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World News
How the USA Lost Its Syrian Allies
Josh Rogin
By Josh Rogin
December 8th 20135:45 am
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As the Geneva peace talks loom, the Obama administration has been forced to reach out to the very Islamist groups it once hoped to marginalize.

As the United States moves forward with a summit it hopes will end the civil war in Syria, the Obama administration finds itself alienated from the opposition forces it tried and failed to cultivate for the last two years.

In turn, the Obama administration has begun reaching out to Syrian rebels who espouse an Islamist agenda and draw support from American allies in the region like Saudi Arabia as opposed to the United States directly.

Peace talks scheduled for next month in Geneva will involve the U.S., Russia, the United Nations, the regime of Bashar al Assad, various parts of the fractured Syrian opposition—and perhaps even Iran. But for those talks to work, all sides will have to agree to a ceasefire.

In the last peace conference in Geneva in June 2012, the United States had some leverage with Syria’s opposition and persuaded moderate rebel leaders to accept something known as the Geneva Communique, a document that purports to set the groundwork for Syria’s transition to a post-Assad government.

But in the 18 months since the first Geneva conference, the relationship between the Obama administration and key centrist opposition groups including the Syrian Opposition Coalition, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and the Supreme Military Command (SMC) run by Gen. Salim Idriss has deteriorated along with the influence and power of these U.S.-allied militias inside Syria.

When all the parties meet again in January, the U.S. will find itself negotiating an end to the Syrian civil war that will empower the Muslim fundamentalists America once sought to tame with more moderate Syrian leaders fighting Assad.

“We are forced to engage with Islamists at this point because we have not properly supported more democratic leaning SMC and the FSA,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an American organization that works closely with various Syrian opposition groups. “There is limited engagement with the Islamist groups in order to bring them on board with Geneva 2, although they had made clear in the past that they don’t recognize the Geneva process.”