Executive Summary

To download the full paper please click here.

The post Reconstruction of Cultural Heritage in Aleppo, Syria Reviewed: a critical exploration of current endeavors and practices appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

The post The Barriers and Limitations of the Modern Approach to Recognizing Genocide in Syria: A Case Study of the Sieges of Eastern Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

Syrian heritage has suffered, as the Syrian people have suffered considerable damage during the conflict which began in 2011. Unfortunately, battles were severe in many of Syria’s archaeological sites, including those inscribed on the World Heritage list such as Aleppo, Palmyra and Bosra (Abdulkarim 2013). That has led to the destruction and loss of a part of Syria’s heritage, which is important not only to the history of the region, but also for the history of humanity.

Although the primary reason for the destruction of Syria’s cultural heritage is years of conflict, other pre-war factors also played a role. For instance, one main factor is the inability of the heritage protection authorities, both national and international, to increase knowledge among the Syrian community of the importance of their heritage. Raising awareness in young people is key because they will have the ability to protect their heritage now and in the future (Kanjou 2014).

Now, after years of war large sections of Syrian heritage are under threat. There are some heavily damaged sites, which cannot be restored and are lost forever. Illegal excavation on archaeological sites is prevalent and various important objects were stolen, thereby losing their provenance and context. Such abuses are ongoing, and the level of destruction is increasing in its severity. The conflict also stopped almost all of the archaeological projects in Syria. The current situation led to the emigration of Syrian archaeologists. International archaeologists are unable to continue their investigations on archaeological sites, but they have also lost the chance to study material excavated from these sites. They have moved their research fields from Syria to other accessible areas such as Caucasian countries, Turkey, Jordan, Iraqi Kurdistan, and the Gulf countries. However, these peripheral countries may not provide extensive cultural assets found in Syria and Mesopotamia.

As stated previously, the Syrian community lacks knowledge and resources to save its own archaeological property. This has occurred for a number of reasons, including a lack of cooperation from local and international authorities. Before the conflict there was a tendency to involve the local community in the management and development of archaeological sites through local development projects. However, the war disrupted all of these projects, and the community has become less aware and less knowledgeable about their heritage. In addition, disorder, poverty and insecurity have encouraged international trafficking in Syrian antiquities.

To download the full paper please click here.

The post The Role of Local Community in the Reconstruction of Syrian Cultural Heritage appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

Millennia-old Oasis

Around 2000 BC, in the middle of a vast arid desert, an area of lush vegetation sprang up by the water of Afqa Spring. Gradually, the spring created an oasis, which became a place to rest between Iraq and Syria and a station for convoys. It was this fertile green area in an arid region that attracted people to live there for over 4000 years and build one of the greatest civilisations that existed during the Roman Empire. Palmyra’s very name comes from the abundant palm trees that the oasis encouraged. The oasis of Palmyra is integral to the archaeological site, and is an area of natural heritage, surrounding an area of cultural heritage. UNESCO added the whole site to the World Heritage List in 1980.

Photo by Haian Dukhan, 2011.

Al-Tadamera and the Oasis

To this day, the residents of Palmyra all own gardens in the millennia-old oasis that surrounds the ruins. The oasis was intensively planted by al-Tadamera with palm, olive, and pomegranate trees. While the al-Tadamera worked continuously to preserve this amazingly green spot in the desert, the oasis, in return, gave them some of its bounty and provided them with a place for recreation and relaxation. The oasis has always had a mystical hold on their collective imagination, conjuring up visions of the ancestors who had lived there and built the mud brick walls that separated the gardens from each other. One of my early memories of the oasis was seeing my late grandfather reconstruct the fallen mud brick wall of his garden, helped by my father and my uncles.

Photo by Haian Dukhan, 2011.

On the extremely hot summer days of Palmyra, the oasis felt like an incredible gift for its people. When we arrived at the oasis, thirsty and tired after walking and cycling from the city during the summer, we found the utmost happiness by swimming in its water irrigation canals, listening to the rustling sound of wind through palm fronds and smelling moisture in the air and lush plant life supported by water. We would then usually climb the high palm trees to cut a thread from a cluster of sweet, succulent, and unbelievably delicious dates.

The oasis is also a vital part of the local economy, offering crucial support for the livelihoods of al-Tadamera. Olives, pomegranates, and dates would be harvested by the locals seasonally and then shipped to the markets inside or outside Tadmor and then on to Homs and Damascus. Families would often work collectively during the harvests. Olive trees have always held a particularly special place in al-Tadamera’s hearts. When the olive harvesting began, we used to join our cousins in assisting. We would put a blanket under the tree and pick up every single olive by hand. When we finished picking olives from the lower branches, our uncles would climb a ladder to reach the olives in the upper boughs. Thinking that we were picking olives from the same trees that our great ancestors had picked from over the millennia, inspired awe in us.

Haian Dukhan in his family’s garden, 2011.

The Oasis during the uprising and the civil war

During the uprising, both the regime and the opposition tried to highlight their connection to the archaeological site and the oasis. The protesters continuously tried to reach the archaeological site to protest there. In January 2012, many protesters managed to reach the Arch of Triumph (later destroyed by ISIS) and raise the flag of the revolution next to it. The regime, in its turn, organised many pro-government protests that marched towards the archaeological site where the protesters chanted pro-Bashar al-Assad slogans. As the uprising became militarised, the regime pushed more than 40 tanks and hundreds of soldiers to Palmyra in 2012 to drive the rebels outside the city. The rebels withdrew from the city and took refuge in the Oasis of Palmyra, calling themselves “Palmyra Oasis Revolutionaries”. Palmyra Oasis is a very dense area with lots of trees and very narrow lanes, so it was difficult for the regime’s militias to fight inside it. The regime continued shelling the oasis for many months, which led to the outbreak of large fires. This prevented the local people from tending their gardens, as it was too dangerous for them to do so. Eventually, the rebels surrendered and left the oasis in 2013, but many people continued to cut down trees for firewood because of increased fuel prices and its rarity due to the war condition.

Things remained relatively stable for a few years until the emergence of ISIS, which captured the city twice, leading to huge battles with the Syrian regime that destroyed both the ancient and the modern city. Most of the civilians who were displaced have not managed to return, as they feared reprisals from the Syrian regime’s militias and the continued presence of ISIS militants in the surrounding desert. During this period, none of the locals have been able to properly cultivate their gardens or look after the trees. On the 25^th of May, al-Tadamera woke up to the tragic news of a mass fire erupting in their oasis, exterminating nearly 200 hectares of the historic palm and olive trees in the western part of the oasis. The displaced locals shared photos and videos of fire burning the oasis and commented with great sorrow that the last element of the beautiful desert trilogy of Palmyra has not managed to survive the tragedy of the Syrian Civil War.

Without the oasis, the archaeological site would appear as having no soul. Photo source: Bachar Khleif, uploaded to Facebook on 27 May, 2020.

Haian Dukhan is a Syrian British academic and the author of “State and Tribes in Syria: Informal Alliances and Conflict Patterns” (Routledge, 2019).

Hasan Ali is an archaeologist from Palmyra. He worked for the DGAM, at the Palmyra Museum for many years. He is currently working as an Associate Researcher at the DAI in Istanbul.

The post A Trilogy of Tragedy: The Burning of Palmyra Oasis appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

Every year, Eid brings a melancholic set of memories. I remember the family gatherings back home in Syria, the great food, new clothes, gifts and toys. As years passed by, I never got used to being indefinitely exiled. Each year brings its own new set of memories. Life goes on. This year, however, I have found myself marking a milestone that I never wanted to reach in the first place. It is now a decade since I left Syria. It was the first morning after Eid in 2010 that I closed the door to my room for the last time and left my home.

A lot has happened since then. It has been more than nine years since the onset of Syria’s civil war. More than half a million people have been killed, and nearly half of all Syrians are internally displaced or have sought refuge abroad. Those who remain must endure terrible living conditions, repression in regime-held areas, as well as daily violence. Those who have escaped have to live with the fact that they may never be able to come home again.

I was living abroad before the conflict started. My parents had a very tough time making a good living as teachers in Syria. This left them with little choice but to seek employment elsewhere.

In 1998, my father was offered work at a school in Riyadh. He took the job and travelled there, forced to leave us behind. Luckily, his financial situation improved and my family was able to move to Saudi Arabia in the autumn of 2003.

Hama, 1998, photo courtesy of Pilar Torres

After that, we started spending our summer vacations in Syria. Every year, I would essentially leave my life in Riyadh behind and go live a new one for a couple of months in my home town of Hama.
During that time, I did not have a phone, access to the internet or any connection with my school friends in Saudi Arabia. Honestly, during those first years abroad, it became quite hard to go back home. It even felt like a chore.

The holidays started to become more and more exciting as I grew up. By the time of my last visit in 2010, I was almost 17 and living my best life. That year was wonderful. It was the year of the World Cup in South Africa and people were out celebrating in cafes all day.

Although Hama is quite small, I came to realise there is a lot to see and explore. My brother and I developed a serious obsession for collecting DVDs and records. We walked all over the city and looked for interesting material in the least expected places. That new passion introduced us to a unique side of our city. The enjoyment I got from going on the hunt for Hama’s hidden gems was like nothing I had ever experienced before.

Hama, 2010, photo courtesy of Hans Christian

To this day, these are some of the things I am most grateful for during my last summer in Syria; 2010 was also the year when I became genuinely interested in my local history.

I had been passing by all those beautiful water wheels and old buildings for years without looking twice – probably because I was only a child, but still, we really do take things for granted sometimes. I know I did and I regret it. But who would have thought that a decade could pass by without being able to go back home? Certainly not my 17-year-old self.

To read the rest of the story as published on The National, click here

The post It Has Been a Decade Since I Celebrated Eid in my Syrian Hometown of Hama appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

The Lemkin Reunion, 6th Annual Meeting

Shattuck Center, School for Public Policy, Central European University Budapest

July 1-3, 2020

Many expected that the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism would lead to the proliferation of liberal democracy and usher in an age of global cooperation on the prevention of atrocities and strengthening rule of law. Thirty years on, however, that idealistic hope has all but vanished amidst a resurgence of realpolitik embodied in the so-called “transactional” approach to foreign policy. Under transactionalism, nations prefer to pursue bilateral relationships based purely upon power and narrowly defined national interests. This approach, however, complicates consensus building through diplomacy around shared values and common interests that strengthen the international system. A disturbing consequence of a system focused on transactional relationships is how it struggles to hold nations accountable in any meaningful way for aggression, atrocities, and eroding the rule of law.

In the past decade alone, the world has been tested by serious breaches of international norms and standards. These have included alleged acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Syria and Myanmar, unprovoked military aggression by Russia in Ukraine, mass persecution of minorities in China, and systematic incarceration of journalists and academics in China, Turkey, and elsewhere. Nationalist quasi-autocratic leaders in EU Member States have assaulted and rolled back democratic norms and the rule of law, while the Philippines’ president has institutionalized state-orchestrated violent oppression. Today, the bar to being considered an outcast nation is exceedingly high. Although the above examples have prompted condemnation, and in some cases, sanctions, so far, the international community has failed to take concerted action to stop or punish behavior that so clearly breaches international principles. The increasingly “transactional” nature of the international system has allowed most offenders to maintain and continue to benefit from “business-as-usual” trade and diplomatic relations across the community of nations.

Enter the Coronavirus: Distraction and Pretext

As if the above concerns were not enough, the unfolding worldwide health and economic crisis precipitated by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has injected a massive, unprecedented challenge into the already stressed international system. The justifiably urgent global focus on combatting the pandemic has distracted the world’s attention from the myriad of crises that had largely gone unresolved. As nations struggle to protect the health of their citizens and their economies, preventing mass atrocities, holding perpetrators accountable, and protecting the rule of law have become even less of a priority. Moreover, some leaders have seized upon the colossal challenge of COVID-19 as a pretext to further erode democracy and the rule of law in the name of combatting the pandemic. Against this backdrop, the transactional trend could further challenge the international order by inhibiting the cooperation and consensus building this crisis requires and diminishing the prospect of accountability for atrocities and abuses, both predating and in the wake of the current crisis.

The 6th Lemkin Reunion will examine these trends and discuss their implications for the future of the international system. While COVID-19 will influence most policy decisions for the foreseeable future, its appearance has in no way diminished the magnitude or importance of the challenges that predated it.

A link to the event schedule and additional information on the program will be posted in the near future. Please check this site again for more details. If you would like to be notified by email when more information is available, please send an email with the subject: “Lemkin 2020” to ccnr@ceu.edu. We hope you can join us for this interesting and informative event.

The post Rescheduled: The 6th Lemkin Reunion appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

Most Medical Facility Attacks Attributed to Assad Regime and Russia

While, hospitals have been damaged by virtually all parties since the Syrian conflict began in 2011, credible research attributes 90 percent of the attacks to the Syrian government and its allies.  Hospital bombings by pro-government forces have become so common that the topic “Russian-Syrian Hospital Bombing Campaign” has its own Wikipedia page.  Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), which has painstakingly mapped hospital attacks throughout the conflict, documented 583 attacks on at least 350 separate medical facilities between March 2011 and September 2019, killing 912 medical personnel.  PHR found 525 of the attacks to have been perpetrated by Syrian government forces (301) or the Russian military (224).  PHR’s research attributed 34 attacks to various non-state groups, including ten by ISIS, three by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and 13 by unidentified antigovernment forces.  PHR also found international coalition forces responsible the bombing of four health facilities.  PHR could not definitively assign blame for 20 attacks.

One Region Endures 62 Hospital Attacks in Six Months During Assad-backed Offensive

Northwest Syria’s Idlib Province, one of the last rebel-held areas of the country, has spent most of 2019 under direct assault from Syrian government and Russian forces.  In a grinding offensive that began in April, pro-Syrian government forces have relentlessly bombarded Idlib almost daily through artillery shelling and aerial bombing, and little by little, are expanding the territory they control.  According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), health facilities in Idlib were bombed 61 times between April 29 and November 6, 2019, including the May 5-6 and November 6 attacks by the Russian Air Force.  Besides the high profile July and August attacks mentioned in the first paragraph, a November 20 missile attack on a displaced persons camp in Qah, Idlib province, killed 12 people and damaged a maternity hospital.  According to OHCHR, 1,089 civilians were killed in northwest Syria (Idlib and Hama provinces) between April 19 and August 29 of this year.

2016 Report: Hospitals So Likely to be Attacked That Militants Avoid Locating Near Them

By targeting hospitals in Idlib, the Assad regime is adhering to the strategy that has yielded results in previous campaigns, for example in Aleppo.  As with earlier attacks, there is scant evidence that the facilities bombed by the regime constitute legitimate military targets.  A November 2016 appeal by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) called a (any) hospital in Aleppo the “most dangerous place in the world,” noting that at the time a hospital in Syria was attacked every 17 hours with a health worker killed every 63 hours.

Doctors Without Borders’ (MSF) analysis of the April 2016 bombing of Aleppo’s Al Quds hospital that killed at least 55 noted that the attack appeared timed to maximize casualties as the hospital was treating more patients than usual following a series of earlier bombings.  The destructive attack closed the hospital for 20 days, and even when it did reopen, the damage it sustained combined with staff it lost to the attack prevented it from returning to anywhere near full capacity.  MSF noted that despite being located in a rebel-held area, Al Quds and other Aleppo hospitals not only had demonstrated their independence, but had been targeted violently at times by anti-regime militants.  According to MSF, the lone armed group that had occupied a building 500 meters from the hospital in 2015 “left the area out of concern for its vulnerability to attack because of its proximity to Al Quds hospital and, paradoxically, not the other way around.”  The report continued, “…hospital staff reported that it is common practice for armed groups not to occupy buildings close to hospitals because they expect to experience collateral damage from attacks.”  MSF added that civilians frequently pressured medical facilities to not locate within residential areas specifically due to fears of attacks.

When the “Do Not Bomb” List Fails to Protect Facilities

As the New York Times reported, the four hospitals bombed on May 5 and 6 this year appeared on a deconfliction list provided by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) to all parties in the conflict (Syrian government, Russia, opposition, coalition) for the express purpose of preventing attacks on medical facilities.  Noting in May that at least six Idlib hospitals on the list had been bombed this year, the director of Idlib’s health directorate characterized the attacks as “systemic.”  Meanwhile, Russia, now proven to be a primary perpetrator of the attacks, is using its position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council to limit the scope of UN investigations into the bombings, block the release of the investigation’s findings, and discredit results as disinformation.  While well intentioned, OCHA’s deconfliction list appears to have been an abject failure that may have unintentially made the hospitals more vulnerable.

Indiscriminate Violence and Deliberate Denial of Safety, Security, and Infrastructure by Design

Even when executed with exacting precision so as to minimize noncombatant casualties, war unleashes destructive, deadly consequences on civilians.  Since the beginning of this nearly nine-year conflict, it has been clear that the Syrian government is taking no such precautions.  It stretches credulity to suggest that the Assad regime and its allies’ 525 attacks on health facilities and hundreds more against other civilian targets and population centers throughout the conflict could be anything besides a coordinated and calculated strategy.

A 2019 Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) report by Tobias Schneider and Teresa Lütkefend dubbed the regime’s use of indiscriminate violence against rebel strongholds, the “Damascus School of Counterinsurgency.”  Like the regime’s repeated use of chemical weapons, the gratuitous bombing of medical facilities and other civilian targets aims to inflict such pain and fear on inhabitants of rebel-held areas that they lose the will to resist, reject the rule of rebel authorities, and in many cases, flee the area altogether.  Unlike chemical weapons attacks that account for a fraction of the deaths caused by conventional weapons, deliberate conventional attacks on civilians, after nearly nine years, no longer spark anything beyond perfunctory condemnation and admonition.

Will “Normalization” of the Assad Government Mean It Escapes Accountability, Consequences?

With the Assad regime’s hold over Syria appearing to stabilize, and its eventual control of current rebel-held territories looking increasingly likely, some nations are inching toward normalizing relations, at least to some extent.  At the same time, documentary evidence continues to dispel any notion that the regime’s Russia-abetted, violent “collective punishment” of civilians for the “crime” of residing in rebel-held territory, so far resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions displaced, is anything but a deliberate strategy.  The fact that the regime has faced few tangible consequences for this approach is likely as responsible for the strategy’s continuation as its military effectiveness.

While few objective observers have ever disputed that the Syrian government and Russia were purposely targeting civilians, hard evidence increasingly removes any doubt.  Intentionally targeting and terrorizing civilians, be it with chemical or conventional weapons, and the targeting of medical facilities are fundamental breaches of the rules of war.  Winning the war or having a Security Council permanent member as an accomplice should not shield the perpetrator from accountability for such crimes.

The post Absent Consequences, Deliberate Bombing of Hospitals and Civilian Areas in Syria Unlikely to Subside appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

The post Despite UN Warning, Russia Again Bombs Kafer Nabl Hospital appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

The New York Times piece was based on multiple pieces of evidence:  a collection of Russian Air Force audio recordings obtained by The Times, social media posts from Syria on the day of the bombings, interviews with eyewitnesses, and records of humanitarian organizations supporting the four hospitals.  What is striking in the report is the analysis of the evidence and its use of multiple sources to confirm who perpetrated the bombing, as well as how plainly the evidence is laid out both in the written report and the accompanying video about the bombing of hospitals in northern Syria in May 2019.

This report immediately reminded me of the area where I lived most of my life.  Most of these neighborhoods have become blocks of ruin, and practically devoid of inhabitants as a result of the continuous shelling of Idlib, which displaced around 450,000 people between April and July 2019, according to MSF.  Hundreds of thousands of displaced people live in appalling and unhealthy conditions.  Many shelters, overcrowded and lacking sufficient infrastructure, have become a breeding ground for diseases.  The situation has been made worse by the fact that most of the region’s health and civil defense infrastructure has been taken out of service by regime forces’ relentless attacks. Within half a day or less between May 5 and 6, 2019, bomb attacks took four hospitals out of service. The apparent deliberate targeting of Hospitals by the Assad regime and Russia resulted in a vast shortage of emergency medical care at a very critical time, intensifying the urgent need for immediate aid.

The four sequential precision strikes on May 5 and 6 targeted the Kafr-Nabl Surgical Hospital, killing one person and forcing the staff to evacuate.  Observers recorded video of a Russian aircraft flying in the area at the time of the strike, while another recording from the Russian Air Force, a pilot reported that he had “carried out” his target at 5:30 pm, the same time as the raid.  The pilot then reported three subsequent bombings about five minutes apart, which corresponds with the chronology recalled by a doctor present in the hospital during the attacks.

While watching the video accompanying the report, my feelings quickly shifted between annoyance, sadness, and anxiety.  The mixture of these emotions is hard to describe as I watched all those towns become piles of rubble stained with the blood of their inhabitants.  These barbaric bombing campaigns have forced people to move directly and indiscriminately, including my family, my relatives, the people of my town, my neighbors, and inhabitants of all the neighboring villages; all have been dispersed to random places, in search of safety and shelter.

The four bombed hospitals served civilian residents and were located far from any military positions, but that was not sufficient to save them from the regime’s targeting. In the video report, I have recognized the voice of a witness, a doctor describing some of what he experienced that corresponded with what the pilots’ said in the Russian Air Force recordings. The doctor was my high school classmate who chose not emigrate because of the shortage of doctors. He wanted to serve the people even if could it cost him his life.

The report clearly documents crimes committed against civilian noncombatants. The moment I finished reading the report, I instinctively thought it provided a definitive guide to condemning Russia and the Assad regime.  But then I remembered that while there are already mounds concrete evidence, thus far nothing has been done to permanently stop the crimes and brutal bombardment.  International silence and willful ignorance of the humanitarian catastrophe resulting from the continued indiscriminate targeting of inhabitants in northern Syria has become the status quo.

While the world continues to ignore the tragedy of four million people under siege in Idlib, the Turkish-led operation “Peace Spring” has sparked demonstrations across Europe and elsewhere and international condemnation.  The operation, which has targeted the Kurd-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the area between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, has caused the death and injury of hundreds of civilians and the displaced as many as 300,000 residents whose ability to return remains in doubt.  The widespread solidarity and renewed attention proves that many countries and human rights organizations are not ignoring what is happening in Syria and should be viewed as a positive show of support.

I am nonetheless forced to ask myself about the contradiction between recent outrage over the Turkish operation and the lack of outrage and attention to the ongoing plight of Syrian civilians indiscriminately targeted by the regime and its allies.  While nations, the press, and social media are buzzing about operation “Peace Spring” and the resultant crisis in Syria’s (north) east, heavy shelling, sometimes augmented by air raids in the southern countryside of Idlib have occurred daily for more than half a year.  Perhaps in the international community undervalues the displaced people in Idlib or has simply tired of hearing about them. Sadly, while Peace Spring has grabbed the international spotlight over the past several weeks, the regime’s shelling and bombing of Idlib has intensified, increasing number of victims killed, injured, or displaced.

The outcome of Peace Spring is as yet unknown, but the consequences thus far are tragic and worthy of the international outcry and condemnation. Still, I must ask: why was six months of continuous shelling that killed dozens and forced hundreds of thousands into homelessness not sufficient to spark outrage?  Was it not enough to see civilians in Idlib facing their unknown fate alone, in silence, and in front of the gaze of the whole world?  Or, after eight years, had the world simply lost interest in the Syrian conflict?

The post While Turkish Incursion Sparks Broad Condemnation, Destruction of Four Hospitals in 12 Hours Met with Silence appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

A Marriage of Convenience, Survival, and Concession

Faced with Turkey’s overwhelming military advantage, the SDF agreed on October 13 to a Russian-brokered security arrangement with the Syrian government under which Syrian army units together with Russian forces and military contractors are deploying to SDF-administered territory in Northern Syria, ostensibly to help the SDF hold off Turkish and SNA forces.  SDF leader General Mazloum Abdi said that while he did not trust the regime of Bashar al-Assad, he believed aligning with the Syrian government and Russia would save lives in the short term and characterized the decision as choosing compromise over genocide.  With the return of its forces to the country’s Northeastern region, the regime of Bashar al-Assad has retaken control (or at least share of control) of up to a third of Syrian territory that it had not held for seven years.  By October 14, forces loyal to the Assad regime had already taken up positions throughout the North, and for the most part, have avoided confrontation with Turkey.

Autonomy Lost

Staring down the Turkish onslaught and no longer able to count on American support, the SDF held few bargaining chips and likely conceded a lot to the Syrian government in exchange for security.  While the Assad regime will retake huge swaths of territory, including several rich in oil and gas, without having to wage a costly military campaign, the SDF and Kurds have likely sacrificed the autonomy that, just weeks ago, showed the promise of the SDF region developing into Syria’s most secure, diverse, and tolerant.  Although the Assad regime may allow some degree of cultural autonomy and achieving complete administrative control could take time, it is unlikely to tolerate self-government in the long run.

Syrian Government Forces Unlikely to Directly Engage with Turkey or Turkish-backed Rebels

While some have suggested the SDF-Assad deal could put Syrian government forces on a collision course with the Turkish military and the SNA, the scenario seems unlikely for a number of reasons.  First of all, Russia is likely to use its close relations with both the Syrian government and Turkey to coordinate between the two sides to broker deals that avoid direct military engagement.  For example, in December 2016, Russia coordinated a ceasefire that returned control of eastern Aleppo to the Assad regime.  The deal also evicted the remaining 34,000 residents (including activists, city council members, rebels, and their families) from the city.  Second, despite being on opposing sides during several previous Turkish military operations, the regime and Turkish-backed forces have largely avoided directly engaging one another with a few notable exceptions.  Despite extensively bombing Idlib since late 2011, Syrian government attacks never targeted the Turkish-trained and supported rebels installed following Turkey’s operations “Euphrates Shield” and “Olive Branch.”  Similarly, the Assad regime similarly avoided engaging Turkish-backed rebel units in Jarablus, al-Bab, and Marea.  In Idlib, Russia facilitated de-escalation zones agreed upon by Turkey and the Syrian government in which both sides had observation points near the front lines.  When the regime bombed and subsequently advanced to several towns in the region that fell within Turkey’s line of observation, Turkey put up little resistance.  Third, during the current operation, Turkey has conspicuously avoided entering several areas in which the Assad regime had a presence, for example Qamishli, despite its border location within Turkey’s so-called “safe zone.”  Furthermore, the pockets of regime forces in the north, for example in Hasakah and Tell Rifaat (as well as Qamishli) have demonstrated little concern over the Turkish operation, suggesting they do not believe they will be targeted.

One recent example of Russian-Turkish de-escalation occurred in the contested town of Manbij.  On October 14, Manbij appeared to be facing a direct Turkish attack.  By October 15, however, the Syrian army, had taken control of the town with Russian and Syrian aircraft controlling the sky amid reports that Russian jets fired upon Turkish-backed rebels in the area.  By October 16, Russia and Turkey were reported to have negotiated a buffer between Syrian and Turkish-backed forces, while the Russian military took over the former U.S. military outpost in Manbij.

A Pre-baked Deal?

Moscow’s close relations with both Damascus and Ankara hold out at least the possibility that the three sides anticipated precisely the current scenario.  While the specifics of the Assad-SDF agreement remain largely unknown, at least one report suggests a significant level of detail.  Given that the U.S. withdrawal and Turkish operation were floated in December 2018, it is not inconceivable that the deal developed over the long term as opposed to hastily over a weekend.

Inhabitants Likely to Lose the Most

As SDF’s General Mazloum Abdi stated, the SDF-Syria-Russia agreement, by reducing the level of armed conflict, could prevent significant loss of life in the conflict.  In the near term, it also may reduce the prospect of further mass displacement of Northern Syrian residents and the humanitarian disaster typically associated with such an upheaval.  Nonetheless, the return of the Assad regime to Northern Syria and the likelihood that at least some of regions will switch from SDF control to that of the Turkish-backed SNA are certain to result in more displacement.  Kurds and others associated with the SDF would be prime targets for persecution and reprisals in SNA-held areas, while those associated with the Americans or implicated in any rebel or anti-Assad activity as well as activists and politicians have strong reasons to fear the regime’s return to control of the region.  While it could take time for the Syrian government to fully assert its administrative hand, once it does, there is no reason to expect its method of governance to differ from the mass repression and violence it employs elsewhere in Syria and has wantonly used against all opponents since the uprising began in 2011.

The post Unintended Consequence? Turkish Operation Poised to Return Control of Northern Syria to Assad appeared first on The Aleppo Project.