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“Syria is in turmoil, but it’s not our friend. The United States shouldn’t get involved in it. This isn’t our fight. Let it be. Don’t get dragged into it!” This means the Assad regime will rapidly collapse. On December 7, President-elect Donald J. Trump posted this in all caps on X (formerly Twitter).
The brutal despot, who has ruled Syria for decades, was attacked by rebels who launched a blitzkrieg-like offensive that captured Aleppo, Homs and other major cities and seized control of the capital Damascus. I was kicked out.
President Trump’s instincts are noble, likely driven by the goal of fulfilling his mission to stop sending Americans to foreign wars. It seems like a reasonable approach to let Allah solve this problem. America has many problems at the moment, including swarms of unknown drones flying over important military installations on the mainland, a mystery that the government seems unable to solve. But there is a dilemma here that will almost certainly complicate President Trump’s “stay out of the fight against others” foreign policy approach.
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If left unchecked, Syria is likely to become a terrorist state. It is a nation-state run by terrorists and harboring terrorist groups. In other words, another Afghanistan.
After the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Syria is now run by the de facto terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). HTS is a dominant rebel faction that leads a variety of disparate groups in rebellion. United Nations Security Council It also considers HTS to be a terrorist group, and in 2015 unanimously adopted Resolution 2254, calling on member states to “prevent and suppress acts of terrorism committed, in particular, by Jabhat al-Nusra,” the predecessor of HTS. . As a result, member states are now obliged to comply with the sanctions regime imposed on the HTS, including asset freezes, travel bans, and arms embargoes. There is a reason Syria has been designated as a state sponsor of terrorism since December 1979.
HTS, a former al-Qaeda affiliate with ties to ISIS, espouses a doctrine of violent jihadism. The head of HTS and the de facto leader of Syria is Abu Mohammed al-Golani, but after the ouster of President Assad, he began using his legal name, Ahmad Hussein al-Shara.
The head of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham jihadist group checks the damage after an earthquake in Besnaya village in Syria’s rebel-held northwestern Idlib province on the border with Turkey on February 7, 2023. , Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. (Omar Haji) KADOUR/AFP via Getty Images)
In 2011, al-Golani was identified as none other than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder and leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (also known as al-Qaeda in Iraq), who led the rebels into the Syrian civil war. We received marching orders to enter. In 2014, ISIS, an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq, took advantage of the civil war to infiltrate Syria and declare a caliphate. As part of a special operation authorized by President Trump in October 2019, al-Baghdadi was chased by US special forces and their dogs inside a tunnel in northwestern Syria, detonated his vest and committed suicide. He is a violent criminal who murdered three young children.
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Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi preaches at a mosque in Mosul in 2014. (Al-Furqan Media/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
ISIS and al-Qaeda are beheading groups that have decapitated Jews and Christians and burned a Jordanian pilot alive in a cage. Al-Ghorani was born from that stock. He is a radical extremist and has been designated a terrorist by the US State Department with a $10 million bounty on his head. Giving an exclusive interview to CNN, polishing his image, trimming his beard and donning an olive green uniform like Zelenskiy doesn’t make him a moderate.
On Wednesday, he insisted that Syria is not a threat to the world and that he supports the lifting of sanctions from Syria and the delisting of HTS as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom. Emphasizing women’s education, he pointed out in an interview with the BBC that at the time he ruled Idlib, about 60% of women attended university there.
But when asked if alcohol would be allowed in Syria, he replied: “There are many things that I don’t have the right to talk about because they are legal issues.” He added: “The Syrian Legal Expert Committee [is] writing the constitution. They will decide. And any ruler or president would have to obey the law. ” The law he is talking about is likely an extremist version of Islamic law, a repressive form of Sharia law typically imposed by Islamist groups such as the Taliban.
A masked Islamic State terrorist holds an ISIS flag in 2015. (Photo by Getty Images from History/Universal Images Group)
There are already reports that Christmas decorations have been taken down and women are being forced to wear veils.
President Trump will likely have to deal with Syria for the same reason that U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001: to prevent the spread of terrorism. But his options are not limitless. He is likely to put pressure on Turkey’s Erdogan, a major supporter of HTS and sponsor of another militia, the Syrian National Army, which is part of the rebel coalition leading the anti-Assad uprising.
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Rebel forces captured Meng Air Base and the city of Tell Rifaat in the Aleppo countryside on December 1, 2024, following clashes between the Syrian Democratic Forces and Syrian regime forces. (Rami Al-Sayed/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
But with the balance of power in the Middle East shifting away from Iran and in favor of Turkey, Erdogan’s ambitions are likely to grow even further. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s mission, who has ruled Turkey for more than two decades, has been to return Turkey to the center of the world map and revive the country’s Ottoman past. He also wants to make religion central to Turkish identity in Muslim-majority Turkey “to help build a new civilization.”
Turkey, which is already aligned with both the US/NATO and Russia with its regional dominance in mind, is unlikely to become a cooperative partner for the US, whose influence in the region has declined under the Biden administration.
If nothing is done, a terrorist state will emerge in the heart of the Middle East under President Trump’s watch. Sending US troops to calm the situation in Turkey would violate his promise not to wage a foreign war. Either way, Trump will be held responsible for what happened in Syria Watching Biden.
Click here to read more from Rebecca Koffler
