment should have the goal of pushing Syrians to reach a negotiated settlement to the civil war. Since the summer of 2015, the U.S. Department of State has been engaged in sustained high-level diplomacy surrounding the conflict, representing the one pillar of the policy where American engagement already is where it should be. Military and humanitarian pressure should rise to a level that is in balance with the political commitment to diplomacy. Military intervention (and humanitarian aid) should shore up non-jihadi rebels (up to and including Ahrar el Sham, if it continues its practical collaboration), and should punish the government when it is possible to do so without hurting civilians. In some cases the to-do list is clear: quick air strikes to support any vetted rebel group that is about to be overrun by the government, Nusra, or Islamic State; lethal force to protect any vulnerable population, such as internally displaced people in camps threatened by jihadists or by the government; and sustained military aid to end siege warfare and keep supply routes open.

Prong 1: Assist

The “assist” plank is the most straightforward. The United States should double its already generous humanitarian expenditures, marking a major financial commitment (although it would amount to a fraction of the costs of a military campaign). This expenditure would have serious impact. It would mark America’s position as the leading humanitarian donor, and should be accompanied by far more political messaging to make clear that the United States gives the lion’s share of humanitarian aid to Syria, as it does in many other troubled parts of the world. The tangible impact is important: every additional group of children enrolled in school, ill people given medical care, or displaced people sheltered, is important—these are clearly achievable goals. The moral impact is equally crucial: the United States can and should frame Syria’s conflict as a war against human beings and the institutions that enable them to live with basic services and dignity.

Since the conflict began, the United States has spent roughly $5 billion on humanitarian aid to Syria. It continues to underwrite much of the essential aid that keeps people alive in areas occupied by Islamic State, Nusra, the Free Syrian Army, and even the Syrian government. In many ways, international humanitarian aid has propped up every party to the Syrian conflict; but the funding has also checked the mind-numbing human suffering caused by the war. In comparison, the European Union has spent about €5 billion (equivalent to about $5.5 billion), while Turkey has spent about $8 billion. The United States has admitted an appallingly low number of refugees from the conflict. Meanwhile, more than 1 million Syrians have sought asylum in Europe. Lebanon houses more than 1 million registered refugees and an estimated 500,000 more unregistered refugees, an amount roughly equivalent to one-third of Lebanon’s total population. Turkey has taken in at least 2.8 million Syrian refugees. The United States has not admitted significant numbers of refugees, and it ought to do much better on that front; but what it can do quickly is shoulder an equal share of the burden by paying to provide for the displaced. That commitment would enable the United States to stand shoulder to shoulder on the same ground as its European and Middle Eastern allies who are reeling but doing their best to help the victims of the war.

The United Nations—which oversees most humanitarian aid inside Syria—has proven incapable of functioning impartially. The Syrian government has been able to dictate which populations receive aid and which do not, all the while siphoning off a great deal of foreign humanitarian aid for its own supporters. The United Nations and its agencies operate under a state-to-state paradigm in an area where dozens of entities claim overlapping sovereignty.

The United States can take action to stop its contributions from being held hostage by the distorted approach taken by the UN agencies in Syria. It can and should withhold any aid that is funneled through the Syrian government, unless the Syrian government immediately lifts all access restrictions (which it has been unwilling to do throughout the conflict, in defiance of the U.N. Security Council). It should run its own airdrops of aid to besieged areas, since it has greater logistical capacity to organize airdrops and has the flexibility to coordinate air drops with the Russians. In Islamic State and Nusra areas in northern Syria that depend on food and other basic aid from U.S.-funded contractors, the United States should dictate new terms of engagement. If aid does not reach its intended civilian beneficiaries, it can cut off supplies. U.S. forces can also target pro- and anti-government militias that engage in predatory behavior and steal or block aid deliveries.

Prong 2: Protect

A more robust military campaign should build on both of the missions already underway: the CIA’s covert sponsorship of armed proxies and the Pentagon’s overt train-and-equip program for rebels. The record of these efforts has been mixed, and even the most trusted proxies vetted by the United States and its allies have displayed very limited potential. A more interventionist strategy should make use of a broader range of proxies than the current approach, which relies too much on the Kurdish-controlled Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance, while recognizing that vetted Free Syrian Army-brand groups will have only limited efficacy and will initially operate in the shadow of the larger, jihadist groups. A U.S.-led military campaign should prioritize the following strategic aims:

*Weaken the Syrian government’s military forces.

*Reintroduce norms of warfare by punishing parties who commit war crimes.

*Protect civilians through siege relief and other means, in pursuit of a war strategy that makes civilian well-being a core interest.

*Promote a core political commitment to a pluralistic Syria where all groups and ethnicities, including the secular, share common rights.

*Preserve Syria’s state and institutions, including the military. Further wreckage to Syria’s institutions and infrastructure must be condemned, punished, and when possible, prevented.

*Equalize the stalemate so that negotiations become appealing to all sides. Achieving balance would be difficult, requiring military strikes or withholding of military aid to any party that aspires to outright victory rather than negotiated settlement.

Supporters of military intervention — including the intervention already under way — must be honest about the risks and limits. American allies in Syria are unreliable, with limited reach. Extremists and jihadists, like government forces, have some popularity and legitimate constituencies. Current U.S. policy has unintentionally strengthened the Syrian government, as well as Islamic State and Nusra; a more active military intervention would weaken those parties in some ways but probably strengthen them in others. An honest policy must acknowledge that there will be collateral benefits to parties that the United States does not want to strengthen, but can calibrate force so that benefits of the policy outweigh the costs.

A rejuvenated military campaign would be a work in progress, but initial tactical steps that would help achieve America’s strategic aims include:

*End regime starvation sieges, such as the ones currently under way in Deraya, Madaya, Moadhamiya, and Eastern Ghouta.

*For symbolic reasons, intervention should also end starvation sieges by Islamic State in Deir al-Zour and by the Free Syrian Army in Foua and Kafraya.

*Air power, special forces, and proxies should expand and defend safe access to rebel Aleppo.

*Short of full safe havens and no-fly zones, the United States can offer incremental protection to civilian areas in the south, center, and north of Syria. Already there are considerable in-gatherings of civilians, for instance, along the Jordanian and Turkish borders. The risks of a heavy civilian concentration already are present; U.S. protection—even if incomplete—could save many lives.

*The United States should pressure the Syrian Democratic Forces, its preferred proxy, to stop attacking vetted Free Syrian Army groups and to cooperate with them. The United States should withhold arms deliveries and air strikes for the Syrian Democratic Forces any time the Syrian Democratic Forces attack Free Syrian Army groups. It should also provide air strikes to Free Syrian Army groups with equal speed and intensity as it does for the YPG/SDF. Where it lacks the capacity to provide air cover to vetted Free Syrian Army units, it should quickly address technical obstacles. It should introduce into the warzone the capacity to shoot down planes, through whichever means the U.S. military finds most effective, whether special forces from the United States or allies like Jordan and United Emirates, or tightly controlled deliveries of anti-aircraft missiles to vetted proxies.

*The United States should make proportionate retaliatory air strikes for any indiscriminate attacks by the Syrian government or the Russian military on civilians and infrastructure, especially hospitals, clinics, and civil defense.

*The U.S. military and its vetted proxies should employ enough force to protect displaced camps and civilian neighborhoods.

*Islamic State and government forces should bear the brunt of U.S. action, but air strikes and special operations should continue to target anti-regime extremists such as Nusra when Nusra threatens U.S. allies. It is not necessary to engage in total war against all the extremist parties to the conflict—limited, occasional strikes will make it harder for all parties to commit war crimes and will inject uncertainty into the calculations of militias.

*Shoot down some Syrian government planes and helicopters. End the long and disingenuous debate about whether to give rebels surface-to-air missiles by addressing the umbrella concern: indiscriminate bombardment of civilians from the air. Even occasional U.S.-orchestrated strikes against regime air assets—always over areas where U.S. forces have given prior notification to Russia, to be sure there are no accidental strikes against Russian pilots—will force the Assad government to shelf its approach of massive bombardment of rebel-held civilian areas.

Any increased military action would, of course, be complicated, and would come with risks and unintended consequences. Already, the United States is deeply and expensively involved, with special forces on the ground inside Syria, an extensive covert program that works with vetted rebel groups in northern and southern Syria, a more limited overt train-and-equip program, and a war against Islamic State, largely consisting of air strikes. In practice, most of the vetted rebel groups are small and in many contexts survive at the pleasure of Nusra. They collaborate with Nusra in battles against the Syrian government. Already, many of these groups are engaged in existential battles against the Syrian government on one side, and Islamic State on the other. Their relationship with Nusra is rocky; the Al Qaeda affiliate has a tendency to destroy or marginalize Free Syrian Army groups that display too much independence. If the United States escalates its involvement, the Nusra Front might escalate its own campaign to eradicate alternative rebel groups. The U.S. military and its allies will have to use their assets to forestall a Nusra offensive—for instance, with extensive air strikes and close air support for vetted MOC groups. If U.S.-backed groups are strong enough, well-armed, and given close air support, Nusra will be less likely to try to wipe them out. But in the long run, Nusra’s agenda will never dovetail with America’s, and it is a fool’s game to expect beleaguered nationalists to defeat Al Qaeda in Syria unaided. In the long haul, Free Syrian Army groups are endangered species unless their foreign sponsors up the ante; better an orchestrated attempt to preserve their seat at the table than a decision to watch them slowly get destroyed.

The ground ally that the United States trusts the most is the YPG, a Kurdish militia in northern Syria that is an outgrowth of the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group in Turkey. The YPG has fought effectively in some instances, including against Islamic State; it also retains close ties with the Damascus government and with Russia. Many anti-government militia leaders in northern Syria, including majority Arabs and some minority Kurds, distrust the YPG and accuse it of ethnic cleansing against Arabs. The YPG has some Arab allies in its Syrian Defense Forces umbrella, but they are not equals in the Syrian Democratic Forces; they operate as junior partners under Kurdish control. U.S. support for the YPG has alienated Turkey, a necessary partner in America’s Syria policy. There are other complications as well. In the south, American support has helped build a formidable rebel force on paper, but the Kingdom of Jordan has only allowed the Free Syrian Army in southern Syria to exist so long as it operates in narrow limits imposed by Jordan, which is more eager to limit its refugee population and contain Syrian government reprisals against Jordan than it is to see a resolution of the Syrian war.

The United States must deal with the often counterproductive and frequently irksome maneuvers of supposed allies who often compete with each other as well as with Washington: the list of troublesome friends includes but is not limited to all the vetted Syrian militias, the non-jihadi unvetted rebels, Ahrar el Sham, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

As it is, American policy is subjected to these problems. A more active intervention will persuade many of these reluctant allies to get in line because there will be a more robust policy to fall in line behind. American military initiative will benefit from a multiplier effect. Today, all of America’s partners follow independent military policies in Syria. With an armed hand on the tiller, the United States can demand that its allies actively support U.S. strategy, and cease supporting groups who oppose it.

Military intervention should establish some protected areas that would be shielded from regime bombardment and shelling—in Aleppo and Idlib province, and in the southern front area near the Jordanian border. U.S. or allied rebel forces would then have to use infantry in those protected areas to drive out Islamic State, Nusra, and other opportunistic jihadi infiltrators. Some Nusra footsoldiers might switch sides if they see momentum, money, and weapons flowing to a reinvigorated nationalist grouping. Military intervention should also protect camps, such as the areas where approximately 165,000 internally displaced Syrians at the end of May were weathering an Islamic State assault, according to Human Rights Watch, but were unable to flee to safety in Turkey because Turkish authorities had sealed the border.

Finally, the United States should declare certain areas off-limits to bombing, and reserve the right to shoot down any planes or helicopters that bomb in those areas. Those areas, at the start, should be limited to key corridors around Idlib and Aleppo where civilians are concentrated. The United States should provide clear maps to the Syrian government and Russia of the protected areas. These protected zones will not benefit from full no-fly coverage. But planes and helicopters that drop ordnance, as well as mortar crews, will be subject to reprisal. Even occasional retaliation, with a few aircraft shot down, will provoke a major reduction in indiscriminate bombing, which has become a favored Syrian government technique because it carries almost no cost. Similarly, siege warfare has been very economical for the government, as well as for some rebel groups that profit from smuggling, but would become much less attractive if siege chokepoints were subject to direct U.S. targeting, or U.S.-coordinated proxy assaults.

Prong 3: Pressure

On the political front, the United States should continue and intensify its recent approach. Washington should maintain the open stance that Kerry has created with the Russians. It can open the tent to more deeply engage Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Success requires a clear definition of the political aims: to reduce human suffering, increase stability in Syria and the region, and raise the slim chances of a negotiated settlement that preserves the integrity of the Syrian state. Only equilibrium allows for serious negotiation. If either side believes it can win outright, it will not entertain concessions.

The United States has done an impressive job pressuring its own clients and allies inside Syria — the relatively weak Free Syrian Army battalions and their negotiating bodies, most recently the Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee (HNC). It has invested considerable, effective pressure negotiating on multiple fronts with the Syrian government and with Russia. Washington has effective open and back-channel discussions with Iran, and it has engaged in diplomacy though civilian as well as military-military channels with Iraq, Turkey, and the Arabian peninsula monarchies. Now, the United States should ratchet up its pressure on all relevant parties, not just its clients. In every forum, the United States should repeat its goals often: a pluralistic Syria, with rights for all groups, including government supporters, within Syria’s borders, and an intact state with national institutions.

The Syrian government should live in fear of U.S. retaliation for sieges of civilians, and for indiscriminate bombing. So should rebel groups—and not just the worst of the worst. The United States is already striking Islamic State, and occasionally Nusra. It should not hesitate to bomb other jihadist factions, including Ahrar el Sham, if those groups murder civilians or harass minorities. Such symbolic targeting sends a clear message to all parties to the conflict.

If the increased U.S. involvement leads to a shift in the status quo while the conflict continues, the United States can claim to have done its best—and should be able to point to a discernible number of lives saved. That alone should justify the involvement….

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