Title: The Future of Northeast Syria
Author: Aaron Stein and Emily Burchfield
Language of Translation: US
Place of publication: Atlantic Council Policy
Publisher: Atlantic Council Policy
Release date: 2019
The future of northeast Syria is unsettled after eight years of civil war and the US intervention to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). It also faces the various divergent interests of powerful external actors, including Russia and Turkey. In mid-April 2019, the Atlantic Council, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, and the Foreign Policy Research Institute convened a group of scholars, intermediaries, and civil-society members from the United States, Europe, and the Middle East to discuss Syria’s northeast at the granular level. The group focused on the building of local security and governance infrastructure, how these efforts interact with the interests of outside parties, and whether a broader power-sharing arrangement can be reached to manage, or help end, the conflict. Over the course of the two-day dialogue, a general consensus emerged that any solution in Syria will require a clear US position on the future of Syria and what Washington is prepared to accept in any post-conflict scenario. The same is true for Russia, the second-most-powerful external actor involved in the conflict, and the guarantor of security, locally and internationally, for the Bashar al-Assad government in Damascus. A third actor, Turkey, has also managed to carve out a contiguous zone of control, stretching roughly from just west of the Euphrates river to a semicircular front line just north of Hama, which is patrolled by Russian and Turkish troops.
The political and military dynamics in Syria are playing out at two different levels, with the non-state, Kurdish majority Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) engaged in a complex set of negotiations with state-level actors, including the Syrian regime, Russia, the United States, and Turkey. In parallel, these state actors are involved with different—and often competing—local actors, each with their own demands for post-conflict governance in Syria. The conference dialogue focused on how the Syrian Kurds and their Arab allies see local security, and the key challenges that stem from non-state governance in a large, ethnically mixed area under threat from hostile outside powers.
The conference’s first session focused on the role of outside actors in shaping local governance and security institutions in the northeast, and how the security and political interests of outside actors differ. Following this panel, the participants discussed the SDF and the development of civilian governance in Syria’s northeast. The discussion focused on intra-ethnic political differences, and the interplay between Kurdish governance and Arab tribal dynamics in parts of the northeast. The third session focused on the main militia in the area, the Syrian Democratic Forces, and its most important member, the Kurdish-majority People’s Protection Units (YPG). The session focused on tensions within the security apparatus, with a particular focus on the relationship between Arab and Kurdish militias, amidst the persistent threat of an insurgent ISIS still active inside Syria. The fourth and fifth sessions switched gears, as participants were asked to think about how to implement a permanent ceasefire, and how any such effort could reconcile the interests of both outside actors and locals. A summarized report of the conference follows (see appendix).
Findings and Recommendations
The Syrian conflict continues, with the regime’s military operations focused near the city of Hama and along the southern edge of a deconfliction zone around Idlib jointly monitored by Turkey and Russia. The start of the renewed offensive in the northwest, led by the regime and Russia, just a few days after this conference concluded, underscores three interrelated conclusions agreed upon by the conference participants. First, the Assad regime and Russia remain committed to retaking all of Syria, and are willing to use overwhelming force to do so. Second, the role of outside actors—in this case, Russia and Turkey—is an important component, and a key enabler of regime violence. Third, the prospects for a negotiated settlement remain elusive, owing to an intractable regime position on rebel capitulation and, conversely, rebel refusal to succumb to regime rule. Further still, the major powers in the conflict—Russia and the United States—remain at odds over key aspects of any future peace arrangement, owing to extreme differences of opinion over the role of Iran in a post-conflict Syria and the future of Bashar al-Assad. Two lesser powers, Iran and Turkey, also diverge over the future of the armed opposition and how to structure a more formalized peace process. Finally, Ankara remains overtly hostile to the SDF, owing to internal security threats from the SDF’s parent organization, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
This messy set of contradicting policy goals and interests has contributed to an ossified process, one beset by the unwillingness of any actor to compromise on core objectives. In the northeast, specifically, SDF now faces very real challenges. One such challenge is governance in Arab areas such as Deir Ezzor, where the SDF is viewed as an external force led by Kurds and intent on changing social mores and norms. As a result of its territorial expansion, the SDF has also grown in numbers, which has led to more people involved in governance, increasing the amount of corruption in governed territory. This feeds local concerns that the group cannot maintain security in far-flung areas. Beyond these micro concerns, the entirety of the SDF project depends on the US security guarantee to protect the border from Turkish military intervention, and from the regime and its allies along the Euphrates river to the south.
Clearly, there is no easy solution to the Syrian conflict. Nor is there a perfect plan to deal with the northeast. The discussions at this conference reinforced this reality, and participants diverged over potential policy recommendations. Faced with bad options, the international community should consider the least-bad ones. In the opinion of the authors, that means the following.
The two largest powers involved in Syria, the United States and Russia, should establish an overt and iterative forum for dialogue about the conflict. This bilateral forum would be used to better understand the positions of each government, with talks also used as building blocks for a joint mechanism to try winding down the conflict.
As an outgrowth of this bilateral track, each side would be entrusted to work through its allies and partners (including Iran, Turkey, and the regime on the Russian side, and the SDF on the US side) regarding the status of the talks, as well as ways to integrate the two rival peace processes now based in Sochi and Geneva.
In the northeast, the United States should not completely withdraw troops, unless it receives assurances from Russia that it and its client, the Assad regime, will not use force to take back territory. Doing so will require US concessions to the Russian side, ranging from an indirect security guarantee for the Assad regime to the potential lifting of some Syria-related US sanctions.
Further scholarship is needed on the security implications of foreign ISIS fighters held by the SDF in northeast Syria, and the prospects for their repatriation. The conference’s discussions touched on this issue, which compounds the SDF’s capacity problems and will undoubtedly have a bearing on the probability of ISIS’s resurgence, but it was not a focus. Given the ramifications for US, European, and regional security, the US government should facilitate closer study of this dilemma.
A mechanism is needed to bring the Syrian regime into compliance with its commitment to disarm under the terms of the Chemical Weapons Convention, along with real punishment mechanisms for the regime’s violations (with Russian support) of its nonproliferation commitments. This may mean continued, targeted sanctions not included in any potential sanctions relief. [1]