Syria's Assad could benefit most from renewed global push against ISIL

Analysis: French calls to intensify anti-ISIL
campaign, coordinate with Russia, could
strengthen Syrian president's hand

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad may turn
out to be the biggest beneficiary of last
week’s massacre in Paris. That’s because the
renewed urgency with which Western powers
are prioritizing the fight against the Islamic
State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) — the
lowest common denominator among outside
powers intervening in Syria — appears likely
to defer any effort to oust the Assad regime.
“I’m seeing signs that France might
reconsider its foreign policy with regards to
Syria,” said Karim Emile Bitar, a Paris-based
analyst with the Institut de Relations
Internationales et Strategiques. France had,
two years ago, taken a lead among Western
powers in pushing for Assad’s ouster, even
urging the United States to participate in a
more muscular military intervention to
restrain the regime’s forces and facilitate a
rebel victory. Now, however, the talk in Paris
is of coordination with Russia, which has
been conducting its own air
campaign against both ISIL and other
enemies of the Assad regime, a longtime
client of Moscow.
Until now, France, the U.S. and their Arab
allies who all oppose Assad have avoided
aligning their own military efforts against ISIL
with Russia’s.
But with Russia and France both ramping up
retaliatory airstrikes against ISIL — both
countries flew sorties over Syria on Tuesday
— such differences may narrow.
Moscow acknowledged for the first time
Tuesday that a Russian airliner that crashed
in Sinai two weeks ago was downed by a
bomb, adding to its own incentive to target
ISIL, which had claimed responsibility.

Friday’s massacre in Paris has amplified calls
among French politicians for coordination
with Russia — and Assad — against ISIL.
“Most right-wing politicians are in favor of
getting closer to Putin to solve the Syrian
crisis,” Bitar said. “The lesser evil narrative ...
is triumphing because of these [Paris]
attacks, so Assad and Putin are among the
victors.”
Following Moscow’s acknowledgment of the
plane bombing, Putin said, "Our air force's
military work in Syria must not simply be
continued. It must be intensified in such a
way that the criminals understand that
retribution is inevitable."
Syrian opposition figures believe the French
and others are taking the bait set by ISIL.
“The main goal is to force France to change
its stances, to escalate its campaign in
Syria,” said Fahd Al-Masri, a Syrian
opposition figure based in Paris. “Any terror
attack carries a political message. Everyone’s
priority now is to fight terrorism, not topple
Bashar al-Assad, who is the reason for the
birth and development of terrorism in Syria.”
French President Francois Hollande is
expected to make the case for more
sustained international action against ISIL
when he heads to both Moscow and
Washington later this week.
Escalated military action against ISIL is being
planned in parallel with a greater diplomatic
effort to resolve the Syrian civil war by
drawing in all the international players
backing Syrian factions. Last month, Iran
was invited to join talks for the first time,
after an apparent shift by the U.S. and its
allies over Tehran’s inclusion — an option
long opposed by Iran’s chief regional rival
Saudi Arabia, which supports Syrian rebel
groups opposed to Assad.
On Saturday, just a day after the Paris
attacks, diplomats from 19 nations meeting
in Vienna agreed on a broad framework for
ending the Syrian conflict, prioritizing a
cease-fire. And that framework made no
mention of ousting Assad. Further
discussions, which would include Syrian
opposition figures, are expected soon.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said
Tuesday that the attacks in Paris — as well
as those in Turkey and Lebanon before them,
all claimed by ISIL — could compel the
regional actors to pursue a dual track of
continuing to target ISIL positions in Syria
while ramping up diplomatic efforts to end
the Syrian conflict between the Assad
government and non-ISIL Syrian opposition
groups.
But until now, intractable differences over the
fate of Assad have stymied efforts to broker
a political solution.
Russia and Iran, Assad’s principal backers,
have at various points indicated that Assad
could eventually depart as a part of a
transition process agreed on by Syrians, but
have pushed back against any effort to make
his departure a perquisite for a political
solution — which has put them at odds with
Assad’s regional enemies. Syrian opposition
groups balk at the notion that Assad could
be allowed to remain in power during a
transition period.
“Agreement would need some consensus on
the future of the Assad clan — which Russia
and Iran regard as legitimate rulers and the
U.S., France and U.K. still, with weakening
resolve, regard as a main provoker of Sunni
jihadism,” David Gardner wrote in the
Financial Times on Tuesday. “Yet Vienna
seems the best hope that external actors now
steering by narrow interest and spinning
compasses in Syria may, after Paris,
conclude the stakes are too high not to
agree.”
Russia and Assad, on one hand, and France,
the U.S. and their allies on the other, are
unlikely to directly coordinate actions against
ISIL until traction on the peace track
continues. But the renewed global campaign
against ISIL may nonetheless end up allowing
Russia and Assad a greater say over the
terms of a Syrian peace process than the
West and its Arab allies would have liked.