The Biden administration is scrambling to find ways to engage with groups in Syria and around the Middle East as victorious militias begin shaping the nation’s future after the toppling of President Bashar al-Assad, the longtime autocrat.
The informal diplomacy during this risky period has to take place through channels outside Syria because the United States closed its embassy in Damascus in 2012 and has no known diplomatic personnel there. The State Department maintains a Syria office in its mission in Turkey, whose government has built close ties to various Syrian militias, including the most powerful one, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
Facing a new 11th-hour Middle East crisis before leaving power, the Biden administration hopes to keep the lid on a Pandora’s box of threats that could emerge from a post-Assad Syria. Among them are a resurgence of anti-American terrorists, new dangers for neighboring Israel and a spasm of violence that could drive more refugees from the country.
U.S. officials have been speaking to their counterparts in Turkey in recent days. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken talked with Hakan Fidan, the foreign minister of Turkey and a former intelligence chief, on Saturday as the militias were moving quickly toward Damascus, the capital of Syria.
Mr. Blinken “emphasized the importance of protecting civilians, including members of minority groups, across Syria,” according to a State Department summary of the call.
It was clear Mr. Blinken intended for Mr. Fidan to convey that message to the militias.
While the United States sees Turkey as a potentially helpful partner, given its close rebel ties, Biden officials are also wary of its intentions toward U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters who have battled the Islamic State in northeastern Syria.
On Sunday, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III spoke with his Turkish counterpart, Yasar Guler, in part “to avoid any risk to U.S. forces and partners, and the Defeat-ISIS Mission,” according to a summary of the call from the Pentagon.
The conversation followed Turkish attacks on the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that the group said killed at least 22 of its members. Turkish officials say those Kurdish fighters are aligned with Kurdish nationalist militants inside their country.
The Biden administration is intensifying talks over Syria with other allies in the region.
The White House said on Monday that Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, would fly to Israel this week to speak to officials there about the related situations in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon and Iran.
The rapid fall of the Assad government surprised both Israel and the United States. Israeli troops crossed into Syria over the weekend and quickly bolstered defenses in the Golan Heights, which Israel had annexed from Syria. Israel also conducted airstrikes on chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, Israeli officials said.
The State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, told reporters on Monday that Biden officials “have a number of ways of communicating” with rebel leaders — “sometimes directly with various groups, sometimes with intermediaries, either inside Syria or outside Syria.”
Roger D. Carstens, the U.S. special envoy for hostage affairs, is already in Beirut as part of a renewed effort to win the freedom of Austin Tice, an American journalist who disappeared in Syria in 2012 and whom President Biden believes to be alive.
Mr. Carstens’s mission is “to find out where Austin Tice is and get him home as soon as possible,” Mr. Miller said.
“We have reason to believe that he is alive,” Mr. Miller said, without providing details.
The United States has been wary of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its 42-year-old leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, ever since President Barack Obama designated its earlier incarnation a terrorist group. U.S. officials say they are closely watching to see whether the organization displays traits of a terrorist group or whether it has changed.
“We will be closely monitoring developments as they unfold and engaging with our partners in the region,” Mr. Blinken said in a statement on Sunday. “We have taken note of statements made by rebel leaders in recent days, but as they take on greater responsibility, we will assess not just their words, but their actions.” He specifically cited respect for human rights and the protection of civilian noncombatants.
David Lammy, the foreign secretary of Britain, said the same thing on Monday. At least one British cabinet official has suggested his government could lift its terrorist designation on the group under the right circumstances.
The U.S. process for a full lifting of the same designation could take weeks or months, once a decision is made.
A senior U.S. official said on Sunday that it was too early to discuss whether the United States might remove its sanctions on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. But the official suggested, in an echo of Mr. Blinken’s statement, that the group would have to earn such a reprieve with tangible action.
Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm based in New York, called any softening of the U.S. position toward Mr. Jolani “a huge risk.”
“Jolani has done an amazing job at rehabbing his image; he’s presenting himself as a modern-day revolutionary cut from the same cloth as Che Guevara, and this is resonating in many parts of the Middle East and further abroad,” Mr. Clarke said. “However, under his rule, northwestern Syria has still been a harsh place where critics are silenced, tortured, jailed and disappeared.”
He noted that the United States still maintains a bounty of up to $10 million on Mr. Jolani’s head.
“Assad is a brutal dictator, but that doesn’t make Jolani more palatable,” Mr. Clarke added. “Neither of these individuals should be running Syria, but U.S. policy needs to deal with realities on the ground and not ideal scenarios.”
The U.S. government broke off diplomatic relations with Mr. Assad and his government in 2012, as the uprising that began the previous year spiraled into a devastating civil war.
Robert Ford, the U.S. ambassador then, pushed the Obama administration to designate the Al Nusra Front, the precursor to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a terrorist group because its fighters set off two suicide car bombs in Damascus in December 2011. The explosions, outside the offices of a security agency, killed at least 44 people, most of them civilians, according to the Syrian government.
Mr. Ford said in an interview on Monday that he would now advise the Biden administration to consider taking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham off the terrorist list because it appears to have adopted more moderate ideas and tactics.
Mr. Ford said the group had broken from the Islamic State and Al Qaeda years ago and had fought both organizations. He also said Hayat Tahrir al-Sham tolerated Christian practices and had allowed Christians to rebuild churches in the Idlib region, the part of Syria that the group has controlled and governed in the late stages of the civil war.
Mr. Ford added that the Biden administration should ensure it has channels to the main players, and that it should encourage its partners, notably Kurdish militias and political groups in the northeast, to engage in any emerging political process.
The Pentagon has kept 900 U.S. troops in northeast Syria, where they work with Kurdish fighters in operations against the Islamic State. But the Kurds are trying to fend off attacks by armed groups backed by Turkey.
“Instead of trying to manage a political process or support,” Mr. Ford said, “it’s much better to engage at a bit of a distance and be encouraging.”
Senior Pentagon officials have said U.S. troops will remain in Syria — at least for now — to continue their efforts to prevent the Islamic State from returning.
Daniel Shapiro, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, said at a security conference in Manama, Bahrain, that the Pentagon would push for the Islamic State’s “enduring defeat, to ensure the secure detention of ISIS fighters and the repatriation of displaced persons.”
American warplanes carried out airstrikes on Islamic State sites in central Syria on Sunday, hitting more than 75 targets, U.S. officials said.
“There should be no doubt — we will not allow ISIS to reconstitute and take advantage of the current situation in Syria,” said Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East. “All organizations in Syria should know that we will hold them accountable if they partner with or support ISIS in any way.”
Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Islamic State militants in Syria have occasionally attacked American troops at a handful of bases in the region.
But as the Biden administration focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a potential future conflict with China, the counter-ISIS mission in Syria became something of a back-burner issue.
During his first administration, President-elect Donald J. Trump sought to withdraw American forces from Syria but was talked out of it by senior Pentagon officials, including Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
Source: nytimes.com
