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Analysis: U.S. plan for ISIS fight further isolates Assad

 
The battle against ISIS could force Syrian President Bashar Assad to leave office.
The battle against ISIS could force Syrian President Bashar Assad to leave office.
Published Sept. 13, 2014

BEIRUT — Syrian President Bashar Assad's government is angry that Washington has not taken it on as a partner in the international campaign to hit the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, likely for a significant reason: It is worried that once the United States has crossed the Rubicon of airstrikes in Syria, it could next turn its sights on Assad himself, aiming for his eventual downfall.

Such a scenario may not be imminent, but it is bound to be rattling Damascus. Already, the American plan includes beefing up rebel factions to the biggest extent yet in the 3 ½-year war.

Analysts say Washington's aim, beyond destroying ISIS, is to create a new dynamic on the ground that would put enough pressure on Assad to go back to the negotiating table.

"The campaign against ISIS is going to put a lot of pressure on the Assad regime and in the end, it's not going to just degrade ISIS, it's also going to degrade the regime's ability to resist a settlement that includes the departure of Assad himself," said Amr al-Azm, a professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio.

"It's going to further weaken the ability of Assad to survive. There's no way he's not going to get drawn into that," he said.

President Barack Obama said Wednesday that his current strategy of striking in Iraq and Syria is focused on the threat posed by ISIS. But he also hinted at something beyond when he said "the Assad regime will never regain the legitimacy it has lost."

"We must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like ISIL," the term Obama uses for the group, "while pursuing the political solution necessary to solve Syria's crisis once and for all."

The Syrian government has said it welcomes U.S. airstrikes against ISIS in Syria. But it had been gambling that Washington would partner with it against the extremists, hoping for a dramatic reversal in the U.S. policy calling for Assad's removal.

After Obama's comments Wednesday made clear that the United States is sticking with the rebels, Assad political adviser Bouthaina Shaaban said that any U.S. military operations in Syria would be considered an aggression unless they were coordinated with the government in Damascus.

Assad has not directly commented on Obama's speech, telling the new U.N. envoy to Syria on Thursday that the top priority now was fighting terrorism. But Shaaban made a series of media appearances Thursday night, saying Obama was making a big mistake by excluding the Syrian government.

She said the Syrian government was "very serious" in pursuing a political settlement for the Syria crisis.

Assad's government benefited from the rise of ISIS in Syria in key ways. Its brutality reinforced Assad's narrative that he is up against terrorists, not democracy-seeking Syrians. In the past year, government forces were able to seize momentum in the civil war, recapturing territory, in part because of the fighting between ISIS and other rebels. Assad's forces largely avoided hitting its fighters.

But more recently Assad has started to feel the heat from ISIS. After initially focusing on defeating rival rebels in northern Syria, the group turned its attention to government troops, killing hundreds of soldiers and allied militiamen in the past two months after capturing army bases in the country's east.

The militants made a big display of humiliating and slaughtering the troops, posting online footage of soldiers stripped to their underwear before they were shot dead, while beheading others and placing their heads on poles.

Posters of martyred soldiers line the streets of government strongholds such as Lattakia and Tartous, centers for the minority Alawite community to which Assad belongs. Many soldiers are still missing. The soaring death toll has led to renewed soul searching and immense pressure on Assad among Alawites, for whom the losses constituted a severe psychological and moral blow. There have been several incidents of Assad loyalists protesting against the government recently.

"The Syrian regime has realized too late that it has made itself exposed and vulnerable to ISIS by allowing it to operate relatively freely," said Lina Khatib, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. She said that popular anger, however, is still not significant enough to form a real threat to Assad simply because of a lack of an alternative.

Assad also faces a manpower crisis because many of the Shiite Iraqis he was relying on as fighters on front lines around Damascus have returned to Iraq to fight there. Hezbollah, whose fighters have helped Assad's forces regain ground from rebels, has been sucked into ongoing battles with Sunni extremists near the border with Lebanon.

Assad may also feel the heat from regional realignments brought about by the ISIS threat. The Iraqi model, whereby a Shiite prime minister backed by Iran and Syria was recently forced to step down peacefully, is a formula the West may eventually repeat in Syria to allow a transitional government.

The changes "are now making Assad really feel the pinch in a way he hasn't felt before," said al-Azm.