Syrian dictator Bashar Assad has “hamstrung” attempts to negotiate an end to the civil war that has racked his country since 2011, a top U.S. diplomat says.
Special envoy James Jeffrey has been working with the United Nations to negotiate a political settlement to end the Syrian civil war. That effort has been complicated by international jockeying for leverage, as Russia and Iran intervened with airpower and ground forces to stabilize Assad’s regime. But Jeffrey allowed that Russia has been “helpful” in the talks, putting blame for the stalemate on the Syrian dictator. “The Russians have been fairly, I would say, forthcoming in ideas and other things,” Jeffrey told reporters this week. “I think the problem is that the Russians are hamstrung by the Syrian regime, which doesn’t want anything to do with this.”
Jeffrey and U.N. officials are negotiating with Assad’s international patrons on the make-up of a Syrian constitutional committee that could design the structure of a new government in the context of a broader peace process. Assad objects to the appointment of the Syrian opposition’s preferred representatives.
Jeffrey hoped to see a “breakthrough” in those negotiations in December, the very week that President Trump upended the political calculations on all sides by declaring victory against ISIS and announcing he would withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned in protest of the decision, which caught allies by surprise, but Trump has since agreed to leave a smaller force in place, even beyond the defeat of ISIS as a land-holding terrorist organization.
“We’re a big step closer to that today. But ISIS still lives on in various cells and in the minds of many of the people in the areas that we’ve liberated,” Jeffrey said. That persistent threat could necessitate a steady stream of air raids and artillery strikes, along with the continued deployment of “some people on the ground,” even though Islamic State fighters — who rampaged across Syria and northern Iraq in 2014 — lost control of their final outpost on Saturday.
