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Experts pessimistic on Syria, warn of Al-Qaeda growth

By Yasmine El-Sabawi

WASHINGTON, April 27 (KUNA) -- With Al-Qaeda's influence growing stronger and the US failure to devise a consistent policy in Syria, the country's future looks bleak, a panel of experts warned Wednesday.
Al-Qaeda in Syria "now finds itself in a very settled, very secure position" after it began carrying out attacks this year on representatives of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) for their participation in the Astana negotiations in Kazakhstan, Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute think tank - where the event was also held - told the audience.
"There was no protection from [the American] side," he added.
Al-Qaeda has been waging a campaign to sell itself as an alternative to the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad, and "to convince Syrians it's not as extreme as they fear," Lister said. Most hardline circles among the group in Syria have begun to splinter off, he noted.
There may now be a central Al-Qaeda wing in Idlib, he warned, and the US is "facing a dual threat" from seeing its interests in the region fall to the group, and also seeing the group strengthened to carry out attacks in the West.
Former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford agreed with this assessment, and said "Al-Qaeda 4.0 is much harder to put down" than the so-called Islamic State (IS).
The US even kept the Astana process at length, and only sent an observer not well versed on Syria, he noted. Now 100 days in, the Trump Administration has not developed a policy on Syria at all, Ford said.
The White House continues to send a confusing message about the legitimacy of the Assad regime, which only changed to become strictly anti-Assad after the most recent sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun, said Randa Slim, an expert on post-conflict peace-building at the Middle East Institute.
Russia and Iran - Assad's allies - have interpreted this Administration's inconsistent messaging to mean "regime change is off the table," she explained. "The US is not willing to put more skin in the game beyond defeating IS." In pursuing an "IS-first strategy," Lister said, the US has done "the easiest thing" to a certain extent - but with the challenge of trying to win the IS-stronghold of Raqqa, the situation becomes more complex, and allies like Turkey start to strike Kurdish forces backed by the US.
"All of these are knock-off effects," he explained.
The IS-first strategy, however, will not secure US interests, and the US has done little to nothing to ensure a sustainable outcome on the battlefield against both IS and Al-Qaeda, argued Jennifer Cafarella, a lead intelligence planner at the Institute for the Study of War.
The only way to put Syria on a path to stability would be to present an "acceptable opposition" to Assad, she said. The attempt at assembling a "moderate Sunni force" has thus far failed for the US, she added.
Terry Wolfe, the Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter IS, and the only government official on the panel, expressed a cautious approach.
The US is currently "training a large number of Sunni Arabs," but it "takes time" to build armies, he acknowledged.
"The Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) have an outsized role, I understand that," he said of the US-backed rebels. "The SDF wasn't our first choice [but] we have a sense of urgency here." The Syrian regime and its allies see Raqqa as "ripe for the picking" precisely because Sunni Arab tribal support for the SDF is "low and uncertain," said Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near-East Policy.
The perception exists that the SDF is a vehicle for Kurdish domination," he said, but "you have to go to war with the force that you have." Tabler stressed that he doesn't "see things getting any better anytime soon." Instead of wiping out IS, he noted, "we are spreading it out" because the US has no comprehensive strategy - and this leaves a gaping hole in Syria for other groups to fill. Assad empowered groups like Al-Qaeda to then present himself as the only viable option for Syria, Cafarella explained, but "as jihadists gain dominance over the opposition, their political outcome becomes more resonant." The more that Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri says Syrians shouldn't trust external negotiations, the more powerful the Al-Qaeda narrative will be, she affirmed.
"We've never been farther" from a negotiated outcome, Cafarella repeatedly said. Neither side is able or willing, and this needs to frame how the US perceives the conflict, she added. The core challenge for the US and international community is that all sides in Syria "have incompatible goals." Ford suggested Syrian civilians informally take negotiations into their own hands. When international powers negotiate, they don't place a high priority on things like repatriation and amnesty - but these are priorities for Syrians, he said.
If there are ways for Syrians to sit down together and decide if they share interests as people who have nowhere else to live - interests that are not shared with Russians, Iranians, or Americans - that should be encouraged, he concluded. (end) ys.gta