US special envoy: Trump's Syria policies have bipartisan support

Washington's policy on Syria unlikely to change as the current approach has support from both sides of the aisle

US Special Envoy for Syria, Joel Rayburn is interviewed by Ahmed Maher for The National. Victor Besa/The National

It seemed a mission impossible for a cohort of resilient and seasoned diplomats from major regional and international powers, as well as the UN: ending a war that erupted in Syria almost ten years ago.

And for the incumbent US special envoy for Syria, Joel Rayburn, he has inherited a policy from his predecessor, which he describes as stable in its strategic goals in the midst of fighting that has devastated the country's infrastructure, crippled the economy, led to the displacement of more than half of its pre-war population and drawn in too many powers and proxies.

If the US and its allies have not managed so far to end the war, it is simply because no easy solutions have been found in such a regional tinderbox.

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  Syrian refugees try to cross into Turkey from Syria, in Akcakale, southeastern Turkey. AP

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  The northern Syrian city of Aleppo was recaptured by government forces in December 2016. AFP

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  A Coalition convoy of US-led international coalition in Deir ez-Zor province, Syria in 2018. Reuters

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  Syrian government forces firing at positions of rebel fighters in the countryside of Maaret Al Numan in 2020. AFP

"The policy that we have been executing concerning Syria for the last several years has always been a bipartisan policy in Washington. It got support from across the political spectrum," Mr Rayburn told The National in an exclusive interview.

This policy, he explained, is centred on three interconnected goals.

"The first one is a counter-terrorism campaign against the remnants of Daesh and also against Al Qaeda. Second is pushing back on the Iranian military influence in Syria both through the Iranian military and through its militias. Third one is trying to get a political solution to the conflict under UN Security Council resolution 2254 including by putting pressure on the Assad regime," said Mr Rayburn.

More than two years in his post, Mr Rayburn has been keen throughout on sticking to these three major goals of an administration that wanted to end "endless wars" and was ready to pull US forces out of Syria at the first opportunity. But the situation, he admits, might change on the ground and one has to act dynamically.

A Turkish Army vehicle is parked on the M4 highway near the town of Ariha in Syria's rebel-held northwestern Idlib province on January 4, 2021. AFP Photo

A US force of about 500 remains in northern Syria after a sharp reduction in troops sent there to drive out ISIS terrorists from their strongholds in the country.

Some of the areas also have oil resources, something President Donald Trump has cited as a justification for keeping US troops partnered with Kurdish allies in the region.

Mr Trump was trying to fulfil a 2016 campaign promise to bring US troops home. Critics say his decision to pull out most of the 2000 US troops left Turkey free to control the north in 2018 and was a stab in the back for allied Kurdish fighters.

But for Mr Trump’s supporters, there was no escaping the fact that ordinary Americans back home have become weary of their army’s overseas entanglements with painful memories from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Under the Obama administration, the US support mainly focused on arming and training fighters who rose up in 2011 against the rule of the Assad regime. The uprising later became a full-blown civil war.

Syrians buy their daily basic food items and other necessities in one of the streets of Damascus, Syria, 05 January 2021. EPA Photo

The government forces lost control of much of the country in this time. The beleaguered regime went to the Iranians and the Russians for help. By late 2015, Russian warplanes and combat troops were also in Syria.

A retired US army officer who served in a variety of assignments in the Middle East, Mr Rayburn would not speculate how president-elect Joe Biden will deal with the expansionist Iranian policy in the region and Tehran's nuclear programme.

But he is positive that there will be no tolerance for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards and its overseas Quds Force to "wreak havoc in the region" or use its missiles against Syria's regional neighbours.

“The absence of Qassem Suleimani has been a big setback to all of the efforts of the Quds force to work through proxy militias to try to create new threats for the region,” he said.

Mr Rayburn's interview with The National coincided with increasing tensions between Iran and the US in the last days of President Trump's administration and just after Iranian-sponsored militias in Iraq marked the first anniversary of the killing of Suleimani.

Suleimani was killed along with Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis on January 3, 2020, in a US drone strike on his convoy at Baghdad airport. Washington accused Suleimani of masterminding attacks by Iranian-aligned militias on US forces in the region, and his killing took US-Iranian hostilities into uncharted waters and stoked concern about a major conflagration.

Mr Rayburn, who served as a senior director for Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon at the National Security Council from January 2017 to July 2018, rejects completely the idea that the US is to blame for the harsh daily existence Syrian civilians endure.

Tough US financial and travel sanctions have targeted dozens of individuals and entities of the Assad regime, including his inner circle, such as his wife Asma.

The US State Department has labelled them the “war profiteers”.

“Bashar Assad and his gang of thieves are to blame for what the Syrian people are suffering. They continue to divert what funds the Syrian government has to shabiha [state-sponsored militants] and the Syrian military to be able to use these resources to pay salaries, buy weapons and bombs in order to attack the Syrian people,” said Mr Rayburn.

“The US has contributed $1.7 billion in humanitarian assistance inside and outside Syria. The suffering of the Syrian people cannot be laid at the feet of the United States. It has to be laid at the feet of Bashar Assad.”

The Syrian regime is grappling with a deepening economic crisis after a decade of war and amid a rare outbreak of protests in government-held areas. The local currency has been in a free fall, which led to soaring prices with ordinary people struggling to afford food and basic supplies.

Syria has already been under US and European Union sanctions that have frozen the assets of the state and hundreds of companies and individuals. Washington already bans export and investment in Syria by Americans, as well as transactions involving oil and hydrocarbon products.

The aim was to try to bring down an oppressive regime. But the regime did not fall. Former US President Barack Obama declared in August 2011 that "the time has come for President Assad to step aside."

But Assad is still in power.

Asked whether the US would accept Assad staying in office under some sort of international supervision, Mr Rayburn said it was up to the Syrian people to decide.

“For the US, we have not made our policy contingent on a personality at the top.

"I have had a hard time believing that if they [Syrians] have a free voice to decide, they would choose the current leadership,” he said.