How Syria will shape Europe’s future We cannot afford another refugee wave

Indeed, it is for the better that Assad’s fall was not the product of Western bombs. This was a Syrian-led transition, helmed by a group Western powers spurn as terrorists, whose success depended as much upon the sudden decision by Assad’s own former loyalists that the regime was no longer worth fighting for as it did the rebels’ force of arms. Kleptocratic, unwilling to translate seeming victory into necessary political reform, deliver prosperity beyond the regime leadership to its core support base, or in the end ensure their security, the Assad regime simply shredded its own legitimacy. A state is like some local deity in this respect: once enough people cease to believe in it, it suddenly ceases to exist. There is a lesson for Western, particularly British, leaders here; HTS has spent years honing its legitimacy by observing the core competences in statecraft and effective governance — policing, transport, swift and responsive reaction to sudden crises.

Indeed, the extraordinary recent interviews with HTS officials attempting to introduce their own stripped-down, digital governance to Syria’s bureaucratic state suggests that Jolani may be as much a 21st-century state-capacity autocrat like Bukele or the younger Gulf rulers than any narrow analogue in Islamic statecraft. Rather than a retreat to the Middle Ages, for good or ill the new Syrian state will be a 21st-century one, and not built on the old model of 20th-century regimes like its Baathist forebear.  Technocratic, results-driven governance is, by its nature, non-liberal, even if not necessarily illiberal: in the new Syria, we may indeed see glimpses of our own near future. But whether or not HTS can expand its effective governance in Idlib – the establishment of which, it should not be forgotten, involved the eradication of some of the most prominent liberal revolutionary voices – to the wider country remains to be proved. When Damascus fell, it was to the forces of the rebel Southern Operations Room, formerly Jordanian assets latterly (and we now see, ineffectively) “reconciled” to Assad’s rule by Russia. The repeated exhortations by HTS for armed rebels to leave the cities to allow security to be established by (its own) police forces highlight one potential tension: how far HTS can exert its authority over its own notional, and generally worse-disciplined allies.

It is one of the ironies of Syria’s rebellion, which does not map onto mainstream pro- or anti-rebel Western discourse, that Salafi jihadist groups such as HTS, through their greater discipline and adherence to stern moral codes, have generally been better at governance than the broadly secular rebel militias the West once backed to varying degrees. Indeed, the Islamic State’s original rise to power across Northern Syria came off the back of quashing predatory rebel militias to the acclaim of Syrian civilians — before then imposing its own brutal and apocalyptic vision of governance. Initial, cautious noises of optimism made on social media by some of the former regime’s most outspoken advocates have been dented in recent days by footage of atrocities carried out, seemingly, by members of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) rebel militias, some of which were once recipients of American military support. Retaliatory rebel excesses — or the sheer banditry for which the SNA is now renowned — will rapidly lose HTS its recent and hard-won domestic and international legitimacy unless Jolani can rein these groups in.

Yet this may not be possible. Whatever Turkey’s role in the HTS offensive, Erdoğan has used the sudden fait accompli in western Syria as the moment to achieve his longstanding aims in the country’s east, of eliminating the Kurdish-led but multiethnic Autonomous Administration of Northeast Syria (AANES) statelet, the West’s chosen partner in the fight to destroy Islamic State. Backed by Turkish airstrikes, SNA militias have forced the AANES’s Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) troops from the city of Manbij, west of the river Euphrates. An apparent American diplomatic push to ensure AANES’s survival east of the river does not seem to be working, with Turkish ground and aerial bombardment of the celebrated border city of Kobani heightening fears of a wider invasion. While the AANES and SDF leadership have made clear their desire to incorporate their statelet in the new Syria, and have already begun pragmatic negotiations with HTS, Jolani may not be strong enough to rein in the SNA or confront its Turkish backer. Indeed, he may not want to: rather than fight the SDF himself, it may be easier for HTS to allow Turkey and the SNA to take the brunt of the fighting and international opprobrium, and reap the spoils at some later date.

Like the opportunistic Israeli ground invasion of southern Syria, condemned by European states, the Turkish invasion of northern Syria shows two notional American client states pursuing their own expansionist foreign policy ends, while a directionless United States seems powerless to stop them. Condemning each other for identical actions, Turkey and Israel together threaten Syria’s largely peaceful transition, eroding the new state’s legitimacy while setting the stage for a resumption of major conflict, and in the case of Northeastern Syria, almost certainly provoking a new refugee crisis for Europe.

On the one hand, the pragmatic acceptance of Syria’s new order by regional and international powers like Russia and Iran shows what actual “multipolarity”, rather than the crude, reflexively anti-Western folk usage, could look like; the West is simply one actor among others hashing out mutually acceptable compromise deals. Yet the opportunistic aggression of both Israel and Turkey highlights that the most dangerous multipolar rivalry comes from within the American order itself. If America has any part to play in the new Syria — and the incoming Trump administration seems to disavow any future involvement in the country — it is simply to use whatever diplomatic leverage it still possesses to safeguard the country’s sovereignty from its own regional clients. Whether it is able to do so will determine the extent of America’s survival as a regional actor.

For us Europeans, with America fading from the picture, the stability of Syria and the wider Middle East is a core strategic interest. Leaving the management of the Syrian conflict to America and regional rivals over the last decade destabilised European politics through the ensuing interlinked waves of mass migration and terrorism, the combined effects of which will ripple through our continent’s politics for decades to come. Europe cannot afford another Syrian refugee wave, and it is a central interest in preserving Europe’s stability that much of the previous wave must be undone, as humanely but swiftly as possible. Diplomatic engagement with HTS, indeed, sets a precedent for the same process with Afghanistan’s comparable Taliban government, for the same ends.

Beyond that, it is in Europe’s interests to help Syria recover from the effects of its lost decade, through lifting sanctions and supporting the country’s economic recovery. Removing terrorism designations from HTS, as the Labour government has suggested may soon follow, could well be a pragmatic step: ensuring that European volunteers from within the group’s ranks, and from within the ranks of allied, even more extreme jihadist groups do not return home is also pragmatic governance. If the overriding theme of Syria’s transition to rebel governance is one of pragmatic, multipolar bargaining for acceptable outcomes, then Europe must begin to think of itself as an independent actor, with its own interests to safeguard, rather than a charity on continental scale.

Rebel rule will mean a new Syria, one way or another. It must also mean a new European way of engaging with an unstable world.

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Aris Roussinos is an UnHerd columnist and a former war reporter.

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