Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s outreach to Washington powerbrokers is emblematic of the Obama administration’s failed policy toward the war-torn nation, says a critic of the president’s approach.
“I think these former Obama administration officials continue to be deluded by the same failed policies on Syria of the past five years,” Omar Hossino, spokesman for the Syrian American Council, said about reports that a former top Middle Eastern adviser to the president visited Damascus recently.
Assad’s nephew, Ribal al-Assad, is in the U.S. He spoke at New York’s Century Foundation and appeared on CNN on Sunday. Ribal’s brother, Siwar al-Assad, visited the Washington-based Middle East Policy Council in October after the event was moved from its originally planned venue of the Rayburn House Office Building.
“There has to be a political solution but diplomacy won’t work without sufficient pressure on the regime to make concessions, and that can only happen through no-fly zones and multiple safe zones to protect civilians,” he said.
The administration and the president have repeatedly said that Assad must go if the long-running civil war is ever to end. But Obama has charted a diplomatic and electoral course for his removal from power. Secretary of State John Kerry is leading international peace talks with moderate opposition groups and the United Nations has endorsed their plan, which calls for elections by mid-2017.
Obama has also repeatedly rejected the idea of no-fly zones and safe zones, saying that the U.S.’s primary military objective in Syria is defeating the Islamic State, which has no air force. And that establishing so-called safe zones might actually backfire and cause more civilian causalities.
He has also said that Assad must give up power but has left open the possibility of a “bridge” between his leadership and the next government.
“Now, is there a way of us constructing a bridge creating a political transition that allows those who are allied with Assad right now … to ensure that their equities are respected? That minorities like the Alawites are not crushed or retribution is not the order of the day?” Obama asked in a press conference on Friday. “I think that’s going to be very important as well.”
Hossino said that the administration must not entertain the idea of working with Assad or allowing him to maintain power.
“Trying to rehabilitate Assad after killing 250,000 people, including by chemical weapons, starvation, torture and rape of the Syrian civilian population, is only going to make it harder to reach a diplomatic solution in Syria and make it harder to fight ISIS, al Qaeda and other terrorist and extremist organizations in Syria,” Hossino said.
Hossino said the Syrian-American community is concerned that presidential candidates from both parties seem to be accepting the rationale supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin that cooperating with Assad is the only way to defeat the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
“The worst thing we could possibly do in the fight against ISIS is to keep the Assad regime in power,” he said. “Assad is the top recruiter for ISIS. He buys oil from them, rarely fights them, and has … launched airstrikes, which have supported ISIS positions such as in Aleppo.
“Removing ISIS requires removing Assad,” Hossino said.
