Here is James Jeffrey Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and Turkey explaining why the US shifted to support Jolani and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. A digest of the main points (followed by full excerpts of his interview from 2021):
· We got Mike Pompeo to issue a waiver to allow us to give aid to HTS
· I received and sent messages to HTS
· Messages from HTS: “We want to be your friend. We’re not terrorists. We’re just fighting Assad.”
· The US was “supporting indirectly the armed opposition”
· “it was important to us that HTS not disintegrate”
· It was important “to ensure that nobody somewhere in the terrorist bureaucracy would decide to take a shot at [Jolani]… that would have been bad.”
· “our policy was, … was to leave HTS alone.”
· “Syria, …is the pivot point for whether [there can be] an American-managed security system in the region.”
· [The] Abraham Accords, … was, … encouraged by what we were doing in Syria and elsewhere.”
· And the fact that we haven’t targeted [HTS] ever, the fact that we have never raised our voice to the Turks about their cohabitation with them … “It’s just like [Turkey] in Idlib. We want [Turkey] to be in Idlib, but you can’t be in Idlib without having a platform, and that platform is largely HTS. Now, … HTS is a U.N.-designated official terrorist organization. Have I ever or has any American official ever complained to [Turkey] about what [they’re] doing there with HTS? No.”
· HTS “are the least bad option” _________________ [Q. = questions, the rest is Jeffrey. Important passages are in bold] …in September of 2018, USAID said, “We can no longer deliver humanitarian aid into the Idlib area, because HTS is controlling checkpoints and other things, and we have this prohibition on our aid going to terrorists.” And therefore we had to turn ourselves into like a pretzel to get Mike Pompeo to issue a waiver, just like the waiver that we had issued in the northeast, because it’s a PKK offshoot that is controlling the ground and thus having potential or real access to the monies we’re sending in for various projects. And we did that. It didn’t say you can give aid to the HTS. It essentially said that if aid winds up somehow in the hands of the HTS, you, the organization, be it USAID or NGOs who were providing the aid, could[n’t] be blamed for it. … …I was receiving communications from them, and I was explaining carefully our position, which I knew would be passed on to them…
Q: Were you receiving messages from HTS? Yep.
Q; What were those messages? Basically: “We want to be your friend. We’re not terrorists. We’re just fighting Assad.” They somehow had picked up the idea that we were now, really, once again, for the second time — initially with Obama, it was the whole “overthrow Assad through the Free Syrian Army” thing that then never had much juice behind it. Well, it had a lot of money behind it, but it didn’t have Obama’s juice behind it, and it eventually faded. And now for the second time, not by supporting the armed opposition but by supporting indirectly the armed opposition — but it’s supporting the Israelis, supporting the Turks, supporting the SDF [Syrian Democratic Forces], keeping our troops on — we were re-engaging militarily, as well as diplomatically, and through sanctions and other economic tools in Syria, to try to stop a Russian-Assad-Iranian victory. And HTS picked up on that. …
Q: But these messages from Jolani were what? They were basically: “This is what we’re doing. These are our goals. We’re not a threat to you.”
Q: What did you make of it?
I said: “I couldn’t agree more. … Keep me informed as often as possible.” I encouraged people to keep me informed. That was my job.
Q: This guy worked for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; this guy worked with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; this guy pledged allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri. And you’re saying that you could trust him? I wouldn’t say I trusted him. I would say that I wanted to know what was going on in Idlib and that it was important to us that HTS not disintegrate or become a terrorist force. Therefore, the fact that they were talking to media people, talking to NGOs, talking to humanitarian organizations, dealing with humanitarian organizations, as opposed to beheading them, was a good thing, because that made it easier for me to ensure that nobody somewhere in the terrorist bureaucracy would decide to take a shot at him. And that would have been bad. … I had to be very careful that I was not seen as someone who was advocating support for HTS, which was why I was horrified when [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov fingered me, hoping that it wouldn’t be picked up by anybody else, because there was a lot of controversy about this Syria policy. Syria had been a disaster in the Obama administration. … So I didn’t want to give ammunition to the people who basically thought that this was a fool’s errand by saying, “This is going to include reaching out to HTS in any way.” So therefore I never reached out to them; I never gave them a message. I just did everything I could to be able to monitor what they were doing and ensuring that those people who spoke to them knew what our policy was, which was to leave HTS alone and would communicate — and I assumed would communicate that to them. Syria, given its size, its strategic location, its historical importance, is the pivot point for whether [there can be] an American-managed security system in the region, with now the — consider the Abraham Accords people, because that was, in a way, both encouraged by what we were doing in Syria and elsewhere, and a little bit afraid that what they were seeing Trump do wouldn’t be repeated by the next administration. And so you’ve got this general alliance that is locked in with us. But it is under pressure, and the stress point is greatest in Syria. You can lose Yemen; you have lost Lebanon.
Q: The stress point is greatest in Idlib, Syria. And in Syria, the stress point is greatest in Idlib. And the fact that we haven’t targeted [HTS] ever, the fact that we have never raised our voice to the Turks about their cohabitation with them — in fact, I used this example the last time I was talking to very senior Turks, when they were bitching about this relationship we have with the SDF, which we renamed from the YPG [Kurdish People’s Protection Unit], which is a Syrian wing of the PKK. And I said to them, “Look, Turkey has always maintained you want us in northeast Syria,” which they do. “But you don’t understand. We can’t be in northeast Syria without the platform, because we only have hundreds of troops there of the SDF, which has 100,000 troops and is fighting ISIS, is containing Assad and the Russians and you.” It’s a big job, and we need these guys. And then it finally occurred to me, and I’d never thought of this, and this was this last year. I said: “It’s just like you in Idlib. We want you to be in Idlib, but you can’t be in Idlib without having a platform, and that platform is largely HTS. Now, unlike the SDF, HTS is a U.N.-designated official terrorist organization. Have I ever or has any American official ever complained to you about what you’re doing there with HTS? No.” … HTS are about as good an example as there is out there of the kind of complicated movements you have in the Middle East, where traditional nation-states, traditional international rules and norms and behavior do not obtain. There still has to be an effort at some kind of order. Individual populations and parts of populations and regional actors and frankly the international community, which is often analogous with the United States, need some degree of predictability and stability, and I won’t say control, but at least influence. And again, when there is not the normal setup of nation-states and of international norms and rules and behavior and international law, you wind up with groups like this, that do things you don’t like, that have a genealogy that is very troubling. But in the here-and-now are the folks you have to deal with to avoid even worse things.
Q: I think you told me before on the phone that they were the least bad option. Yeah. They are the least bad option
