Time to pressure Assad and Putin in Syria

It’s time to turn up the heat on Bashar Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Syria. The Syrian dictator faces economic implosion, and Putin can no longer afford to sustain the Syrian regime.

Those two men are most responsible for the catastrophe that is Syria in 2020. It’s a land where 500,000 people have died since Assad starting massacring his people in 2011. Applied to Syria’s 2011 population, that means 2.4% of Syria’s population has been lost. Think about the scale of that misery. Applied to the U.S. population, that percentage would mean more than 80 times the number of U.S. citizens having died of the coronavirus than is currently the case.

Oh, and don’t forget, more than 10 million refugees have been internally displaced or forced out of Syria so far.

Yet, the true horror of Syrian suffering is measured by Assad, Putin, and Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s deliberate effort to achieve it. Their mayhem strategy has involved starvation campaigns, the deliberate targeting of hospitals and markets, the barrel bombing of civilian neighborhoods, and the gassing of entire towns. They are mass murderers.

But as I say, the world now has an unmatched opportunity to drive Assad from power and transition Syria to peace.

The first factor here is the economic pressure brought on Syria by the coronavirus and the collapse of its economy after nearly 10 years of war. Assad’s foreign capital reserves are near totally depleted, and U.S. sanctions are wreaking havoc on his access to international trade and finances. The coronavirus has worsened matters here, suspending even those few functional economic activities that had sustained, and further draining Assad’s bank accounts. Desperate to scrounge any money he can find, Assad is now extorting longtime oligarch allies. He is vulnerable.

In better times, Putin and Khamenei might be able to throw Assad a lifeline. But they have their own issues.

Iran’s economy has imploded under the weight of U.S. sanctions. So much so that influential Iranian officials are now demanding Assad pay them back for their contribution to his murder campaign. Iran’s inability to assist Assad is one example as to why sanctions relief for Tehran, absent a new nuclear deal, would be a serious mistake.

How about Putin?

Well, collapsed global oil prices has evaporated Russia’s energy-export dependent economy and Putin’s revenue stream. At the same time, Putin’s domestic handling of the coronavirus has jeopardized his domestic credibility in an unprecedented manner. Frustrated that he hasn’t been able to push the United States out of Syria and thus secure dominion over its political future and access to its eastern oil fields, Putin is stuck. The world is unwilling to accept Russia’s cease-fire proposal, which basically involves Assad taking unilateral power with Russia as his guarantor. Today, Putin’s Syria policy is an evermore painful drain on his resources and prestige.

So what should be done?

Well, President Trump should give the U.S. military more authority to counter Russian maneuvers in and around Syria. That will show Russia that American resolve is unwavering.

Still, the most valuable action here would be new sanctions on Assad and Putin. There is an obvious moral cause for such action. But any new restrictions on Assad’s access to the international banking sector, and on Russian companies operating in Syria, would have an outsize effect. Those Russian companies, after all, would have to judge their continuing involvement in Syria alongside the risk of European firms refusing to do business with them in new concern over suffering secondary U.S. sanctions. The objective here wouldn’t be to force Russia into a loss in Syria, but rather to pressure Putin’s support for a compromise with Syrian rebels. A compromise, put simply, in which Assad loses power, federalism takes hold, and Russia gets to keep its economic and military investments under any new administration.

Syria’s people deserve the world’s attention. And now, finally, America has the means and the moment to support them.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views and editorial stance of the SOHR.

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