As the bizarre spectacle of President Donald Trump’s press conference with Russian leader Vladimir Putin unfolded on Monday, the key reason many thought the two might have met essentially became a footnote: Syria.
Russia, with help from Iran, has been militarily dominating in Syria, backing President Bashar al-Assad’s military in its fight against rebels, as well as the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS).
President Trump hardly mentioned Syria on Monday, but when questioned, said that the United States and Russia would cooperate “in order to help Israel.”
“And creating safety for Israel is something that both President Putin and I would like to see very much,” Trump said, adding, as an afterthought (by his own admission):
“One little thing I might add to that is the helping of people. Helping of people. Because you have such horrible. I’ve seen reports and I’ve seen pictures. I’ve seen just about everything. If we can do something to help the people of Syria get back into some form of shelter and on a humanitarian basis. That’s what the word was, a humanitarian basis.”
Bassam al Ahmad, co-founder and executive director of Syrians for Truth & Justice, based in Istanbul, told ThinkProgress that Trump’s answer was “unforunate.”
“[The] U.S. and other countries should deal with the root of the problem — lack of democracy, lack of freedom,” said al-Ahmad, answering questions via e-mail. “They really should help Syrians to decide their fate.”
In an uncomfortable interview with Putin (aired on Monday) with Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace, the host brought up the rather conservative estimate of half a million civilians being killed in the country’s protracted civil war that has lasted more than eight years. He asked if Putin had any qualms in Russia’s role in those deaths, and Putin responded by blaming “terrorist” groups for those casualties, adding that it was the U.S. that “heavily bombed” Raqqa in its quest to liberate it from ISIS.
Wallace pushed back, citing U.N. reports accusing Russian pilots of deliberately targeting civilians in Aleppo and Ghouta.
“You are completely deceived and I’m very sorry that you don’t know the real situation in Syria,” sighed Putin.
But what is the real situation?
“Russia has slaughtered civilians in Syria and allowed Assad to do the same, and worse, so Russia certainly isn’t one to talk,” said Daphne Eviatar, director of the Security with Human Rights program at Amnesty International (AI) USA.
“The U.S.-led coalition in its own bombings in Syria and its own use of lethal force in Syria has killed a lot of people, as well,” she told ThinkProgress.
AI has documented the operation Raqqa in a June report, finding that from June 6 to October 12, 2017, “the US-led Coalition operation to oust IS from its so-called ‘capital’ Raqqa killed and injured thousands of civilians and destroyed much of the city.”
“We found large numbers of civilians killed and none of them have been acknowledged by the United States, none of them had been helped by the United States and none of them had ever seen anyone from the United States,” said Eviatar. “All they got was bombs dropped on their buildings and their families killed.”
On top of that, conditions in the south of the country are getting worse — which seems unfathomable, given the horrors visited upon the Syrian people by their own government, various armed opposition groups, ISIS, as well as international interference that has so often resulted in massive civilian casualties.
The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that civilians continue to flee Russian airstrikes in the outskirts of Quneitra (where a school serving as a shelter was struck, killing 10 civilians) and the western Daraa province. They’re running to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, where they are being turned back by Israeli forces.
The Jordanian border has been long sealed.
Southern Syria, incidentally, is where Putin on Monday said Russia was “crushing terrorists”
According to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), the latest moves by Syrian government forces has left tens of thousands of displaced civilians trapped along the Golan Heights frontier.
In a statement on its site, the IRC also expressed concern for the safety of 160,000 people who fled Russian airstrikes earlier this month, shortly after Russia violated a ceasefire in the area brokered by the United States in 2017.
According to U.N. figures in the past month, 234,500 people have been displaced in Southern Syria. This represents a very troubling escalation that does not see any signs of letting up.
“There really is nowhere else for these people to go and seek safety,” said Mark Schnellbaecher, the IRC’s Middle East region vice president. He pointed out that health teams are seeing “regular cases of children bitten by snakes or stung by scorpions, made worse by depleting anti-venom stocks because fresh medical supplies haven’t been allowed to enter from Jordan.”
Jordan and Israel are both U.S. allies, so it does not seem entirely impossible for the Trump administration to leverage some of that goodwill to at least help transport humanitarian supplies to the the besieged population.
Even if it can’t do those things in southern Syria right now, Eviatar said the U.S. could do a lot to alleviate suffering in the rebel-held areas it supports, including helping clear unexploded ordinances, helping rebuild homes, and providing humanitarian assistance to civilians.
Resisting investigation, as Russia does, and ignoring international law, as the U.S. does, only encourages other parties, including the Assad regime, to continue along the same course.
“First they should develop a clear strategy on Syria,” said al-Ahmad. “The issue of humanitarian aid is important, but I believe Syrians [are] asking for more commitment.”
The U.S. forces, he said, “should use their presence in Syria to push a real political transition and ensure to include all Syrians.”
This requires a long-term view of Syria that the Trump administration has been reluctant to take.
“It’s not in the United States’ interest, even aside from the issue of humanitarian concerns, for people there to be suffering, when there’s a real risk of extremist groups coming back and retaking territory,” said Eviatar, pointing out that the U.S. is heavily invested in Syria’s stability, as well as regional stability.
“Trump has been threatening to pull out [U.S.] forces, and saying ‘It’s not our problem,’ but he was very strong on using very heavy weapons, to use very deadly lethal force that killed a lot of people. You can’t do that and say, ‘It’s not my problem.'”