The Awful Choice in Syria

A recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on the unrest across much of the Middle East caused a bit of a stir among regional experts and reporters, and sparked a debate over how to end arguably the most pressing challenge facing the Mideast today: the civil war in Syria.

Kissinger -- who once supposedly quipped, when asked in the 1980s about the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, "pity they both can't lose" -- is quite familiar with the Middle East, and he is well aware of how difficult it is to avoid and end conflicts in the region. According to Kissinger, halting the land grabs and maniacal acts of the so-called Islamic State is paramount, and must take primacy over the ouster of Syria's nominal president, Bashar Assad:

"So long as ISIS survives and remains in control of a geographically defined territory, it will compound all Middle East tensions. Threatening all sides and projecting its goals beyond the region, it freezes existing positions or tempts outside efforts to achieve imperial jihadist designs. The destruction of ISIS is more urgent than the overthrow of Bashar Assad, who has already lost over half of the area he once controlled. Making sure that this territory does not become a permanent terrorist haven must have precedence. The current inconclusive U.S. military effort risks serving as a recruitment vehicle for ISIS as having stood up to American might. "

Although not an especially controversial argument -- few would disagree that a terrorist group that ties its enemies to ancient ruins and detonates them is deserving of anything but absolute defeat -- the future of the Assad government, as well as its share of responsibility for the rise of the Islamic State, has in fact become a subject of debate in foreign policy circles, and will likely continue to be so long as Moscow and Tehran have a role in the Syrian peace process.

Some, however, have argued that policymakers and analysts too often confuse Assad for the lesser of two evils, rather than a symbiont of that very same evil. In so doing, argues Frederic Hof, a former special adviser at the U.S. Department of State, Western leaders run the risk of enabling a regime that no longer possesses the ability to piece Syria back together again. Hof:

"The conflation of regime -- the Assad-Makhluf clan and its inner circle -- with government (including the Syrian Arab Army and Air Force) is understandable, but misleading. The assumption that the disappearance of the former would cause the collapse of the latter is ubiquitous, but entirely unfounded. Indeed, the departure of the regime would open the door to the kinds of internal Syrian discussions about security arrangements, transition, and a united front against [ISIS] that are currently interrupted and preempted with midnight door knocks by regime enforcers."

Hof argues that the "regime-government conflation thesis" has become the prevailing view of the situation in Syria within the Obama administration, and that this theory erroneously lends legitimacy to the binary -- and, according to Hof, false -- choice between ISIS and Assad.

Hof is probably correct about the White House's thinking on Syria, as it becomes more apparent with each passing week that the administration shares Kissinger's sense of urgency on curtailing ISIS's advances.

Western publics, moreover, may find it difficult to stomach a war against a Mideast strongman who poses no obvious or direct threat to them. They just might, however, support a war against a radical jihadist group bent on bringing its remarkably brutal brand of terror to the capitals of Western Europe and the Western Hemisphere.

Around the Region

Why Assad must have Aleppo. Al-Monitor's Mona Alami explains why the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo is so crucial to Syrian President Bashar Assad's war strategy:

"Thousands of Shiite militiamen were deployed on Oct. 19 in the Aleppo region under the command of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, from Iran's elite Quds Force, in an attempt to recapture Aleppo ... The Iraqi Shiite militia, Kataib Hezbollah, has sent approximately 1,000 fighters from Iraq, who are fighting alongside 2,000 members of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

"‘The control of Aleppo is essential to President Assad's national legitimacy. Syria was created after the First World War by the union of the provinces of Aleppo and Damascus. Losing Aleppo would mean for Assad that he is the president of half the country. Strategically, Aleppo is vital to regaining the northwest [the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo] and the control of the Turkish border, directly or via the Kurds,' Syria expert Fabrice Balanche, from the Washington Institute for Near East policy, told Al-Monitor."

Drawn to Yemen. The Associated Press reports that many migrants, most of them from impoverished parts of East Africa, are flocking to war-torn Yemen in search of opportunity:

"Some 70,000 people -- mostly economic migrants from Ethiopia and refugees from Somalia -- have crossed this year, UNHCR said. Spokesman Adrian Edwards noted that Yemen has long been a thoroughfare for travelers seeking to reach oil-rich Gulf states, and many migrants have sought ways around the fighting.

"'Most of the movements to Yemen have shifted to the Arabian Sea coast where people believe the situation is calmer,' UNHCR said. It tallied over 10,000 new arrivals in September -- a 50 percent increase from August -- and over 10,000 so far in October. Yemen now hosts more than 264,000 refugees, some 95 percent of them Somali, UNHCR said."

Houthis are no Hezbollah. Iranian journalist Saeid Jafari compares Yemen's Houthi rebels to Lebanese Hezbollah, and explains why the former could never quite achieve the Iranian client status long held by the latter:

"[E]ven if Yemen did enjoy greater geopolitical significance and proxy conflict with the Saudis did not carry the risk of dangerous escalation, there are fundamental differences between the Houthis and Lebanon's Hezbollah that preclude the formation of another Iranian-backed Hezbollah. From a purely religious point of view, the prevalent form of Shiite Islam in Yemen is not the same as the Shiism endorsed by the Islamic Republic. Iran espouses mainstream Twelver Shiite Islam, which is also prevalent in places like Lebanon and Iraq, while the Houthis are Zaydi Shiites, a minority branch of Shiite Islam that is virtually unique to Yemen. More importantly, while Houthis have a strong fighting spirit and have managed to forge a coalition with elements of the Yemeni army, they simply do not possess the kind of distinguished social and economic status that Hezbollah has in Lebanon. Hezbollah commands authority stemming from history, military considerations and its image among the Lebanese public. The Houthis, on the other hand, not only face great shortfalls in terms of the latter, but are further confronted with the complexities of the tribal fabric of Yemeni society."

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