World powers should not provide “reconstruction assistance” to Syrian President Bashar Assad, a senior State Department official said Tuesday.
“We do not support reconstruction assistance to those territories held by Assad,” Brian Hook, the special representative for Iran, told the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Aid funding for Syria is the latest diplomatic arena of competition for control over the war-torn country, which is currently divided between U.S.-backed forces and an Assad regime propped up by Russia and Iran. Syria needs international assistance to rebuild a stable society, but U.S. officials don’t want to help Assad consolidate a victory in the Syrian civil war. Russia hopes to induce other Western powers to help by citing the threat of refugee flows into Europe.
“We must reinforce the humanitarian dimension of the Syrian conflict, and by that I mean boost humanitarian assistance to the Syrian population, and help the regions where refugees living abroad can return to,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said Saturday during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “This is potentially a huge burden for Europe.”
Putin’s appeal for help rebuilding the territory his military coalition has taken points to Russia’s vulnerability in the country, according to the Trump team.
“The Russians are stuck there at the moment,” John Bolton, the White House national security advisor, said after Putin’s foray to Germany. “I think their frenetic diplomatic activity in Europe indicates that they’d like to find somebody else, for example, to bear the cost of reconstructing Syria — which they may or may not succeed in doing.”
American officials hope that financial pressure will enforce Assad’s departure.
“It’s just reality: Syria, by World Bank estimates, [it will require] more than $200 billion to reconstruct Syria,” Brett McGurk, the U.S. official overseeing counter-Islamic State operations in the region, said in 2017. “It’s probably many multiples of that. And the international community is not going to come to the aid of Syria until there is a credible political horizon that can lead to a credible political transition in Syria. That is the reality.”
