The Forest and the Trees: Syrian Reactions to Foreign Actions Against ISIS

The Washington Post last week reported that Syria strongly denounced the decision by Turkey to allow ten Iraqi Kurdish fighters to cross the border from Turkey into the Syrian town of Kobane. (Turkey also appears to have permitted 50 Free Syrian Army fighters to cross into Kobane as well.) In the Post’s words, “Syria expressed fury” at Turkey and called its behavior “disgraceful.” This reaction is notable mostly because Syria’s “fury” about this small incursion onto its territory stands in stark contrast to its deafening silence about the much greater intrusion of Syrian sovereignty that has been going on for months in the form of military air strikes by the coalition fighting ISIS. That coalition includes the United States, of course, but also the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Bahrain, each of which has engaged in kinetic air strikes in Syrian territory. And states such as the UK and France may also be conducting unarmed reconnaissance flights in Syrian airspace. The extent of the intrusions in the two cases---allowing ten pesh merga to cross into Syria versus conducting hundreds of air strikes on Syrian soil against ISIS and other terrorist groups---are not remotely comparable. Why did Syria get so upset with Turkey and yet remains so quiet about the air strikes? Admittedly, Syria made some chest-thumping statements before the United States commenced air strikes in late September, but it has (as far as I can discern) said nothing since. Even Iran and Russia, which condemned the air strikes early on as violating international law, have not kept up their complaints. Additionally, Russia could have attempted to introduce a Security Council Resolution condemning the coalition actions, but has not done so. Several factors may be in play. The first is politics. Assad apparently is content to have the coalition attempt to defeat ISIS, and presumably what bothered him most about the Turkish decision yesterday was that it allowed Free Syrian Army members to transit into Syria. (I assume Syrian forces have no presence at the Syrian/Turkish border, which Kobane abuts; otherwise the Syrian border patrol simply could have halted the pesh merga on their way in.) On the other hand, the U.S. and other states reportedly are arming rebels who are fighting both ISIS and Assad---thus potentially strengthening Assad’s opponents in the same way Turkey is. And that arming has not drawn protests. So perhaps Syria feels as though its protests against Turkish actions may affect Turkey’s policy (which has been contentious within Turkey itself) in a way that protests against U.S. and coalition air strikes and related support for anti-ISIS forces will not. Second is an evidentiary point. Although the press has widely reported on Western (and Middle Eastern) efforts to arm Syrian rebels, there may be limited tangible evidence of those efforts to which Assad could point at this stage. In contrast, the Turkish decision to allow armed actors to cross into Syria appears to have been relatively overt. That would explain the difference in reactions to Turkey’s action at the border and to arming rebels, but obviously doesn’t explain the suppressed reaction to the incontrovertible and highly public air strikes. Why does this matter? The responses of other states to uses of force prove highly salient, particularly when states and scholars try to evaluate after the fact whether a particular forcible action was lawful. Muted responses by states most affected by a use of force leave a different historical trail than robust, detailed objections to that force. Based on the lack of public statements, it appears at this stage as though many states do not see the coalition’s use of force in Syria as particularly controversial legally. Ryan Goodman has pointed out that some NATO allies have declined to date to conduct air strikes within Syria, which might suggest discomfort with the U.S. Government’s legal theory for using force against ISIS inside Syria. But there are other possible explanations for that reticence, and at least France has indicated that it doesn’t see a legal hurdle to conducting strikes.  Perhaps a combination of the high stakes of combating ISIS and an acclimatization to the U.S. government’s legal theory about using force against non-state actors extraterritorially accounts for state responses to the use of force in Syria.