Above: former U.S. Ambassadot to Syria James Jeffrey<\/p>\n
The Rambo of the State Department is leaving. James Jeffrey, the outgoing Syria envoy, boasts about his achievements in a recent candid \u00a0interview with Al Monitor which with no sense of shame opens up \u00a0to public gaze the the cynicism, callousness and sheer power-crazedness \u00a0of US policy on Syria, conducted as though it were a video game or a \u00a0game of Monopoly.<\/p>\n
In a long-ranging interview \u00a0with Al-Monitor, James Jeffrey looks back on his efforts to incorporate \u00a0fragments of Obama-era initiatives into a cohesive Middle East policy.<\/em> Al Monitor<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Jeffrey makes no bones about it. It\u2019s not about ending the Syrian conflict, it\u2019s about prolonging it:<\/p>\n Basically, first and foremost \u00a0is denial of the [Assad regime] getting military victory\u2026.And of \u00a0course,\u00a0we\u2019ve ratcheted up the isolation and sanctions pressure on \u00a0Assad, we\u2019ve held the line on no reconstruction assistance, and the \u00a0country\u2019s desperate for it. You see what\u2019s happened to the Syrian pound, \u00a0you see what\u2019s happened to the entire economy. So, it\u2019s been a very \u00a0effective strategy..<\/em><\/p>\n The point is, this [preserving \u00a0the SDF] is our plan B. We have a plan A. Plan A doesn\u2019t answer \u2018how \u00a0does this all end?\u2019\u00a0Plan A\u2019s whole purpose [is] to ensure that the \u00a0Russians and Assad and the Iranians don\u2019t have a happy answer to how \u00a0this all ends, and maybe that will someday get them to accept Plan B. \u00a0Meanwhile, they\u2019re tied up in knots. They don\u2019t see Syria as a victory.<\/em><\/p>\n So, we don\u2019t care a jot if Syrian people are suffering greatly, \u00a0that\u2019s part of the plan. We are happy to prolong the suffering \u00a0indefinitely as long as the Russians, Iranians and Assad can\u2019t claim \u00a0victory.<\/p>\n Plan B, by the way, requires implementation on US terms of UN \u00a0resolution 2254, which would amount effectively to a suicide note for \u00a0Assad as under those terms it would allow millions of Syrians outside \u00a0Syria to vote and thus decide the fate of those still inside.<\/p>\n At no point in this lengthy interview does Jeffrey even mention \u00a0the Syrian people. The only Syrians (condescendingly) mentioned are the \u00a0Kurdish militia SDF:<\/p>\n The SDF,\u00a0they\u2019re clean kids. \u00a0I\u2019ve gotten to know them and their leadership very, very well. They \u00a0really are phenomenal, by Middle Eastern standards. They\u2019re a highly \u00a0disciplined Marxist offshoot of the PKK.<\/em><\/p>\n So, let\u2019s get this straight: the US is supporting a bunch of \u00a0Marxists in North East Syria to stop Assad getting the much needed oil \u00a0for the Syrian people and is indifferent to the fact that Idlib is \u00a0controlled by a bunch of Islamist fanatics? Jeffreys in fact does not \u00a0say a single word about the character of the opposition to acknowledge \u00a0their Islamist extremism, or about the likely consequences if Plan B \u00a0were to succeed and deliver the keys of Damascus to Islamist radicals. \u00a0In this game \u2013 and a game is clearly how callous power-crazed Washington \u00a0policy makers see it \u2013 only preventing victory by the other side \u00a0matters.<\/p>\n Trump emerges as relatively sensible, which is saying a lot.<\/p>\n The president was \u00a0uncomfortable with our presence in Syria. He was very uncomfortable with \u00a0what he saw as endless wars. \u2026 Trump kept asking, \u201cWhy do we have \u00a0troops there?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The reason that Trump pulled \u00a0the troops out was I think because he was just tired of us having come \u00a0up with all these explanations for why we\u2019re in there.\u00a0We at the State \u00a0Department never provided any troop numbers to the president. That\u2019s not \u00a0our job. We didn\u2019t try to deceive him. He kept on publicly saying \u00a0numbers that were way below what the actual numbers were, so in talking \u00a0to the media and talking to Congress, we had to be very careful and \u00a0dodge around. .But the Syria mission is the gift that keeps on giving. \u00a0We and the SDF are still the dominant force in [northeast]\u00a0Syria.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Not our job?\u2019 The deviousness of this is breathtaking. The US State \u00a0Department deliberately withheld crucial information from the President \u00a0in order to get their way on keeping their counters on the Monopoly \u00a0board which for them is Syria. It\u2019s no surprise that someone of \u00a0Jeffrey’s calibre boasts about helping Israel to pulverise Syria:<\/p>\n We then also had the \u00a0Israeli air campaign. The US only began supporting that when I came on \u00a0board. I went out there and we saw Prime Minister Netanyahu and others, \u00a0and they thought that they were not being supported enough by the US \u00a0military, and not by intelligence. And there was a big battle within the \u00a0US government, and we won the battle.<\/em><\/p>\n The argument [against \u00a0supporting Israel\u2019s campaign] was, again, this obsession with the \u00a0counterterrorism mission. People didn\u2019t want to screw with it, either by \u00a0worrying about Turkey or diverting resources to allow the Israelis to \u00a0muck around in Syria, as maybe that will lead to some blowback to our \u00a0forces. It hasn\u2019t.<\/em><\/p>\n All that matters is \u2018stabilizing the situation\u2019 to US advantage:<\/p>\n So that was how we put \u00a0together an integrated Syria policy that nestled under the overall Iran \u00a0policy. The result has been relative success because we \u2014\u00a0with a lot of \u00a0help from the Turks in particular \u2014\u00a0have managed to stabilize the \u00a0situation.The only change on the ground to the benefit of Assad has been \u00a0southern Idlib in two and a half years of attacks. They are highly \u00a0unlikely to continue, given the strength of the Turkish army there\u00a0and \u00a0the magnitude of the defeat of the Syrian army by the Turks back in \u00a0March.<\/em><\/p>\n It would be hard to disagree with that pessimistic analysis. As long as the US puts stymieing its adversaries ahead of any genuine \u00a0concern for the suffering and prospects of the Syrian people, including \u00a0the millions of refugees condemned by this policy to indefinite exile, \u00a0no end is in sight.<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth bearing in mind that Jeffreys worked with Obama long \u00a0before he worked with Trump. Anybody who expects the Biden \u00a0administration to follow a different path on Syria must be seriously \u00a0deluded, unless by \u2018different\u2019 is meant an even more reckless, activist, \u00a0interventionist policy that goes beyond \u2018stabilising\u2019. And there is no \u00a0Trump there now to apply the brakes.<\/p>\n