Western efforts to contain the Syrian war have reached a new low. The latest sign is the announcement from Washington that John Allen, the retired Marine general in charge of the coalition of states fighting ISIL, is to step down.
Gen Allen could not stay on after it emerged that the force of US-trained fighters that was expected to upend the balance of power in Syria actually amounted to less than half a dozen men at one stage. A bigger question for the Americans is whether “moderates” can ever win wars in sectarian conflicts, especially given the woeful performance of the US-trained army in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the European Union is struggling to come to terms with an unprecedented influx of migrants, mainly from Syria but also from Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea, that could amount to one million this year. On Wednesday, EU leaders pledged to spend more than €1 billion (Dh4.1bn) in aid to try to stem the flow of migrants. The leaders were warned by Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, that failure to regain control of the EU’s borders would undermine the whole European project.
At the same time, the prospect of any end to the fighting in Syria is hampered by the fallout of Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea last year. With Russia under western sanctions, the shared interest of Washington, Europe and Moscow in destroying ISIL cannot lead to joint action without overcoming the bitter legacy of Ukraine.
Against this grim background, several avenues are being explored to contain the crisis, but all of them are subject to multiple conflicting interests.
Turkey has long favoured a safe zone in the Syrian border area which would allow some refugees to return without being bombed from the air by the Syrian regime. In a similar situation in 1991, when Iraqi Kurds were fleeing the onslaught of Saddam Hussein’s forces, a US-patrolled no-fly zone was imposed by the United Nations.
But that was a time when Moscow thought of itself as a partner of America, not an opponent. No such UN action is conceivable now.
A suggestion that Turkey could impose its own safe area, without UN support, has been knocked out by Russia’s dramatic entry into the conflict zone with the establishment of an airbase near Latakia. No one knows quite what president Vladimir Putin is planning – he must be relishing the confusion he is spreading among the western powers – but one thing is clear: Turkey, a member of the Nato alliance, cannot enforce a no-fly zone in Syria if Russia is there and ready to use armed force to back the Assad regime’s right to bomb its own territory.
In fact, the arrival of the Russians in Latakia could be seen as a pledge by Moscow to close off Syrian air space to Turkish and Israeli aircraft. It is this possibility that caused the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to scramble to Moscow to ask Mr Putin if his bombers were going to be excluded from Syria.
Without a safe area in the north, the options are limited: the EU has concluded that the focus must be on making life easier for refugees to stay in Jordan and Turkey. This is no easy task.
For those refugees who cannot work legally, the long-term prospect is to be reduced to an underclass.
In Jordan, there are an estimated 1.3 million Syrians. With unemployment high and informal working endemic, the northern governorates where the refugees mainly live are a tinderbox, with local people expressing rising resentment against the refugees. The refugees are believed to be driving down wages and raising the cost of rents.
However, a Chatham House research paper, Syrian Refugees in Jordan: Confronting Difficult Truths, suggests that this desperate situation is salvageable. Some economists conclude that the addition of Syrian labour to the Jordanian workforce – even in the informal sector – is a spur to the national economy, which is already boosted by the aid money. If these funds were used to promote Syrian employment and income-generation projects, and similar efforts lavished on the Jordanian population to counter local resentment, all would benefit. That would require a big rise in aid at a time when donor fatigue is causing a cut in food rations. But the alterative is an explosion sooner or later.
As for Turkey, the same problems apply, but the stakes are even higher. The trickle of refugees heading into Europe from Turkey has become a flood this summer, with 5,000 a day arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos.
Brussels needs to make Turkey its front line against the migrant flow. But why should Turkey do anything to help? It has been looking after 2 million Syrians, at the cost of some $5 billion; Europe is in crisis over an annual influx of 0.2 per cent of its population. If Turkey is to offer Syrians the right to work – a generally unpopular move in a country with 10 per cent unemployment but one relished by employers who see Syrians as fit to do jobs that most Turks will not do – it needs something in return. The Turks would like visa-free travel in Europe – a move that could hardly be sold to European electorates where anti-foreigner feeling is high.
What is certain is that the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is going to be a focus of European attention even as he tries to persuade his country to give him a super majority in the November election which would turn his largely ceremonial post into the executive position.
The western powers know that the price of indecision is to do business with Mr Putin. Europe will be dealing with another leader it does not relish, Mr Erdogan. If the fallout from the Syrian war is going to be contained in some way, the cost will be high – in hard cash to the refugees and their host populations, but also in political concessions.
Alan Philps is a commentator on global affairs
On Twitter: @aphilps