With his signature Friday, President Trump cleared the way for Congress to begin a monthslong review of his evolving strategy in Syria.
The creation of a 12-member Syria Study Group was tucked inside an unrelated bill Trump just signed into law, the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration. The legislation allows Republicans and Democrats to appoint experts to the panel, which is mandated to hand a final report to Congress in six months, according to the Washington Examiner.
The review panel, championed by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., comes as the U.S. military works to eliminate remaining Islamic State forces in Syria after four years of war and the Trump administration pushes a new policy aimed at keeping a presence there until Iran leaves.
It “will bring outside experts together to finally develop a U.S. strategy in Syria,” Shaheen, a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, said in a statement.
The senator’s office did not return repeated requests for comment.
Trump said earlier this year he wants the roughly 2,000 troops in Syria to return home “very soon,” but his own advisers, cabinet members, and military leaders have indicated in recent days that the U.S. may remain involved for the foreseeable future.
James Jeffrey, Trump’s special envoy to Syria, said the administration’s goals in Syria now include countering Iran, which has moved into the country amid the seven-year-old civil war at the invitation of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Iran is pursuing its own long-term presence. The U.S. will remain to counter that, but the strategy does not necessarily mean American “boots on the ground” and could include oversight of local or regional Arab forces, Jeffrey said.
“While we don't have any direct military tasks that have been given to us in terms of that, we do recognize that our presence on the ground, our development of good partners on the ground does have an impact on Iranian activities,” Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of U.S. Central Command, said on Thursday.
The legislation signed by Trump on Friday orders that the Syria Study Group, which will be co-chaired by a Republican and Democrat, should get “full and timely cooperation” from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.
The final report will include a full assessment of activity by Iran, Russia, and others in the country, military and diplomatic recommendations, and “options for a gradual political transition to a post-Assad Syria,” according to the legislation.
The panel of experts will make a progress report to lawmakers in January.
Iraqi scenario in Syria
Trump's seven-line ratified law announces in its last line the creation of a "new independent commission" to recommend strategic options for the United States in Syria.
The amended Civil Aviation Administration law exempts a clause from the article "G" to indicate that the group is called the "Syria Study Group", which makes any researcher in US policy in the region immediately recall a committee previously formed by the US administration in Iraq which goes under the same name: the "Iraq Study Group".
Researchers are frightened by this coincidence between the names of the committees, as they fear that this name matching could indicate a gateway to worsening the Syrian political scene; especially when one remembers the work of the Iraq Study Group and the results of its recommendations on the general situation of Iraq which obviously caused its decay and deterioration.
This law, in its article “G” clearly refers to the Iraq Study Group as a model, as it is literally put: "This item refers to the Congressional sense of the urgent need for a political solution to the Syrian war and it establishes the Syria Study Group to make recommendations to the United States regarding Syria. Just like the 2006 Iraq Study Group, it finds that religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria are oppressed groups, and that the Islamic state and the government of Syria committed mass genocide and heinous crimes against humanity there.
In order for us to stand against Trump’s new plans regarding Syria we have to go back a little to the history of the Iraq Study Group, formed almost 12 years ago, known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission, named after its co-presidents, the first is the former Secretary of State James Baker Of the Republican Party) and the second is the democratic representative Lee Hamilton, who held sensitive positions including Vice President of the Sept. 11 commission.
Although many years have passed since the work of the Iraq Study Group (Baker-Hamilton), and since the making of its famous and numerous recommendations, it is still to this present day a subject of debate between politicians and those interested in the changing political positions and decisions of the United States.
In terms of form, title and outcome, the “Syria Study Commission” appears to be a duplicate of its predecessor, the Iraq Study Group. This duplication makes it likely that the new committee’s aim is to provide an honorable cover for the US withdrawal from Syria, ensure its recognition of the catastrophic situation as unsolvable and maybe also try to deepen the already disastrous situation just like it did in Iraq.
It would not be at all unexpected for the” Syrian Study Commission” to issue recommendations requiring close cooperation with Iran, Russia and others, and even Iraq, in order to ensure "security, order and stability in Syria".
It will not also come as a surprise that the Syria Study Commission would seek guidance from of Putin, Lavrov Rouhani Netanyahu, Maliki, Jaafari (Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Iraq's current foreign minister) and others who are so steeped in Syrian blood before presenting their recommendations to the white house.
The “Iraq Study Group” had, indeed, previously consulted the foreign minister of the regime, Walid al-Moallem, and his Iranian counterpart, Jawad Zarif (then Iran's ambassador to the United Nations), with Ephraim Sneh, the Israeli general and minister, and former US Secretary of State "Madeleine Albright", and her predecessor, "Henry Kissinger," who put the ingredients of the famous "poison soup" for Iraq, which was made in the form of recommendations.
One of the most important tasks of the "Study Committee of Syria” will be to urge all States to adopt a reconciliatory attitude with the regime and to reopen their embassies and resume diplomatic relations with Assad which is exactly what the “Iraq Study Group” had done. It encouraged all countries to support "national reconciliation in Iraq”, and to "activate the legitimacy of Iraq through the resumption of diplomatic relations and the reopening of embassies in Baghdad," and to even help Iraq open its embassies abroad.
(Zaman Al Wasl, Washington Examiner)
Zaman Al Wasl
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