Jim Jeffrey's Terrible Syria Solution Could Create More Chaos

Reuters
July 15, 2019 Topic: Security Region: Middle East Blog Brand: Lebanon Watch Tags: SyriaNo Fly ZoneKurdsWarJim Jeffrey

Jim Jeffrey's Terrible Syria Solution Could Create More Chaos

Sterile talk about buffers and safe zones may sound good in Foggy Bottom, but Ambassador Jim Jeffrey’s policies both fan the flames of extremism and set the Kurds up for a massacre.

Almost twenty years ago, I first visited Iraqi Kurdistan. Today thousands of Americans, Turks, and other foreigners fly into airports in the major cities of Erbil and Sulaymaniyah. At the time, Turkey largely blockaded the border and refused to recognize Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government. Now Turkey is Iraqi Kurdistan’s largest trading partner and the builder of its airports, but at the time Turkey largely turned its back on the region’s potential.

The Clinton and Bush administrations were wise, however, to stand up to (rather than appease) Turkish anger. Jeffrey’s policy of Turkish appeasement would have been bad enough then. It is even worse now, however, given that pre-Erdoğan Turkey was an ally that did not support Sunni extremism, but post-Erdoğan Turkey is not an ally and does support it.

So what should be done? Jeffrey should stand down on his vision of a buffer. It will not appease Turkey, but only encourage Erdoğan to demand more. A wiser policy would be for Washington to embrace the Kurdish administration in northeastern Syria and endorse federalism in Syria’s future. The United States should invest directly in the region and help rebuild it in order to provide both jobs for Americans and consolidate a zone of influence and tolerance. Rather than treat Syrian Kurds as an enemy in a misguided attempt to appease the unappeasable, Washington should encourage Ankara to treat them as a market. Trump is at an inflexion point in Syria. He claims to have defeated the Islamic State but appears on the brink of a policy which could empower its next iteration.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Image: Reuters