US helps Syria’s ruling Al Qaeda offshoot while punishing its people

The US ignores its own terrorist designation of Syria's ruling Al Qaeda veterans, all while maintaining sanctions that devastate ordinary civilians.

(Photo by Ali Haj Suleiman/Getty Images)

In his memoir of his time as a senior aide to President Obama, Ben Rhodes recalled one of the administration’s top quandaries in Syria.

Back in late 2012, the CIA was waging a multi-billion dollar covert war to help insurgents topple then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. By that point, Al Qaeda had established a powerful franchise in Syria known as Jabhat al-Nusra, which international actors were promptly designating as a terrorist organization.

Yet for a US government seeking regime change in Damascus, adding al-Nusra to the State Department terror list posed a problem. On the ground, Rhodes acknowledged, al-Nusra “was probably the strongest fighting force” against the Syrian government. Moreover, rather than coming into conflict with one another, it was “also clear that the more moderate opposition” favored by the US was in fact “fighting side by side with al-Nusra.” Therefore, Rhodes recalled arguing to his colleagues, designating al-Nusra as a terrorist organization “would alienate the same people we want to help.”

Rhodes and his compatriots ended up losing that debate. Yet while the State Department designated al-Nusra in December 2012, it turns out that the US still found a way to help. By placing Nusra on the terrorist list, the New York Times explained that month, the Obama administration hoped “to remove one of the biggest obstacles to increasing Western support for the rebellion: the fear that money and arms could flow to a jihadi group that could further destabilize Syria and harm Western interests.”

In other words, designating al-Nusra as a terrorist group was a toothless move that helped the Obama administration continue arming the insurgency that the Nusra militants dominated. The notion that US sanctions would force an Al Qaeda-dominated rebellion to abandon its leading fighting force was a fantasy – if not a deliberate ruse -- that ensured that US weapons would continue to flow.

And that they did: three months after Nusra’s terrorist designation, the Associated Press reported that the US and its proxy war allies had “dramatically stepped up weapons supplies to Syrian rebels” to help them “seize Damascus.” Despite the Obama administration's public opposition to Nusra, “there is little clear evidence from the front lines that all the new, powerful weapons are going to groups which have been carefully vetted by the U.S.” Instead, insurgents “including Jabhat al-Nusra” had been seen “with such weapons.” Once U.S. weapons arrived in Syria, the Obama administration quietly acknowledged that it had no way of controlling who would use them. “We needed plausible deniability in case the arms got into the hands of al-Nusra,” a former senior administration official explained in 2013.

With US arms in hand, al-Nusra and its allies captured the Syrian province of Idlib in May 2015. It was from Idlib that al-Nusra – now under the name of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – launched the recent offensive that removed Assad.

And now that HTS, an Al Qaeda offshoot, has finally seized Damascus in December 2024, the Obama administration veterans who now serve under President Biden are facing a dilemma similar to what Ben Rhodes described during that same month in 2012.

On the one hand, the US helped the insurgency that toppled Assad – not only via the CIA dirty war, but also the crippling sanctions that crushed Syria’s economy and the concurrent military occupation that deprived Syria of its oil and wheat. Yet on the other -- because of the decision that the Obama team took in December 2012 over Rhodes’ objections -- the new Syrian government is a designated terrorist organization. The HTS ruler, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani – now using his given name, Ahmed al-Shara – even has a $10 million US bounty on his head.

In Washington, the decision has been made to give Syria’s ruling Al Qaeda spinoff another helping hand.

After meeting with al-Jolani/al-Shara in Damascus on Dec. 20th, senior State Department official Barbara Leaf announced that the US will suspend the $10 million reward for his capture. In Leaf’s telling, Al-Shara “came across as pragmatic” and offered “moderate statements” on issues including the rights of women and minorities.

The US government’s willingness to engage with al-Shara, a former leader of Al Qaeda – and before that, a former deputy leader of ISIS – underscores that its definition of “terrorism” is entirely dependent on political calculations. The operative standard boils down to whether or not the designated “terrorist” is “on our side”, as Jake Sullivan described al-Qaeda in Syria in a now infamous February 2012 email.

Similar criteria applies to the US definition of “moderate.” After receiving the Biden administration’s endorsement, al-Shara’s government has offered a vision for Syria that hardly reflects the democratic aspirations of the secular, reformist protesters who took to the streets against Assad in early 2011.

After initially suggesting that there would be quick elections, al-Shara now says that this could take up to four years. For a war-torn country like Syria, some interim period of restructuring before a vote is understandable. But the government that al-Shara is putting in place for this open-ended transition does not resemble Syria’s rich cultural mosaic, and instead HTS’ own brand of sectarianism.

Al-Shara has tapped Anas Hassan Khattab, a former Al-Qaeda commander and Nusra co-founder, as Syria’s new intelligence chief. Back in 2014, the United Nations designated Khattab as a “terrorist” for his critical role in Nusra’s financing and operations. Meanwhile, the only woman appointed to serve in the “transition” government to date has declared that the new system will be based on Sharia law. She also insisted that there will no space for both “secularism” and “those who don't agree with my thinking.”

The most ominous development is a wave of sectarian violence. Although largely downplayed in Western media, there are widespread reports, documented with video evidence, of militant attacks on Alawite, Christians, and other minorities. Although HTS fighters have reportedly tried to stop such attacks in some areas, this is an inevitable consequence of a sectarian insurgency taking power in a decimated, divided country. As the New York Times notes, HTS’s own ranks “include thousands of radicalized foreign fighters”, complemented by many more in other militias. In a show of gratitude for their critical role in toppling Assad, al-Shara has said that these foreign militants will likely be granted Syrian citizenship.

As the US offers Syria’s new rulers an olive branch, it has done the opposite with the Syrian people. Last week, President Biden authorized a five-year extension of the Caesar Act, a set of draconian sanctions that have deliberately prevented Syria’s reconstruction and crushed its economy. Congress had included the sanctions in its must-pass annual defense bill right before Assad’s ouster. His surprise overthrow has put the US government and allied Syrian opposition lobbyists in the awkward position of acknowledging that their sanctions devastate Syrian civilians.

Republican Rep. Joe Wilson, a longtime proponent of the sanctions on Syria, has now asked the Biden administration to issue a waiver that would “suspend sanctions statutes and executive orders connected to reconstruction, economic development, foreign investment, and other critical economic activities.” These waivers, Wilson wrote, “could build good will for the United States in Syria... by facilitating economic and financial access for ordinary Syrians.”

This is a sharp U-turn for Wilson, who not only co-sponsored the Caesar Act sanctions but even declared that he was “deeply saddened” when Biden issued a temporary waiver on them after the devastating earthquake of February 2023. In now wanting to “build good will” by lifting sanctions, Wilson is acknowledging that they indeed hurt “ordinary Syrians.”

As the New York Times observes, “there is widespread agreement that the single most important step in rebuilding Syria’s economy can be taken only by the United States: Lift the punishing layers of sanctions that have effectively cut off Syria from international commerce and investment.” As to why the US had the right to subject ordinary Syrians to these punishing sanctions in the first place, that is because there was a unilateral agreement in Washington behind making them suffer if it could help topple their government.

Now that regime change has been achieved, the US is also being more candid about another critical component of its immiseration of ordinary Syrians. After long claiming that it had only 900 troops inside Syria, the Pentagon has now admitted that the number is in fact more than 100% higher. “I learned today in fact there are approximately 2,000 US troops in Syria,” Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, told reporters last week.

As top US officials from President Trump on down have acknowledged, the aim of that troop presence is not to fight ISIS, but to loot Syria’s oil and wheat to complement the sanctions in collapsing the Syrian state. With Syria risking a descent into further chaos, the current message from the White House is that the “transitional” regime that grew out of Al Qaeda, and not the Syrian people, remains the only suitable recipient of Washington’s help.