Research & Commentary Results

Russian President Vladimir Putin made waves leading into the UN General Assembly with new military deployments to Syria and an accord with Iran and the Iraqi government, signaling the formation of something like an alternate coalition combating ISIS. The sudden moves serve as a wakeup call not only for the United States and its allies, but also for Iran. The Russian actions are not enough to lead the Iranians to openly second-guess their support for Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, but they are bound to raise tough questions among officials in Tehran.

Sana managed to escape the violence in Syria by making her way to Lebanon, but now she is alone and suffering from mood swings. She is battling eviction threats from her landlord due to her disruptive and erratic behavior. Mahmoud, another Syrian refugee in Jordan, is experiencing increasing feelings of depression, worried that he can no longer provide for his wife and three children, two of whom have learning disabilities.

The Russian escalation in Syria will create a flurry of diplomatic activity to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis and a fresh attempt to confront ISIS in Syria, but the conditions for success on both fronts are still absent.  The intervention is likely to lead to further escalation of the conflict with no resolution of the political or security stalemates.  

Furthermore, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s move into Syria is the result of a number of factors and will have far-reaching consequences at the international, regional, and local levels.

Russia’s recent increase in military aid to the Syrian government is an extension of previous Russian policy on Syria; what is different is not the thrust of Russian policy but the scale of the aid. This ramp-up carries new risks to those hoping for a real political solution to the longstanding Syrian conflict and to those hoping to see the threat of terror groups operating in Syria contained.

This past June, the United Nations removed Yarmouk refugee camp from a list of what it terms “besieged areas” in Syria. The reason for this shift, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), is due to the availability of humanitarian aid via drop-offs at government checkpoints in nearby suburbs.

Read the full article in the September 2015 issue of The Ripon Forum.

It will be one year this September since the U.S. president declared the formation of an international coalition to ‘degrade and destroy’ ISIS.   After 6,000 air strikes, 9,000 targets struck, 10,000 fighters killed, and various battles undertaken in Iraq and Syria, the war is at a strategic stalemate.

The United States’ unprecedented close air combat support to the PYD, a Syrian Kurdish political party and its associated militia, has helped the PYD drive back the Islamic State’s forces from a long strip along the Turkish border, handing ISIS its greatest defeat in Syria to date. The airstrikes have also enabled the PYD to consolidate its hold on Syrian Kurdish territories, and it has launched an ambitious autonomous governance project creating new administrations to manage local affairs.

Read the full piece at The National Interest.

Conflicts in the Middle East, especially the Syrian conflict, are stretching the humanitarian community more than ever before. There are almost 60 million displaced people around the world, the largest exodus in recorded history; nearly a quarter of whom are from the Middle East, with 20% from the Syrian conflict alone. As the region generating the most displacement and the host to the largest number of displaced persons, the Middle East presents unique challenges for the international community, including donors like us at USAID.

If the hallmark of al-Qa‘ida was to execute simultaneous spectacular attacks to advance its strategic momentum, the month of Ramadan in June and July showed that the Islamic State (ISIS) is taking this tactic to a new level. Yet the extreme amounts of blood shed during the holy month will likely ultimately weaken ISIS, as tribes and other groups in Syria and Iraq, even more appalled by the organization’s barbarism, unite against it.

The Middle East Dialogue on New Political and Security Dynamics Shaping the Arab Region met in Beirut May 30-31 to consider the situation in Syria, which has deteriorated further since the last meeting of the Dialogue in Berlin last December. Violence has risen, government-controlled territory has been lost to both opposition and extremist forces, Syrians are suffering and the Syrian government is reaching the limits of its military and civilian capabilities.

“What’s going to happen to the Syrian refugees?” This was the question I asked of everyone I met during a recent trip to Lebanon and Turkey to research Syrian displacement. Without exception, those I asked—government and UN officials, academics, business and NGO representatives, Syrian diaspora groups, and Syrian refugees—responded with the same answer: “I don’t know” (or sometimes “‘God only knows”). When pressed, almost everyone said that the war in Syria would continue for the foreseeable future and that more people would likely leave or try to leave.

Probably the most important group fighting the Syrian regime now is Ahrar al-Sham (Free Men of the Levant), a Salafi group fighting mainly in the north but also in central and southern Syria. Contrary to Western reports suggesting that the al-Qa‘ida-linked Nusra Front led the battle to capture the northwestern Syrian provincial capital of Idlib last March, Ahrar had more fighters in the battle—a fact demonstrated by its predominance in the subsequent military oversight council established for Idlib.

In the last few weeks, the Syrian Druze have been a focal point in significant fighting on the ground. If their role in the fighting continues, or even if it changes, the Druze will likely have a profound impact on the trajectory of the Syrian conflict.

For decades, most refugee crises followed a pattern: A war erupted, usually in a poor country, and beleaguered civilians staggered across the nearest border. The United Nations organized a response, rich nations footed the bill, and aid groups sent in workers to tend to the needy. Even in extreme cases, such as the mass exodus from Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, the crisis was largely confined to the country at war and a few immediate neighbors.