It has now been over a decade since Syria erupted into civil war. The uprising was spontaneous and spread like wildfire. Within weeks, President Bashar Assad had lost control over huge swaths of Syrian territory. The Assad family’s demise appeared inevitable. Rather than flee, however, Assad increased the brutality.
Neither fighting nor atrocities in Syria were random. Both sides fought for control over Homs, a small city literally at the crossroads of the country: Whichever faction controlled Homs could control commerce across Syria. Meanwhile, both Assad and the radicalized opposition sought to cleanse regions along sectarian or ethnic lines. The Syrian air force focused its assaults on Sunni population centers in order to change the demography of the Sunni heartland. Turkish-backed forces pursued a similar strategy of demographic transformation as they sought to pursue an ethnic cleansing in Syrian districts along the Turkish frontier of their native Kurdish populations.
While Russia, Iran, and Lebanese Hezbollah came to Assad’s defense and Turkey supported the radical Sunni opposition, moderate forces found no patron, especially as the Obama administration chose to sit on the sidelines. There was some support for the Syrian Kurds as they struggled against the Islamic State, but it was little, late, and undercut by former President Donald Trump.
Today, Assad has largely reestablished control over Syria. Moving forward, even if the United States follows the Arab lead to normalize relations with Assad, U.S. leverage over the Syrian dictator will be minimal. Assad now associates survival with intransigence and feels mass murder and ethnic cleansing pay off.
Today, Ethiopia is rapidly becoming the new Syria.
In November 2020, Tigrayan leadership rejected Ethiopian Premier Abiy Ahmed’s order to postpone elections. They feared that he sought to follow the path of self-described reformers who consolidate dictatorship. Abiy reacted with fury, sought to decapitate the Tigrayan military leadership, and then dispatched the Ethiopian army to Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray state. While Ethiopian officials insisted Abiy’s battle was just with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the army not only denied food to the entire Tigray Region but also closed Tigrayan businesses in Addis Ababa and rounded up ethnic Tigrayans in internment camps. To be a Tigrayan in Abiy’s Ethiopia is to be a dead man walking.
Initially, however, Abiy’s military assaults failed.
Last June, the Tigray Defense Forces recaptured Mekelle, and subsequently, they and other regional groups began to march on Addis Ababa. Just as the Syrian opposition sought to capture Homs, Tigrayan forces sought to cut off the Chinese-built railroad and highway between Addis Ababa and Djibouti, whose port is a lifeline for Ethiopian trade. Over the past week, the United Nations and various embassies began to evacuate their staff. Abiy’s fall appeared inevitable. It has not come yet.
Instead, the Ethiopian military has regained towns in northern Ethiopia that it previously lost. Tigrayan commanders said they made a tactical withdrawal to reconsolidate their lines. Given the press blackout, it is hard to know what is true. What is certain, however, is that while Washington has remained on the sidelines, other states, including Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and China, have provided Abiy drones and other technologies to use against the rebels and control the population.
They took a gamble. If Abiy remains, their stock will rise while America’s influence will be zero. Meanwhile, refugee flows will accelerate, and ethnic minorities will radicalize. Abiy is a Nobel laureate, and it is possible that with foreign assistance, he can outlast the opposition. But like Assad, he will then rule over a husk of a country whose potential he has largely destroyed.
There is no magic formula to resolve conflicts, but sitting on the sidelines and acting only as a diplomatic scold will never work. It is time for the U.S. to do what it refused to do in Syria: offer meaningful support to those resisting a murderous dictator.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
