There is a particular choreography to geopolitical reinvention, a kind of diplomatic yoga that allows former enemies to clasp hands without ever acknowledging the awkward contortions required to reach one another. Few recent spectacles illustrate this better than Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s triumphant appearance in Washington, an event staged with the pomp and theatricality of a reluctant wedding, announcing Syria’s decision to join the U.S.-led coalition against ISIL. One might almost forget, in the halo of flashing cameras, that al-Sharaa once kept far warmer company with al-Qaeda than with any Western statesman. But Washington has never been a city burdened by too much memory, and al-Sharaa, to his credit, has always known the value of a good amnesia.
The Syrian leader’s sudden enthusiasm for battling ISIL feels like a comedian stepping onstage just after the punchline: he’s late, but still eager for applause. For years, his government maneuvered within a labyrinth of opportunistic alliances, tolerating extremist factions that proved useful against domestic opposition. The distinction between “enemy” and “instrument” blurred in the desert haze. Now, however, with his country fractured, his economy eviscerated, and his foreign patrons fatigued, al-Sharaa finds renewal in the gleam of the White House portico. A strategic baptism, one might call it, emerging from past associations scrubbed clean enough for a ceremonial handshake with an American president who never met a convenient contradiction he couldn’t embrace.
As for the U.S. administration, its enthusiasm for the partnership rests on a well-worn American logic: yesterday’s rogue can be today’s ally, provided he says the right things in front of the right lectern. There is something quintessentially American about welcoming a figure once steeped in alliances with al-Qaeda into a coalition to defeat ISIS, a bit like hiring an arsonist as your new fire marshal because he now insists he’s turned over a new matchbox. It is a move justified, as always, by the necessities of stability, counterterrorism, and the ever-nebulous “regional balance,” a phrase that often means doing whatever prevents the situation from turning even more chaotic than it already is.
Al-Sharaa’s pivot is not the graceful ideological conversion he claims, but a calculation drawn with the precision of a man balancing on political crutches. His alliance with al-Qaeda affiliates may once have been a marriage of convenience, but marriages of convenience have a way of lingering in the family album. Even now, as he positions himself as a steadfast opponent of extremism, one can sense the nervous shuffling behind the curtains, aides rewriting the past tense verbs in his official biography, spokespeople oscillating between denial and reinterpretation, and the diplomatic corps stitching together a narrative sturdy enough to withstand at least a couple of news cycles.
In Washington, meanwhile, the welcome felt less like an ideological endorsement and more like an impatient shrug. The foreign-policy establishment has always harbored a soft spot for a repentant autocrat. A stern lecture here, a promise of reform there, and suddenly the slate is negotiable clean. President Trump, never a guardian of moral coherence, framed the partnership as evidence of his unique ability to “bring former adversaries into the light” a phrase that should perhaps have come with an asterisk large enough to fill the Oval Office. For Trump, al-Sharaa is not a relic of a complicated past but a prop in a reassuring narrative: America leading a grand coalition, America defeating terrorism, America directing the play even as the stage buckles beneath it.
What makes this alignment particularly surreal is the shared enemy at its center. ISIL, the splinter whose rise was partly nourished by the broader instability of the Syrian conflict, becomes the convenient monster both leaders now vow to slay. It is a promise that allows al-Sharaa to rehabilitate himself in Western eyes while permitting the U.S. to claim that partnerships are justified by the magnitude of the threat. The fight against ISIL becomes the moral detergent cleansing past sins, and both nations hold the bottle.
Of course, no one seriously believes that Syria’s participation in the coalition will transform its internal dynamics. The structures of repression remain; the shattered neighborhoods, the displaced millions, the unresolved grievances all persist long after a photo op ends. What this new alignment does offer al-Sharaa is permission to present himself as indispensable once again: a leader too central to exclude, too useful to discard, too committed at least on paper, to be left out of the grand strategy against extremism.
For the U.S., the calculus is equally transactional. Stability, even the brittle kind, is more appealing than the unpredictable repercussions of abandonment. And in the scorecard of counterterrorism, having a new signature on the ledger looks better than admitting that the situation has grown too tangled to manage cleanly. Al-Sharaa’s past allegiances are treated as unfortunate footnotes, obstacles of etiquette rather than ethical concerns. He speaks the language of cooperation now, and in Washington, linguistic compliance often matters more than historical record.
The great irony, of course, is not merely that a man once entangled with al-Qaeda now joins a coalition to defeat its ideological cousin. It is that this shift is met with so little astonishment. The modern geopolitical landscape is littered with such reversals, yesterday’s enemy becoming today’s strategic asset and the world has grown accustomed to watching these moral somersaults executed with straight faces. Al-Sharaa’s reinvention is not remarkable because it is implausible, but because it is so profoundly expected.
In the end, this partnership may be remembered less for what it accomplishes and more for what it symbolizes, the triumph of expediency over consistency, the elastic nature of alliance-making, and the peculiar global tradition of allowing powerful men to rebrand themselves with nothing more than a podium and a handshake. And if al-Sharaa stands a little taller beside an American president, it is not because he has shed the shadows of his past, but because he has learned how easily those shadows can be rearranged under the bright lights of diplomacy.
No comments:
Post a Comment