Adlibbing Idlib

 

 

Figure 1: A Russian-Turkish patrol on the M-4 highway in 2020.  Hayat Tahrir al-Sham closed M-4 with blockades.  Photo by Xinhua/ via Getty Images

Salvation for the two million refugees in Idlib Province of Syria lies on only one route, guarded by reputed terrorists. Bab al-Hawa is the only crossing left from Turkey to Idlib, in the rebellious northwest of Syria, territory contained in the south by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (see Figure 4). 

It was not always thus. Almost a decade ago, the United Nations set up four routes into Idlib, to ensure sufficient aid: Two from Turkey (Bab al-Hawa and Bab al-Salam) both on rebel ground; one from Iraq (Al-Yarubiyah), on Kurdish territory; and one from Jordan (Al-Ramtha), now recaptured by Syria (see Figure 3).  In 2019, Russia and China on the Security Council vetoed continued use of Al-Yarubiyah and Al-Ramtha, to try to force aid to go through Damascus; both nations backed Assad in the civil war.  In 2021, Russia and China vetoed Bab Al-Salam.  That left Bab al-Hawa as the only route for aid to Idlib, and it was crippled by the earthquakes. 

The United Nations did not respond to the February 6 earthquakes for three days, saying it lacked approval by Syria and the Security Council. Not until a week after the earthquakes did Assad agree to open two more northern routes, for three months: Bab al-Salam again; and al-Rai, roughly 50 miles northeast of Bab al-Hawa (see Figure 2). Rescuers have had trouble bringing in heavy equipment.

"The UN's insistence on waiting for the Syrian regime's permission—the very regime that has bombed, gassed, starved, forcibly displaced and imprisoned millions of Syrians—is unforgivable," wrote the head of the rescue group White Helmets, Raed Al Saleh.  "It is no secret that the Syrian regime is not a credible partner in addressing the suffering of all Syrians in a neutral and impartial manner.

"For years the Assad regime with the help of its ally Russia has weaponized humanitarian aid and sought to tighten access to humanitarian aid for civilians in the northwest despite the fact that even before the earthquake, roughly 4.5 million people were facing a desperate humanitarian crisis."

 

Figure 2: A truck carrying aid to Idlib crosses at Bab al-Salam on February 14, 2023.  Source:  Bakr Alkasem/AFP via Getty Images, in Al-Monitor

In Idlib live 3.4 million, including 2 million who lost their homes elsewhere in Syria in the carpet-bombing by Bashar and his puppet-master Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Overall, in the northwest region, three fourths live on United Nations aid, 85% of which came via Bab al-Hawa (Arabic for “Gate of the Winds”) in 2021.

 

Figure 3: The original routes for aid into Idlib Province. Source: Physicians for Human Rights

 

Turkey had agreed to clear two highways into Idlib but didn’t. Instead, it bottled up refugees in the province to keep them from crossing over into Turkey. Thousands of Turkish troops remain in Idlib and surrounding areas.

The Bab al-Hawa route, like much of the province, is under the thumb of a former affiliate of al-Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which would rather be known as nationalists than as terrorists. The Russians and Syrians beg to differ. The US has called the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who had been a commander in the Islamic State of Iraq, a terrorist since 2013 and had offered $10 million for information leading to his capture (see Figure 6).

Figure 4: Northwestern Syria, a battle ground of the civil war, is in darker colors at the top of the map.  Source: European Union Agency for Asylum.

You know that you have a tough row to hoe when your best bargaining partner is a child of al-Qaeda.  And the hoeing is even harder than it looks. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham can force refugees across the border into Turkey, where another surge of immigrants would turn voters against Erdogan in this summer’s Presidential election (see Figure 5).  So Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would deal cautiously with Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham. And without Erdogan, no plan to save the refugees via aid down Bab al-Hawa is possible. There seems no alternative for now to giving al-Jolani what he wants.  European governments have already talked in secret to him, according to Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute.  James Jeffrey, a US special representative for Syria, said Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was “the least bad option” for Idlib.

Figure 5: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham forces protesters away from the Bab al-Hawa crossing in 2019.  Photo by Omar Haj Kadour/AFP via Getty Images.

Al-Jolani controls access to Idlib. For example, after their 2017 ceasefire, Turkey and Russia patrolled the M-4 highway from the Syrian port of Latakia east to the Syrian city of Aleppo that could have provided more aid to Idlib refugees. But Hayat Tahrir al-Sham objected that M-4 constricted its own zone of influence. It blockaded M-4, leaving it useless to Idlib today.

 

Figure 6: Al-Jolani, leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Source: Frontline

 

What’s the problem?   

 

In short, the UN’s sensible plan to provide four routes of aid to Idlib fell apart because no nation thought it worth saving. Russia and China did the mischief, of course, but other nations did not bother to dissuade them. In general, humanitarian aid is an afterthought in the foreign policy budget. In the United States, the Republican Party controls the House of Representatives in which spending bills originate.  The Grand Old Party proposes to slash foreign aid by 45%. You can bet that humanitarian aid would go first.

This predicament occurs because a nation believes that it should always put its own interests first. Realpolitik rules. This argument has a certain logic but overlooks that one’s interests may suffer in the long run.

An example from monetary policy may help. The central bank, the Federal Reserve, is supposed to steady prices by steadying the supply of dollars. After all, the more dollars that circulate per loaf of bread, the higher the price of a loaf. So the Fed should promise not to create a lot of dollars in the years to come. But in a certain year, the Fed might become popular by creating money that people spend, creating jobs for a while. This boom is temporary, because our income ultimately depends on how much we can produce and sell, not on how many dollars we print. But if the Fed pursues its own interest in every single moment, it will rev up the printing presses 24/7.  Prices will soar, subverting the Fed's long-run interest.

The solution is for the Fed to commit to long-run restraint of the money supply, despite temptations of the moment. And that’s what the Fed is doing today.

The same principle holds in foreign policy. If the United States acts in every moment on only its own interests, it will suffer in the long run—because other nations will not cooperate, since they too always pursue only their own interests.

Consider the runup to World War II. It would have been in the immediate interests of the US to stay out of the European conflict, as the America First movement demanded. After all, the Atlantic Ocean protected the US from Nazi invasion. But in the long run, isolationism would have led to a Nazi Europe and, as transportation costs fell in coming years, to an eventual mortal threat to the US. 

Instead, Franklin Roosevelt’s demonstrated his commitment to democracy in the Lend-Lease provision of arms and in an unpopular military draft.  This commitment won over the United Kingdom and, in the decades to come, cemented a Western alliance that still serves American interests in politics and trade.

In the same way, a commitment to humanitarian principles can attract allies by showing that the US does not always put its own narrow interests ahead of the shared ones of its friends.  Humanitarian aid is not a frill.

My point is not that the US should pursue humanitarian aims just because they are noble. My point is that being noble—that is, expressing values that people commonly admire—the aims can be understood and accepted by all. By pursuing them, a nation may suffer a short-run cost, because they deviate from its short-run interests. But it makes the sacrifice, because it sees that other nations do the same, in the pursuit of a long-run benefit to each that will more than compensate for the short-run cost to each.

Story of the ballot

This is like the voting problem. I spend precious hours casting my ballot, in exchange for a virtually nil impact on the national election. But I vote, anyway, because I know that I will gain from an informed national vote. Yes, in principle, I could renege, by refusing to vote.  But I recognize that my neighbors will see my refusal and so refuse themselves, touching off a chain reaction.

Another explanation:  People vote because it entertains them.  Politics is a sport.  

A practical example of a common humanitarian decision is the response to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's emotional speech to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization a few weeks after Putin's War began. By noting that he might not see the NATO leaders again (because Kiev then was under siege), he bonded with them and thus won their support, although individual members had much to lose from sanctions imposed on Russia—for example, Germany's loss of Russian natural gas and oil. The NATO sanctions may stem from each member's recognition that its failure to approve them would doom the overall policy. Or maybe they amount to a sport.

The late great mathematical economist John Nash showed how we can think about such problems. In the Nash equilibrium of a game, every player does her best, given what other players do. The classic example is the Battle of the Sexes.  Desi and Lucille are pondering what to do tonight. Desi wants to go to the opera; Lucille, to the bullfight. But whatever they do, they want to do it together. The game has two Nash equilibria: Both go to the opera, or both go to the bullfight. For example, if Desi goes to the opera, Lucille will want to go see Puccini as well; and if Lucille goes to the opera, so will Desi.

The right amount of humanitarian aid, I think, is a Nash Equilibrium.  Given what other nations do, the US will gain by this aid, because its value in establishing the country's credibility among others exceeds the value of whatever else it could have spent the money on.  Similarly, given what the US and other nations do, humanitarian aid benefits Iceland. And so on for every other nation. I thank Forest Weld for this insight.

"The right amount" is pretty vague.  To what degree should the US pursue humanitarian aims?  Should they comprise 5% of foreign aid, or 50%?  That is a problem in dynamic optimization.  One considers both the momentary and long-run benefits of aid.  We can spend aid on either short-run policies or long-run ones, so we should compare their benefits to the US.  For example, we can buy either tanks for Ukraine or medicine for Idlib refugees. The tanks yield short-run benefits for the US in the form of a quid pro quo with allies that pays off in trade. The medicine yields long-run benefits in the form of reputation. We should allocate aid in such a way that one more dollar spent on Abrams has the same immediate value to the US as the long-run value of one more dollar spent on quinine.  Aficionados of the calculus of variation will recognize this as, more or less, the Euler equation, which any solution must satisfy. -- Leon Taylor, Baltimore tayloralmaty@gmail.com

 

Note

I thank Mark Kennet for perceptive comments.

References    

 

Priyanka Boghani.  Syrian militant and former Al Qaeda leader seeks wider acceptance in first interview with US journalist.  Frontline.  April 2, 2021.  Syrian Militant and Former Al Qaeda Leader Seeks Wider Acceptance in First Interview with U.S. Journalist | FRONTLINE (pbs.org)

David Gritten. Earthquake-hit Syria to open two more border crossings for aid delivery - UN.  BBC News.  February 14, 2023.  Earthquake-hit Syria to open two more border crossings for aid delivery - UN - BBC News  

Carl Hulse and Catie Edmondson.  House G.O.P. Prepares to Slash Federal Programs in Coming Budget Showdown. The New York Times. March 8, 2023.  House Republicans Prepare to Slash Spending in Budget Showdown - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Omer Karasapan.  The coming crisis in Idlib. Future Development.  The Brookings Institution.  May 13, 2021.  The coming crisis in Idlib (brookings.edu)

Charles Lister.  Is Idlib set for internal strife?  MEI@75.  May 1, 2020.  Is Idlib set for internal strife? | Middle East Institute (mei.edu)

Adam Lucent. Explainer: Why Syria’s Assad opened two border crossings for earthquake.  Al-Monitor.  February 14, 2023. https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/02/explainer-why-syrias-assad-opened-two-border-crossings-earthquake-aid#ixzz7vQ4kGA13

Raed Al Saleh.  Opinion: It was one of the world’s deadliest catastrophes. Where was the UN?  CNN.  February 14, 2023.  Opinion: It was one of the world's deadliest catastrophes. Where was the UN? | CNN