Losing credibility

Obama losing credibility with Syrian opposition leaders

Tensions between the administration and the moderate rebels have spiked ahead of Friday's peace talks.

By Nahal Toosi

As the Obama administration pushes for peace in Syria, its credibility is crumbling among Syrian opposition leaders, many of whom increasingly doubt the U.S. is serious about ending the rule of dictator Bashar Assad.

The long-simmering tensions, boiling over just ahead of U.N.-led peace talks Friday in Geneva, are badly damaging the gathering’s already low prospects for success, say former administration officials and analysts close to the Syrian opposition. If the talks peter out or collapse, that will further undermine President Barack Obama's foreign policy legacy, which already has been tarnished by the endless bloodshed in Syria. It also will further complicate the U.S. goal of ultimately defeating the Islamic State by first stabilizing Syria, whose civil war has given the terrorist group breathing space and a source of recruits.

“A number of the opposition has expressed the feeling that the U.S. is not acting as an honest broker and that they’ve lost both trust and faith in the ability of the United States to deliver on a political settlement in Syria,” said Andrew Bowen, a senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest who has contacts among Syrian opposition groups.

In the past few days, Secretary of State John Kerry and his aides have flown to Riyadh, engaged in a flurry of phone calls and issued public statements in a bid to persuade opposition leaders to show up for Friday's talks. But opposition leaders, through their own public statements and leaks to the press, suggested they worry the United States is caving to the demands of Assad’s two main patrons, Russia and Iran.

Both Russia and Iran have a significant military presence in Syria, and they have helped Assad make gains in recent weeks. The U.S. role is far more limited — essentially special operations forces and airstrikes targeting the Islamic State, whose jihadists control large portions of Syria and Iraq.

“Kerry did not make any promises, nor did he put forward any initiatives,” said Khaled Khoja, president of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, in one statement questioning U.S. intentions. “He has long been delivering messages similar to those drafted by Iran and Russia, which call for the establishment of a ‘national government’ and allowing Bashar al-Assad to stay in power and stand for re-election.”

Among the numerous reports floating around — some of them highly speculative — are those that allege Kerry warned opposition leaders they could lose international support if they didn’t attend Friday’s talks. The reports come as the U.S. has appeared to be backing away from its demand that Assad must leave office by signaling its support for the notion of a transitional period.

The secretary denied that the U.S. had threatened the opposition with a loss of support — and the administration continues to insist the Syrian conflict will not end so long as Assad stays in power. But Kerry also warned that the comments from the opposition groups should be taken in context— "there are a lot of factions here, folks, and (a) lot of different interests at play" — and said that Syrians themselves must decide their country's future.

“The position of the United States is and hasn’t changed; that we are still supporting the opposition politically, financially, and militarily,” Kerry told reporters while visiting Laos earlier this week. "They have to be serious. If they’re not serious, war will continue. You’ve heard that refrain from me for months. Up to them. You can lead a horse to water, you can’t make it drink."

State Department spokesman Mark Toner on Wednesday said the U.S. is urging the Syrian opposition to attend the talks "without preconditions" in order to seize the opportunity to see how serious the Assad government is about peace.

"These are going to take some time. No one is expecting 180-degree turnaround from anyone," Toner said. "But when you get people talking back and forth you can get some measure of negotiations, some measure of dialogue."

The lead grouping of opposition leaders, known as the High Negotiations Committee, declared late Tuesday that it would not attend the talks unless the Assad government met several conditions, including lifting its sieges on parts of the country. Still, the HNC left open the possibility it could show up, and its members were talking again Wednesday.

The Syrian government, meanwhile, has agreed to participate in the Geneva gathering. The session will likely consist of “proximity talks” — meaning U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura will shuttle among key players instead of putting everyone in the same room.

The stakeholders include a number of countries at odds with one another, including Saudi Arabia, which is helping coordinate the Syrian opposition, and Iran. The Saudis recently cut off diplomatic ties with Iran after Riyadh's execution of a Shiite Muslim cleric led Iranian protesters to attack the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

The U.S. and its allies in Europe also have had growing concerns with Russia's military actions on behalf of Assad. On Tuesday, a British official issued a harsh statement after Russian-backed Syrian forces took over the southern Syrian town of Sheikh Miskeen, which had been under the control of opposition groups considered moderate.

“The fall of Sheikh Miskeen to regime forces today reveals the hypocrisy of Russian targeting in Syria," said Gareth Bayley, the United Kingdom's special representative for Syria. "By continuing to support the regime in its bombardment of the moderate opposition, Russia risks damaging the already fragile process of intra-Syrian negotiations."

The Syria talks are expected to last at least six months, with the goal of establishing a cease-fire and achieving a political settlement, including holding new elections in Syria, where some 250,000 people have died in nearly five years of war. This week's meeting was supposed to be held Monday, but it got delayed after grumbling from the opposition. De Mistura sent out invitations on Tuesday, but he wouldn't say who was on the list.

The disagreements being aired ahead of the talks are partly about pre-conditions: the opposition, for example, wants the Syrian government to stop bombing civilians as just one of several confidence-building measures. But there also are differences over who should be allowed to engage in the Geneva talks. Turkey objects to the participation of a Syrian Kurdish group which has captured a large stretch of territory in Syria. Russia says the Kurds have to play a role.

Philip Gordon, a former White House coordinator for Middle East affairs, warned that Friday's gathering could backfire if the various sides concluded others could not be reasoned with. Gordon, now a senior adviser at Albright Stonebridge Group, has argued that negotiations on a cease-fire should be made a priority and de-coupled from future talks on a political settlement.

"Every negotiation is hard, but sometimes you have the feeling that you’re at least in the ballpark, and you need to get people in the room to make difficult decisions because there’s enough of an interest on each side for a resolution," he said. "Frankly, it just doesn't feel that way this time. They’re so far apart on the most fundamental issues that even if somehow you get them there that doesn’t really indicate any likelihood of an agreement. It's almost like having a meeting for the meeting's sake."

Robert Ford, a former ambassador to Syria, said the United States has relatively little leverage in the talks, in part because of the Obama administration's unwillingness to play a larger military role in Syria — even if that means just sending more support to moderate armed groups fighting Assad.

Assad, on the other hand, is playing such hardball that he won't even allow the United Nations to send in humanitarian aid to some areas, Ford said.

"The Americans have to realize they have a credibility problem," said Ford, now a senior fellow with the Middle East Institute. "Words don’t mean much. What are the Americans doing on the ground to help put pressure on both sides to help make concessions? That’s what matters. It is just hot air from Washington to talk about the need for a political deal without actions taken to make it happen."