Episode 63. The Front Lines in Syria with General Jasper Jeffers and Ambassador William Roebuck

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy (00:00): From the American Academy of Diplomacy, this is The General and the Ambassador. Our podcast brings together senior US diplomats and senior US military leaders in conversations about their partnerships in different parts of the world to advance US foreign policy interests. I'm Ambassador Deborah McCarthy, the producer and host. The General and the Ambassador is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy in partnership with UNC Global at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Today, we will focus on US diplomatic and military engagement in Syria with Ambassador William Roebuck and General Jasper Jeffers. Ambassador William Roebuck served as the Deputy Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS from 2018 to 2020. Just before, Ambassador Roebuck was the Senior Advisor to Special Presidential Envoy to the coalition from January to December, 2018. He is currently the Executive Vice President of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. General Jasper Jeffers served in Syria with US Army Special Operations Command as part of the Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve. He is currently Deputy Commander Third Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia. Ambassador Roebuck, General Jeffers, a warm welcome, and thank you for joining The General and the Ambassador. I wanted to start with a general introduction on Syria and where we stand. Syria has been embroiled in a civil war for the past 10 years. What began as anti-government protests in 2011 against the long rule of the Assad family evolved into an internal war between Assad's military and various opposition forces. Since 2012, the UN has brokered talks to end the conflict. In 2014, ISIS came in and seized vast stretches of territory in the country and declared a caliphate with a capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa. To prevent an ISIS takeover in Syria, as well as Iraq, the US engaged militarily and set up a task force, the Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve to coordinate operations with other countries. The task force continues to this day and is part of the US led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. The 83 country coalition also coordinates other elements, including providing humanitarian assistance to Syria and applying sanctions against the Assad regime. Ambassador, I'd like to start with you. You were the US Deputy Special Envoy to the global coalition from 2018 to 2020. You spent much of that time in Northeast Syria, leading US diplomatic engagement with the main opposition group, the Syrian Democratic Forces, also known as SDF, as well as coordinating with US military on the ground. Our embassy in Syria has been closed for almost nine years. How did you and your team operate and who provided your security?

Amb. Roebuck (03:14): Thank you. Deborah it's great to be here today. We operated out there on a shoestring, really. I got out there in January of 2018 and I was with usually one mid-level officer, foreign service or civil service officer, with me. And that was it. There wasn't an embassy as you noted. So it was a very small group and we were embedded with US Special Forces. The entire time I was there, we lived on a small makeshift military base. These were not military bases in the sense of what you would think of in the United States or a big base in Europe, they were very small and we relied on the US Special Forces for security and on our Kurdish local partners. And together, I lived on this base and I would radiate out in armored cars, escorted by US Special Forces and our Kurdish partners. And I would visit places all over Northeast Syria, trying to reassure people to tell them we were trying to assist with stabilization, humanitarian assistance, things like this. So it was a big effort.

Amb. Roebuck (04:13): Did your team grow over time or you stayed with a lean and mean small operation?

Amb. Roebuck (04:18): It stayed lean and mean in terms of the core diplomatic team. It was myself and one officer. And then there was a core group of people who worked on the assistance front called Syria Transitional Assistance Response Team, or START for short. And they were about six or eight people who were specialists in providing assistance and helping societies get back on their feet again, rebuilding after a war. So it was small.

Amb. McCarthy (04:44): General. You were with the combined task force. In Syria, the US led coalition made significant strides and pushing back ISIS over the years. In 2019, the opposition SDF forces eliminated the final ISIS territorial stronghold in the country, capturing over 10,000 fighters. How did the task force work with the SDF to coordinate this pushback of ISIS?

Gen. Jeffers (05:10): First of all, Ambassador, thanks for having me on, and it's great to see an Ambassador Roebuck. And just to talk a little bit more about what he described before I shift tothe question, thinking of different times where we were on some of those small facilities, like that little team and what it represented, very, very tactical, very, very much by nature of how we were living, as the Ambassador described It, kind of like on a real small base with our partners and with that interagency team, both Department of Defense and Ambassador Roebuck's team, you were forced through by the nature of how you were living to get really close both personally and professionally. And I think that's indicative of how we also worked with the SDF. You were brought together very, very close in a very direct partnership way. So you talk about a soldier sitting next to a leader within the SDF, the Syrian Democratic Forces, working a military problem, or in, you know, in the cases of where Ambassador Roebuck would have been in the room, maybe it was a different problem. But for the pushback of ISIS, as we provided military support to the SDF, it was side- by-side in these locations where we could bring the best resources of the coalition to bear, US or a coalition soldiers sitting next to an SDF soldier or leader and bringing logistical support or air support to their fight against the Islamic state. As they tried to push it back.

Amb. McCarthy (06:27): Is ISIS still a threat to the United States in Syria?

Gen. Jeffers (06:32): ISIS a threat in general. So the threat in Syria is there for a host of reasons. It's a good assumption to make that Syria is going to struggle with internal security for some time in the future and the Islamic State, wherever they exist, they exploit those gaps that are there in these locations where there's a lack of internal security and ability to manage it. So certainly they are still there. They are greatly reduced from where they were in that 2014 to 2019 timeframe, but the Islamic state is filling locations in Syria, where there's just gaps in internal security and a lack of ability to get to.

Amb. McCarthy (07:06): And what other groups threaten the US in Syria?

Gen. Jeffers (07:10): I mean, there's a number of violent extremist organizations in Syria that adhere to ideological principles similar to the Islamic State. There are Al-Qaeda affiliates. And I think it goes back to that general point that these organizations, where there is opportunity, where there is space for them to exploit a lack of security environment and have access to resources, they will take advantage of that safe haven. And there are a number of locations like that in Syria today.

Amb. McCarthy (07:38): Well, I wanted to go in a little more depth on the global coalition. Bill, the global coalition is an international diplomatic and military effort to defeat ISIS. Can you explain to our listeners how it operates? Who takes the lead?

Amb. Roebuck (07:52): The global coalition is a group of 83 members, 78 states actually, and then five or six organizations like NATO, European Union, Arab League, Interpol, groups that are not countries that wanted to participate. It's a big umbrella diplomatic grouping. It was put together back in 2014, when ISIS became a threat, the idea was that there would be burden sharing and collaboration between countries who viewed ISIS as a common threat. And there were specific, we call them lines of effort, to cooperate against terror messaging that ISIS did, their propaganda, try to put out messages on our side, which made clear that ISIS was a terrorist organization. And to spell out the types of things they were doing in terms of mistreating people, killing, marauding in villages and towns of Syria and Iraq, et cetera. We tried to counter their financing mechanisms, terror financing. We tried to counter the flows of foreign fighters into this battle space in Syria and Iraq. And then we coordinated with all these countries to get more assistance and to make clear what the needs were so that donor countries would contribute to the assistance to rebuild the towns and villages. The primary theory behind stabilization assistance is to make sure ISIS does not have a space, a vacuum, to go back into and try to reassert itself. And then finally, we worked on a political military effort, which tied into Jasper on the military side CJTF-OIR, which was the military effort. And what we did on the global coalition side was to ensure that countries were contributing either forces or military capabilities that were needed in the fight. So it was a big organization on the diplomatic side, a similarly big or bigger organization on the military side. And that's why it was constructed in such a large way to make sure people who were involved in it were cooperating and that we were lashed up and coordinating on the overall effort. The person who led it on the US side on the diplomatic front was Syria Special Representative Ambassador Jim Jeffrey. And I worked directly for Jim and we managed the global coalition working closely with key allies, either British, French, Italian, German, in Europe, but also some key Arab partners and others to make this global coalition work.

Amb. McCarthy (10:14): Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about the humanitarian assistance provided by the US and the global coalition. Then we'll go back to the military aspects. The United States is the largest donor of humanitarian assistance to Syria. And the country obviously has suffered greatly because of its long civil war. Roughly 6 million Syrians have been internally displaced and another, roughly 6 million are now refugees in nearby countries, including Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, and Lebanon. Can you explain mbassador what the U S assistance consists of and how you and your team got it distributed? I understood that a lot of assistance comes in through the UN and they have to negotiate for it to come in through key entry points, and these negotiations are really difficult at times.

Amb. Roebuck (11:02): Basically there were two types of assistance that we provided in Syria. One was humanitarian assistance and the other was, we call it stabilization. Humanitarian assistance was huge because the needs were so great. It was really the most basic sort of assistance for people in direst need. A lot of it was provided by UN for refugee camps or camps for internally displaced people in Syria. That's really the funnel where a lot of it was sent. These are people who needed shelter, food, access to very basic medical care, fuel to cook with, to stay warm, water. We, the US we're the largest donor we've given about $13 billion or more since the beginning of the war in Syria. And the UN, as I said, is the primary mechanism for distributing that. As you note, there are difficulties in getting that assistance in, across the international borders with Syria. Most of it comes in through Damascus and is distributed in a radiating way out of Damascus, but there is one border crossing still open that we've had tough negotiations on to keep open, but it's thought that it's a very vital crossing to get assistance, and especially in the Northwest. The other type of assistance we provide is called stabilization. I mentioned it earlier. The second stage after you get people stabilized, you've taken care of their basic needs, and they want to return to their homes. This assistance is designed to help them return to their communities, work, to get some sort of local administration, local governance set up and provide basic things like essential services, repair the water infrastructure, so there's running water, there's clean water, there are bakeries to provide basic food. And then you move on to sort of second stage things that are necessary, repairing the electrical grid, repairing hospitals and schools so that people can really resume their lives. As I said, we had a small team that organized this inside Northeastern Syria, and they coordinated with a bigger group of folks in Turkey. There was a group in Amman, Jordan that sort of helped support them. This was a big effort and they deserve a lot of credit for what they were able to do. And on the stabilization side, we worked very closely with our military partners, US military had civil affairs teams, Jasper can tell you about that, but those efforts on the military side to provide stabilization and our efforts were very closely lashed up and coordinated.

Amb. McCarthy (13:30): Well I did want to ask you General about the role that the US military played in the assistance projects on the ground and how you worked with the Ambassador and the USAID team.

Gen. Jeffers (13:40): In terms of the people contribution, I think the Ambassador mentioned, just the capability that exists within the special operations formation, it's got these civil affair teams. These are specialists and soldiers who understand how to work in that environment, whether it's delivering aid that they can provide themselves, or if it's something that supports the military mission or helping the Ambassador and his team, one of the teams, deliver their aid based on a change in the security environment. I had a boss who used to tell me all the time, he's like your effectiveness goes up with your proximity to the problem. So get close to the problem. And a lot of times the security environment can challenge that, especially for some of these organizations that are trying to work, you know, a contribution in this case that may be coming from a country that wants to participate in a coalition but wants to deliver it in a means, a kind of humanitarian means. And, and we, we help that with that. We help to get the Ambassador, his team, or other folks a little bit closer to the problem, let them connect to our partners, our local partners who could help really execute the final delivery. I'd argue that it was pretty effective.

Amb. McCarthy (14:39): Well, I want it to turn back now to a discussion on the military side, the main US military partner on the ground in Syria has been the Syrian democratic forces, which we've mentioned before. They consist of Kurdish militia, as well as other forces. So Jasper, can you explain to us who are the Kurds and what is their role in the SDF? And then for both of you in your time together, how did you each engage with the SDF leadership?

Gen. Jeffers (15:05): We've probably got some stories to tell on that aspect, but an ethnic minority native to a region that kind of stretched across international boundaries in that part of the world, in the Middle East. So, if you think, looking from the top down from an air area, Southern Turkey, through Northeastern Syria and Northern Iraq, Western Iran, and the community, while it stretches across boundaries kind of has their own unique dialects in some cases, depending on the particular region they're from, and some of their own history as well that would separate it out, but they share this kind of common cultural identity as Kurds. The particular Kurds we were working with in Northeastern Syria, the main military component of that was a Kurdish militia, the People's Protection Units, the YPG that was stood up in 2011 during the Syrian civil war to protect that part of their homes and the Kurdish population in Northeastern Syria. And as ISIS became the principle threat there, that started out as our primary partner over time, that evolved after a relatively short amount of time into what we today refer to and what we refer to throughout this session as the Syrian Democratic Forces, which was a coalition of local partners, you know, the Kurdish population in Northeastern Syria, in that corner is, they're the predominance of the population, but it's not homogeneous by any stretch of the imagination. There was a collection of Arab militias and Arab leaders and other Kurdish groups and other groups that all joined forces together to fight the Islamic state, and were called the Syrian Democratic Forces

Amb. Roebuck (16:31): In commenting about how we related to our partners. We were on military bases. We would meet regularly with the Syrian Democratic Forces leadership. When there was a crisis, for example, in October of 2019, when Turkish and Turkish supported forces came in, I was on the base, General Mazloum [SDF leader] was on another part of the base. I would often meet with him a couple of times a day, and with his people around him, sometimes three or four times a day, if it was a real crisis. We were trying to find out what was going on. We were trying to reassure him. We were trying to maintain that relationship under very difficult circumstances. And so those points of contact, we always met together. I met either with General Jeffers or with his counterpart or with somebody else who was a local commander on the base I was on. So it was a joint effort on that diplomatic side to maintain that relationship.

Amb. McCarthy (17:21): Well, we will get to the issue of Turkey in Syria, which is a very deep issue, I know, but at first I want to talk about another country that's in Syria and that is Russia. What are Russian objectives in Syria?

Amb. Roebuck (17:37): I think first and foremost, the Russians wanted to defend the Assad regime. They wanted to make sure that it didn't fall. That's why they intervened in 2015 at a very critical period where he was under a lot of military pressure. I think they want to win the war in Syria for him and with him and with their Iranian partners. That's a very important objective for them. And then they want to use that prestige from having supported an ally for influence in the broader Middle East in the Gulf region, for example, where we have many partners and in other parts of the Middle East. And I think they've by and large been able to do that. They've been able to communicate in a very tough neighborhood, that they will stand by an ally, no matter how flawed that ally is, they will stand by them and they will do whatever's necessary. And that, in the Middle East, that has counted and has given them additional influence. The other thing I would mention Russia was trying, I think, to under difficult circumstances, maintain its relationship with Turkey, a critical country in that part of the world that has tremendous influence and its geostrategic location, a very powerful military. They were on different sides of the civil war in Syria, but Russia played it very artfully and has by and large managed to maintain that relationship with Turkey.

Amb. McCarthy (18:54): Well Jasper there were reports of Russian air and ground incursions in areas where the US military operate. What mechanisms have been established to avoid a clash between Russian and US forces?

Gen. Jeffers (19:08): So going back to describing like what the roles were, we had a very, very tactical role for the period of time that we're talking about, for me personally, but in a lot of cases that did put me in a position as the senior tactical military person on the ground, in that part of Northeastern Syria. So at the tactical level, it was not uncommon to have opportunities where some of our tactical forces would have direct engagement. And that means like, hey, both Russian forces and US forces may be out on a patrol and they'd have an opportunity to talk to each other. And there were a set of boundaries and they'd kind of go back, you know, like if it was a Russian ground force, that was not where they were supposed to be. Then often that would result in US elements, just saying like, "Hey, you're not where you're supposed to be. Head on back." And those happen occasionally, but the main deconfliction occurred at much higher levels than where I was. So there's channels that do actual deconfliction in time and space, both air and ground with Russian military forces that runs through military channels at a more senior level of the joint task force. And it was a 24/7, 365 type operation. And they de-conflict daily.

Amb. Roebuck (20:16): I would just say in a broad sense, Russia clearly did not want us there, but they recognized that we were there and they had to work around us. And so that is the reason we had this reality that Jasper describes of a deconfliction mechanism, which is based largely on protocols that the two sides had gotten together at senior levels of the military, and diplomatic level, and negotiated. And in the military, the tactical level on both sides was implementing those protocols.

Amb. McCarthy (20:44): Well, I wanted to turn back to the issue of Turkey. Turkey also entered the Syrian conflict in opposition to the Assad regime, but with national concerns, concerns related to its shared border with Syria and with the Syrian Kurdish military force, the YPG that you mentioned Jasper, whereas the US has partnered with the YPG as a key member of the SDF. Turkey considers the group as an affiliate of a Kurdish separatist terrorist group called the PKK. In 2019, Turkey conducted a land and air incursion into Northern Syria to drive the SDF and its Kurdish forces away from the border, just before president Trump ordered US troops to withdraw from the area, leaving the SDF and its Kurdish members to face the attack. So let me start with you Bill, can you tell us about the lead-up and the consequences of Turkey's actions and the US decision to pull back its forces.

Amb. Roebuck (21:41): Turkey had already made such military operations into Syria several times before. They had gone into Efrain and into Azaz area. These are areas outside of the Northeast, but they had made clear that they were capable of doing it. And they had threatened to do this in Manbij area, which is in the Northeast, about six or eight months earlier. So at this instance, a month or two before October, they started building up forces. President Erdogan his rhetoric about our local partner, the SDF, the YPG as Erdogan would refer to them, got more and more strident. He began making threats that Turkey was coming in. So there was a whole dynamic that was building up. Of course, US forces were on the ground. We established some small outposts along that border to be able to inform Washington about what was going on and inform our military, but in effect it also served as a bit of a tripwire for Turkish forces. In effect, it made it more difficult for Turkey to come in. No matter what they did, they did not want to harm US military forces. President Trump, President Erdogan had a phone conversation. The contents, you know, I'm not privy to all the details of the conversation, but as I understand it, president Erdogan left, and this is covered in the media fairly thoroughly, he left that conversation with the understanding that it was okay to pursue a military operation in Northeastern Syria, which his forces undertook shortly afterwards, primarily relying on some trained militia elements that were working with the Turkish military. They went in in early October and created a very difficult situation for our local partners.

Amb. McCarthy (23:21): Jasper, can you describe a bit, this, I call it an incursion, perhaps that's the wrong word and how quickly did we have to move?

Gen. Jeffers (23:29): We had, for the kind of outpost that the Ambassador described, we'd had those in position for some time and had rehearsed options to have them fall back, because they were very, very small outposts, providing a security function. Any sovereign states border is going to have security issues that are going to get managed. And we had had rehearsed plans to have those forces returned back to other facilities inside Northeastern Syria. So when directed, we pulled them back, I don't think it took us very long that wasn't the speedy part of it. The military incursion commenced, the Turkish military executed their operations and they had a set of military objectives they were trying to achieve. One of them was, places on the ground that they wanted to get to. The great thing about military people is we are going to plan. We're going to figure out what the contingencies are and we're going to plan it. And we try to anticipate all those risks, but there's always something. You know, I think the risks we ran into here is maybe we didn't understand like how the rest of the environment would respond to that. Obviously there was a great deal of anxiety from the Kurdish population and the other population that lived in that particular area that the military forces were moving through. Our partners, you know an incredible amount of anxiety within the leadership of the SDF, and they responded in ways that caused us to have to move quickly in other parts of Northeastern Syria. The year prior to this, I had been a brigade commander, at the army level that's about 4,000 soldiers and we do a training event out in California, at the National Training Center. And one of the things you do out there is they really try to stress the entire organization so that your hardest day, you know, is in training, not in combat. But there are days where even I, as kind of an army leader thought I was like, man, I don't know if I'm ever going to be faced with all these challenges at one time. Like where I've got multiple combat operations going on and I've got a protest outside my gates and you know, the population is uprising and my partners are frustrated. There were times during that training where I was like, ah, I don't know how realistic this is. And then obviously like fast forward a year and I was like, wow, okay. So there were times where we were standing there at the base, I'm looking out and there's a Kurdish protest ongoing outside, and our partners are incredibly frustrated, and we are trying to maintain the fight against the Islamic State while our partners and their families are feeling an incredible amount of anxiety as the military operation was ongoing. And those meetings that we were having with General Mazloum that were happening during the operation were certainly a challenge as leader.

Amb. McCarthy (25:51): Well, Ambassador, you mentioned that you had the toughest meeting in your entire diplomatic career with the General [Mazloum] after the incursion, he reportedly said that the US had betrayed his forces. Can you describe this meeting and explain how you handled the situation?

Amb. Roebuck (26:07): It really was the most difficult meeting I had. It was done by teleconference. I was on that base that Jasper mentioned, over near Kobani area, further west in the Northeast and General Mazloum was in another base, but I was trying to convey some points that Washington had given me, but it was a difficult situation. We didn't have much to offer General Mazloum. We had essentially, at the most senior levels of our government, communicated to Turkey, the military operation that they were contemplating, we could live with it, I guess is the way to describe it. And so it was commencing and he did feel betrayed, General Mazloum. He wanted us to stand up to Turkey. He felt we could and just tell them, "no, we have forces on the ground. This is endangering our forces and our fight against ISIS and our local partner. And you have to stop." And we didn't do that. And he felt, and he was right, that his forces were in jeopardy, that the people of Northeastern Syria, all those villages along the border to a depth of about 15 miles, were in danger. So he, he accused us, the United States of betraying him and of allowing his people basically to be killed and to be cleansed of those villages. And a lot of that ultimately happened. So it was a very difficult meeting. And my boss, Ambassador Jeffrey followed up, had a couple of meetings to carry on this conversation. And they were also extremely difficult meetings, in the end we had nothing really to offer him on the senior diplomatic front and events took their course. You know, I was a diplomat sitting in a room trying to reassure a foreign partner as best we could, but we had not much to offer to reassure him. And so my job, Jasper's job, after that meeting and in the next several days up to a week was to try to hold that relationship together under very difficult circumstances until we got a change in the picture, in the diplomatic military picture, where we could do a better job of reassuring him because he was an incredibly valuable partner for us. And we wanted to try to maintain that relationship just as long as we could until the very last moment when it was like going to be obvious that we were actually totally leaving. In the end, we didn't totally leave. And so our efforts were worthwhile, all that effort to maintain that relationship for a better day, came to pass. We did get a better day and we were able to salvage the relationship. This is what diplomacy does in difficult circumstances.

Amb. McCarthy (28:33): Well, I understand the US brokered a ceasefire to enable the SDF forces to withdraw from parts of Northern Syria. Who led that discussion for the US government, and how were each of you involved?

Amb. Roebuck (28:46): The ceasefire that was negotiated was in Ankara Turkey. Vice-president Pence led the delegation, Ambassador Jeffrey was there. We did get in effect a ceasefire with some agreement about withdrawal of General Mazloum's forces that were in that area. And that took place over a period of days and weeks after the ceasefire began to be implemented

Gen. Jeffers (29:09): And on that aspect, really from the military component, we were exclusively focused on maintaining the relationship to continue the operations against the Islamic State. As the negotiations were happening, we certainly tracked it closely. And one of the lessons that I'll also try to close with at the end that I take away from this is the incredible tight partnership we had with Ambassador Roebuck and his team. You know, this team of relatively young Foreign Service Officers and his direct supporting team, and many of our younger tactical leaders, and the connection to the SDF, partnerships and the trust, you know, there's a human aspect of this that it's hard to account for in these types of situations. But I think there was a degree of trust there as we on the military side stayed focused on our mission and let the diplomatic process play out. I think having us all together was a critical part of what made it come out through the other end.

Amb. McCarthy (29:57): Well, I mentioned at the beginning that since 2012, the United Nations has sponsored peace talks in Geneva between the Assad government and the opposition. In 2015, the UN passed Resolution 2254, outlining a roadmap for a political settlement. However, another set of peace talks called the Astana process has been set up by Russia, Iran, and Turkey. The US is not a party to that process, but has attended as an observer. I wanted to ask who has taken the lead for the US government in the Geneva process, and what are the prospects for success given that the fighting seems to have eased into this uncomfortable stalemate?

Amb. Roebuck (30:40): I would say the lead on the US side for the Geneva process was Ambassador Jeffrey, Special Representative for Syria. And of course at the most senior level, it was the Secretary of State. I had three Secretary's of State, I think, initially secretary Tillerson, and then Pompeo, and now after I left, Secretary Blinken came in. But a lot of the real maintenance of that process and that representation at the meetings would have been Ambassador Jeffrey and a couple of people on his team. The prospects for the Geneva process at this point, I would say are not good. It's been clear for a long time that there's a disconnect between the diplomatic efforts at the Geneva process, which is led by a UN Special Envoy, for that, there's a disconnect between those efforts and the realities on the ground, where Russia, with Iranian help, had buttressed the Assad regime to the point where he was not really interested in participating very enthusiastically in that process. So they nursed it along. They allowed it to go forward, but they gave it no oxygen. So it never really prospered and most recently in May of this year, the Assad regime went ahead and had elections an Assad, even though the Resolution 2254 calls for preparation for a political solution and free and fair elections, these elections were not free and fair. And there was no constitutional reform effort beforehand, which was the procedure that had been agreed on. And he has now been reelected to a new seven year term. And that's really in contradiction to the whole Geneva process and 2254, what the resolution calls for. So I would say what we have is a frozen conflict. I think the US is trying to manage its part in that, but I don't see prospects for a robust vigorous diplomatic resolution to the conflict in Syria in the near term. I think it's a stalemate, as you mentioned earlier,

Gen. Jeffers (32:41): I would tend to agree with that assessment, you know, from a personal perspective, I mean, there's certainly no military solution to the Syrian conflict. So how we achieve some type of political ends here is I think a ways off. I think that has implications for the region and certainly for the people of Syria and our mission against the Islamic State.

Amb. Roebuck (33:02): My sense is the new administration, they haven't really appointed a new senior level person for Syria and they haven't finished what they've described as an interagency review of Syria policy, that's still ongoing. But what has emerged or a couple of pillars that seem important to the new administration, they've made clear they're staying in Northeastern Syria, that our military is going to stay. They've made clear that they're going to really focus on the humanitarian situation, trying to improve it for the lives of people in Syria and in neighboring countries. And they want to push for a nationwide ceasefire. And all that's good, but it doesn't really answer the question, what is the direction that we're going in with a solution for Syria? And I, my sense right now is that the status quo that is there on the ground is going to continue. In addition to our forces, which provides some leverage for us, we also have economic sanctions on Assad and those economic sanctions on him and his regime are going to continue. They're quite draconian in some ways. And that creates a lot of pressure, but it also creates a lot of indirect unintended harm to individual Syrians in the country. You're looking at a situation that could drag on for several years. And I think people are divided, including Syrians, about what the best way to proceed is. But the bottom line is that the Assad regime is in power. They are slowly getting control of parts of the country that were not under their control. And that's just a reality that's going to be there. Assad and his regime have essentially won the war and we have to decide how we're going to deal with that reality.

Amb. McCarthy (34:39): Well I wanted to ask both of you gentlemen, as the wrap-up question, a question related to leadership. Which is, you both led teams that worked closely together, Foreign Service Officers, members of our military. What lessons learned about this partnership would you impart to others who will be in future conflicts in the field working together?

Gen. Jeffers (35:01): I think that's the essential question. And one of the reasons why I was so excited to do this particular podcast. We had an opportunity, I think that's the best way to describe it, to have a really stressful event, to kind of, and a challenge to work through while we were simultaneously on the ground. But I think the real lesson that I took away from it is how do we build that same dynamic, that what the Ambassador and I got to experience where I got to watch some of my subordinate elements and certainly myself, I was the beneficiary of this direct interaction at the very edge of a problem with some young foreign service officers and other members of the interagency team that I thought was pretty effective, both in managing that particular crisis and I think just as a general model. You know, there's the George Box quote, right, the British statistician, "All models are wrong. Some are useful." That's fair because there were certain things about this environment that made this feasible. You know, you were a hundred yards from the SDF leadership and his kind of general staff. Ambassador Roebuck and his team would be in a ubiquitous, a Containerized Housing Unit, a CHU in military parlance. And then we were in ours right next door. And we'd all come together and have some chai and solve problems in our own space. But that trust and connection that we had, you know, I believe that the real collateral benefit of that is going to be years from now when those young Foreign Service Officers and some of the young military leaders are sitting on their end of the podcast, you know, as they are carrying the title of ambassador or general, potentially, that they will remember back to that experience and it'll allow them to function better for these problems that we're going to face around the world. And what I'm taking on, and my obligation, I feel like as a leader, is how do I recreate that? Because we're not going to get these types of environments always. How do I recreate it either in training back here in the United States, how do I find opportunities to connect that kind of level of leader to get people closer earlier?

Amb. Roebuck (36:52): I'd start by pointing to the young officers that I worked with on the civilian and the military side, incredibly talented group of mid-level Foreign Service Officers, some Civil Service. Most of them had Arabic. They were tremendous reporting officers. They were very good at contact with levels of the Syrian Democratic Forces and with others on the civilian side. And they made this work. They worked well as a team, both the team that was with me for stabilization and the political side, but also as Jasper mentioned the lash up and interagency front, making sure that when we were doing stabilization, that it was organized and done in a way that made sense. We weren't duplicating efforts, spreading the scarce resources in the most effective way. So that's one element is just using talent that's out there and using it as effectively as possible, giving a chance to develop and grow. The second element is just how important it is for diplomats to be able to go out into expeditionary environments and handle themselves, to be creative, to understand that they're not going to get much guidance from Washington, they're going to have to learn how to, not so much handle their own security, there's going to be a security structure, but they're the ones that are going to have to make the calls and calculations about how expeditionary in a specific instance they want to be. That final thing I would mention on lessons learned is the importance of the US government of our Diplomatic Corps, working with our military to reassure partners and to reassure people that we are involved with, in some of these conflict areas. People listened to everything the US Government says about their area. It's critically important that there are people on the military side and also on the diplomatic side who are out there in the towns, in the villages, talking to people, communicating, reassuring them that the US is going to continue, for example, in this instance, to carry that fight against ISIS, to stabilize their towns and villages so they can get back into them and to take care of their most vulnerable people through humanitarian assistance. We were able to do all that. And then at the senior levels, the US government had the power to convene and the power to bring together this massive coalition on the diplomatic side, and also on the military side to carry this fight to ISIS. And we used it. So between what we did on the ground and what we were able to do at senior diplomatic and military levels, we inflicted a massive military defeat on ISIS. We defeated that so-called physical caliphate, and we have created a problem out in Syria and Iraq now that's much more manageable and that we can get after with a smaller number of troops and, and do it in an effective way. Thank you.

Amb. McCarthy (39:43): Well, I want to thank you gentlemen, for sharing your knowledge, your wisdom, and also for these valuable lessons learned going forward. We do struggle to see how we can, the term often used is "institutionalize", and there's no one mechanism. I'm very glad to hear, General, that you're thinking of incorporating into training because obviously that's a natural place to do it in, but thank you very much.

Amb. Roebuck (40:08): Thank you.

Gen. Jeffers (40:08): Thank you. Thank you both.

Amb. McCarthy (40:10): This has been a new episode in the series The General and the Ambassador. Thank you for listening. Our series is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy in partnership with UNC Global at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can find our podcasts on all major podcast sites and on our website, www.generalambassadorpodcast.org. We welcome all feedback and suggestions from our listeners and can be reached directly at general.ambassador.podcast@gmail.com.