Leaving Syria alone: Trump policy branded 'the most sensible'
10:15 Share

We all have dreams. Dream home renovations, dream vacations, or sending our kids to their dream colleges. But finding straightforward ways to turn those dreams into realistic goals, that's where things get tricky. Merrill understands that. That's why, with a dedicated Merrill advisor, you get a personalized plan and a clear path forward. And having the bull at your back helps your whole financial life move with you. So

So when your plans change, Merrill is with you every step of the way. Go to ml.com slash bullish to learn more. Merrill, a Bank of America company. What would you like the power to do? Investing involves risk. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, registered broker dealer, registered investment advisor, member SIPC. This podcast is brought to you by Aura. 2024 has seen a surge in high-profile data breaches.

Thank you.

Additionally, Aura provides up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, offering a robust safety net in the event of a worst-case scenario. For a limited time, Aura is offering our listeners a 14-day trial plus a check of your data to see if your personal information has been leaked online. All for free when you visit Aura.com slash safety. That's Aura.com slash safety to sign up for a 14-day free trial and start protecting you and your loved ones. That's

a-u-r-a dot com slash safety. Certain terms apply, so be sure to check the site for details. Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. I'm Toby Gillis with Alex Debel. Friday, just five days after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, has been declared Victory Day, with huge crowds taking to the streets across the nation to celebrate.

Yet the future remains hugely uncertain, as every interested party, both internally and from the international community, scurries to try and influence the outcome. But are any of their questions answerable at such a volatile moment? And who will influence things the most? The West? Turkey? Russia? Iran?

Our guest today is Tobias Schneider, a research fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute and former editor of the Syria in Context sub stack. Tobias, is it at all possible to have a steer at this early stage on what Syria might look like when the dust settles? I mean, that's the million dollar questions that not just pretty much all external observers, Western governments, regional governments, but even most Syrians themselves are asking.

We have seen the near total collapse of the Assad regime in less than two weeks.

But that doesn't mean that the country is suddenly at peace or pacified. Everybody else is still around. So the armed factions that have taken over the capital and much of central Syria are as divided among themselves as they were at odds with the Syrian government oftentimes. We have the Syrian Kurds and their allied militias still holding much of the northeast, which is the country's grain basket. And

hold much of its remaining oil reserves, and we still have many of the key constituencies of the regime itself, the loyalists, located mostly in the rural regions of the coast and the Alawite minority primarily, but also among

really a range of constituency that the Assad regime has co-opted over the years. And it's not yet entirely clear if they are just willing to melt away into the background or how they will deal with a new state emerging that might either exact vengeance against those who have committed crimes in the past, or that just downgrades their status in the country and brings new social groups and social strata into the reward system.

Tobias, clearly there are many groups who are thrilled with the fall of Assad, but all of them will have their own ideal view of what Syria's future should be. So is it just a pipe dream to hope that they will give up those ideals to back HTS as the new leaders in order simply to obtain a simpler, more peaceful, short-term future? I don't think that strong centralization...

is necessary for the fulfillment of the Syrian dream. I think what we might hope for, what we can hope for, is a Syria that is to the largest degree possible inclusive of a lot of different ways of life. Syria is an extraordinarily diverse country. We're talking from conservative Sunni Muslims all the way to Christians who still speak the ancient language of Aramaic, who still speak as Jesus did.

We have extremely secularist Kurdish groups. We have very conservative religious establishments. We have trading cities. We have rural backwaters. We have a small extractive oil economy, but we also have historically a pretty vibrant, bizarre culture. And the only way really to govern it at the end of the day is

If you don't want to go down the route of brute force, that Bashar al-Assad is inclusive. We can hope that through a process that will hopefully emerge in the coming months, Syrians among themselves will find a way to establish that, maybe with help of the international community, maybe with help of regional actors. It's not really clear yet. For the moment, Hayat Tehriya Hashem, the arguably most prominent

religiously extreme rebel group among the fray, but also the most professional and disciplined and most technocratic has taken much of the reins of power. If they don't relinquish at least some of that, there will be growing resentment among different strata of society, among different groups.

But for the moment, there needs to be just somebody who, you know, manages the trash pickup and the electricity provision and all of these things that government does on a day-to-day basis. And Hayat Daghri Hashem has, for the moment, taken the reign. They have kept almost all civil servants who haven't been directly famously implicated war crimes on. And we'll see how it goes forward from here. But there are a lot of tough choices ahead.

You said potentially with the help of the international community. I imagine every country with an interest, Turkey, Iran, Russia, almost every single Western nation. How easy do you think it is for their respective intelligence services to be gathering the answers to their questions at the moment in order that they might best shape their foreign policies? The Syrian war has been going on for almost 14 years now. We know everybody involved.

We know all the factions. We know who their leaders are. All of their leaders have participated in international negotiations in one format or another. All of them have back-channel connections to all international actors. And it's not just that international actors have spies on the ground. Most have been on the ground. This international coalition led by the United States has de facto controlled a third of the country for a decade now.

We know most of the people we're dealing with. The same is obviously true for the Russians, for the Iranians, for the Turks, for the Jordanians and the Emiratis. They all have everybody's WhatsApp numbers and they have been wheeling and dealing behind the scenes for years and years. And they know who they're dealing with. This shows already in the first week. We can already see that, especially how Tahir Hashem is doing incredibly well.

politically pragmatic statements that you wouldn't have imagined years ago, that they would strike a deal with the Russians, for example, that would allow them to maintain some presence in the country and it would allow them to this day to move relatively freely in the country, even though the Russians have killed tens of thousands of Syrians in opposition-held territory and opposition fighters, right? Until very recently, these were the stated blood enemies of

This was the purpose of the insurgency in some degree. It was to get rid of Assad, but also to get rid of the Russians and the Iranians. The groups now have just issued general entities, have been pragmatic in dealing with the Russians. That's because they've had channels before. And so in terms of actually arranging it, it's not that hard.

What is going to be hard is resolving the material interests. For example, the opposition is strictly split between what could be called the northern opposition, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army and Ha'ir Tahrir al-Sham faction, and the southern factions, which have been backed by the Gulf Arab states, which are afraid of increasing Turkish influence. And both of them reach Damascus around the same time, and they will be contesting the

power in the city. And this will be one of the many geopolitical fault lines that will continue to run through the country. These are going away and these cannot really be resolved with a single WhatsApp call or something. These are material differences and material differences that have sparked wars in other parts of the region. So things are still very unstable in that regard.

Finally, as this was unfolding, Donald Trump put out a message on Truth Social effectively saying the U.S. should not go near the situation. If that ends up being his policy, how do you think that might change things? The most immediate impact will probably be that President Trump will try again what he tried to do in his first term, which is order a precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces from northeast Syria.

That will lead to a collapse of what's known as the Autonomous Administration, which is basically the Kurdish-led governing body that administers the northeastern parts of Syria, which are home to about two to a few million people. Once that happens, Syrian rebels, especially Turks-backed rebels, will immediately flood in and take over control.

And it's not entirely sure that if it doesn't happen, that Turkey and other rebel groups wouldn't still try to put pressure on the Trump administration, on the Americans in the region, basically saying either you have to fight us, your NATO allies and affiliated militias, or you get out. There is, outside the autonomous administration itself, really nobody in Syria who wants an autonomous Kurdish state led in the North-East.

Otherwise, of course, everyone hopes for the United States to play a constructive role to incentivize sanctions relief. The United States has the most comprehensive sanctions regime on Syria. But this has happened so suddenly that really no foreign power, not the United States, of all the intelligence capabilities, not the Europeans, not even the Turks and Jordanians and Israelis have seen coming. So nobody really has a plan for what's going on right now.

And at the end of the day, the most striking thing about the last two weeks has been that this has been a Syrian process. So nobody really owns what's going to happen except Syrians. And that's, for the country, that's a blessing. Obviously, everybody will try to meddle and everybody has their little proxies. But at the end of the day, this will have to be sorted out by Syrians. And maybe in that sense, Trump's declaration of us not having any key interests and us staying as far away from this as possible

might even be the most sensible foreign policy that any administration has had in a long time. Tobias Schneider, Syria expert, thank you very much for joining us. That's it for today. Thank you for spending 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of The Times. We'll see you tomorrow. We all have dreams. Dream home renovations, dream vacations, or sending our kids to their dream colleges.

But finding straightforward ways to turn those dreams into realistic goals, that's where things get tricky. Merrill understands that. That's why, with a dedicated Merrill advisor, you get a personalized plan and a clear path forward. And having the bull at your back helps your whole financial life move with you.

So when your plans change, Merrill is with you every step of the way. Go to ml.com slash bullish to learn more. Merrill, a Bank of America company. What would you like the power to do? Investing involves risk. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, registered broker dealer, registered investment advisor, member SIPC. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's the show that we recommend. Welcome to Just a Couple Things. It's your sister.

Jesse Wu. You may know me from Wild N' Out, Dish Nation, All Blacks a la Carte, and so many other platforms. Just a Couple Things is a podcast where we're dishing all things pop culture as well as comedic story times. Give my podcast a follow and make sure that you subscribe, subscribe, so you never miss out on an episode. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.