Free Syria regime stands at crossroads

A lone demonstrator outside my local city hall today, in Barrington, Rhode Island, is getting plenty of horn honks for his sign, "Celebrate Free Syria" (photo RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

I do celebrate the fall of the Assad regime. Ghastly, if not unexpected, stories of oppression are pouring out of the country, especially about brutal political imprisonments and torture.

I've not been able to help, though, but wait for the other shoe to drop concerning Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the prevailing Islamist rebel regime. Western media are eager to report on the efforts of HTS leader Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani to position himself as a moderate and distance HTS from its al-Qaeda origins. 

The Taliban promised enlightenment, too, when Kabul fell. And now Afghanistan is in an alarming state. The NGO Human Rights Watch declared almost a year ago "that the pattern of abuses against women and girls in Afghanistan amounts to the crime against humanity of gender persecution."

I hope my anxiety is ill founded, and Syria will be different. HTS has a fractured nation to hold on to. Foreign forces, including Americans, are firming up footholds. And Turkey looks poised to invade to suppress the Kurds.

France sent a diplomatic mission to Syria earlier this week, and other western powers should follow suit. The West would do well to impress on al-Jawlani which side of the bread has the butter. The United States has an opportunity, all at once, to further U.S. security, to protect Syrian human rights, to establish a western foothold in a sphere of Russian influence, and to give the Kurdish people a good turn due. 

But how that opportunity will fare as against Trump isolationism remains to be seen. We have an opportunity, too, to throw it all on the pyre and strike the match. And then we really will see what al-Jawlani is made of.