Former CIA director: Syrian government accountable for attacks on Kurds

WASHINGTON, DC - Retired US General and former CIA Director David Petraeus said the United States must hold Syria’s interim government accountable for violence against Kurdish forces, warning that Damascus should do more than acknowledge attacks on minority communities.

In an interview with Rudaw conducted on Friday, Petraeus, who served as commander of US Central Command, expressed support for new US diplomatic ties with the interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa but raised concerns about Damascus’ commitment to minority rights.

“Ahmed al-Sharaa acknowledged what happened to the Druze. He acknowledged what was done to the Alawites,” Petraeus said, in reference to attacks on the communities last year, including the massacre of 1,500 Alawites and summary execution of Syrian Druze. “I suspect he’d acknowledge what’s going on right now between the new regime military and the Syrian Democratic Forces” in Aleppo, he said, referring to the latest round of clashes between the army and the SDF.

“But an acknowledgement is not enough,” Petraeus added.

“You've got to take remedial action, and we should hold him accountable for this,” he said.

Petraeus noted Sharaa, former leader of the Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, broke away from Al-Qaeda to build local institutions and “certainly a military - not just a bunch of tribal militias, but a real military capacity in Idlib, where he is also responsible for providing education and a number of the other functions of government.”

Sharaa must now take concrete steps to build an inclusive government that empowers and guarantees the rights of all of Syria’s diverse ethnic and sectarian groups, Petraeus argued.

“That is still very much a work in progress, and partly because you have a number of different groups that have not yet been sufficiently included or have not been persuaded that they want to play a part in this new government,” he said.

Petraeus praised US President Donald Trump’s decision to engage diplomatically with al-Sharaa and lift sanctions on Syria, but said Congress was right to attach conditions and will assess whether sanctions should be reimposed.

“This is going to be an assessment; it’s going to be a judgment,” he said. “Is [Sharaa] doing all that he should be doing?” Petraeus said.

Rudaw spoke to Petraeus as the SDF announced they would withdraw from their positions in rural eastern Aleppo ahead of a major Syrian military operation to seize areas held by the SDF.

Earlier in the week, the Syrian Arab Army, backed by armed groups, expelled Kurdish-led internal security forces (Asayish) from Aleppo’s Kurdish-majority neighborhoods in fighting that drove 150,000 residents from the city.

Petraeus said US Syria Envoy Tom Barrack is pressuring both the Syrian government and the SDF, arguing the SDF has “got to be willing to take more risk than they have been willing to so far if they are going to be incorporated into the Syrian military in some capacity,” which has underpinned tensions between Kurdish and central government leaders.

He rejected Turkey’s demands to disarm the SDF and expressed confidence that Washington will not abandon the group, given its crucial counterterrorism and regional security role.

Petraeus agreed with Senator Lindsey Graham's concerns about transferring responsibility for Islamic State (ISIS) prisoners to the Syrian government from the SDF, which lost 12,000 fighters defeating ISIS in northeastern Syria.

He expressed optimism about US-led mediation efforts to de-escalate the conflict in Syria, including a planned meeting Saturday between SDF Commander Mazloum Abdi and US Special Envoy Tom Barrack in Erbil, facilitated by Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani.

He said the leader of Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), President Masoud Barzani “may be able to help General Mazloum develop what would be a reasonable way forward to ensure the desires of the Kurds in the Syrian Democratic Forces, but also to enable the president of Syria to incorporate the area of northeastern Syria that is currently controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces.”

The following is the full transcript of the interview with David Petraeus: 

Rudaw: President Trump gave the Syrian interim president a chance in order to establish or create a prosperous Syria for everyone. I would like to ask whether the Washington approach to the new Syrian Government will change, or how Washington is looking into the recent events that have happened in the region?

Former CIA Director David Petraeus: And by the way, I support that decision. In fact, I thought it was great to see him first meet with Ahmed al Shaara in Riyadh when he was conducting his visit to the GCC countries. I was positive to see that meeting to have the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, facilitating that particular meeting, and to see President Trump lift the sanctions on Syria and on al-Sharaa himself to the extent that he could. And I thought it was great then to have the subsequent meeting that he has had with him in the United States, and to see Congress lift the remaining Caesar sanctions and others, because they prevented investment in Syria in three critical sectors, finance, construction and energy. So all of that, I think, is positive, and I think very positive also to see the conditions that Congress put on the lifting of those sanctions, again, essentially to encourage very strongly to Ahmad al-Sharaa and the government that is developing to provide representation of all the people, and not just majority rights, but minority rights as well.

Do you see this on the ground? Do you see that Ahmed al-Shaara’s government is inclusive, and the Kurds, the Druze, and the Alawites are seeing themselves within that government?

No, I have some concerns about what is evolving. I should note, by the way, that I interviewed Ahmad al-Sharaa, as you may recall, last September at the Concordia summit during the UN General Assembly week in New York, which was surreal for me, by the way, because, of course, he was a detainee in Iraq when I was the four star commander of the surge in Iraq, and the four star commander subsequently of US Central Command responsible for the greater Middle East and his path to the presidency was rather circuitous, shall we say, an al-Qaeda, an Iraq member, cell leader. Then, of course, formed the Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

Then broke away from that, to be fair, and built a government, if you will, and certainly a military, not just a bunch of tribal militias, but a real military capacity in Idlib, where he is also responsible for providing education and number of the other functions of, of government. And when I did interview him, he agreed that what Syria needed was what I described earlier, government that is representative and inclusive of all the elements of society in a country that has many, just about all the ethnic, sectarian, tribal and other fault lines that run through the Middle East are in Syria. And to ensure, again, not just majority rights, but minority rule, and to provide not just majority rights, but also minority rights.

And that is still very much a work in progress, and partly because you have a number of different groups that have not yet been sufficiently included or have not been persuaded that they want to play a part in this new government, you have, obviously, the former regime elements, the Alawites that are out on the coast. You have some of the Free Syrian Army elements left over up in the north, contiguous to and often aligned with Turkey. You have the Syrian Democratic Forces over here, the Syrian Kurds, but also some Arab tribes as part of that as well, with in which there's some friction, to be sure. And then you have, of course, down in the southern part, you have the Druze as well, and some other elements contiguous to Jordan that aren't fully again, represented or included in this. So this is still very much a work in progress, and it's why I agreed, and actually contended that when Congress lifted this full sanctions, there should be conditions on this.

United States officials have long said that we judge people, leaders, and countries based on what they do, not what they say. On the one hand, we see rhetoric from the new Syrian government: They're saying that they are giving the rights of the minorities like Kurds, Christians, and Druze, but in reality, we see that massacres against Kurds have been committed by Damascus-aligned groups within the Syrian Defense Ministry.

And there's no question about that. And Ahmed al0Shaara acknowledged what had happened to the Druze, he acknowledged what was done to the Alawites. I suspect he'd acknowledge what's going on right now between the regime, if you will, the new regime military, and the Syrian Democratic Forces up in the area of Aleppo. But an acknowledgement is not enough…

I was about to ask you about that.

You've got to take remedial action, and we should hold him accountable for this, and I'm sure that our ambassador to Turkey, who is also the regional representative, who has the oversight of Lebanon and Syria as well. In fact, it's reported that he is putting pressure on the government, and also, to a degree, on the SDF, because they have got to be willing to take more risk than they have been willing to accept so far if they are going to be incorporated into the Syrian military in some capacity, in some form.

With the recent attacks on the Kurdish forces in the two neighborhoods in Aleppo, we saw increasing concern by the US Congress, senators like Lindsey Graham, and other members of Congress. I've interviewed many of them myself. They condemn these attacks and, at the same time, say our concerns are increasing. Would that affect any US policy towards Syria?

At some point, it could sure. Congress could take action. They could reimpose again. There are again benchmarks, if you will. There are issues that are identified in the legislation that lifts the Caesar sanctions, in particular. And if we do not see what we have hoped to see, there is the possibility of again putting some sanctions back on Syria as a way of pressuring Ahmed al-sharaa. Again, this is going to be an assessment. It's going to be a judgment. Is he doing all that he should be doing? Could be doing how can we help him, by the way, as well? Because again, he's trying not just to build a government and to ensure security, he's also trying to bring the economy back to life, noting that the only productive part of the economy, the major export crop of the economy, was an illegal narcotic previously.

Last week, I had a chance to ask a question to President Trump about the escalation in Aleppo and the fighting between the Kurds and the Syrian Arab Army. He said that he wants peace, and he wants this fighting to stop. But despite this clear message from President Trump to both the Syrian Arab Army and to the Kurdish-led SDF, the fighting still continues. How should the leaders in Syria and in the region look into this message from the President of the United States, when he says, I want them stop fighting?

They're going to have to redouble their efforts. They're going to have to do more than they have obviously done so far, to try to, number one, resolve the differences, and number two, to move forward with inclusion, incorporation, again, of that part of the country, and the same with other parts as well, so that they feel representative. They feel that they're the central government is concerned about their issues, in particular, a degree for some kind of quasi autonomy or independence or what have you, in some fashion, maybe not using the Kurdish Regional Government as a model. But perhaps again, there are other models that could be determined and examined, but that does need to happen.

And do you think that the Kurds in Syria, or the Kurdish autonomous region, deserve some sort of autonomy within a unified Syria?

It's tougher for me to say no. It's tougher for me to say I think that this is something that you should you know I have. I think we all should be aware of our limitations when it comes to nuanced understanding of particular positions in such a very complicated situation. By the way, keep in mind, as I mentioned earlier, it's not just the Syrian Kurds that are in the SDF-controlled area. There are Arab tribes, and they also have concerns. And again, I just marched around the country identifying the major issues. There are other issues as well. I didn't mention the refugee camp of whatever it is, 80,000 that are down right next to the Iraq border, nearly contiguous with Jordan. Either. Another issue where there are US forces that are deployed to protect that. How do we bring that into this government, all of these different issues?

So this is look, having actually been on the ground in Iraq, Iraq alone for four years, many more years in the region, being reasonably aware of, again, the ethnic, sectarian and tribal issues that you find in many of these countries. We had it in Mosul when I was the commander of the multinational forces North Iraq in the first year of liberation, and trying to satisfy all these different elements, and get them all into the new province council, and getting them to work together and so forth, was a major task, and that was just one province, much less an entire huge country and very substantial population. And oh, by the way, I had the 100 and first airborne division. So I was the sheikh of the strongest tribe in Nineveh province. He doesn't have that relative capacity either.

Bloomberg reported that days before the Aleppo attack, General Mazloum Abdi went to Damascus and sat down with the Syrian new leadership to negotiate about the March 10 agreement, and how to implement it. But what Bloomberg reported was that the talks collapsed as soon as the Syrian Foreign Minister entered the room and told them, pack up, and he just ended the negotiation. How does the United States look into this, or one side who are not willing to work together with the other side?

Obviously, that is not a particularly constructive tactic to employ if you're trying to get the other side to agree in a very complex issue where there are very significant interests on either side of the table, you just can't take the my way or the highway approach. You have to sit down and listen; you're going to have to make some compromises on both sides. There could be some interim steps that could be taken rather than trying to get to the end state immediately. That's what needs to take place. And frankly, again, having been in a similar situation in a much smaller scale, I appreciate very much the challenges of this kind of activity. And this is a time when, again, our regional envoy undoubtedly is leaning on them, as is actually reported in the open press.

Both sides are getting some support from the US, from their partnership with the United States, Syria, and at the same time, the SDF. What leverage do you have on these groups in Syria to make them make peace?

Very considerable levers. Again, our military support is what has enabled the very admirable Syrian Democratic Forces under terrific leadership of General Mazloum, I should note, I have enormous respect for him, and enabled them, but they did the fighting on the ground and the dying on the ground to defeat the Islamic State caliphate in northeastern Syria that used to have its headquarters, of course, in that particular area, along with the headquarters that was in Mosul. So you had Raqqa in northeastern Syria and Mosul in northern Iraq as the two capitals of the caliphate that was established by the Islamic State, the first ever Islamist extremist caliphate in modern history, I believe. So we did a great deal to support them. Have done a tremendous amount to sustain them. We still enable them to carry out very important tasks, to keep pressure on the Islamic State, to keep hold of all those that are detained at the whole again, detention facility, which is a very substantial number of people, and actually growing, because there are still children being had there and so on. So look, we have real leverage there by either continuing to provide support or choosing to withdraw support.

And we have leverage, obviously, with the Syrian government in a variety of different fashions, whether it is the aid that we're providing, sanctions that we have lifted, or other levers. The challenge is, though, you have to have, again, a real construct in mind for what it is we believe they should be doing. That's the real challenge. I think again, that is what was often the issue in Iraq. Where do we want this to go? What do we want it to look like? And not just in general terms, as I have said with government, that's representative of all the people and ensures minority rights as well as majority rule. You've got to operationalize that. What does that look like? How can you reassure the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurds in particular, and how can you also satisfy the legitimate desires by the Syrian government that their military has a monopoly on the use of force in the country?

Tomorrow, General Mazloum Abdi is expected or scheduled, to visit Erbil and have a meeting with Ambassador Tom Barak, the US Special Envoy for Syria. They're talking about the ongoing discussions between Damascus and Rojava, and this meeting is being facilitated by President Nechirvan Barzani. How do you look into these meetings that are taking place in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, between Ambassador Tom Barrack and General Mazloum Abdi?

Well, I think they're potentially very, very important. By the way, I was just in the Kurdish region. A couple of months ago, I had the opportunity to meet President Barzani, actually, again, Masoud Barzani, in a way, the president emeritus at this point in time. He was the president when I was there. Nechirvan Barzani, the current president of the KRG. Prime Minister [Masrour] Barzani and so forth, as well as the deputy prime minister [Qubad Talabani], of course. And then the leaders in Erbil and also the leaders in Sulaymaniyah. I was there to deliver the graduation address at the American University of Iraq, Sulaymaniyah, which I have long supported, and where I received the first honorary PhD, which…

Congratulations

Thank you very much. And again, it was a really appreciative of that honor. But look this, I think, is a great opportunity for our regional envoy, Ambassador Barrack, to sit down with, again, Masoud Barzani Kak Masoud, who has is so wise, frankly, on these kinds of issues, and may be able to help general Mazloum develop what would be a reasonable, again, way forward to ensure The desires of the Kurds in the Syrian Democratic Forces, but also to enable the President of Syria to incorporate the area of northeastern Syria that is currently controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces. I should note when I was serving in northern Iraq. So as a two star, the commander of the great… [incomprehensible] the 101st Airborne Division, I was very privileged to meet at least every month with Kak Masoud. In fact, after the first few meetings in his office, he would just designate a location we would fly our helicopters up and land at that location, and we'd sit there looking down into the valleys where he had fought as a Peshmerga and a Peshmerga leader, and basically telling war stories to each other, and me asking him about his experience here and there. And you know, with the Iraqi regime forces of that time, while we had wonderful Kurdish food, it was something I looked forward to every month. Sometimes it was even more frequent than every month…

Hopefully, you can get to go back to Kurdistan and have this…

And well, I had a very nice meeting with him again when I was there just a couple of months ago. And I hope to have many more in the years that lie ahead.

I hope so, too. And speaking of trust in Syria, Senator Lindsey Graham says that the Turkish and Syrian Arab Army are not trusted to replace the Kurds to guard the current detention centers, where ISIS militants are held. Do you think that the current Syrian government and its affiliated factions with the Syrian Arab Army are trusted to guard those detention centers, where we had an incident last year, one of the insider security forces, fired at the American forces, killing two service members and one contractor?

Probably somebody, obviously, with extremist views, tragically, and the… this kind of attack is particularly pernicious because you it erodes the all-important trust between our soldiers and the host nation forces. I have enormous respect for Senator Lindsey Graham. You know, he was a colonel in the US Air Force Reserve when I was commanding in Iraq, Central Command in Afghanistan. And he did tours of active duty, usually about a week to ten days, about 15 times during the course of the really, the four and a half years that I was a four-star in the region, and he was absolutely magnificent. He could see issues that we missed, and he would propose solutions that sometimes would cause us to slap our forehead, as in, why didn't we think of this?

Does that mean you agree with what he says on the current situation in Syria?

By large yes, I share his concerns, and I do share the concerns absolutely about having a very reliable force continue to make sure that these individuals that are in detention, we're talking tens of thousands of them at al-Hol alone are not able to get out to be truthful, this issue, I'm not sure why the Syrian Government is seized with this.

There's a lot of other bigger issues than who guards elements that are actual former Islamist extremists, and then often, of course, women and children who sympathized or worked with them, that's going okay. That's not broken. I would say, let's just not try to fix that. Focus on, again, far more importantly, the relationship between the Syrian military as it now exists, and the SDF forces as they now exist, and figure out a mechanism again, to satisfy the legitimate desires of of the those people that are put forward by General Mazloum, again, another really admirable individual. You know, we were looking for that kind of individual for years and strategic leaders, those at the very top that can do what he has done are very, very rare and crucially important.

So again, let's figure out what are the absolute fundamentals, the real bedrock issues in concerns of the Syrian Democratic Forces and the legitimate concerns of the Syrian government and its military, and figure out how to bridge the gap. And again, if anyone can come up with a solution, it will be our envoy, together with Masoud Barzani.

With your long years of service in the military and later in the CIA, for which we thank you, the Kurds have always feared that they might be abandoned by the USA once again, especially now in Rojava. Do you think that, with the experience that you have, the United States will abandon the strongest ally against ISIS, who have about 12,000 people killed in this fight?

I don't think so. I think there is a keen recognition of the enormous sacrifice and exceptional service of SDF members; again, they did the fighting on the front lines. We enabled them in a variety of different ways, everything from intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to air strikes to indirect fire to logistics, training, equipping, sustainment, all of this, but again, they're the ones that fought and died in very substantial numbers to enable the achievement of our common objective, which was to eliminate the Islamist extremist caliphate in northeastern Syria.

With the past incidents that happened in Syria, like attacking Druze in Suwayda, attacking Alawite in Latakia, and now attacking Kurds in the north. To what extent does the United States or President Trump tolerate these actions or violations by groups or the Syrian Arab Army against the minorities in Syria?

Well, the United States has very substantially lodged protests, threatened, in some respects, the government with again, what could happen if that has not gotten under control, it has not been seen since those terrible incidents. There is a big investigation ongoing. We'll see whether it is, is forthright and has integrity. The Israelis, who have, of course, supported the Druze for a long time, lodged similar concerns and actually bombed Security Force headquarters in Damascus and other Syrian military elements. So again, the Syrian Government is on notice. They know they cannot do this again.

They've got to get these murderous elements that were cloaking themselves in the new Syrian government and carrying these out under control. I think they are doing they're certainly conscious of the imperative of doing this, and we'll see if they keep that under control and provide, once again, the kind of governance and security and support for the revival of the economy and all the other tasks that government has to perform if they're capable of doing that. I can tell you that the Syrian diaspora in the United States is overjoyed to see the end of the murderous Bashar al-Assad regime, which followed, of course, in the murderous regime of his father, Hafez al-Assad. They're very keen to support the new Syrian government, to invest in the new Syria but again, Syria, Syria's government is going to have to validate that trust if it is to continue, and they should be very clear about that, and I think that they are.

Is the regime change in Iran the ultimate goal of the United States with the current situation, and what makes President Trump hesitate from taking a decisive military action against Iran?

I can't speak for the US government as to whether regime change is the objective or what specific objective there is. I do think that the reason that there is a lower likelihood of strikes right now, reportedly, is because there were cautions, as is publicly known, from GCC countries and from Israel, about rushing into this and about what might transpire if that's the case. And there were cautions from the US military that, yes, we can do the following right now, but it would be really nice if we had the capability to do much more, both offensively against Iran and defensively, in case Iran responds by missile or some of the longer range rockets or the other capabilities they have mining the Gulf, interfering with the freedom of navigation, activating their proxies that are left.

Of course, most of their proxies are dramatically degraded and probably will not do anything as a result. Hezbollah, I don't think, is going to take action against Israel, because, say, the US hits the headquarters of the security services, or takes out some individual security service leaders, or destroys the remaining missile program and launchers and other retaliatory capabilities and so forth. And I think this is logical. Of course, the President has also said that there is a message passed to him indirectly from Iran that said that there will not be the execution that the President was concerned might happen, and that also, the quote, killings were stopping, that has not yet happened. So I think that there is a temporary period during which there is a reduced likelihood of US military action and perhaps also taking other actions, whether they're diplomatic, economic, informational, cyber, all the other tools in our arsenal, short of military action, that's reduced for a period of time. But I think when the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and its task force of ships arrives in the Gulf, that there will be a higher possibility at that time of some, some kind of action, if these, if the killings of the demonstrators continue.

When we speak of Iran, there are about 8 million to 10 million Kurds living in this country. Does the United States recognize the rights of the Kurds in Iran as well?

Again, I can't answer for the United States government.

From your point of view?

I mean, again, I think there's a keen awareness that there are Kurds, Azeris, Turkmen, Arabs and other minorities in the region. When you talk, I don't know what you mean about their rights. If you're talking about their right to self-governance or the right to independence or something like that, I think that would probably exceed what would be seen as the rights, let's face it. I mean, again, the reality today is that the Kurds are the largest population in the world that has no country. So again, to imply that this would be the place where you would see…

Is that a sad reality for you?

Yeah, I think it is for right now. Again, you're talking about?

About the Kurds being the largest people in the world who do not have a country. Is that the sad reality for you?

It is, it is a sad reality without question. Yeah, that would be an accurate description of it. And again, keep in mind, I don't think there are too many other people who have done as much with the Kurds as I have done in my time in uniform and as the CIA director, and would love to do as the as a partner in one of the world's largest investment firms.

And I think that the Kurds are appreciative of the services that you provided in Iraq and in the Kurdistan Region?

Well, it's kind of you. Thank you. It was the greatest of privileges and great to sit down with you.

Thank you.

Likewise, thank you so much.

Updated at 1:39 am on January 18. 

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