When the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, thousands of Syrian refugees began to flood into neighboring Jordan. By the end of the following year, the number of refugees had reached 150,000; a year later, it was one-half million. There are currently at least 1 million Syrian refugees in Jordan.
A senior Jordanian military official told me shortly after the start of the Syrian uprising that most of the refugees were poor and uneducated, creating a major economic burden on his country. He added that some unknown number of the refugees were actually extremists who sympathized with those who wished to topple the regime of King Abdullah II.
Jordan continues to confront a massive economic challenge, particularly with respect to healthcare and education. Fortunately — thanks in part to economic assistance from friendly states, including the U.S. — the government somehow continues to cope. It has also managed to thwart any threats to its governance, as the Hashemite leadership has overcome numerous times over the past three-quarters of a century, beginning with the 1951 assassination of King Abdullah I. The latest turn in the Syrian conflict may pose the most serious threat to the government since its 1970 Black September conflict with the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
The latest turn in the Syrian civil war could result in a new influx of refugees not only into Jordan but neighboring Lebanon and Iraq as well. David Carden, the U.N.’s deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis, stated this week that “more than 115,000 people have now been newly displaced across Idlib and northern Aleppo.”
The Syrian opposition’s forces have strengthened their hold on Aleppo and have just seized Hama, despite being subjected to intense Russian and Syrian government air strikes. Hama is a city with a population of about a million, and where the memory of President Hafez-al Assad’s 1982 massacre of tens of thousands in his brutal suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood remains very much alive.
The opposition consists of a coalition of forces, but leadership is in the hands of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which translates as “Assembly for the Liberation of the Levant.” It is noteworthy that “the Levant” includes not only Syria, but also Lebanon and Jordan, and indeed Israel, Gaza and the West Bank as well.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is an offshoot of al Qaeda — it was called al-Nusra at the onset of the Syrian civil war. Abu Mohammed Al-Golani (likely a nom-de-guerre), who founded al-Nusra at al Qaeda’s behest, has claimed for some time that he broke with the terror group. He now preaches tolerance for Syria’s ruling minority, the Alawites, and for minority Christians, Druze and Kurds.
Whether al Golani’s assurances mean anything is highly debatable. As a Sunni Islamist, his ideology matches that of the Muslim Brotherhood, meaning that whatever he says, he has no love for the Alawite-led regime that was responsible for the Hama massacre, nor for Alawites as a group, which an Iranian fatwa dubbed as Shiites and therefore heretics in his eyes.
A rebel victory in Syria could result in an attack on the entire Alawite community, forcing its members to flee to Jordan or, more likely, Lebanon or Iraq; Iraq is majority Shiite, while Lebanon’s Shiite population is large, influential and the base of Hezbollah’s support. Should Hayat Tahrir al-Sham begin to persecute Druze and Christians as well, they would also be inclined to escape to Lebanon or Jordan.
A new migration of refugees is the last thing Syria’s neighbors need. Jordan would confront even more intense economic pressure at a time when its prospects for obtaining additional foreign aid, especially from the U.S., are increasingly dim. Lebanon is just emerging from a devastating war between Hezbollah and Israel that could restart at any time. Iraq suffers from far too much Iranian influence and freewheeling militias; more Shiite newcomers would, as in Lebanon, affect what is already a fragile balance of power between Sunni and Shiite Arabs.
Complicating the challenge that more refugees could pose are the rebels’ future plans. Given the very name “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham,” it is far from clear that the group’s ambitions would stop at Syria’s borders. Instead, like the Islamic State, it may well try to conquer more parts of the Levant. A rebel victory therefore poses yet another security threat to Jordan, a top-tier American non-NATO ally, as well as to far more fragile Lebanon.
A rebel victory also creates a new potential threat to Israel. The Jewish State has generally limited itself to attacking Iranian targets in Syria. Indeed, ever since the beginning of the civil war, Jerusalem has tended to treat Assad as a known (if hostile) quantity, in preference to the rebel groups, which constitute a potentially more fearsome security threat.
While these developments are taking place in Syria, the U.S. remains preoccupied by its presidential transition. Joe Biden’s lame-duck administration has been reduced to issuing plaintive statements about the revived Syrian conflict. Donald Trump has yet to take over the reins of power in Washington, and his attitude to America’s role in the region is uncertain. Yet despite what appears to be Trump’s reluctance to engage in the Middle East, his administration’s likely unstinting support for Israel could lead it to turn a blind eye to Russian attacks on the Syrian opposition, and even to ongoing Iranian support for the Assad government.
There would be considerable merit in doing so. Bashar al-Assad’s regime certainly ranks with that of his allies the Iranian ayatollahs as the most despicable in the Middle East. But a victory in Syria by Sunni Islamists could further destabilize a region that is wracked by multiple concurrent conflicts and that already suffers from huge population displacement.
Perhaps Washington should conclude, as the Israelis might, better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.
Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.
