Stephen Zunes - the Syrian Tragedy: Causes, Consequences, Options (2015)

Stephen Zunes: As Keith mentioned, I have spent time in the Middle East, including a number of trips to Syria prior to the outbreak of the war, where I met with some top government officials, including the foreign minister and others, as well as dissidents. academics and others, but my main impressions of Syria was it was one of the most beautiful countries I've ever been to. The natural beauty of the mountains, the great archaeological wonders, the great water wheels, In Hama, the crusader castles, the Palmyra, the Roman ruins, the best preserved in the world. Aleppo, one of my absolute favorite cities I've ever been to, with its ancient streets and the... the great fortress in the middle of the city that we're going to overlook. It was a place that seemed very authentic, very real. I was never a fan of the government, as you might imagine, but the country and its people. ones that have always been very dear to my heart. And so to see it descend into this kind of tragedy has been personally painful for me. And even though it's my job to analyze, being an area of specialization in my academic work, it's been a hard one for me, frankly, because I know so many people there, many of whom are now dead. I want to start by just giving a little history of the country. Syria, of course, is an ancient society. Damascus is one of the longest inhabited cities in the world, going back well over 4,000 years, the street called Straight is the oldest street in the world. I've walked there, and through there I've seen where the Apostle Paul lowered in a basket. That building is still there. It's just remarkable. Yet the modern boundaries of what we call Syria are like... Most boundaries in the Middle East and Africa and other parts of the previously colonized world are pretty artificial. Indeed, Lebanon was literally carved out by the Syrians out of Syria, where they could have a Christian minority loyal to the French, could predominate politically and set up the sectarian system, which has caused so many problems there. The French did some similar work in Syria. They used the Alawites, a religious minority, a Muslim sect that represents about 12% of the population. They used them disproportionately in the military they were trying to build up. among military officers, they hope to be loyal to France. This is similar to the favoritism of minorities, an old trick of colonial powers. We saw the British use the Sikhs in India, the British use the Igbos in Nigeria, the Americans use the Hmong in Laos, and in a similar way, the French use the Alawites. The country finally became independent in the 1940s. In 1949, it had a free election that elected a left-leaning nationalist government. But in apparent cahoots with the US Central Intelligence Agency, there was a military coup which overthrew this government. And that was the last free election the country had. It's been a series of military governments. Though through the 50s and beyond, they tended to lean more to the left, more nationalistic. During the Cold War, Syria allied, though technically non-aligned, was in many respects allied to the Soviet Union. They adopted a strong pan-Arabist ideology. In fact, for several years in the late 50s, early 60s, they merged with Egypt to become one country called the United Arab Republic. The goal was to get all the Arab countries eventually into one nation, but the Syrians didn't feel they were getting a good end of the deal and renewed their independence a few years later. 1967, in the Arab-Israeli war that June, Israel ended up conquering the southwestern part of the country, taking over half of the Golan province, and it remains as occupied territory, Israeli-occupied territory ever since. Most of the Syrian population was ethnically cleansed. though there is a small series of Jews communities that still consider themselves Syrians that have periodically engaged in nonviolent resistance against the Israeli occupation and settlements there. In 1970, there was a coup by the head of the Air Force, a man named Bashar Assad. He instituted one-man rule and organized state services into sectarian lines, where the Sunnis, the majority, would be the formal heads of political institutions, while the Alawites were given control over the military, intelligence, and security apparatuses. Now, this was not sectarian in the sense of religion, per se. Indeed, the Baathist movement and the Assad family are pretty secular in their orientation. But it was a means, given the history of coups in that country, it was basically a way where Assad could be assured of remaining in control. Despite not giving lip service to the Palestinian cause, Assad did more harm than good. The Palestinian refugees that had fled Israel during the original ethnic cleansing in 1948 were largely sequestered to their refugee camps and not granted citizenship status. And what support he gave for the opposition tend to be some extremist groups, including some pretty notorious terrorist groups. that killed a number of Israeli civilians, hijacked airliners, and engaged in other acts of terror. In 1975, Syria intervened in the Lebanese Civil War, ironically, with the support of the United States, trying to crush a victory by a coalition of Lebanese leftists. and Palestinians. But internally, he focused on establishing a kind of authoritarian, secular, semi-socialist kind of political system. It got resentment from a number of quarters in society, both left and right. A hardline Islamist uprising in 1982 was savagely suppressed in the city of Hama, basically where the hardcore Sunni Islamists ended up taking over the heart of the city. Basically he surrounded, Assad's forces surrounded the city and just bombed and shelled and bombed and shelled for days. resulting in the deaths of as many as 10,000 people, mostly civilians. Between 1982 and 1984, the United States actually engaged Syrian forces in Lebanon when the US militarily intervened after Israel's invasion. We killed quite a few Syrians, they shot down a couple of our planes, killing a couple of American pilots. Yet they are still willing to cooperate with the United States in areas of mutual concern. For example, they sent troops to Saudi Arabia in 1990 as part of Operation Desert Shield in reaction to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Even though Saddam was a fellow Baathist, the government in Syria was always very hostile towards the Iraqis, even to the point of being willing to ally with the United States in opposition to Iraq's aggression. In fact, their opposition to Iraq was so strong, they were the only Arab country to attack Iran during the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s. Also with the support of the United States, in December of 1990, just before the Gulf War, the United States supported Syria in staging a coup against a Maronite general alive with Saddam Hussein, who himself had seized power in a coup a couple of months earlier. This, of course, led Syria to end up dominating Lebanese affairs. It's kind of ironic that the man we helped Syria overthrow later became supported by the United States, and the Syrians rule in Lebanon, which he initially supported, became the subject of a U.S. hostility. In the 1990s, the government of Assad moderated somewhat. It stopped supporting terrorist groups, opened up the political system at least a little bit, and yet the United States kept it on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. I actually interviewed the US ambassador in Damascus about this, and he admitted that, yes, we hadn't seen evidence of them supporting terrorism in recent years, but we're keeping them on the list as leverage to pressure them to be more open to certain US diplomatic initiatives. And this is the first time I had long, many of us had long suspected it, but it was the first time I'd heard it from somebody as high ranking as U.S. Ambassador admit that the terrorism list, the State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism was based at least as much on political concerns as their actual involvement in such activities. The other way Syria moderated was in its longstanding hostility towards Israel and was willing to recognize Israel's right to exist, have full diplomatic and economic relations, allow for international peacekeeping force and demilitarizing the border region if Israel would withdraw from the occupied Golan Heights. And the argument came down literally to a couple hundred yards of where the boundary would actually be when the talks broke off. Everybody assumed they would be resuming shortly, but Bashar Assad died and ended up cutting off the talks. By the time that Syria was willing to resume, the hardline right-wing government had come to power in Israel and no longer wanted to pursue negotiations. And the United States, which for years had pushed Syria to support the land for peace formula, backed away and basically said, and basically started supporting Israel's position that they'd be able to hold on to the occupied territories even if its Arab neighbor wanted to make peace. When Hafez Assad died, he was replaced by his son Bashir. His first choice was his son Basel, but he ended up dying in a car accident, so he groomed his son Bashir, who was not much of a... Not much of a political figure. I mean, he was an ophthalmologist trained in Britain. He had no interest in politics. But his father basically wanted him to succeed. And there's some irony here, because the whole idea of the Baathist movement and this kind of Republican revolution in the Arab world was to get away from the archaic, anachronistic tradition of hereditary leadership. Initially, he opened up the system somewhat. It was known as the Damascus Spring. There was more descent and cultural life bloomed. People were excited that there might actually be a hope for democracy, but the door shut relatively quickly. This was short-lived. and remain this kind of love-hate relationship with the United States. After the 9-11 tragedy, the Syrian government helped the United States in trying to crack down Al-Qaeda. In fact, even took part in the so-called extraordinary rendition program where the CIA would kidnap suspected terrorists, send them to countries where they would be tortured, And if they found people of Syrian background, they would send them to Damascus to be tortured. One of them happened to be a Canadian citizen who was perfectly innocent, but had the same name as a terrorist suspect. And he was sent to Damascus and tortured there better part of a year before the US and Syrians realized he was actually innocent. But despite this cooperation, the United States saw Syria in a negative light, and Congress almost unanimously passed a law in 2004 called the Syrian Accountability Act, which imposed very, very strict sanctions on it. And it was based in order for the sanctions to be lifted, Syria had to withdraw its forces from Lebanon in accordance to the UN Security Council Resolution 425, which called for all foreign troops to leave Lebanon. What's interesting though is that that resolution was passed 30 years earlier. And the only country they mentioned by name was Israel. But the US had supported Israel's occupation of Lebanon. Israel had unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon in 2000. But now we're insisting it had to be enforced in the case of Syria. And of course, most Lebanese wanted Syria out. They should have been out. They were violating it. But the Syrians said, why are you suddenly interested in enforcing this resolution when you blocked enforcement of the resolution back when it primarily involved Israel? The resolution also claimed that Iraq was supporting the armed resistance US occupation forces in Iraq. in Iraq, which was a bit bizarre because the main forces fighting the United States were pro-Saddam or Islamist extremists, both of which the Syrian regime had opposed. They also insisted that the sanctions not be lifted until direct Syrian-Israeli peace talks resumed, even though it was the Israelis who broke it off, not the Syrians. Furthermore, they made exaggerated claims about Syria's supposed weapons of mass destruction. They were known to have a chemical weapons stockpile. They cited John Bolton, who in the same testimony claimed that Cuba was developing biological weapons and other bizarre allegations that were later found to be false. He, and who was one of the big people promoting the scare attacks around Iraq, this is the same person that was cited in this Senate resolution. And also they insisted that Syria unilaterally disarm its missiles, even though Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, others had more sophisticated missiles that had unilaterally get rid of their chemical weapons, even though Israel and Egypt still had their chemical weapons. And I could go on, but what was striking about this resolution is that even though the concerns raised about Syria in many cases were valid, some cases exaggerated, the behaviors that Syria were involved in were very similar to the behaviors of countries lied to the United States and so Syria felt they could just reject these demands and were but it was quite striking the fact that there's hardly a single I think there may be six dissenting votes or two dissenting votes in both houses of Congress I think four members abstained. Quite bizarre that nobody actually pointed out some of the inaccuracies within the wording and the double standard. And the extreme anti-Syrian stuff has gone back for many years. Even my own union, the American Federation of Teachers, passed a resolution in 2006 claiming that Syria was supplying Hamas with sophisticated missiles and Hamas attacks on Israel were being done at the bidding of Syria. But in reality, Syria and Hamas have very bad relations. They've never sent them sophisticated missiles. In fact, Hamas is actively supporting the Islamist opposition attacking and fighting the Assad regime this day. But it's a sort of example of the extreme how it made it very difficult, basically, here in the United States to have much rational discourse on Syria, and why many Syrians, even those opposing the government, frankly do not trust the United States and our intentions there. Indeed, in 2006, Bush pushed the Prime Minister, Prime Minister Olmert of Israel to launch a massive attack on Lebanon and Syria in anticipation of a planned attack on Iran, which didn't happen for various other reasons. Israel did go ahead and attack Lebanon. They did not think they had what it took to attack Syria simultaneously, and even the war on Lebanon against the Hezbollah militants there ended up being a disaster. That, too, was supported by a large bipartisan majority. In 2007, the Assad regime tried to, again, with a coalition government in Israel, thought maybe they could make peace. Again, they offered all the formula of land for peace that people have been talking about for years, that Israelis had supposedly wanted for years. The Israeli cabinet considered it. We're considering it. When Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Secretary of State, you know, called the Israeli Prime Minister Holmert and said, don't even think about it. the president of Israel, Shimon Peres, admitted that it was U.S. pressure that got them to say no, because he pointed out that the Bush administration, few friends that Israel had in the world, we don't want to displease them by making peace with Israel. Basically, what the United States wanted to do, you know, was to, we were afraid that if Assad succeeded in getting their land back, that had been occupied all these years by Israel, he'd be seen as a national hero, you know, to strengthen his rule, and again, The goal of the Bush administration was regime change in Syria. That's why he put these strict sanctions that no government could reasonably abide by because they were so one-sided. Basically, there was an active effort to try to bring down the regime. Assad, that regime was very different, because it was not just one-man rule. It was more like an oligarchy, in the sense that you had the Ba'ath Party, which had been in power more or less for 50 years. They had offices in every town, every neighborhood, actively recruited people as members. They had a unifying ideology. The military, almost everybody had been in the military, and many of them had maybe close family officers who benefited from the system. You had the sectarian divisions. You had large minorities, not just of Alawites, but of Christians, who are about 10% of the population, of Shias and Druze, who... felt that Assad, as bad as he was, was at least protection from the more hardcore fundamentalist extremist types that might come to power if the Sunni majority ever gained power. So he had this kind of divide and rule strategy. On top of that, there was the crony capitalist class that benefited from government support. Those are mostly Sunni business people. So if you take a decent percentage, though not all, of the religious minorities, combined with those that have close personal ties to the party and the military, and as well as the economic interest, you have a good 30%, 40% of the population. So whether your struggle is non-violent or violent, if you're going against a regime that has a social base, even though it's a minority, if it's a big enough minority, it's gonna be much harder than going against one-man rule. We saw this in the leftist revolutions, for example, that Somoza was pretty easy to overthrow in Nicaragua, whereas in El Salvador it was more of an oligarchical system. It became much more difficult. He also had the problem that civil society was weaker in Syria than it had been in Tunisia and in Egypt. Assad had been able to manipulate the strong sense of nationalism that the people had, that the Assyrians have long had in the face of threats from the West, the Israeli occupation and the like. So basically, it was a real challenge. It was clear that Assad was not going to fall within a matter of weeks, as had been the case in the other Arab revolutions. People were so angry, so frustrated at the massacres Many people were saying we need to take up arms. They pointed out how Libya had started out non-violently, they took up arms, and then the West came to the rescue in terms of military intervention. Maybe they'll do that if we take up arms as well. It ended up being a disastrous decision. Because turning to arms struggle just gave the regime the excuse for even greater repression. The large-scale defections from the military and the police, which originally formed the basis of the so-called Free Syrian Army, largely stopped. Soldiers are much more likely to defect if they're being ordered to shoot into crowds of unarmed protesters than if they're being shot at themselves. And the big problem of course was that as the armed struggle continued, the hardline Islamist groups gained the ascendancy. The Free Syrian Army really wasn't much of an army. The Pentagon estimated that it was literally as many as 1,000 separate militia, acting not in coordination with each other. They ranged in ideology, they ranged in their military preparedness, but they were weak from the very beginning. But the Islamists ended up dominating and many of the FSA units got overrun by the Islamists or in the course of the struggle they became radicalized. And I know a number of stories of young fighters who started off as moderate and secular but as the struggle continued and out of their desperation and the horror that was around them embrace this very reactionary, militaristic, chauvinistic version of Islam. We then came to the rise of ISIS. Bringing the war to the cities gave the regime the excuse to unleash extreme brutality, massive bombings of crowded civilian neighborhoods, reputable human rights groups that investigated and documented crimes against humanity of an extraordinary degree. Thousands of civilians are being killed every month. During the nonviolent phase of the struggle, 5,000 civilians were killed roughly. Since then, it is literally, the death toll has gone up 50 times. Nearly a quarter million people have died. At least two-thirds of them, three-quarters of them have been civilians. Seven and a half million people, about a third of the country's population, have been displaced. Four million of them are in exile as refugees. I just want to mention we've got a lot of attention in Europe, about a couple hundred thousand refugees that have fled into Europe. But remember, the overwhelming majority of refugees are hosted by countries that are a lot poorer and a lot less capable of supporting them. than the European ones. I want to talk a little bit about the rise of ISIS, since they're the ones that are kind of on people's minds. They've ended up being even more ruthless and deadly than the government, not in terms of the total numbers killed, that's primarily from the regime, because they have an air force and can drop bombs in crowded areas, but we've all heard the stories, the ruthless control of ISIS, the beheadings, the executions, mass kidnappings and rapes and the like. There are times when the United States has exaggerated stories of various terrorist groups, guerrilla groups we don't like, but from everything I'm aware of, the horror of ISIS is not exaggerated. This is a fanatical cult. has about as much to do with Islam as the Branch Davidians or the neo-Nazi Christian identity groups have with Christianity. Indeed, if you look at the original caliphates, The original caliphates that they were claiming to be emulating actually gave autonomy and rights for the Jewish and Christian minorities, including their own court systems. They respected the archaeological treasures of pre-Islamic times. These certainly weren't democracies by 20th century Western standards, but they were nothing like the horror that's being afflicted in the name of Islam by this group of fanatics. But I want to tell a little bit about how they emerged. Their leadership is largely Iraqi. Many military commanders were actually members of the Iraqi army who suddenly found themselves unemployed when the United States invaded the country, and instead of just purging the top officers loyal to Saddam, ended up eliminating the entire armed forces. So you had these embittered, unemployed men who were able to take home their guns and military training and become guerrilla fighters. The other problem was that the other bastion of secular nationalism in Iraq that the United States got rid of was the civil service. Basically, we said any member of the Baathist party can no longer be a member of government, but since you had to be a member of the Baathist party to work in the civil service, that pretty much eliminated everybody. And they became personal fiefdoms of the Shiite sectarian parties that ended up dominating Iraq after the US invasion. And the new Iraqi army basically was organized primarily by the Badr Corps, which was the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a pro-Iranian group. In fact, the Badr Corps had actually been armed and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. They fought on Iran's side on the Iran-Iraq War. So to many Iraqis, particularly the Sunnis, who are the strongest in terms of the sense of Arab nationalism, they saw their government being taken over by these pro-Persian, pro-Iranian factions that had killed their fellow Iraqis in this long bloody war in the 1980s, that they got in power by virtue of an invasion by traditional imperialist powers, the United States and Britain, that they'd also opposed the historic enemies had kind of taken over and who made that possible it was it was it was the uh the the the iraqi shias who are just as arab as they were who had who are their neighbors and they've been intermarriage between the sunnis and shias and small towns only one mosque sunnis and shias worship together i mean theologically there's less difference between sunnis and shias than there are between catholics and protestants And they had not been fighting each other for years. I mean, Saddam Hussein was ruthless against Shia groups that kind of organized as Shia groups. But if you look at the ruling Ba'ath Party, at least a third of the top leaders were Shia. It was a secular nationalist regime. What I'm saying is that the sectarian fighting that helped give rise to ISIS was not something that grew spontaneously out of all they'd been fighting each other for centuries. It was a direct consequence of the US invasion and post-occupation US policies. Now, one of the groups that had been fighting the United States in the government, there were like 40 armed groups fighting US troops after the invasion. But one of the, though this was a minority, one of the deadliest and most dangerous was, was a, the Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which had sprung up in the Sunni dominated areas. But many of the Sunni tribesmen who had been fighting the US and the Iraqi government said, you know, these Al-Qaeda guys are even scarier. If the Maliki government, the US-backed, an Iranian-backed Shia government, would incorporate Sunnis back into the army, back into the government, we will join your side in fighting Al-Qaeda. And they did. And Al-Qaeda was largely defeated. In fact, it was this agreement, much more than the so-called surge, which led to a lessening of the fighting. But the Maliki government didn't go through their end of the deal. and the sectarian tensions remained. And again, they're not fighting each other for theological reasons. If you think, for example, speaking of Catholics and Protestants, think of Northern Ireland. Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland were not killing each other for their religious differences, per se, but because of various historic reasons. The Protestants identified with Britain and the Catholics with the Irish Republic. It was competing nationalisms and there was sort of an assumption if you were one, if you were Protestant, you sided with Britain, if you were Catholic, you sided with Ireland. And so when the IRA or the Ulster Unionists would plant bombs in the other people's pubs, killing random civilians, and the tit-for-tat killings that went on for several decades. Again, it was about how the religion became fused with the national identity in this nationalist struggle. Similarly, the fighting in Iraq initially was about the sense by some Sunnis that the Shias were collectively responsible for taking Iraq out of the Arab orbit and into that of the Western powers and of Iran. But whatever the reasons, it more and more evolved into one that was more sectarian. Suddenly, who you were did make a difference. And there was mutual ethnic cleansing, religious cleansing, if you will. And in recent years, the Sunnis started using non-violent protests in tent cities and other kinds of efforts to try civil resistance, to try to get the Maliki government to fulfill its end of the bargain. They responded by brutal repression, including massacres. And so when this new shadowy group, ISIS, emerged out of the remnants of the old Al-Qaeda in Iraq, they were actually welcomed by the Sunni communities, saying, how could they be worse than the Iraqi government? Well, they were. And the Iraqi government didn't, the army was so corrupt and everything, they just, you know, threw down their weapons and ISIS picked them up, along with banks full of gold, along with all sorts of other oil and other resources. And this enabled them to move into Syria with more arms, more money, and take over large swaths of territory in that country as well. Of course, they don't recognize Iraq and Syria. That's why they use terms like the Levant or others, in the sense that they see these boundaries as, again, artificial colonial constructs that they don't recognize. So basically what I'm saying is that yes, the horrific repression of the Assad regime, the evaporation of the non-violence struggle was a major cause of the rise of ISIS or ISIL or the Islamic State, whatever you want to call it. But a lot of the blame frankly goes to the United States for our intervention in Iraq. If it had not been for the invasion of Iraq, there would be no ISIS. Some conspiracy theorists say we somehow created ISIS or secretly arming ISIS. No. We're very disturbed at the rise of ISIS. But it was a direct consequence, again, I would argue, of the US intervention. Indeed, if you look at ISIS's military equipment, the vast, and this has led to some of the conspiracy theories, but you will notice that the vast majority is U.S. made. Now the U.S. did not arm ISIS directly with this, but they were able to capture it from the Iraqi army, capture it from rebel groups in Syria, some of which were armed by the United States and others armed through U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf, like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who get their arms from the U.S. But it's a... It's contributed to the horror that we're seeing unfold in that country. And it's led to a lot of difficult questions. What can we do now? Well, it's interesting because during the fall semester two years ago, I was having to explain to my students why the United States appeared to be on the verge of going to war against the Syrian government. And then last fall I was having to explain to my students why the United States was going to war against Syrian rebels. But the initial Initially, the big concern, of course, was the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime, a horrific attack which killed over 1,000 innocent civilians. But the direct confrontation was averted when Russia was able to negotiate Syria's blade entry into the chemical weapons treaty and disarm them, even though other forms of mass killings, unfortunately, by the regime have continued. Now we have ISIS as seen as the bigger threat. And the US has begun air strikes against ISIS, along with Britain, France, the Jordanians, Saudis, and more recently, Russia. The latter is of concern to the United States because Russia appears not to be bombing just ISIS, but also some of the more moderate groups that the US supports. Russia's agenda seems to be more at propping up Assad. The United States would like to see Assad go, but also, of course, would like to see ISIS suppressed. And in many ways, let me just mention a bit on the Russian perspective. I mean, to the Russians, the Middle East is like Latin America is to us. And for those of you who remember the Cold War, remember how the United States was quite willing to support all sorts of thugs and dictators and rationalize for war crimes in the name of fighting what we call terrorists. That was leftist rebels. And Russia is engaging a similar kind of policy, only the difference being that usually in Latin America, the case of the Soviet penetration was greatly exaggerated, whereas in the case of the Middle East, the United States really has become the hegemonic power with the... U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and military bases all throughout the area and a number of regimes that were once pro-Russian having been overthrown and taken a more pro-Western orientation. So the Russians have their strategic rationale for that, but I would argue that there's absolutely no justification for this kind of intervention, especially anything that supports Assad. Well, any kind of military intervention makes sense, given what's there. I have a hard time with this question in a lot of ways, you know, because I feel like, you know, if policymakers had listened to me, we wouldn't be in this mess. So now they turn to me and say, okay, what do we do now? And personally, I'm skeptical about military intervention. My own background, you know, I grew up in a Christian pacifist background. and so the idea of endorsing any kind of military intervention, even on humanitarian grounds, is a tough one to me. At the same time, we are faced with an unprecedented threat in terms of ISIS, again, and not to mention, people can certainly make a case in terms of a no-fly zone or some kind of responsibility to protect vis-a-vis the terror and oppression by Assad. At the same time, I'm open to being convinced that some kind of targeted military intervention is worthwhile, is morally and legally defensible, but I'm still not convinced yet. I do this for a couple of reasons. First of all, the United States has been bombing that part of the world on and off for a good quarter century now, and we seem to have only made things worse. Secondly, the fact is that most of the fighting is taking place in crowded urban areas. Killings of civilians is inevitable in these cases. And even though Assad and ISIS are responsible for far more civilian deaths overall, when the US does end up killing civilians, and we have by the hundreds in our strikes in Syria over the past year or so, It plays right into the hands of both the regime and of ISIS, that here are these Western imperialist powers once again coming in and intervening and killing our people. And they have reminders of this. If you drive through Syria, you'll see the remnants of crusader castles. These people have a long memory of Western imperialism going back more than a millennium. In other words, whatever tactical advantages militarily that foreign intervention by the United States or Russia or anybody else might have, It could lead in a longer term to strategic losses politically as people rally around the flag in terms of Assad or in terms of the black flag of ISIS. That both have been... been able to cynically manipulate the strong sense of nationalism, the history of resistance against colonialism, against Western invasions and intervention that's gone on in Syria and elsewhere in that part of the world for such a long time. I think the only way that air power really could make a difference would be if ISIS was being challenged by a unified popular movement, not the corrupt and brutal armed forces of Iraq or Syria. In fact, one area where the U.S. bombing has helped has been in the Kurdish areas of Syria, where the YPG, the armed Kurdish movement there, which has a lot of popular grassroots support, has women fighters, has a kind of decentralized kind of socialist organization. They have... They have been quite effective in fighting against ISIS. And again, military planners will tell you no matter how many bombs you drop, if you're going to win a battle, you have to have somebody there on the ground with the flag claiming that space. So you need to have people on the ground who can do it. But the Kurds, remember, are a minority. They're only 10% of the Syrian population. If ISIS is going to be defeated, it needs to be defeated by presumably Sunni Arab Syrians. And at this point, there really is not a force that is mobilized that air power can really support. So there's something about, I think we may have to just wait. And that's a hard thing to say. I mean, there's something about the American persona that if we drop enough bombs, if we send enough money, if we do enough this or enough that, we can fix things. But there are limits to what any outside power can do at this point, and as frustrating as that might be. And again, we don't have a good history in that part of the world. And so oftentimes, even well-intended and even for a good cause, U.S. intervention, especially the military kind, can inadvertently backfire. There are a few glimmers of hope I want to mention. One is that groups so extreme, so rigid, so ideological as ISIS can't govern in the long term. They control millions of people over a wide swath of territory. They need to keep water and electricity running. From what I can hear, they're doing a pretty bad job. More and more people are fleeing the area, not just to flee the repression, but just because things aren't working, things aren't functioning. And people are saying no in a lot of ways. Remember, nonviolent resistance is not just people being out on the streets protesting. In Syria, that can get you killed pretty quickly, as folks found out. But there are other ways of more quiet resistance, more individual resistance that can still undermine the system. And that is the fact that 90% of families, Syrian families under the control of ISIS are not sending their kids to ISIS schools. that they do not want to be indoctrinated in this gross distortion of Islam. There are other tiny acts of non-cooperation that are going on all the time. And cumulatively, that could help lead to their eventual collapse. I think that what things outside powers can do to perhaps hasten that would be to go after the black market, especially on the Turkish border. We do have some sway in Turkey in terms of our aid, in terms of our military bases and the like. We could really press to... make it more and more difficult for ISIS to get its funding. We need to pressure our allies in Turkey and in the Gulf region to stop supporting some of the non-ISIS hardline Islamists because often they end up working along with ISIS on some areas. But I think, and we also need to push for diplomacy, even with people we don't like, like Assad, like the Russians, like the Iranians, to try to reach some kind of settlement. But the only settlement that can be reached that will last, to have any hope, would be one that includes Syrian civil society.