It is painful simply to read about the horrors that Aleppo is currently enduring. In its death throes, it is reminiscent of Stalingrad, Warsaw, and Manila in World War II or Srebrenica during the Yugoslav Wars of Succession—cities that endured suffering beyond human comprehension. Amid reports of razed buildings and dead bodies in the streets, it is numbing to read that some women have committed suicide rather than be raped by regime troops.
Responsibility for these war crimes lies with three men in particular: Bashar Assad, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, and Vladimir Putin. It is their forces that are targeting civilians and committing crimes against humanity. Yet the outside world also bears moral responsibility for standing by and doing nothing. Apparently “Never Again”—the rallying cry of post-World War II human rights activists–means that never again will we let Nazis murder six million Jews, and nothing more. Moreover, for all of the pious humbug heard from liberal internationalists, the West will not intervene to stop the slaughter in Syria any more than it did in Rwanda or Darfur. The failure to act—motivated, one suspects, by an unwillingness to get U.S. forces more deeply enmeshed in another Middle Eastern conflict or to endanger the nuclear accord with Iran—is a stain on his presidency that Barack Obama will have to live with for the rest of his life. It will also haunt members of his administration, such as UN Ambassador Samantha Power and National Security Adviser Susan Rice, who have been identified with the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine and who have asserted in the past that the U.S. has a national security interest in stopping crimes against humanity. The slaughter in Syria is the worst crime of the 21st century and Obama, effectively, has done nothing to stop it.
There might conceivably be a silver lining in the tragedy of Aleppo if were to actually lead to peace in Syria. Even peace under a dictator like Bashar Assad is preferable, after all, to the horrors of civil war. Prior to 2011, Syria was a despotic but peaceful place. Since then nearly 500,000 people have been killed and 11 million displaced from their homes including nearly five million who have fled the country. Most Syrians, one suspects, would see a return to the pre-2011 status quo as a dream come true. It will, though, remain a dream because the fall of Aleppo will not end the war—not by a long shot.
Five years of fighting has badly depleted the Syrian army. It has all but ceased to exist as an effective force. As a result, Bashar Assad has had to rely on help from Shiite militias, primarily composed of foreigners. Iran is said to have supplied 6,000 to 8,000 Shiite paramilitaries from as far away as Afghanistan and Iraq and as nearby as Lebanon. Russia has supplied copious airpower—indeed it was the Russian intervention beginning a year ago that stopped the erosion of Assad’s support and allowed him to regain lost ground in Aleppo.
Unless the Russians and Iranians step forward to provide a lot more assistance—which seems unlikely—Assad will be hard-pressed to seize control of most of his country. It is obvious how short-handed the regime is by the fact that, even as it was regaining Aleppo, it was once again losing Palmyra to the Islamic State. Assad simply doesn’t have enough forces to police most of the countryside.
This map from the Institute for the Study of War shows just how limited Assad’s control remains. With the fall of Aleppo, he will hold most of the country’s western region which contains its largest urban centers, including Damascus, Homs, and Hama. But Islamic State retains not only Palmyra but also Raqqa and Deir-ez-Zor in the east. The Kurdish militia known as the YPG and Turkish-backed forces control much of the north. The al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly Jabhat Al-Nusra), controls Idlib Province next to Aleppo. The moderate rebels of the Free Syrian Army control Daraa in southern Syria near the border with Jordan.
With Aleppo in his grip, Assad may try to retake some of this territory—Idlib Province would be an obvious next target. But he has made clear that he has little interest in routing Islamic State or the Kurdish militias. So the civil war is destined to continue. Even if President Trump makes good on his campaign rhetoric and cuts off all U.S. support for the rebels—support that was meager to begin with—it is likely that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey will simply step into the vacuum to keep the opposition forces going. Assad’s scorched-earth tactics have made it all but impossible for the Sunni community inside or outside of Syria to reconcile with his regime.
{Originally posted to the Commentary Magazine website}
