Can Syria's jihadi rulers be trusted to cut business-style deals that resolve everybody's needs? There's a lot of hope that the horse will sing.*
America once more tests the notion that we can have "tame jihadis"
The al-Shara’a-Trump meeting [came] nearly one year after the collapse of the decades-old Assad family regime, which saw the former jihadist leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – formerly aligned with Al-Qaeda – shed his past and claim leadership over Syria. The Trump administration quickly moved, following support from key Middle East countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, to support the new transitional authority, lifting sanctions and offering international legitimacy to the new rulers.
Will that create "a very successful regional power that was also abiding by international norms and international rules, and that would be good for everybody"? I would like to be wrong, but I suspect "economic and diplomatic" tools will work no better than "hope and change" for taming Islamists.
Nor is getting the new Islamist government's willingness to kill rival Islamists a sign of becoming tame. We may get quiet. But that is not peace. This will only buy time. Will we or the Syria jihadis use it better?
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NOTE: Photo of an earlier meeting in Saudi Arabia from the article.
