Paris terror attacks are a victory for Syria’s Assad
November 16 at 12:13 PM
In the wake of terror attacks that killed at least 129 people in Paris on Friday, French jets
pounded Islamic State positions in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the extremist group's supposed "caliphate." According to French officials, they
hit an Islamic State command center, training camp and ammunition depot, among other targets.
French President François Hollande had deemed the brazen assault on Friday an "act of war," one that would be met with a "ruthless" response by France and its allies.
Now, world leaders are rallying around the need to crush the Islamic State, a militant group that controls large chunks of territory in Iraq and Syria and has the apparent means to inspire sympathizers elsewhere to carry out hideous attacks.
"The terrible events in Paris were obviously a terrible and sickening setback," President Obama
said while attending a Group of 20 summit in Turkey. "It reminds us that it will not be enough to take on [the Islamic State] in Iraq and Syria alone."
Before the Paris attacks captured global headlines and attention, focus had been on international efforts to broker some sort of cease-fire and political transition in Syria, where a grinding five-year-old conflict has displaced half the country's population, led to more than 250,000 deaths and triggered a refugee exodus that has reached Europe's borders.
At the center of these deliberations was the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Hollande was one of the most outspoken Western leaders on the need for Assad to go.
In 2012, France led the way in
officially recognizing the rather feeble Syrian Opposition Coalition as the "real representative" of the Syrian people. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius even
called for Assad's "elimination." And the French lent support to prominent Sunni Arab gulf states, which, to varying extents, were helping fund and equip rebel militant factions fighting in Syria.
But now, as the French military ramps up its efforts against the Islamic State, an Assad foe that is also known as ISIS and ISIL, it seems as if the Syrian government is sitting pretty.
Russia's recent intervention into the conflict on behalf of Assad, a long-standing ally, has buttressed the regime and complicates the efforts of other regional powers to aid its opponents.
"There is no justification for terrorist acts,"
said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, standing next to Secretary of State John F. Kerry at a meeting in Vienna on Saturday. "And no justification for us not doing much more to defeat ISIS and al-Nusra and the like," he added, referring to an al-Qaeda proxy fighting in Syria.
"It doesn't matter if you are for Assad or against him," said Lavrov, who is very much
for Assad. "ISIS is your enemy."
Not surprisingly, the embattled Syrian president took the opportunity over the weekend to crow over the West's supposedly "wrong" policies in the past five years. Assad
suggested that France was experiencing blowback for its decision to support his enemies, saying France's "ignorance of the support of a number of its allies to terrorists are reasons behind the expansion of terrorism."
Of course, Assad's critics counter that his heavy-handed, brutal response to what was initially a mostly peaceful uprising is the root cause of the havoc in Syria; the regime's relentless bombarding of civilian areas with barrel bombs and other indiscriminate weapons of war is as — and probably more — responsible for the ongoing refugee crisis as the depravity of the Islamic State.
"Making sure Assad is not the answer is key to a viable settlement," Andrew Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,
told Bloomberg View, referring to the ongoing discussions about a political solution to the Syrian conflict. "At the end of this process, it has to be a viable agreement that puts a country back together or we are going to have terror attacks in the U.S."
In the present climate, though, this process seems a distant prospect, especially as
calls grow in the West for more concerted action against the Islamic State. At the same time, the regional divisions over Syria's future pose a genuine obstacle to defeating the group.
"A massive ground operation by Western forces, like the one conducted in Afghanistan in 2001, seems out of the question, if only because an international intervention would get mired in endless local conflicts,"
writes French academic and Middle East expert Olivier Roy. "A coordinated offensive by local powers seems unlikely, given the differences among their goals and ulterior motives: It would require striking a political agreement among regional actors, starting with Saudi Arabia and Iran."
That, for the time being, does not seem in the cards, perhaps to the relief of the regime in Damascus, which is grimly clinging on in the midst of the carnage and chaos.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/16/how-the-paris-terror-attacks-are-a-victory-for-syrias-assad/