Biden tells Syrian activists he still thinks Assad must go

 

 'Three Syrian American activists took advantage of their audience with Biden at a private fundraiser on June 27 in Maryland to implore him to do more to oppose Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and protect innocent Syrian civilians. Encouragingly, these activists said, Biden not only seemed to care deeply about the plight of Syrians but also seemed to want to do more about it. Yet they also noted that the president’s statements on Syria don’t match his own administration’s current policies. They are right on both counts.



 Alaa Tello, a Syrian American from Massachusetts, said she told Biden, “Assad must go.” Biden then responded, according to Tello, “I agree.” That contrasts sharply with his administration’s own recent actions, which include telling Arab gulf countries that the United States won’t oppose their normalization of Assad and failing to implement U.S. sanctions against Assad’s enablers.

 Biden was vice president when the Obama administration first declared in 2011 that “Assad must go.” Current administration officials don’t say that anymore, due in part to the fact Assad doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. But the activists’ conversations with the president was a sign that Biden still believes it, Tello said afterward.

 Tello pressed the president to help the Syrian people free themselves from the grip of Assad and his Russian and Iranian partners, whose campaign of mass atrocities is now in its 13th year.

 “He said, ‘I can’t promise you, but I will do the best I can,’” Tello said. “He cared. He engaged in the conversation with a high level of empathy and I felt a lot of hope that the United States and the president will help the Syrian people.”



 Tello’s husband, Muhammad Bakr Ghbeis, a physician, said he implored Biden to pay more attention to Syria’s northwest Idlib province, where more than 3 million internally displaced civilians are living in squalor, cut off from the world, and enduring constant attacks from Syrian and Russian forces.

 “We have to save Idlib,” Ghbeis told Biden. “Please save Idlib, Mr. President.” Biden responded: “I hear you, but I can’t send U.S. soldiers to Syria.” Ghbeis answered, “Mr. President, no need to, we can do it, we can protect ourselves, we just need more support from the U.S.”

 Ghbeis spelled out the specific asks of the Syrian American activists in a Wednesday op-ed in the Hill that he co-wrote with former House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.). Ghbeis and Engel want the Biden administration to actively oppose Assad’s further diplomatic rehabilitation, including his possible attendance at an international climate conference later this year in the United Arab Emirates. The Arab League welcomed Assad back as a member this year.

 Syrian activists also want the administration to publicly support a bipartisan bill called the Assad Regime Anti-Normalization Act that would stiffen penalties on any entity that aids the Assad régime, until or unless the Syrian government ceases its atrocities. Lastly, they want Biden to give Syrians living outside Assad’s rule more humanitarian aid and economic support.

 Ghbeis is active in a nonprofit organization called Citizens for a Secure and Safe America, which advocates on behalf of the Syrian opposition. The group’s spokesperson, George Stifo, another Massachusetts resident, was also at the event, where he had his own interaction with Biden.

 “Mr. President, if we had stopped the Russians in Syria, we would not have seen the war in Ukraine,” Stifo told Biden, arguing that Putin became emboldened after getting away with atrocities in Syria. Stifo says that president responded by saying he would not permit the Russians to succeed again.



 One might think that the president was just telling the Syrian activists what they want to hear. But Syrian Americans know from experience that these quick chats with the commander in chief can have real influence. In 2018, after a different Syrian activist met with President Donald Trump at a fundraiser, he took her story to heart. Trump ended up changing U.S. policy, directing his officials to use diplomatic tools to prevent a Syrian attack on Idlib at the time — which they did with some success.

 Biden officials like to think they run a tighter ship and that the president won’t change U.S. policy after a few conversations. But you never know.

 What comes out of this particular exchange remains to be seen. But all the Syrians’ specific policy asks are part of a broader, valid concern about the Biden administration’s Syria policy. They see the administration as lacking initiative and willingness to get deeply involved in the diplomacy needed to negotiate a just end to the war.

 “We really need to push the political process and the U.S. needs to lead on that front,” Ghbeis said. “That has not been the case for the last six years.”

 In the past, Biden has expressed the view that the United States should lead the international diplomacy on Syria and use pressure to stop Assad from slaughtering civilians with impunity. Perhaps his encounter with the activists will lead him back to this position. Even after all this time, it’s still the right thing to do.'

The Wagner Mutiny Could Strengthen Iran in Syria

 

 'As Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, began on June 23, Russian military police in Syria apprehended at least four of the Wagner Group’s top leaders and flew them to the Hmeimim air base on the country’s west coast as a precautionary measure. Multiple sources told Foreign Policy via messages over an encrypted messaging app that all were still being kept at a closed facility at Hmeimim; however, no public indication of their whereabouts has yet been made.

 Home to several thousand Russian soldiers and contractors, Hmeimim is Russia’s command and control center in Syria and the logistics headquarters for all Wagner operations abroad.

 With its two large landing strips, it is the largest Russian facility outside the former Soviet Union capable of servicing and refueling heavy aircraft transporting large quantities of weapons and personnel. Wagner flights to Libya, Mali, Sudan, the Central African Republic, and even Venezuela depart from Hmeimim via Russian defense ministry aircraft before arriving at their final destinations. Should the Kremlin deny Wagner access to this facility, Prigozhin’s global empire would grind to a halt.



 As in Russia itself—where the police and Federal Security Service have raided the group’s headquarters and shut down its subsidiaries—Wagner’s leaders in Hmeimim have reportedly been given an ultimatum to sign new contracts with the defense ministry or return home. However, following years of attrition within the ranks of Russia’s proxies in Syria, Wagner forces form one of the core components of what’s left protecting Moscow’s interests in the country, granting Prigozhin significant leverage that will likely delay an abrupt dismantling of his influence.

 Currently, Wagner has between 1,000 and 2,000 troops deployed in Syria, who sit at the center of a much larger network of more than 10,000 local private military contractors who help guard oil, gas, and phosphate infrastructure in the country’s desert.

 Wagner pays Syrian private military contractors in part from the revenues generated from these facilities, most of which are owned or operated by companies linked to Gennady Timchenko—one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest confidants who experts claim has overseen the latter’s personal wealth—and Wagner shell companies.

 As Russia is one of the world’s largest energy and commodities exporters, revenues earned from Syria’s natural resources are negligible to the Russian state. However, for Syria’s régime, they are a desperately needed source of foreign currency, and Moscow’s control over them grants Russia leverage that it can use to ensure that Damascus does not renege on its geostrategic commitments to the Kremlin in any postwar scenario.

 These commitments include preserving Russia’s right to use Hmeimim as a launching pad to project power in Africa and, more importantly, to dock nuclear-capable vessels in Syria’s Tartus port. The latter has been one of Moscow’s greatest geostrategic achievements since the 1970s and enables Russia to project nuclear deterrence along NATO’s southern flank.

 Regardless as to what individual Wagner leaders decide, ensuring that Russia retains leverage over Damascus means securing the loyalty of the thousands of Syrian private military contractors whom Prigozhin commands. Any pause or reduction in incentives for these forces caused by confusion in Moscow will be seized on by Russia’s main rival, Iran, which could offer these fighters weapons and better pay.



 Despite partnering to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Russia and Iran have been viciously at odds in Syria since 2017. In 2018, their proxies had violent clashes over control of Syria’s phosphate reserves and have continued to battle over other strategic assets.

 This struggle to protect its position has worn on Moscow, particularly as its hopes for a political solution to the conflict have fallen flat; Russian companies would likely earn a massive windfall if sanctions on Syria were lifted and Putin has exerted pressure on Assad for years to ensure this. But such a resolution and an injection of Western development aid have failed to materialize.

 By 2021, Russia began to cut support to many of its proxies in parts of the country it no longer viewed as strategic, many of which switched their loyalty to Iran to replace lost salaries. This process accelerated following Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

 The rapid normalization seen in recent months between the Assad régime and Arab League states is itself a last-resort strategy by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan to contain Iran after accepting that Russia may no longer possess the means to do so.

 Currently, Wagner mercenaries and their network of contractors at oil and gas sites across Syria are one of several core components of what’s left of Russia’s bare-bones occupation. Supported in part by an independent and sustainable revenue stream, they have so far proved largely resistant to Iran’s overtures.



 However, should another pillar in Putin’s régime fall, that could change, with Wagner’s Syrian mercenaries following the same path as many other former Russian proxies. Examples abound.

 In April 2021, Russia ignored requests for support from a tribal-backed militia fighting U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria. After being defeated and expelled from their homes, tribal fighters opened their doors to Iran, which flew in large quantities of heavy weapons and equipment and replaced the group’s lost salaries.

 The Syrian Army’s 8th Brigade was once Russia’s most loyal unit within the armed forces in southern Syria. However, by late 2021, Moscow became frustrated with its failure to send sufficient troops to fight the Islamic State and halved the group’s salaries. By 2022, it ceased contact altogether, and now the 8th Brigade fights for Syria’s Military Intelligence Directorate, one of Iran’s most powerful proxies and which is heavily implicated in regional drug trafficking alongside Hezbollah and other groups.

 Similarly, in July 2022, National Defense Forces militias in eastern Deir Ezzor led by Hassan al-Ghadban broke with Moscow after the latter failed to pay their salaries for six months. The group shortly after merged with the 4th Division, one of Syria’s top elite Iranian-backed units led by Maher al-Assad—brother of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—which sits at the top of Syria’s drug trade.

 Should Russia lose the loyalty of Syrian mercenaries guarding the country’s energy infrastructure, Moscow would no longer be able to guarantee that it could continue coercing Assad to allow the Kremlin to use Syrian territory to threaten NATO and expand throughout Africa.



 Following the defeat of the Islamic State in 2018, Russia undertook an aggressive campaign to overhaul and reform Syria’s decrepit military, which Moscow hoped to partner with as its main client in a postwar scenario. Syrian generals who spoke Russian were promoted and purged hundreds of senior officers, seized weapons and military IDs from Iranian-backed militias, and arrested their financiers.

 The program provoked a wave of violence against Russian forces and their proxies by Iranian-backed groups that refused to disarm and instead accelerated their infiltration of Syria’s institutions.

 By 2020, Russia had given up. Limited by the economic contraction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and its failure to achieve any semblance of order, Russia’s defense ministry scaled back its efforts and turned to its own network of private military contractors to build an irregular force to manage its now narrowly defined interests.



 This shift was hastened by Russia’s belligerent stance toward Turkey, whose proxies Moscow fought two separate conflicts with in 2020, creating an urgent need for new recruits. Between December 2019 and August 2020, Wagner recruited thousands of Syrian mercenaries through more than a dozen private security firms to fight in Libya against the Turkish-backed government alongside renegade warlord Khalifa Haftar.

 During the fighting, Wagner seized control of two large oil fields and export facilities and a petrochemical complex—key leverage that the group has used to selectively manipulate energy markets by imposing blockades. During the same period, Wagner-backed militias took part in a shorter conflict against Turkish-backed rebels in Syria’s Idlib province that resulted in large territorial gains for the Assad régime.

 Following these campaigns, Russia was soon forced to mobilize again, this time against the Islamic State in central Syria. In the eight months from August 2020 to March 2021, the group exploded out of remote parts of the desert and killed more than 460 soldiers and civilians and injured hundreds more. The majority of attacks were concentrated around the country’s gas-processing plants and oil fields, an attempt by the Islamic State to extort payment from the companies that managed their production.

 The Islamic State’s attacks posed a direct threat to Russia’s core interest, and Moscow exhausted all options in response. The private military contractors used to recruit Syrians to fight in Libya were revived across the country, with recruits trained in Suqaylabiyah, a large Orthodox Christian town on the outskirts of the desert where Russia has recruited its most loyal mercenaries. Russia’s defense ministry issued an ultimatum to loyal units within the Syrian Army: Send fighters, or stop receiving salaries.

 Lastly, for the first time since 2017, Russian units fighting in the desert partnered with Iranian proxies including Afghan Shiite militias. For the first three months of 2021, this combined force supported by Russian air power bombarded the Islamic State, driving many of its fighters to Iraq or Kurdish-controlled parts of northeastern Syria.

 Now, preserving this network of mercenaries built up throughout 2020 is key to ensuring the smooth running of Syria’s energy and phosphate reserves, which has since become Russia’s main priority. Iran has meanwhile seized the opportunity to chip away at Moscow’s faltering facade and pick off former proxies that the Kremlin can no longer afford to patronize.



 Wagner forces and the Syrians they contract are mercenaries and by definition fight for material gain. Some, such as Orthodox Christians in Suqaylabiyah and neighboring towns, either feel some affinity with Russia or view it as a bulwark against encroaching Iranian Shiite sectarianism. However, should Moscow pull the rug entirely from under Prigozhin, all of Wagner’s proxies will be forced to make practical decisions.

 Of the four Wagner leaders in Syria detained late last month, two were based in Hmeimim, one in Damascus, one in the oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor, and the last in Suqaylabiyah. Should their detention drag out, the Christians of Suqaylabiyah and other groups may find themselves on the receiving end of enticing Iranian offers.

 Iran may also soon be in a better position to make such offers. Following months of quiet negotiations, in late June the United States resumed indirect talks with Tehran to explore relaunching the nuclear deal or replacing it with an interim agreement. As a measure of good faith, the United States recently agreed to unfreeze and release $2.7 billion of debt from Iraq to Iranian banks. Tehran has similarly requested that $7 billion in South Korean debt frozen by sanctions be released, offering to free detained U.S. citizens in exchange.

 However, Russia’s current weak position may delay any brash steps to rein in Prigozhin’s position in Syria. Russia’s occupation is not driven by profit-seeking, and allowing Prigozhin to continue reaping a modest fortune is a small price to pay to ensure Moscow’s presence on the Mediterranean is kept intact. Should it do the opposite, the Kremlin risks creating a gap that Iran’s proxies would soon step in to exploit.'

Syrian régime organised feared ghost militias

 

 'In the early years of Syria's brutal conflict, top government officials established and directed paramilitary groups known as shabbiha to help the state crack down on opponents, war crimes investigators have documented.

 The Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) published seven documents its investigators said showed that the highest levels of Syria's government "planned, organised, instigated and deployed" the shabbiha from the start of the war in 2011.

 Dating from as early as January 2011 - the first days of the protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's rule - the documents detail the creation of so-called Popular Committees, groups that incorporated régime supporters already known as shabbiha into the security apparatus, and trained, instructed and armed them, the report said.



 The documents include instructions on March 2, 2011 from military intelligence to local authorities via Security Committees run by Assad's Baath party leaders to "mobilise" informers, grassroots organisations and so-called friends of the Assad government. In further documents in April they are ordered to form them into Popular Committees.

 They also contain instructions in April, May and August, 2011 to Popular Committees from the newly-established Central Crisis Management Committee (CCMC), a mix of security forces, intelligence agencies and top officials that reported directly to Assad, the report said.

 One of the CCMC's first directives, dated April 18, 2011, and included in full in the report, ordered the Popular Committees to be trained on how to use weapons against demonstrators, as well as how to arrest them and hand them over to government forces.



 A German regional court in 2021, in a case against a Syrian intelligence services official, said in its judgment the CCMC was established in March 2011, reporting to Assad as an ad hoc body composed of senior leaders of the security forces.

 A U.S. district court found in 2019 in a civil case that Assad himself established the CCMC, which the court called "the highest national security body in the Syrian government" and "comprised of senior members of the government".

 The documents showed the government created the militias "from day one", rather than latching onto pre-existing grassroot groups, as scholars of the Syrian war previously thought, said Ugur Ungor, an expert on Syrian paramilitaries and a professor of Holocaust and Genocide studies at the Dutch NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, who has reviewed the documents in CIJA's new report.



 Some human rights scholars who have studied the role of the shabbiha in the Syrian war say the Assad régime initially used the groups to distance itself from violence on the ground.

 "The régime did not want the security forces and army to be pictured doing these things," said Fadel Abdul Ghany, chair of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a UK-based advocacy group.

 No shabbiha members have been brought to trial in international courts. Ghany, who reviewed the documents, said they could help build such cases.

 "Here you have the paper trail that shows how these units were mobilized", said one of CIJA's directors, Nerma Jelacic.

 CIJA is a nonprofit founded by a veteran war crimes investigator and staffed by international criminal lawyers who have worked in Bosnia, Rwanda and Cambodia. Its evidence on Syria has previously been used in court cases against régime officials conducted in Germany, France, Sweden and the Netherlands.



 CIJA named nine massacres in Syria the reports said involved pro-government militias, including in the neighbourhood of Karm al-Zeytoun in the city of Homs in March 2012.

 One Syrian man, who asked not to be named as he feared reprisals against relatives still living in government-held zones in Syria, said his wife and five children were among those killed there.

 "The shabbiha put them up against the wall, tried to violate them, then shot them," he said. At the time, he had joined a rebel group and was in a nearby district, al-Adawiya - where another massacre had just taken place, also cited by CIJA.

 "The moment I heard that my kids were dead, I was holding a six-month-old baby that had just been killed in Adawiya. So, I was imagining what had happened to my kids," he said, speaking by telephone from within a rebel-held enclave in northern Syria.



 The CIJA documents showed tensions between some branches of the security forces and some Popular Committees as reports of abuses spread - but rather than rein-in the militias, the security forces issued instructions to not oppose them.

 CIJA's Syria team of 45 people studied the documents to detail the growth of the shabbiha groups from neigbourhood-level loyalist groups to a well-organised militia and later a parallel wing of the army called the National Defence Force (NDF).

 While there is no international war crimes court with jurisdiction over Syria's conflict, there are a number of so-called universal jurisdiction cases in countries like the Netherlands, Sweden, France and Germany which have laws allowing them to prosecute war crimes even if they are committed elsewhere.

 Ghany said the documents were "necessary" pieces of evidence linking the shabbiha to the state in international justice cases.

 "These documents make it possible to pursue people legally - if there are individuals in European countries, then a case can be brought against them," he said.'

What’s behind the latest Russian airstrikes in Syria?

 

 'Each morning, Yasser H. and his brother sell what they harvest at the market in Jisr al-Shughur in the west of Syria’s Idlib province. But last Sunday, everything suddenly happened very quickly, the 39-year-old recalled.

 “Here we are the vegetable market … we were surprised today by the Russian bombing,” he said. “The scene was very terrifying and cruel. Suddenly you see the wounded and martyrs on the ground, and there is no one to help or carry, the majority were injured and there was no one to help.”

 “We were civilians and farmers — nothing more, nothing less,” he added.

 Ahmed Jasigi, from the city’s Civil Defense, also spoke of several deaths, condemning the attack on a market “that is an important source of income for farmers.”

 Haifa, 25, from Jisr al-Shughur, was also near the market that day, though able to take cover. “But our neighbor didn’t make it. He is dead now, and he had just gotten married. We are all shocked and sad,” she said.

 At least nine people were killed and dozens injured in the Russian airstrike on the market last Sunday in the rebel-held area, with the death toll expected to rise.

 Four more people were killed in another attack in a suburb of Idlib.

 A third rocket attack reportedly killed eight members of the Hamza Brigade, a paramilitary group affiliated with the militant Islamist militia Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Syria’s main insurgent group.

 The Idlib province in northwestern Syria, near the Turkish border, is the last region held by Syrian rebels and Islamists. It is mostly under the control of Islamist militias from the Hayat Tahrir al Sham group, which grew out of the Nusra Front. Around 4 million people, most of them internally displaced several times over, live in poverty amid extremely difficult conditions.

 Bente Scheller, Middle East analyst at Germany’s Heinrich Böll Foundation, a Green Party affiliated think tank, also sees the airstrikes as a show of force by Russia, especially since Syrian dictator Bashar Assad was readmitted to the Arab League.

 “There are plenty of autocrats who reinforce each other’s belief that brute force is a proven way to get their way — Putin is underlining that with the increased attacks,” Scheller said. The conflict between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the mercenary Wagner Group who recently staged a mutiny, may also have played a role. “Since the Wagner private military company has shown Putin up and exposed that his strength isn’t in great shape, the attacks in Idlib may also serve to reassure Putin himself,” Scheller said.

 Turkey has supported armed opposition to Assad throughout the war in Syria, much to the displeasure of Damascus, while Moscow has expressed impatience with Ankara for not doing enough to drive the jihadists out of the buffer zone. That is also making a rapprochement with Damascus less likely, according to a diplomatic source.

 Moscow is now apparently ramping up the pressure. “Russia wants Turkey to normalise its relations with Syria because that would once again be a much greater signal to Europe and also NATO,” said Scheller. At the end of 2022, during the most recent Russian-brokered talks with Ankara, as well as at the recent Syria peace talks in Kazakhstan, Damascus had demanded that Turkey completely withdraw its military presence from northern Syria. A statement by Turkey, Russia, and Iran said the latest round of talks had been “constructive,” and that they had discussed “preparing the roadmap for the restoration of relations between Turkey and Syria.”

 But the Turkish and Syrian leaders have different interests. “Turkey does not want to withdraw from Syria — quite the opposite,” Scheller said, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hoping to create a larger security zone on Syrian soil. Additionally, Erdogan needs the territories he occupies to enable the repatriation of some the 3.6 million Syrian refugees.

 “Assad, on the other hand, wants to recapture every inch of Syrian soil,” Scheller added. And while the Kurdish-Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD) is a thorn in Ankara’s side, Assad sees the PYD as a partner. “For Assad, but also for Russia, as part of a rapprochement, it would be more important to act together against the Islamist HTS that controls Idlib, or other forces,” she said, referring to Hayat Tahrir al Sham, an insurgent group that rules much of northwest Syria.



 So far, the presence of Turkish troops has prevented Damascus and Moscow from using full military force to retake the rebel enclave around Idlib.

 Back at the recently bombed market in Jisr al-Shughur, farmer Yasser H. said he just wants to live in peace, and not as a pawn of political interests. “But Russia does not distinguish between civilians and military.” '