How far will the rehabilitation of Assad go?

This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘How far will the rehabilitation of Assad go?’

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Gideon Rachman
Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator, the Financial Times. This week’s podcast is about Syria. It’s now 12 years since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war. The country’s leader, Bashar al-Assad, is still in power, and though he is a pariah in the west, he’s beginning to regain acceptance in the Middle East. The Saudi foreign minister visited Assad in Damascus last month, the first such visit by a Saudi official since the war broke out in 2011. My guest this week is Kim Ghattas, author of the book Black Wave, a study of religious fundamentalism and geopolitics in the Middle East. She’s also a contributing writer for The Atlantic. So has the Assad regime won the Syrian civil war?

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Barack Obama
We both agree that Assad needs to go. He needs to transfer power to a transitional body. That is the only way that we’re gonna resolve this crisis. And we’re gonna keep working for a Syria that is free from Assad’s tyranny, that is intact and inclusive of all ethnic and religious groups and that’s the source of stability, not extremism.

Gideon Rachman
That was President Barack Obama calling for the removal of Assad back in 2013 during a visit to Turkey. As he made clear, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish leader, was also demanding the removal of the Syrian leader. Ten years on, Obama’s gone and Erdoğan’s tottering, but Assad is still very much in power. Russia’s intervention in support of the Syrian leader was an important moment in securing his hold on power. And the Syrian war, which dominated the world news a decade ago much as Ukraine does today, is now attracting much less international attention. So what’s happened? To explain, Kim Ghattas joined me on the line from Beirut. I began our discussion by asking her about the significance of the Saudi foreign minister’s visit to Damascus.

Kim Ghattas
It was an important moment, Gideon, for two reasons. One, because it’s Saudi Arabia, the regional heavyweight, the leader of the Muslim world, custodian of the two holy sites. It carries weight however critical or supportive you are of Saudi Arabia and its policies. And it was also significant because the Saudis had been quite forceful in their opposition to Assad over the last 12 years. They had not made any overtures towards the Assad regime over the last couple of years while others were, such as the UAE or Jordan. So to see the Saudis follow in the footsteps of the Emiratis and the Jordanians in opening up to Assad and try to engage him and in some ways begin to normalise with Bashar al-Assad is quite significant politically. And it’s important to point out that it’s devastating for millions of Syrians who’ve been on the receiving end of the Assad regime’s violence.

Gideon Rachman
And is it, do you think, a recognition by the Saudis that Assad isn’t going anywhere? I mean, there were many years when the slogan was Assad must go, but he seems to be firmly in power, so are they just adapting themselves to reality as they see it?

Kim Ghattas
In many ways, yes, because the Assad family, the Assad regime, are really masters at biding their time and holding on to power and waiting for the opportune moment to come out on top again. Hafez al-Assad was brilliant at that, and it turns out Bashar al-Assad is, too. And so there was that realisation two years ago already by the Emiratis and the Jordanians that Assad’s not going anywhere and he’s creating problems for us. The Jordanians have security issues on their border with Syria. There’s the whole issue of drug trafficking, which Jordan is having to deal with, as do the Saudis. But it’s important to point out that over the past two years, the Jordanians and the Emirates have very little to show for their efforts to engage with Assad. And so you could have argued there’s no reason for the Saudis to now engage with Assad, but the Saudis have decided that they are going to give it a try and do it a more concerted way with others on board via the Arab League, possibly in co-ordination with the UN and try to put a process in place, which we saw begin on Monday this week in Jordan, with a meeting of the foreign ministers of Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia meeting in Amman.

Gideon Rachman
We say that Assad isn’t going anywhere and they recognise that. Does that mean that the war is essentially over, or is it just mean that Syria is condemned to a low-level civil war? The fighting continues, but there’s no real prospect of them losing power.

Kim Ghattas
There’s no real prospect at the moment of Assad losing power. But he is ruling over an unstable country. He is nominally in control and to some extent practically in control of the areas that he rules over. Parts of the country are still outside of his control — the north-east and the north-west. But even in the areas that he controls, he’s being challenged, including by continued Israeli air strikes. There’s been over 20 fairly large Israeli air strikes on territory under Assad control over the last 12 months, the latest one over the weekend. The airport in Aleppo was hit and is out of commission. And it’s not the first time this year.

Gideon Rachman
So why have the Israelis been staging these air strikes?

Kim Ghattas
The Israelis have made very clear that they’re going to continue to target Iranian assets and Hizbollah movement in Syria because they feel that is a threat to them. And they’ve been doing that consistently over the last few years. And it gets very little criticism from anyone, including from the Arab world, which I find rather interesting. And somewhere in the back of the minds of some of these Arab officials, they must be thinking this is possibly their leverage over Assad, to say, look, you know, you’ve got Israeli strikes hitting your territory. You need to move away from Iran and from the Russians, and then those strikes will stop. And you can really say that you’re in control of your territory. I think all of this is a very tall order, but the Saudis think that it’s worth another effort.

Gideon Rachman
So the Israelis are a problem for him. How about the Syrian opposition forces? Are they still going and do they still have external support?

Kim Ghattas
Syrian opposition forces and the Syrian opposition outside have not managed to really be a challenge to the Assad regime over the last few years, in part because they don’t have enough external support. And I think that’s really been the problem from the onset for the Syrian uprising against Bashar al-Assad, which started peacefully and then armed itself with support from the Saudis and the Americans. But it just never was enough. This is not a Ukraine situation where the west is giving the Ukrainians everything they can to attempt to win the war and certainly keep Putin at bay. That has never happened with Syria. And so today, the opposition is fairly defeated, but still in control of some parts of the north. They’re not going to be able to really challenge Bashar al-Assad. But I would also argue, and that’s what some Syrian experts like Charles Lister or Ruslan Trad also say that you never know when the internal dynamics shift within such an unstable situation because there’s a lot of power and money at stake and we have seen some internal divisions and fighting even within territories controlled by Bashar al-Assad.

Gideon Rachman
Give me a sense of the state of the country after now, you know, more than 10 years of fighting and brutal repression by the Assad regime. I mean, how many people do we think have died? How many have disappeared? And can normal life continue in any respect, really?

Kim Ghattas
One thing I learned living through war myself in Lebanon during the ’80s is that it’s fairly incredible to see how life can continue even in wartime. And so while I haven’t been able to visit Syria myself over the past decade — I’ve been on a persona non grata list since 2007 — I sort of glean, like everybody, you know, what life might be like in some parts of Syria, whether under regime control or under opposition-held areas. You know, in Damascus, there’s some sense of normality: restaurants, people going out. There’s a lot of people who made money from the war, from the drug trade, etc. And so a little bit everywhere, I think you can sense some normality as people try to get on with their lives. But it is a war-torn country where the damage and the violence inflicted has been tremendous. On the ground, from the air, not just by the Syrian regime, but also by Russian airplanes which devastated the civilian infrastructure in opposition-held areas by Iranian and Iranian-affiliated militias on the ground.

So 12 years later, you have over 500,000 people who’ve been killed. Overwhelmingly, the numbers say 90 per cent of them by regime violence and by violence meted out by the Russians and the Iranians. And just to point out that the UN stopped counting quite a few years ago. So the 500,000 is a number from a few years ago. You have 135,000 people who’ve disappeared in Assad’s dungeons and you have millions of displaced internally and millions of refugees in neighbouring countries. So how you put this back together is really quite difficult. And I think that’s why the Saudis and others in the Arab world have come to the conclusion that they somehow have to work with Assad to figure out a way forward. And that’s what they’re discussing. The voluntary return of refugees, a political process potentially. They want his help on ending the drug trafficking. And in the long term, Saudi officials tell me they’d like to see a reduction of foreign influence and foreign forces on the ground. And they’re mostly thinking Iranian, but they’re also thinking Russian. You’d assume that would also apply to the Americans who are in the north-west.

But the one thing, Gideon, about Bashar al-Assad and his father before him, as I said, is not only are they masters at biding their time, they’re also masters at creating problems, which others then have to come to them to beg to solve. And so we saw that: post-US invasion of Iraq with the flow of jihadis coming from Syria into Iraq, which fed into the insurgency against the Americans. It was Bashar al-Assad who allowed that flow to begin with because they nurture these groups and then unleashed them whenever they want. And now, when it comes to the Captagon trade. They created this problem and now the Saudis and the Jordanians have to come to us, sad to say, can you help us stop this? It’s a little bit like asking Pablo Escobar to shut down some of his trading routes to help you.

Gideon Rachman
Can you just explain what is Captagon?

Kim Ghattas
Captagon is a highly addictive synthetic amphetamine drug produced in massive scale in Syria that heightens people’s attention and awareness and awakeness. And it was highly sought after by fighters during the war in Syria. It was what helped them keep going. And it’s become an absolute lifeline for the Assad regime. The FT itself has a report about the fact that it’s a trade that is worth $57bn. And so Syria today gets described as a narco state. Just in the last week or so the Jordanians and the Saudis have seized $400mn worth of drugs. So you can just imagine what actually gets through. And it’s become a problem for Saudi society, Jordanian society. It brings, you know, the usual violence with it — drugs, gangs and so on. And the Saudis really want to find a way to stop that trade or at least minimise it Again, here I think it’s going to be a tall order.

Gideon Rachman
And presumably this is either tolerated by the states or a major source of revenue indirectly for the Assad government.

Kim Ghattas
Oh, it’s run by the state, it’s run by the Assad regime and in particular members of Assad’s family, including his brother and his cousins, who have just been sanctioned by the Treasury department in the US. This is a state enterprise, if you can call Assad’s presidency still a state, whatever is left of Syria as a country that is led by a state. This is a state enterprise.

Gideon Rachman
Going back to the Saudis, it’s very interesting, isn’t it, that this initiative as part of a kind of broader change in the way Saudi is dealing with the world? I mean, most recently we had the rapprochement with Iran. There has been talk for a few years now that through the Abraham Accords, there may eventually be a normalisation with Israel, where again, you saw the Emirates acting as kind of the first people to put their toe in the water. So do you see what Saudi is doing here as part of a broader strategy, or was it really just driven by this specific Syrian problem?

Kim Ghattas
It’s driven both by the specifics and by the wider strategy. I think it’s been very interesting to observe Saudi diplomacy over the last six months or so. You know, after the bombastic approach that MBS took to being defence minister and then crown prince, launching a war in Yemen, allegedly ordering action against Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist, which led to his murder and dismemberment in a Saudi consulate in Turkey in 2018, the blockade against Qatar. After all this sort of bombast, you know, I can do it better, the Americans aren’t helping us. That kind of approach I think, they’ve come to the realisation that it hasn’t delivered for them.

And so now they’re trying diplomacy. And they’re going for what the Turks and the Emiratis have tried before them, which is zero problem in the neighbourhood. And it didn’t work out very well for the Turks. I’m not sure it’s working out too well for the Emiratis either. But the Saudis are now trying that, and I think that is a welcome development for the region because I think people have had enough of conflict, tension and war. That’s not to say that the Saudis will be successful, but if they understand that it requires also long-term vision and an understanding that although they are themselves an absolute monarchy, they do need to keep in mind that accountability is important in the region because otherwise you’re building on very shaky ground. So engaging with Assad or trying to figure out what to do about Sudan, you know, we’re dealing with authoritarian countries that are trying to solve problems, and obviously they’re going to bring an authoritarian outlook to these problems. But it’s always important to remind them to try to bring some more governance and rule of law and understanding of accountability to the table.

So I think the Saudis today want to make this effort to de-escalate with the Iranians. And without having done that first, they wouldn’t have been able to reach out to Bashar al-Assad. How far can they go in either diplomatic moves, I think really depends on how smart they are about it, whether they know how to use leverage. And frankly, whether they know how to co-operate and work together with the Americans on that and whether Washington can work with them as well on some of these issues.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah, I’d like to talk to you in a second about the American role, but I was just struck by your mention of the idea of accountability, because my initial reaction is scepticism in that Saudi will ever back that given obviously the Khashoggi case, but also everything that happened in Yemen and so on. I mean, in a way, it seems to me that Mohammed bin Salman at least, is one of the least accountable people in the world and probably likes it that way.

Kim Ghattas
Absolutely. But it’s still worth saying it every time. I’m not gonna stop.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah (laughing). So coming to the Americans, you said that the Saudis need to work with them. But how interested are the Americans in Syria? I mean, during the Obama period, it was probably almost the number one foreign policy issue for the US, but one that I think in retrospect, even they would acknowledge they never really got their hands around, there was the famous red line that Obama didn’t enforce. But all sorts of other gambits that were tried and failed. Are the Americans still players on Syria? And if so, what’s their strategy?

Kim Ghattas
They’re not really players at the moment, but it’s important that they re-engage quickly because they need to be able to shape some of what is unfolding and not be caught flat-footed. Their position was, for the longest time, don’t normalise with Assad. That was their message to Arab countries. Today, the message has changed slightly and is, if you want to normalise with Assad, at least get something from him that’s worth it. So that’s a bit of a, if not a green light, a yellow light, because I think the White House has also come to understand Assad is not going anywhere. Nobody wants to really do what it takes to remove him and no one ever really wanted to, to be honest. I’ve had these discussions with American officials back in 2012, ’13, ’14, when I was still based in Washington. And I kept having this discussion with them about how far they were willing to go to do something about it. And they kept saying, well, you know, we can’t do this, we can’t do that. The thing is, they didn’t wanna use all the tools in their toolbox to come to a decisive outcome.

And so when the Russians got involved in 2015, militarily in Syria to prop up Bashar al-Assad, there was a sense in Washington, OK, great, if Putin can solve this problem for us, cauterise the wound, then let him do it. But again, you know what happens in the Middle East doesn’t stay in the Middle East. And so Syria turned out to be a great training ground for Putin, for his troops, for testing weapons, and for trying to figure out how far he could get away with military action without getting any reaction from the west.

And that’s what leads us to Ukraine, where Putin did realise that actually he’d gone too far and that Ukraine was not Syria. But even Zelenskyy has said we should have paid more attention to Syria at the time. And so today, it’s very important for the US to pay attention to what is going on in Syria and how Arab countries are normalising or not or how far it can go and to try to be part of this conversation. I’m not saying that they’re not part of the conversation at all. You have enough American officials visiting the region, engaging with the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Jordanians, etc. But I think they need to be more engaged and put forward some of their own thoughts as well as to how this can move forward without, of course, acknowledging that Bashar al-Assad is there to stay. So it’s a tricky balance.

Gideon Rachman
One of the things about this war is that it’s drawn in so many external actors. We’ve talked about some of them, but there are others. You mentioned the Russians. I mean, how much can they sustain their involvement in Syria given the draining nature of the war in Ukraine? There’s Iran, too. It’s been you know, crucial on the ground, as you’ve pointed out. Are they still as committed as ever? And then there’s Turkey, which was backing the opposition forces, but also has its own domestic issues and economic issues. We can’t deal with all of them in great depth. But those three, where are they?

Kim Ghattas
Iran is as committed as ever. They feel they really have a dog in this fight. Syrian territory is important for them. It is part of their strategy of forward defence bases, which for them include Lebanon, but also Iraq and Yemen. So they’re not going to give it up. In fact, there are lots of reports about the Iranians negotiating with Assad to settle some of his debts towards Iran by giving them land in Syria, in areas that he controls. They spent a lot of money to save Assad because saving Assad means ensuring their own survival. But they are starting to make noises about the fact that Assad needs to pay up. And earlier this year, before the earthquake in Turkey, there had been some serious signs of economic crisis in areas held by the regime because the Iranians were no longer willing to deliver oil on credit, they were asking to be paid. And so, that really made life difficult for people in the Assad-held areas.

But you know, saved by an earthquake, what can I say? Bashar al-Assad was, to some extent, saved by this earthquake which killed so many people and devastated so many parts of Turkey and north-west Syria. And it was the opening that he had hoped for that brought Arab countries back to Damascus to talk to him. And you can tell that Iran is still committed and still very much present in Syria alongside its best and favourite ally in the region, Hizbollah, the Lebanese militant group/political party which operates extensively in Syria. You can tell they’re still very much present there because of the continued Israeli air strikes against their positions and assets.

When it comes to Russia, there was hope amongst some in the Syrian opposition that Russia’s war against Ukraine, an invasion of Ukraine would draw down Russian forces from Syria, provide an opening for some further pushes against the Assad regime. But that just didn’t pan out. Russia can maintain its presence and control and support for Assad with minimal effort or just with what it has at the moment in Syria. And when it comes to Turkey, Erdoğan was one of those who also very forcefully called for Assad to leave. And so he’s also pondering the U-turn. There have been efforts at rapprochement with help from Russia, which is trying to push a Turkey-Syria rapprochement that includes Iran. There was a meeting, not that long ago, bringing together all four countries. And that part is tied up in Turkish politics. Erdoğan wanted a meeting with Assad before the elections to show that he could bring about deals and resolutions to issues like the refugees that did not happen. And we’ll have to see who wins the election in Turkey on May 14th.

Gideon Rachman
I mean, refugees you mentioned, there are several million, I think, in Turkey and many million all over the world. What realistic prospect is there that they could ever return to syria?

Kim Ghattas
It’s a really difficult question, Gideon. I mean, if you think about Afghan refugees from the ’80s who are still in Pakistan, and now there’s a new wave of refugees from Afghanistan, of course, after the takeover of the Taliban. If you think about various refugee crises in Africa, you know, hopefully Ukrainians will, one day, be able to go home. But when it comes to Syria, it’s very difficult. In Lebanon, we have over a million refugees in a country of about 5mn. That’s a huge burden for Lebanon for the past 10 years in a country that has imploded economically and financially. So there is some sense to what the Saudis are trying to do to find a way to allow the voluntary return of refugees to Syria. But how can you ever guarantee their safe return? What mechanisms can you put in place to guarantee that those young men who do return don’t get immediately drafted into military service or thrown in jail because they were once supporters of the opposition? And we’ve seen that happen already.

Unfortunately, going back to the point that I mentioned earlier in our conversation, this is a problem that Assad created and that the world now needs him to help resolve. And without some leverage to guarantee that the refugee return will be safe, I can foresee this being very problematic. And a lot of refugees simply don’t want to go back because they’re fearful of what might happen to them. On the other hand, countries like Lebanon and Jordan and to a lesser extent Turkey, but especially Lebanon, cannot continue to both bear the burden and be told you can’t force them to go back to Syria without getting proper assistance and help in dealing with the issue. It’s starting to become a source of tension both in Lebanon and in Jordan with host communities.

Gideon Rachman
And finally, let’s get back to the question of the rehabilitation of Assad and of his regime. How far do you think it can go? I mean obviously, the Saudi visit is very important for him, you mentioned the meeting in Amman this week. But can he realistically think that he may become, if not respected member of international society, an accepted member of the global community in so far as it exists? Are we gonna see Assad being invited on visits, becoming again a head of state who’s regarded as persona grata?

Kim Ghattas
I certainly hope not. And that would be really a stain on the west’s conscience. I think the limits of his acceptability are in the Arab world where he can visit maybe the UAE or Saudi Arabia. Maybe he will, one day, get invited to an Arab League summit or for a bilateral visit to Saudi Arabia. But remember, Omar Bashir, the military dictator of Sudan, was indicted by the ICC, and then he went to the Arab League summit in Baghdad and in Amman. He even went to visit Bashar al-Assad. You can go on these visits and still find yourself deposed after some time.

Now, the Sudan story goes into a different trajectory. But the limits of Assad’s respectability are right here in the region where other authoritarians are willing to deal with him because they need some problems solved. And hopefully, again, I’ll repeat it, I know it’s a tall order, but hopefully they will keep in mind the fact that accountability and an end to impunity on some level, particularly because of the war crimes that happened in Syria, it’s important to keep accountability in mind.

And then you have to remember that there are American sanctions in place on Syria. The Caesar Act, named after one of the defectors who photographed the hundreds of bodies that died under torture and deprivation in Syria’s jails. And that imposes sanctions on the Syrian government and Syrian officials, Syrian entities and anybody that does business with them. So you’re not going to see people rushing to help with the reconstruction of Syria because secondary sanctions are very much a threat.

And then you have the various legal processes that have been launched by Syrians who want accountability. And we must remember the Syrian people in all of this. They are launching processes to get justice against Syrian officials, middle-ranking and high-ranking, in Germany and France and in the US to try to get accountability. And so when you have these processes in place, you frankly, I certainly hope, cannot expect Bashar al-Assad to get on a plane and fly to Paris or the US and be welcomed again as a head of state.

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Gideon Rachman
That was Kim Ghattas, author of Black Wave, speaking from Beirut. Thanks for listening and please join me again next week.

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