After dozens of Turkish soldiers were killed by Syrian forces in a late-February airstrike near Idlib, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned the attack. Pompeo said he was looking for ways the United States can aid Turkey. It may have sounded like a simple statement on behalf of a NATO ally, but Pompeo’s remark risked convincing the Turks that the Trump administration welcomes Turkish military engagement in the conflict. To this we must add the news that the United States is considering supplying Ankara with Patriot missiles for use against Syria.
This is exactly what the United States must avoid. Syria’s civil war has reached the point where a Syrian regime victory is less costly to U.S. security and humanitarian objectives than a grinding, deadly, endless battle between armed factions supporting or opposing the regime of Bashar al Assad. Now that the Syrian dictator has consolidated control over Aleppo province, only one major rebel holdout remains on the battlefield.
Idlib is a province in Syria’s northwest, hugging the Turkish border. Thousands of opposition fighters are entrenched there, many of them members of the al Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. They are no match for the Syrian and Russian warplanes that have been pounding the area in a new offensive since late last year. Turkish soldiers stationed in the province are increasingly vulnerable to the Syrian regime’s operations, as shown in the February airstrike. Approximately 900,000 civilians have fled since December, and U.N. human rights officials are calling the crisis “overwhelming.” Assad and his allies in Moscow and Tehran are clearing Idlib in much the same way as they have cleared opposition fighters from other parts of Syria in nine years of war: by launching an indiscriminate air campaign and targeting any facility that would complicate Damascus’s push for victory.
As bad as the battle for Idlib is today, the violence and human suffering will likely get even worse if Turkey continues to support opposition forces who don’t have the power to resist the regime’s offensive over the long term. As one of Ankara’s NATO allies, the United States should stop encouraging the Turks to hold out and instead tell them the cold, hard truth: There is no sense prolonging the war when an Assad victory is all but assured.
This is in no way an endorsement of Assad, who by all available markers has distinguished himself as the world’s worst war criminal. The fact that hundreds of thousands of Syrians, many of whom are women and children, would rather leave their homes and endure the elements than stay put is a poignant illustration of how brutal the Syrian dictator’s prosecution of the war has been. So many bombs have been dropped on hospitals, clinics and homes over so many years that the Syrian and Russian air forces have almost normalized the tactic.
Yet none of this changes the balance of power on the ground or the direction the war is traveling. The rebel ranks are now dominated by jihadists who would just as happily kill an Alawite civilian as they would a Syrian soldier. The same anti-Assad opposition that once controlled parts of the Damascus suburbs is now pinned into a corner of Syria and trapped between Russian planes and a sealed Turkish border. No amount of Turkish-delivered TOW missile systems, weapons, ammunition or intelligence support will be able to compensate for the unchallenged superiority Moscow and Damascus enjoy from the air. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may loudly threaten a ground offensive in Idlib if Syrian troops continue to move deeper into the province, but even the loudmouthed Turkish leader likely understands that sending more of his soldiers into Northwestern Syria is a pointless endeavor.
For the United States, the situation in Idlib is a microcosm of the entire Syrian war: hopeless and tragic, yet a crisis where there are very few direct national security interests at stake. Throwing more Turkish weapons into the mix will neither deter Assad from continuing his offensive nor magically persuade him to enter into a dialogue and give up at the negotiating table what he has refused to surrender on the battlefield.
Western capitals can’t bring themselves to say it openly, but Assad is on his way to winning the war militarily. The only question is how many more people will die before the strongman declares victory.
The only interest Washington possesses in Syria is ensuring transnational terrorist forces on Syrian soil do not attack the United States. Assad’s record, heinous though it may be, indicates that he won’t tolerate terrorists in Syria. That’s why ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had to hide out in Idlib, the one territory in Syria out of Assad’s grasp. Keeping the United States safe from threats is a legitimate interest for the Washington. Political questions — who rules Damascus, what Syria’s foreign policy looks like, and how the Syrian political system is structured — are not nearly as important.
The United States should tell Turkey in no uncertain terms that under no circumstances will it permit U.S. military equipment being transferred to extremist fighters in Syria. Ankara has its own designs for Idlib, none of which are aligned with Washington’s objectives.
Turkey may be a NATO ally, but that doesn’t earn it the privilege of blanket U.S. support. It’s not worth standing by Turkey when that means prolonging the Syrian civil war — and the humanitarian crisis it entails.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a columnist at the Washington Examiner. The views expressed are the author's own.
