The NDAA and America’s Foreign Policy in Syria
I cannot deny having a personal bias for the people of Syria. I’ve seen the wreckage first hand in a way I wish I could explain further. I’m probably responsible for 60% of the views of HBO’s Cries from Syria since its release in 2017. I’ve played as large a part as possible in multiple charities trying desperately to help Syrian civilians, namely one whose aim is to build mobile hospitals in Syria’s most war-torn areas. I’ve sponsored a young girl there named Amira for seven years – a girl who I’ve watched grow into an incredibly strong young woman who I have no doubt will someday spread revolutionary ideals throughout her country – who thankfully has remained safe after all of these years of war and bloodshed in Syria. Amid all of this I knew to classify this as an opinion piece, because of my inability to remain unbiased on the subject.
Today, the U.S. Senate passed the NDAA, or National Defense Authorization Act, a yearly budget bill relating to national defense, the military, foreign aid, black budget money, intelligence, etc… This legislation was passed by the so-called “Do Nothing Democrats” last week, and is expected to receive the President’s signature within the week. This year’s NDAA contains a measure several years in the making: The Caesar Syrian Civilian Protection Act. A piece of legislation that provides for sanctions against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as well as members of his regime.
The bill’s history is an interesting one. The legislation shares its namesake with the pseudonym of a Syrian police officer who fled the country in 2016, smuggling with him a multitude of photographic evidence – some 50,000 images – of President Assad’s regime’s egregious and downright evil crimes against humanity. Spanning from torture to mass killing, the images are gruesome and not for the faint of heart, but many are available to the public. Caesar testified before Congress in disguise and presented the evidence he risked his own life, and the lives of his family, to smuggle out his homeland.
Congress, though slowly, began drafting a bill that became part of the NDAA. A provision that not only imposes sanctions and censures against President Assad and members of his regime, but also imposes consequences against foreign actors such as Iran and Russia, have had boots on the ground in Syria for almost a decade attempting to squash revolutionary uprisings against Assad. Doing so using not just guerrilla tactics, but going as far as to drop illegal dirty bombs on civilian centers such as Huraytan, a town northwest of Aleppo, where bombs were dropped on hospitals and schools.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “The measure establishes as U.S. policy the use of ‘diplomatic and coercive means…to compel the government of Bashar al-Assad to halt its murderous attacks on the Syrian people and to support a transition to a government in Syria that respects the rule of law, human rights and peaceful co-existence with its neighbors.'”
The bill also adds measures against civilian or non-governmental militias, such as Hezbollah, which has also come to the aid of Assad’s regime, and even targets financial centers. Administration officials are now investigating whether or not the Central Bank of Syria has been engaging in money laundering. If this is found to be true, which it likely is, the U.S. will impose penalties on the institution, though those penalties aren’t very well outlined in what is publicly available from bill at the moment.
The bill goes further in restricting the transfer of funds, technology, and property, and bans any and all violators from entry in the U.S. in the future.
The bill contains language that will allow President Trump, or future presidents to lift the sanctions in the future if Assad and his allies produce evidence that their human rights violations have come to an end. They will have to prove they are no longer targeting civilians, restricting international humanitarian assistance, and of course, they must prove they are no longer using chemical weapons on their own citizens, meaning both civilians and rebel army militants.
With this bill, the United States severely escalates sanctions, joining its Western allies in targeting Assad and his regime. The U.S. has had sanctions on Syria since 2005, and those sanctions increased drastically under President Barack Obama, namely after 2011, when what was a series of massive civilian protests turned into bloodshed and civil war. You can find a list of sanctions against Syria dating back to 2004 here from the U.S. Department of Treasury.
With such a history of sanctions, however, one must wonder just how effective they are. One must also wonder how you sanction a government, but not its civilians. Also, why the sudden change? This comes months after President Donald Trump ordered the removal of U.S. troops in Northern Syria, claiming the war against ISIL was over in the region. As if to say, “Thank you for your help, and now you’re on your own to fight your government, Islamist rebel groups, ISIL, oh, and Turkey.” As anyone familiar with the situation remembers, only three days later, Turkish air strikes began in the border towns of Turkey and Syria – towns the United States was helping to protect just days before. The air strikes resulted in the death of 70 Syrian citizens, and the displacement of over 300,000. During the military act, both Turkish forces and Turkish-allied Syrian forces were accused of committing atrocious war crimes, including summary killings and unlawful acts, including, but not limited to, public executions and even public rape.
According to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who I’ve written about recently in timeline of the prosecution of Michael Flynn found here – was to expel Syrian Democratic Forces – a rebel army mostly made up of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) – who is viewed as a terrorist group by the Turkish government due to its ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party. The SDF is considered an ally of the United States and Western allies, though, namely in its war against ISIL, as the SDF has helped the United States in a monumental fashion in the removal of ISIL from the region.
However, the problem with war is that it’s complicated. It’s unfortunately not just made up of good guys and bad guys like the comics. It’s not made up of clear cut good people, or clear cut evil people, or even demon with the heart of gold anti-heroes who don’t get along with the other good guys, but fight for what’s right in the end. War, just like life, is rarely black and white. By the previous couple of paragraphs, it would appear that there is a narrative to present the Turkish government as awful people, and their armies as the evil invading scourge that wants to watch the world burn. On the contrary.
The Turks were the first to condemn the actions of Bashar al-Assad, who cracked down on peaceful protests in 2011, which led to the exorbitant bloodshed and murder of unarmed Syrian citizens, and kicked off one of the longest civil wars in recent world history. Turkey went as far as to create safe zones for Syrian refugees fleeing the violence, and even backed and funded the Free Syrian Army, which was the first organized revolutionary group to stand up to Assad’s tyrannical regime.
Turkey is responsible for a lot of the military funding toward the revolutionary groups working against Assad. Yet, what is the Free Syrian Army today? It’s a group that is made up of primarily radicalized Islamists, probably partially because of their relationship with ISIL in their growing phase. Now they’re a group backed by the Turks, and are taking part in the public rape and murder of North-Eastern Syrians, who are merely fighting for statehood.
And what is the U.S. to say one way or the other? During the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, we trained soldiers to fight for their independence, and those soldiers went on to become Al Qeada. We fought with the best intentions against South American drug lords, but all we did was make a mess out of Central America by cutting off their Caribbean pipeline, splitting one cartel into seven. We made a mess out of Iraq and Afghanistan and ultimately created ISIL in the first place, while giving radical groups free-reign in Iraq after removing their strongest opposition. Maybe the same might be the case in Syria, creating another militant group aligned to a particular world religion, thus creating another Bosnia, where people of three separate religions are killing one another, but we think of creative names for them so that the general public doesn’t realize religion does nothing but create war.
I wish I had the answers. I hope against hope that what this year’s NDAA was meant to accomplish will make change. I hope every night for the citizens of Syria, trapped in a civil war that seems to be going in three directions between the government, the Islamist revolutionaries, and the Kurds. A civil war that is little more than a proxy battle between foreign governments inside of a country with convenient resources, or adjacent to said resources. Above any of this, I just hope that a young woman named Amira, who I love with all my heart, grows up and holds onto her idealism, and doesn’t allow herself to get swept into a war in one way, or the other, or the other. I hope she is on the cover of TIME someday, as she should be, for uniting Syria, and establishing a democratic state in the region, aligned with U.S. and other Western forces, and never wavers in the face of adversity, as she doesn’t now, even when asked why her grades are slipping amid bloodshed happening outside her front door. At the risk of this being another 20,000 word timeline, I’ll stop this here, but I hope you learned something about the black and white politics we’re presented in the United States every day, and I hope Amira is the next revolutionary that hipsters wear on T-shirts without ever actually knowing her politics or background, just like Ernesto Guevara.
For more information on Syria and what you can do to help trapped civilians there, please visit https://app.mobilecause.com/vf/Sami4syria or text Sami4Syria to 71777. These poor people are caught up in a near decades long civil war they had nothing to do with, and deserve our help, as the poorest among us are living better than any of them. Please consider my request. Even a dollar helps.
Thank you for reading, and I hope this wasn’t as much of a slog as my normal articles.
The Seventh Floor 