Experts continue to warn against a U.S. alliance with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to defeat Islamic militants as the Obama administration looks for partners in the regional fight.
Both White House and State Department officials on Tuesday ruled out a direct partnership with Assad to strike the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS). The Washington Post reported that "such strikes would be a strategic benefit to Assad" whether the United States cooperated with him or not. Assad has largely avoided attacking ISIL in Syria during a three-year civil war, focusing most of his efforts on eliminating the moderate rebel opposition.
Assad even helped facilitate the rise of the jihadist group that now threatens U.S. and European security, a main reason why many experts have strongly cautioned against U.S. officials working with the Syrian leader. Syrian journalist Hassan Hassan noted recently that Assad’s forces declined to engage ISIL in the northern city of Raqqa:
Raqqa was saved the fate of Deir Ezzor, Aleppo, Homs, and Deraa. ISIS soon controlled the province, painted government buildings in black and turned them into bases. The group’s bases were easy to spot, for about a year and a half. Elsewhere, too, Assad allowed ISIS to grow and fester. The regime has been buying oil from it and other extremist groups after it lost control of most of the country’s oilfields and gas plants.
Frederic Hof, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former Obama administration adviser on Syria, wrote on Tuesday in the New Republic that Assad could lure the United States into an "ambush." The authoritarian leader will "allege coordination and collaboration when none exists," Hof said:
How to avoid the ambush? Demonstrate real hostility toward Assad, whose removal for the sake of neutralizing ISIS is even more justified than the ouster of Iraq's Nouri Al Maliki. If, in the course of U.S. anti-ISIS air operations over Syria, regime air defense radars lock onto U.S. aircraft, the relevant air defense site or sites should be engaged decisively. Robust and timely aid for Syrian nationalist rebels fighting both the regime and ISIS is a must. Relevant security assistance for a Syrian National Coalition trying to set up an alternate governing structure in non-Assad, non-ISIS Syria is mandatory. Building an all-Syrian national stabilization force in Turkey and Jordan for eventual anti-regime and anti-ISIS peace-enforcement is essential. American leadership in creating mechanisms that can one day bring Bashar Al Assad and his principal enforcers to trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity is vital. These are the steps that can put the lie to Assad's libel.