Ex-Ambassador Robert Ford on the US Role in Syriaâs 10-Year War
By Aaron MatĂ© – Mar 20, 2021
Former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford speaks to Aaron Maté about the 10th anniversary of the Syrian war, the US role in the conflict, and why he now supports the withdrawal of US forces.
Robert Ford served as US Ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014. On the tenth anniversary of the Syrian war, Ford speaks to Aaron MatĂ© about the roots of the conflict; the US role; the current US sanctions that target Syriaâs reconstruction; chemical weapons allegations against the Syrian government; and why he now supports the withdrawal of US forces.
Guest: Robert Ford, retired US diplomat who served as US Ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014.
TRANSCRIPT
AARON MATĂ:  Welcome to Pushback, Iâm Aaron MatĂ©.  This month marks the 10th anniversary of the war in Syria.  After a decade, hundreds of thousands have been killed, millions displaced, and the country is still in crisis.  The UN says that sixty percent of Syrians are at risk of famine in the coming year.
Well, joining me is Robert Ford. Â He is a retired US diplomat who served as the US Ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014. Â Robert Ford, welcome to Pushback.
ROBERT FORD:Â Nice to be with you.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â I want to get into your recollections and reflections on the 10-year anniversary of the war. Â But before we get into the past, I want to talk about the present.
The current US strategy in Syria is one of a military occupation in about a third of Syria, and, also, crippling sanctions that are preventing Syria from rebuilding. You recently wrote a piece in Foreign Policy called, âUS Strategy in Syria Has Failed.â How would you describe the US strategy in Syria today, and what do you make of it?
ROBERT FORD: I think since 2015, and the importance of ISIS to the United States, the US has had to two key interests in Syria. Oneâand most importantâwas destroying the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS.  And there was a second but less important goal, which was to try to pressure the Assad government in Damascus to make enough reforms to make a political solution to the broader Syrian civil war possible.
The Americans actually did pretty well on goal number one. ISIS has been pretty much defeated.  It upholds new territory and has many fewer fighters. As of February 2021, a Pentagon report says that itâs no longer able to attack from Syria to outside of Syria, to places like Western Europe or the United States.  So, thatâs all very good.  But on the second goal of helping to resolve the Syrian civil war to promote a political settlement, there I think the Americans have failed and failed badly.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â How so?
ROBERT FORD: Well, in short, there has been a United Nations-led negotiation about a new Syrian constitution. That started in 2018, and for three years has made no progress of any ⊠ nothing significant.  Essentially, the Syrian government has refused to negotiate, it simply kind of stalled, refused to write, take notes on areas of agreement or disagreement, which was the UN mediatorsâ latest suggestion rejected by the Syrian government delegation.  In the end, Bashar al-Assad really does not want to introduce political reforms under outside pressure.  Iâm not sure heâll ever introduce political reforms; thatâs a different question. But, certainly, under outside pressure, and the Americans, despite occupying about a quarter of the country, using different kinds of economic pressure, withholding oil revenues, economic sanctions, and other things, has not succeeded in extracting concessions from Assad, either.  And I think, therefore, we really do need to have a rethink about what weâre doing in Syria.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â So, do you think that the US should be occupying Syria still and imposing these sanctions that prevent reconstruction?
ROBERT FORD: Iâm mostly concerned about the American military forces because weâve already lost a few. Iâm happy to say only a few, about half a dozen.  But thatâs still half-a-dozen soldiers lost, for what, exactly?  Itâs not clear to me.
I think itâs important for your listeners to understand that the American troops were sent into Syria originally to fight ISIS.  Now that that job is more-or-less finished, we have a sort of mission creep where now the American forces are there not to defeat ISISâISIS is already defeated. As I said, the Pentagon report itself, February 5, 2021, said itâs defeated, canât threaten outside of Syria, which is the most important thing.  But now, so what are the Americans doing?  Well, now they sort of changed the mission to putting pressure on Damascus, the Assad government, trying to get the Iranians out, trying to limit the Russian influence.
The military force, to my mind, is no longer serving a useful purpose. It costs about two-and-a-half to $3 billion a year. Iâd much rather see that funding used for higher priority needs elsewhere.  So, I think the military forces should leave; they probably need to leave in such a way as to not cause confusion, the way that Donald Trumpâs idea of withdrawal did.  There needs to be close consultation with the Syrian Kurdish militia with which we partnered against ISIS.  We need to talk with the Russians about it, how they would come in to help chase the remaining pockets of ISIS here and there.  But itâs not something the Americans need to do.
Sanctions is a different question, Aaron. Â I think a lot of it is emotional here in the United States. Â Thereâs a desperate desire for justice after all the war crimes committed in Syria. Â And I think getting rid of the sanctions is going to be a much harder battle to fight in the Congress. Â So, the sanctions have very strong approval in Congress. Â And I think the first step of that is to say, what are the sanctions actually achieving?
AARON MATĂ:Â Â Well, one thing the sanctions are achieving is, you know, starving the Syrian people after all the suffering theyâve already gone through. And Iâm wondering if you think we have any right at this point to be sanctioning a country that we helped immiserate. Â This was a war that we were involved in through the CIA Timber Sycamore program, the proxy war. Â I mean, do we have a responsibility actually for the chaos that happened in Syria, and then, accordingly, what right do we have to sanction a suffering country?
ROBERT FORD: I think itâs important. Two things there.  Number one, Syriaâs economy was suffering well before the civil war, and it was sufferingâitâs one of the reasons the civil war broke out, as there are large segments of Syrian society that were not benefiting from the Syrian economy.  And so, they joined into the protest marches way back when this started 10 years ago.  Letâs not forget that the Syrian economy has been mismanaged for decades. With respect to what the sanctions are doing, yeah, I think the sanctions are adding to the problems of the Syrian economy, and theyâre adding to the problems of regular Syrians.
Look, the sanctions are designed to cut back on foreign currency inflows into Syria. The Syrian exchange rate has plummeted now.  Itâs largely wiped out whatever was left of the Syrian middle class. Itâs reduced the amount of investment coming into Syria. That means fewer jobs, which then has an impact on the Syrian labor market in terms of unemployment and wages.  I think it would be foolish for an American official to say that the sanctions donât have any impact on a regular Syrian.
I was in Iraq after the American invasion there. I went in a few months after our soldiers did.  And there was no Iraqi middle class to speak of by then. Sanctions over a period of years against the Saddam Hussein government had wiped out the Iraqi middle class, and I think our sanctions are doing the same in Syria.  But that does not relieve responsibility with the Bashar al-Assad government, both for militarizing the entire uprising that dates back to 2011 and does not absolve the Assad government of the economic mismanagement and corruption which afflict Syria to this day.
AARON MATĂ:  Well, itâs true there is corruption.  Itâs true thereâs corruption in many states, but not every state has massive amounts of death and refugees.  And I see that as a consequence of war.  And on that front, in terms of the militarization of the conflict, let me ask you about that. Initially 10 years ago, there were protests, especially in Damascus, opposing the restriction of freedoms, calling for the release of political prisoners.  But there also was, as I understand itâI wasnât thereâbut from what Iâve read, there were violent attacks on the Syrian Army as well.  Iâm wondering, you being on the ground back then, when you first started to see the protests becoming militarized, and this turning from some protests against an autocratic regime into an armed militarized war?
ROBERT FORD:Â Yeah, itâs a fair question.
So, I was on the ground, and I led a team of American diplomats, several of whom, like me, speak Arabic. Â And we also worked closely with a number of other embassies, including the Japanese embassy, the Danish embassy, the British and French Embassies. Â And this is what we saw, Aaron.
In March and April, May into June, the protests were almost entirely peaceful.  I, myself, went to Hama where there were huge demonstrations in June. The Syrian government was furious.  I didnât join in the marches, but I watched them.  And there was no violence.  In fact, we drove around the city of Hamaâitâs a pretty big city, thereâs about a million peopleâand there was no damage anywhere.  I distinctly remember driving by the cityâs police headquarters, and there were two policemen sitting out in white plastic chairs under the treesâthis was June, it was hotâjust sitting in the shade of the trees drinking tea.  Itâs not like there was a war going on, and they werenât worried about getting sniped at or anything. They were sitting out on the sidewalk in the shade of some trees drinking tea.  So, letâs keep that in mind.
Thatâs not to say there was no violence.  In the first protest, for example, in Daraa [March 20, 2011], in which weâre now coming up on the 10-year anniversary, yeah, the protesters did attack the telephone office [Syriatel] thatâs owned by Bashar al-Assadâs cousin, Rami Makhlouf. They did attack a court building.  They were demanding, actually, not so much free speechâthat wasnât the issueâit was police brutality.  They were demanding that the police chief at Daraa be sacked because he had arrested and beaten up some kids.  And when the protests spread to Damascus and Homs, and to cities on the Mediterranean coast like Baniyas, Tartus, and then out east, to Deir ez-Zor, it was police brutality and the security servicesâ unaccountability that was really the focus of the protestersâ ire.  And to be honest, the fighting didnât really start in earnest until August. There had been a few gun battles here and there, but nothing big.  But in August it got serious.  And thatâs when the Syrian Army went in and physically occupied Hama, the city that I had visited in June. They physically occupied the city of Deir ez-Zor; smashed up the town mosque.  I can still remember watching the video and thinking, my, if the Americans did that in Iraq, it would just be horrific.
But that came in August. The Free Syrian Army, your listeners might be interested to know, where did it come from?  They were originally deserters from the Syrian Army, young men who left the ranks and took their weapons with them and joined protest marches and were sent up to rooftops.  And their jobânow Iâm talking about July and Augustâtheir job from rooftops was to watch the protests down below, and when the Syrian security forces came in, say, from left, they would shout down to the protesters, âRun away to the right!â, and they would shoot at the Syrian security forces coming at the protests, and they would shoot at them in order to give time for the protesters to run away.  Being arrested at that time was a very bad thing because the Syrian security forces are, to this day, infamous for their torture and their mistreatment and abuse of detainees.
AARON MATĂ:  In terms of your timelineâagain, I wasnât thereâbut from what Iâve read, Anthony Shadid of The New York Times, the now deceased New York Times correspondent, he was reporting in May of 2011 that even US officials, possibly yourself, weâre acknowledging that the protesters were armed.  And then in June, you have the mass killing in Jisr al-Shughur of more than a hundred Syrian soldiers, which it was later confirmed, committed by the opposition.  So, the picture that I drew from all this is that, earlier on, in parallel with the protest for reforms, there was actually an armed rebellion earlier on.
ROBERT FORD: So, itâs interesting you raise the Jisr al-Shughur incident, since the Syrian government asked for our help on that.  And Jisr al-Shughur is a little place up near the Turkish border, and the fight started there because the police arrested some people, and the people said, âLet them go.â And it escalated into shooting between the two sides.  And in this case, the people with guns outnumbered the security forces, and the security forces were overrun.  And it took a little while for the Syrian government to send in enough forces to take the town back.  But Jisr al-Shughur was not a big place; itâs kind of out of the way, itâs kind of hard to reach, actually. You have to drive up to Aleppo, you have to take a long detour to get to it.
In the principal places, Aaron, where the protest movement was big and where it was politically importantâDamascus, Homs, Hama, Baniyas, Tartus, Deir ez-Zor, Daraaâfor the most part there really was not any big fighting.  There was shooting and there was killing on the side of the Syrian government, and we saw that with our own eyes. We had American diplomats that saw the Syrian troops fire into crowds. So, we didnât see a lot of shooting back in the other direction. Were there arms? Yeah, absolutely. Syria, like Iraq, has a lot of arms. So, but itâs one thing to have them, and itâs another thing to be organized to use them.
RELATED CONTENT: US Bombs Syria and Ridiculously Claims Self Defense
AARON MATĂ:Â Â Right. Â Okay. Â So, at whatever point this conflict became militarizedâI think weâll disagree on the datesâhow did you feel about Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, arming what turned out to be Salafi jihadists, mostly benefiting groups like al-Qaeda and their allies? Â And then you had proposals earlier that were initially rejected, I believe, by Obama, but later on approved to arm these same factions. Â What did you think about this tact of arming the militants fighting the Syrian government?
ROBERT FORD: So, a couple of points on that. Number one, those countries did send in weapons before the Americans.  They didnât ask for American permission.  In some cases, they informed the Americans, but they werenât asking for permission.  And I think thatâs especially important. Look at how Turkey is today and how many problems we have with the Turkish acquisition of the Russian [S-400] surface-to-air missiles, the way the Turks react with our working with the Syrian Kurdish militia.  Turkey doesnât take orders from the United States.  And they werenât asking for permission.
Were the Americans enthusiastic about it? No. And if you go back and look at our statements from 2011, 2012, and even 2013, 2014, we were always demanding that there be a political solution.  We used to say over and over again, âThere is no military solution in Syria.â  [inaudible] We wanted a negotiation.
This, I would say, Aaron, comes from the Obama administrationâs trying to learn the lessons of the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq.  Nobody wanted to rush in and overthrow Bashar al-Assad. And letâs be honest, [inaudible] because we didnât want a repeat of Baghdad 2003. I was in Iraq in 2003, and I had spent five years off and on at the American Embassy over the next years, and it was just ⊠it was a disaster.  And none of us wanted to repeat that. None of us.
So, we always wanted Syrians to negotiate with Syrians.  That was always the goal. Thatâs why Hillary Clinton signed whatâs called the Geneva I communiquĂ© with the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and others, including Turkey and Saudi Arabiaâthat there needs to be a negotiated deal to set up a national unity transition government, signed, I remember, on June 30, 2012. And I was immediately sent to talk to the Syrian political opposition, who was in exile, to say, âYou have to get on board with this.â  One of our challenges, frankly, was getting the armed groups to go along with it.  And that goes back to the arming of the different armed groups that you mentioned.
AARON MATĂ:  But in 2013, Obama does authorize this arm-and-equip program, funding these militias.  And Iâm wondering what you think of that? Were you in government still at that time, when this was authorized?
ROBERT FORD:Â Absolutely.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â And what did you think when Obama decided to finally arm the militants?
ROBERT FORD:Â Yeah, so I have to tell you, Aaron, I supported arming factions of the Free Syrian Army as early as the summer of 2012. Â And it took the president a year to get to a decision.
A number of us who were working on Syria urged the president to do it for two reasons.  One, if we didnât arm people who were willing to go along with a negotiated settlementâremember, thatâs what we were after, negotiated settlementâif we didnât arm the people who would back a negotiated settlement, they would be overtaken by extremist elementsâal-Qaeda, which in Syria was called al-Nusra Front. And we didnât want that.  That would just complicate ending the conflict. And we were very uncomfortable with al-Qaeda spreading into Syria anyway.  Thatâs why we had to close the American Embassy.  It wasnât because of the Syrian government.  It was because al-Qaeda posed risks to the physical safety of the American Embassy in Damascus and we couldnât trust the Syrian government to be able to protect us.  So, we had to close the embassy in February 2012.
The second reason I supported arming the Free Syrian Army, which was for the most part more secular, was that they would then be able to put some pressure on Bashar al-Assad.  And it didnât look to us by summer of 2012, more than a year into the uprising, that Assad was going to negotiate of his own free will, but it appeared to us that it was going to take a measure of coercion and pressure.  As I look back in retrospect, Aaron, frankly, that assessment about Assad negotiating under pressure may have been wrong.  There are some very good analysts out there, like Aron Lund at Carnegie [Endowment for International Peace], Sam Heller at The Century Foundation, and Josh Landis out of the University of Oklahoma, who disagreed vehemently with an assessment that Assad would have negotiated under pressure. The history will show he didnât, although by 2015, he was on his back heels and talking about the need to retreat across several fronts. That seemed to me to suggest heâs beginning to get it, that heâs not going to win [inaudible]. But in any case, thatâs when the Russians intervened, so weâll never know.
AARON MATĂ:  But let me ask you, in terms of what you wanted Assad to negotiate about. The way I hear you is that you were pursuing reforms.  But the way I heard US officials speak publicly, including Hillary Clinton, is that they wanted him to go.
ROBERT FORD:Â Yeah.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â So, was the demand not his ouster? Â In which case, why would he negotiate that?
ROBERT FORD: So, we did say he had to go. But we didnât say when.  And we didnât say where in the process.  We said, thatâs up to the Syrians to negotiate.
I remember a conversation I had with John Kerry in 2013, about a year before I quit the State Department.  And the Syrian opposition was talking about putting forward a proposal that said, âAssad doesnât have to go right away.  Weâre prepared to negotiate how long he stays.â And Kerry said, âI donât know if I like that.â  I said, âMr. Secretary, if thatâs what the Syrians end up wanting to do, weâre gonna have to go along with it.  We canât be harder-line than the Syrians.â I mean, thatâs ridiculous.  We canât be. I remember, I said to himâKerry speaks FrenchâI said, âWe canât be royal que le roiâ [more royal than the king]. I said, âWe canât.â I mean, if thatâs what the Syrians come up with, weâre gonna go along.  And he didnât argue. I think he was a little surprised.
But, I think, Aaronâand itâs worth noting because I bet your listeners donât knowâin January and February 2014, the UN did convene a big peace conference on Syria. Russia, together with the Americans, together with the Syrian government, and the Syrian opposition attended, with the blessing of armed groups, including armed groups that we were [inaudible]. And the Syrian opposition at that conferenceâit was in Switzerlandâthe Syrian opposition, in writing, gave to the United Nations mediator, a guy named Lakhdar Brahimi, an Algerian, they gave Lakhdar a paper saying, âWeâre willing to negotiate composition of the new national unity transitional government, and we are even willing to negotiate Bashar al-Assadâs role in it.â This was given to the United Nations from the Syrian opposition in writing. When Lakhdar tried to give the piece of paper to the Syrian government delegation head, a guy named Ambassador [Bashar al-] Jaafari, he wouldnât even touch the piece of paper. Literally sat on his desk in front in the negotiating room.  So, people who say this was all about overthrowing Assad, it sounds nice, itâs a great soundbite, but itâs actually not at all accurate.
AARON MATĂ:  But if weâre pouring weapons into the country, Turkey is letting tens of thousands of fighters pour over the border, the US even gave, I believe after you left government, but the US gave anti-tank missiles, which helped al-Qaeda capture Idlib. And the US saying publicly that Assad has to go.  Can you understand why itâs hard not to believe that the goal here was regime change?  And Iâm just wondering, looking back nowâŠ
ROBERT FORD: I have to say, Aaron, on this, youâre being selective, and in some cases inaccurate. The United States never gave anti-tank weapons to al-Qaeda.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â Not directly, but they gave it to their allies, who then gave it to al-Qaeda, or al-Qaeda took them.
ROBERT FORD: No, Aaron, the number might be half a dozen.  The one person I know whoâs really studied this in detailâIâd recommend him to you very highlyâis a guy named Jakub JanovskĂœ. You can find him on Twitter. He did a very detailed assessment of all of the videos that the Nusra Front, thatâs al-Qaeda, put up on the internet.  And he concluded that about six missiles, US anti-tank missiles, were in fact ⊠made their way to al-Qaeda.
And Aaron, I want you to think about this in historical context. Â Do you think when the Americans airdropped weapons into the French resistance against the Nazis in France, do you think the Nazis never got their hands on any of those air drops? Â I mean, seriously, Aaron, do you really think that?
AARON MATĂ:  Well, the problem I have with that analogy is thatâŠ
ROBERT FORD: The leakage to the al-Qaeda elements, there was a small amount of leakage, but much, much, much more of their weaponry came from the Assad government, either, because the Assad soldiers were corrupt, as we said, we talked at the start about corruption.  They sold them, or in some cases, they surrendered, and with that, huge caches of weaponry made their way into al-Nusra hands.  The amount of material that al-Nusra got from the United States wouldnât have lasted them for a day of combat.  Itâs just completely inaccurate to say that the United States was funneling arms to jihadis. I see that complaint all the time, and itâs simply not true.  Thatâs actually why I agreed to come and talk to you today.
AARON MATĂ:  Well, and I appreciate you coming on because itâs rare to be able to speak to someone with your direct vantage point.  But look, to me, itâs not controversial.  Joe Biden admitted in 2014 that US allies were essentially arming al-Qaeda and al-Nusra. He said that at Harvard University.  He later apologized for it because it offended Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but it was true, I think, and the US knew about thatâŠ
ROBERT FORD:Â So, letâs draw a distinction, Aaron. Â I was talking about the American Timber Sycamore program.
AARON MATĂ:  Right, I got that, butâŠ
ROBERT FORD: If you want to talk about the Turks, the Turks did play dirty.  They played very dirty, and, frankly, we called them out on it. I did, personally, on three different occasions with the Turks in 2013.  And once with the head of Turkish military intelligence, Hakan Fidan, and I said, âYou are allowing people over the border. Stuff is making their way to groups that are fighting and killing the people weâre trying to help, that will back a negotiated settlement,â and asked it to stop.  The Turkish response, frankly, was disingenuous at best.  And the Turks would routinely say to us, âWell, if you give us the names of the people that you donât want to cross, weâll put a lookout on for them.â  And I remember saying to themâand I saw senior State Department officials say this to them, people like Wendy Sherman and Bill Burns, at the time, in the Obama State DepartmentââThis is not about giving you a couple of names.  This is about you shutting down the border to stop extremists moving back and forth.â
Iâd be very frank with you, Aaron.  The Turks, in private, Turkish friends of mine in the Turkish government said, âWeâre doing it because theyâre the best fighters.  Theyâre the most dedicated.  And theyâre the ones that are going to turn around the fight against Bashar al-Assad and win.â  And I remember saying to them, on one occasion, I said, âYou guys are playing with snakes, poisonous snakes, and they will come back and bite you.â  I said, âYou donât know what youâre dealing with. We dealt with these same people in Iraq, and theyâre deadly.â  And one very self-assured Turk said to me, âAfter we get what we need against Assad, we will kill them ourselves.â  I thought, wow, thatâs a really Ottoman Turk mentality, but you donât know what youâre dealing with.
AARON MATĂ:  Okay, on the point of Idlib, not to debate this too much, but I want to read you one quote from Foreign Policy magazine, from Hassan Hassan, who was very much a supporter of the militancyâŠ
ROBERT FORD:Â Yeah, heâs a very bright analyst.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â Okay, so he writes this: Â âThe recent offensives in Idlib have been strikingly swift, thanks in large part to suicide bombers and American anti-tank TOW missiles.â
ROBERT FORD: Right, remember that ⊠what was the date of that, Aaron?  Was that 2013?
AARON MATĂ:Â Â Heâs writing this in 2015, when al-Qaeda and allies captured Idlib.
ROBERT FORD:Â Thatâs when they were making progress towards Latakia.
AARON MATĂ:  Yeah, but, to clarify my point quicklyâŠ
ROBERT FORD: So, well, letâs talk about that.  Itâs good you raised it.  So, there were two sets of fighters in there. There was the Nusra Front and there were Free Syrian Army elements. It was the Free Syrian Army elements using American made anti-tank rockets.
AARON MATĂ:  And my point is that the provision of these anti-tank missiles helped al-Qaeda. That was my initial point. I realize that, deliberately, the US didnât say, âLetâs send these to al-Qaeda.â
ROBERT FORD: It would be like saying, Aaron, that American progress against the Nazis in France helped Joseph Stalin.  I mean, I guess on one level, thatâs true.  But itâsâŠ.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â Except in this case, we were arming the Nazis.
ROBERT FORD: Please let me finish, Aaron. To say that the Free Syrian Army was fighting on behalf of al-Qaeda would be completely wrong, because they did not share the ideology.  If anything, I think, frankly, had Assad fallen, you would have then seen a very nasty battle for power between the Free Syrian Army and the Nusra Front. I donât know if Nusra would have prevailed; it would sort of depend on what kind of outside assistance reached them.  But this was a marriage of convenience, a tactical-level marriage of convenience against a common enemy.  I donât think it was wise politically, for the Free Syrian Army to do this.  And thatâs why we put the Nusra Front on the terrorism list in 2012, was to warn the Syrian opposition away from the Nusra Front.  But as the battle got nastier in 2013 and 2014, their motives for making a marriage of tactical convenience with the Nusra Front outweighed our cautions against doing it.  I understand it. I can remember talking to the Free Syrian Armyâs commanders about it.  And they spat at me and said, âIf you would give us more help, we wouldnât need the Nusra Front, but you donât.â This is what I meant, Aaron, about if we donât help the moderates, the bad guys would prevail.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â What if we had poured in no weapons at all? Â Wouldnât that have averted 10 years of suffering?
ROBERT FORD: What would have happened had we done that? Turkey would have continued anyway. Qatar would have continued anyway. Saudis, I donât know; maybe they would have, maybe they wouldnât have. But I know that the Turks and the Qataris would have continued.  So, you would have had longer fighting. Would Assad have won more quickly? Maybe. Kind of depends how much the Turks were willing to escalate.  And the Turks have sent troops of their own into Syria.  So, the Turkish capacity to escalate should not be underestimated.  I mean, they might have sent troops in to fight Assad earlier; they had a big battle with Assad a year ago. So, certainly the Americans would be able to say, âNot our problem.â Would it have ended the Syrian civil war?  Not at all clear.  Depends on other foreign states.
AARON MATĂ:  States with whichâŠ
ROBERT FORD:Â I know thatâs not the happy answer, Aaron.
AARON MATĂ:  Well, states with which we are allied. And given ⊠look, itâs myâŠ
ROBERT FORD: Aaron, just because youâre allied doesnât mean they do what you want them to do.  Thatâs not ⊠it doesnât follow that way.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â You seem to argue that the Free Syrian Army was a major fighting force outside of al-Qaeda. Â Itâs my understanding from what Iâve read that the dominant fighting forces inside Syria were Salafi militants, primarily al-Qaeda and then, later on, ISIS, and thatâs who really Assad was fighting, for the bulk of this war, notwithstanding the army defections that, of course, did happen.
ROBERT FORD: Yeah, so it would be nice theory if it was true, but letâs be honest, it wasnât. They did become predominant, Aaron, youâre right; they did become predominant by the end of 2015.  That I think is absolutely true.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â And we still continued to send in weapons then.
ROBERT FORD: Well, Aaron, if you look at the demonstrations, I mean, there are lots of videos. Just take a look at those demonstrations in 2011.  You donât see any black flags of ISIS, you donât see any black flags of al-Qaeda. None. Zero.
AARON MATĂ:  No, but you did hear people chanting, âChristians to Beirut.  Alawites to the grave.â That, to me is undeniable. Iâm not denying theâŠ
ROBERT FORD: So, Iâve heard that allegation.  It might be true.  But if itâs true, itâs a very small minority and definitely not a majority.  I saw that with my own eyes.  Personally.  In Hama was a big Muslim Brotherhood stronghold.  I saw no al-Qaeda flags, I saw no jihadi flags of any kind.  I met no jihadis. I saw lots of people at checkpoints out of government control.  But I saw nobody. I mean, my bodyguard was a little concerned, I have to tell you, but we were never held against our will in any way.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â Right.
ROBERT FORD: Just the opposite.  They wanted the Americans to see what they were doing.  And our message in 2011 was dialogue and negotiation. Our message in 2012, dialogue and negotiation. Our message in 2013, dialogue and negotiation.  Thatâs why we went to the Geneva peace process.  If we wanted regime overthrow, like 2003, we could have done it, believe me. The Syrian governmentâs armyâs not that tough.  This is not a replay of Libya. This was a different approach.  Did it work?  No, it failed.  Iâm not sure thereâs anything the Americans could have done to resolve the Syrian conflict.  Thatâs where Iâve come away from this.  Iâve been away now out of the government for seven years.  And I think we tried. We could not fix this problem.  Maybe it would have been better not to try.  But in any case, we couldnât.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â Let me ask you this. Â It did succeed in bleeding Iran and Hezbollah. Â Was that a part of the goal?
ROBERT FORD: Oh, I think there were people in the American government, sure, who would be happy with that.  But that wasnât the American goal.  I can remember, I was sitting in one meeting, and they said, âWell, at least theyâre killing bad guys.â But that wasnât why the Americans were doing it.
I would put it to you this way. Â There was a sense in the American government in 2011 and â12 that Arab populations were finally deciding theyâd had enough of tyranny and enough of rampant security force abuse, and they wanted justice and they wanted accountability. Â And that for us on an emotional level was easy to sympathize with.
AARON MATĂ:  In certain places, though. Because in Bahrain, when people rose up, the US backed Saudi Arabia when it crushed that uprising.
ROBERT FORD:Â You mean the one in eastern Saudi Arabia? Â Yeah, youâre right.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â In Bahrain.
ROBERT FORD:Â And even in Bahrain.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â In Bahrain, yeah.
ROBERT FORD:Â Yeah.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â Where the US Navy has the Fifth Fleet.
ROBERT FORD:Â Itâs interesting you raise that here, because initially, the Obama administrationâs response to the Bahrain situation was to say, the Bahraini government needs to negotiate with the protesters. Â And itâs only after the Saudis sent in what they called the Operation Peace Shield with other Gulf Cooperation Council states, the Americans kind of watched, didnât object. Â And then, frankly, parts of the United States military that have a close relationship with the government of Bahrain prevailed in the interagency arguments, and the American position shifted to being more supportive of the Bahraini ruling family. But initially, the Obama response was in favor of the protesters and the need for a political reform program that would meet the demands of protesters.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â Alright, I have kept you way over time, and I want to respect what we committed to. Â So, if you have to go, I understand.
I do want to ask you a question about Latakia, though, which you raised earlier, which I think is important because you mentioned that those are rebels that we were supporting.  But Robert F. Worth of The New York Times wrote a piece called âAleppo After the Fallâ in May 2017.  And he wrote that if the US-backed rebels had been successful in Latakia, that they would have committed âsectarian mass murderâ against the Alawites there.  One, is that correct?  And two, if it is, what business do we have supporting people like that?
ROBERT FORD: Yeah.  So, the people that we were supporting with Timber Sycamore, I met them myself. They would not have committed sectarian mass murder.
Iâm going to give you an example.  Google him. A guy named Colonel Abdul Jabbar al-Oqaidi, who in 2012 came to our attention because he did a national radio address. He was in the Free Syrian Army but did a radio address, which we actually picked up, in which he said to the Alawite community, âWeâre not fighting it. Weâre fighting a president and a security apparatus, the head of which, by coincidenceââthat was word he used, sudfa in Arabicââis an Alawite, but weâre not fighting Alawites.â
Now, fast forward a year-and-a-half, and then Oqaidi said, âWell, al-Qaeda fighters are our brothers.â And he wasâjustifiablyâheavily criticized for saying it. I remember, we ourselves even said, âWhat on earth are you doing?  What are you talking about?â And heâs the guy I said spat at me and said, âIf you would give us more serious support, we wouldnât need these people.â
Donât mistake tactical alliances for ideological compatibility.  They are two different things.  Are there people in the Syrian oppositionâthe armed oppositionâthat would have slaughtered Alawis? Absolutely, there were. And as time went on, it got nastier and nastierâon both sides, I would add.  In the end, Aaron, what we have now is a Syrian government which has murdered tens of thousands of people, far more than ISIS killedâfar, far, far more than ISIS killed, as reprehensible and awful as ISIS isâthat has used chemical weapons.  I know thatâs controversial for you, butâŠ
AARON MATĂ:  It is, actually, because Iâve been covering aâŠ
ROBERT FORD: I know it is, but Iâm telling you, the evidence is quite clear, and which has used sexual abuse as a weapon. Thatâs documented also by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry from the Human Rights Commission.  And so, the nastiness of this fight has increased on both sides. It was bad enough in 2011 when the uprising started; it descended into deeper and deeper levels of hell as it went on.
What I hope your listeners will take away from this is that it is not an equal combat on both sides; is not an equal responsibility on both sides. One side from the beginning was using torture and shooting at innocent people, thousands of arrests. And one side was trying peacefully, for a very large part, to bring about change.  And, unfortunately, in this instance, the bad guys won.
AARON MATĂ:  Robert, if weâre flooding the country with weapons, and the main beneficiaries of our involvement are groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, how can you say that weâre trying to resolve it peacefully? And if Syria ⊠look, I understand thereâs no justifying torture, thereâs no justifying crushing descent, especially what happened early on in with the protest, but I guess the point Iâm making is that it wasnât just a crackdown on a peaceful protest, there was a war.  And in the context of a war, war crimes will be committed. People are going to be killed.  And my concern as a citizen of the West is, what responsibility do I have for that war?  And if the US spends billions of dollars on a CIA program, one of the most expensive in the CIAâs history, by all accounts, then I think the US has a responsibility, too, for this, and a responsibility for all the death and suffering that happened.  Iâm wondering if, after 10 years of this, you think that if had we not ⊠can we at least agree that had this not happened, had there not been this massive foreign effort to have a proxy war in Syria, that all the death and suffering would not have happened?
ROBERT FORD:Â I think the Assad government would have fought either way. Â And so, your question then is if the Turks, the Americans, the Qataris had laid back, Saudi had laid back, would it have been better to let Assad win relatively quickly instead of kind of where weâve gotten at today, is that what youâre asking?
AARON MATĂ:  Yes. I mean, aside from the fact that thatâs accepting that we have the right even to do that to a sovereign state, even one that we donât like.
ROBERT FORD: Well, so letâs talk about sovereignty for a minute. Absolutely, Syria is a sovereign state, thatâs absolutely true.  But within the context of sovereignty, thereâs also a sense of responsibility, which is to say that the Syrian government is responsible for not destabilizing its neighbors. And even had Turkey, Qatar and the United States, Saudi Arabia, stayed out of it, there still would have been huge refugee flows trying to escape from those same brutal Syrian security forces, and they still would have flooded the borders of Lebanon and Jordan and of Turkey, which is itself destabilizing, particularly in Lebanon, but some places like Jordan, Turkey. Therefore, you canât just say that all these other countries intervened in sovereign Syrian territory. The Syrian government itself was taking actions which were destabilizing to its neighbors.  And thatâs why when you get into this âwho started itâ stuff, I think itâs never-ending.
We actually looked at the question of Responsibility to Protect, which was a doctrine that came out of the Rwandan genocide experience. In the end, the Obama administration decided not to invoke it, mainly because there was a sense that the UN Security Council would have to approve it.  And we knew the Russians and the Chinese would veto it because they donât want any foreign state intervening in any sovereign statesâ internal affairs. And in Syria it was refugee flows that were destabilizing neighboring countries. They didnât particularly care.  Probably Putin enjoyed it.  So, Iâm not entirely convinced that the sovereignty argument [inaudible], thatâs one.
AARON MATĂ:  But the logic of that, we are going to intervene because there are refugees, but intervene in a way that creates far more refugees. Iâm very confident that if not for the foreign intervention, flooding the country with Salafi fanatics from around the world, and weapons, that there would not be as many refugees.
ROBERT FORD: Well, Iâm never going to justify the Turks allowing Salafi jihadists to go into Syria. I think that Iâve already said that that was a bad mistake.  And we criticized them at the time of playing with snakes.  Iâm never going to justify it.  But I have to say, Aaron, that in the end, they came in response to what the Assad government was already doing.  And so, the principal responsibility ⊠do the Americans have a share of responsibility? Of course, we do. Yeah. It was our anti-tank missiles blowing up Syrian government tanks, and not just a few; I mean, hundreds of them.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â Yeah, yeah.
ROBERT FORD: So, they blunted the initial Syrian offensive when the Russian Air Force started doing close air support.  But are the Americans the âŠ. do they bear primary responsibility?  No. I donât think so.  I think we have to go back to where it started in 2011.  And thatâs with the Syrian government.
Had AssadâI actually sent a message to himâhad Assad just fired a couple of his top security secret police people ⊠we all know who they were, we all knew what they were doing.  Had he just fired them, he probably could have gotten ahead of the whole protest movement right then.  That was the message I sent him.  This was in May 2011.  A Syrian businessman was going into see him that day and asked me if Iâd like to pass a message.  And I said, âYes, this is the message.â  I said, âCanât you just fire a couple of these guys and get ahead of this and tamp it down?â I said, âWeâre not trying to destabilize you.  The Americans wants stability in the Middle East.  After whatâs happened in Egypt, from whatâs going on in Bahrain and Yemen, the last thing we need is more uprisings everywhere.  But you are going to have to get ahold of these security forces that are running rampant.â  The message came back, Aaron, from Assad: âI canât.â
You know, when I got that message, I thought, âI canâtâ; I wonder what that means.  And it wasnât clear. The businessman couldnât elucidate. Did it mean, âThe security guys have me surrounded and I canât. Theyâll kill me if I try to remove them.â? Is that what it meant? Or did it just mean, âIâm not going to make concessions under pressure. I canât make concessions under pressure.â?  It wasnât clear. To me, to this day, March 12, 2021, Iâm still not exactly sure what âI canâtâ meant.  But whatever, he didnât.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â And 10 years later, we have a catastrophe.
Alright, so as we wrap, is there any constituency in Washington in the establishment that you think is ready to let go of this war, to admit that the US side has lost, and to support a withdrawal from Syria, as you seem to support? And, also, to end the sanctions?
ROBERT FORD: I think there are foreign policy thinkers who are ready to do that.  But inside the administration itself, Iâm not aware of any. Some of the Biden team with whom I worked in the Obama administration, I think a number of them think the American relationship to the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia is generally a good thing.  I think they still hope that American leverage will sooner or laterâeven if itâs later, much laterâwill extract the concessions that they hope to see from Bashar al-Assad.
And no, I donât. There are groups like Quincy Institute [for Responsible Statecraft] which has, and Defense Priorities which have urged the administration to withdraw forces out of Syria, but I donât think there are many inside the administration or in the Congress.
AARON MATĂ:  All right.  Well, Robert Ford, Iâm very grateful for your time.  I do want to mention, since you raised the issue, have you followed the scandal around the OPCW, where inspectors that went to investigate allegations of chemical weapons in Douma in April 2018âŠ
ROBERT FORD:Â Sure, of course.
AARON MATĂ:  âŠhad their report censored and have alleged that there was a cover-up of their own findings?
ROBERT FORD:Â Right. Â So, but who were the people making those allegations? Â Were they the experts or were they support staff?
AARON MATĂ:  They were the actual inspectors ⊠well, thereâs two that we know of so far, andâŠ
ROBERT FORD: The allegations that I have seen are from support staff. They were not actually engineers or chemists.
AARON MATĂ:  Well, one of the whistleblowers who has made this allegation actually was the top chemist on the team and actually wrote the teamâs original report.  And thatâs what is at issue here, is that he says that his initial reportâwhich has been leaked to WikiLeaksâwas doctored and censored, and that instead a bogus report was put in its place, which was then thwarted after internally it was protested. But thatâs the scandal here, which is that the teamâs own findings have been suppressed.  And this is a very consequential investigation because the US bombed Syria, along with Britain and France [bombing], based on this allegation. Iâm just wondering if youâve followed this.
ROBERT FORD:Â Wait, are you talking about the 2013 team?
AARON MATĂ:Â Â No, Iâm not talking about Ghouta in 2013. Â Iâm talking about Douma in 2018.
ROBERT FORD:Â Oh, during the Trump administration?
AARON MATĂ:Â Â Yes.
ROBERT FORD: So, I have to say on that, Iâm not aware, that I have not heard.  Frankly, what happened in Douma, I mean, at that point, the Syrian government was about to take it over anyway.  And Iâm not familiar with that controversy within the OPCW. The 2013 [incident], I paid much more attention to.
But I guess I would just say this, Aaron.  Thereâs plenty of documentation by the UNâs joint investigative group with the OPCW that looked at incidents in Syria chemical weapons use, from 2013 onwards. Theyâve issued several reports.  Theyâve said that in at least one instance, ISIS used some kind of mustard gas up in northern Syria, but that there are at least four to five documented, clearly investigated, documented instances where the Syrian government, even after the 2013 disarmament deal, when the Syrian government used chemical weapons. Mostly chlorine gas, although I think thereâs one allegation of sarin gas use.  So, the 2018 incident, I donât know about that report, but I have no doubt whatsoever that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons on multiple instances, the same government that bombs hospitals, the same government that bombs bakeries, the same government that kills people in detention routinely. Look at the photos that were brought up by the military defector.  You know, why would you think they wouldnât use chemical weapons?  Why would you think they would suddenly have moral scruples against these?  It doesnât make a lot of sense.
AARON MATĂ:  Well, look, thatâs a whole other debate.  But I find these allegations pop up in pretty inconceivable situations where, in the case of Ghouta in 2013, the OPCW⊠no, UN inspectors are already in the country. In the case of Douma, as you said, Syria was about to retake Douma anyway, so why would they do the one thing that they know will trigger US military intervention? And then you have, most importantly to me, the suppressed evidence of the Douma case and allegations of a cover-up at the OPCW in conjunctionâŠ
ROBERT FORD: Youâre talking about the 2013? 2018.
AARON MATĂ:  2018, yes.  Which I find very serious, and I think raises questions about the accuracy of other investigations.  But thatâs a whole different minefield.  Thatâs not what, admittedly, I brought you on for, so I donât wantâŠ
ROBERT FORD:Â Have me on again, Aaron, and weâll talk about it.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â Yeah. Â But listen, I want to give you the final word before you go. Â Any final words you want to leave viewers with about Syria that you think are important now after 10 years of war?
ROBERT FORD: Yeah, there is one thing. I do think we need to get American troops out of Syria. Thereâs mission creep. ISIS is defeated. We kind of did what we set out to do. Itâs time to declare victory and go home. Canât fix the Syrian civil war.
By contrast, something the Americans could do that would be hugely helpful is to increase humanitarian aid to the Syrian refugees that number some five million, particularly in Lebanon, where their living circumstances are precarious, very precarious, but also in Jordan and Turkey.  Thatâs something where we have access. The UN can work, other agencies can work. Save the Children, CARE, MĂ©decins Sans FrontiĂšres, Doctors Without Borders, all of them can work freely, but itâs a resource issue.  And I think we need to increase resources there. Iâd like to spend less on the military operation and much more on humanitarian aid.
And then there is the issue of Northwest Syria, Idlib, where the UN is in charge of an operation getting humanitarian aid to some two million displaced Syrian civilians.  And if the Russians shut that operation down using a veto in the UN Security Council, people in Idlib will either flee, which is a problem, or theyâll starve, which is immoral.  And I think there, too, the international communities are going to need to replace the UN operation with something else to get humanitarian aid in, medicine, food, COVID-19 vaccines. Theyâre going to have to figure out a way to replace that UN operation, if the Russians do try to shut it down. It would be much better to reach some kind of agreement with the Russians not to shut it down, and I hope that the Biden administration ramps up diplomacy with the Russians over the next few months, before that vote at the beginning.
AARON MATĂ:Â Â Robert Ford, youâve been very generous with your time, and I really appreciate your willingness to engage with some critical questions. Â So, thank you very much.
Robert Ford is a retired US diplomat and a former US Ambassador to Syria. Robert, thank you.
ROBERT FORD:Â My pleasure. Thank you, Aaron.
Featured image: File Photo.
Aaron Maté
Aaron Maté is a journalist and producer. He hosts Pushback with Aaron Maté on The Grayzone. He is also is contributor to The Nation magazine and former host/producer for The Real News and Democracy Now!. Aaron has also presented and produced for Vice, AJ+, and Al Jazeera.
