The Winners and Losers in Syria's Ceasefire
By Robin Wright

Six years into the world’s grisliest war and worst humanitarian crisis, a ceasefire went into effect on Friday in Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin, its co-mastermind, admitted that it is “fragile.” Two previous ceasefires—in February and September—lasted only weeks.The odds are stacked against this one bringing an end to all the fighting, since it deals with only one of multiple wars inside Syria, which have so far killed an estimated four hundred thousand people. But the current initiative—brokered by Russia and Turkey with Iranian support—is different from past efforts. It signals big shifts in the basics of the Syrian tragedy.

For now, Russia has “won” Syria. Moscow escalated its involvement, in September, 2015, by providing the government of President Bashar al-Assad the air power he needed to pummel the rebels. The pretext was to bomb the Islamic State; it was a ruse. Some ninety per cent of Russian airstrikes have been against the rebels challenging the Syrian government. Assad could not have regained control of Aleppo—the country’s largest city and former commercial center—earlier this month without Russia. And the rebel rout in Aleppo changed the strategic reality enough to allow the Russians to step in and take the diplomatic lead on behalf of its most important ally in the Middle East.

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http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-winners-and-losers-in-the-new-syrian-ceasefire

The New Yorker

The Trump Team's Holy War
By Robin Wright

In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former five-star general and the Supreme Allied Commander in the Second World War, inaugurated the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C. “I should like to assure you, my Islamic friends, that, under the American Constitution, under American tradition, and in American hearts, this center, this place of worship, is just as welcome as could be a similar edifice of any other religion,” Eisenhower said. “Indeed, America would fight with her whole strength for your right to have here your own church and worship according to your own conscience.”

Every President since then—including Jimmy Carter during the Iran hostage drama, Ronald Reagan after the Marine-barracks bombing in Lebanon, George H. W. Bush during the Gulf War, and his son after the September 11th attacks—has reached out to the Islamic world, even as they were tough on extremism. President-elect Donald Trump, whose campaign rhetoric was repeatedly laced with xenophobic rants against an entire faith, is instead hinting at an almost primeval crusade after he takes office next month.

“I think Islam hates us,” he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, in March, lumping 1.7 billion people spread across six continents into a dangerously simplistic stereotype. 
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http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-trump-teams-holy-war-and-the-remaking-of-the-world-order

The New Yorker

The Berlin Attack is Right Out 
of the Terror Handbook
By Robin Wright 

The world’s deadliest terrorist groups are increasingly open about their intentions, tactics, and targets. Last month, Rumiyah, the slickest terrorist magazine on the Internet market, was very precise. The “most appropriate” killing vehicle, the Islamic State publication advised, is a “load-bearing truck” that is “double-wheeled, giving victims less of a chance to escape being crushed by the vehicle’s tires.” It should be “heavy in weight, assuring the destruction of whatever it hits.” It should also have a “slightly raised chassis and bumper, which allow for the mounting of sidewalks and breeching of barriers if needed.” And it should have a “reasonably fast” rate of acceleration.

In the same issue, Rumiyah urged Islamic State members, or sympathizers anywhere in the world, to hop in vehicles—steal them, if need be—and attack outdoor markets, public celebrations, political rallies, and pedestrian-congested streets. “All so-called ‘civilian’ (and low security) parades and gatherings are fair game and more devastating to Crusader nation,” the magazine, which is published in several languages, said.

The rampage in Berlin on Monday—which the German government has now deemed a terrorist attack, though the motive behind the attack was still murky—was right out of the jihadi literature. 

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http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-berlin-attack-is-right-out-of-the-terror-handbooks

The New Yorker

Tea with Hezbollah's No. 2
By Robin Wright 

Naim Qassem, a cleric who wears a white turban and has a trim beard to match, is Hezbollah’s second-in-command. From Hezbollah’s public-relations office, two fighters drove me, in a black Chevrolet S.U.V. with draperies on the windows, to meet Qassem in Beirut’s poor southern suburbs, the movement’s stronghold. The flags of Hezbollah and Lebanon were in a corner of the meeting room; a plate of dates and almonds was on a table. Attendants brought in rotating trays of tea, juice, and water as we talked. I asked Qassem if the intervention was worth the increasing costs, human and political.

 “Since in the West you like to use metaphors and examples, I will give you one,” he said. “You have a house, and in this house there is a fighter, his wife, and children, and there is an enemy attacking this house. You have a garden and a wall, and a hundred metres away you have an olive grove. Is it better to protect the olive trees or the house? Near the olive grove the fighter will die. But if they get to the house, the house will be destroyed and everyone will die. We went to Syria, near the olive trees.” Qassem added, “We believe that as important as the losses or the sacrifices in Syria are, they are much less than if Syria had disintegrated.”

 Founded, trained, and armed by Iran after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Hezbollah has been transformed by three tactical decisions. Each has been a progressively bolder gamble; with each, Hezbollah’s impact has grown, even as the costs have soared and its popularity has fluctuated.

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http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/having-tea-with-hezbollahs-no-2

The New Yorker

The Battle for Aleppo, 
Syria's Stalingrad, Ends
By Robin Wright 

 Aleppo has been part of human history for some five thousand years. Abraham is said to have grazed his sheep on its slopes and donated their milk to the local poor. Alexander the Great founded a Hellenic settlement there. The city is cited in the Book of Samuel and Psalm 60, and for centuries its residents reflected the three great Abrahamic faiths. It was at one end of the ancient Silk Road, and a major metropolis in the many empires that conquered and ruled the region. Its medieval Citadel, pivotal during the Crusades, is one of the world’s oldest and largest castles. More recently, Shakespeare referred to Aleppo in both “Macbeth” and “Othello.”

The Battle of Aleppo, which since 2012 has pitted the despotic government of President Bashar al-Assad against an array of disorganized opposition rebels, now appears to be over. A deal to allow the safe passage of the last opposition fighters, their families, and any civilians who want to leave—an end to the agony—was brokered Tuesday by Russia and Turkey. “All militants, together with members of their family and the injured, currently are going through agreed corridors in directions that they have chosen themselves voluntarily,” Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told the U.N. Security Council.

Much of the famed city, the largest in Syria, has already been destroyed. The Old City has been gutted. The destruction has been compared to that at Stalingrad and in the Warsaw Ghetto. In a crescendo of cruel air strikes, which have escalated since the summer, eastern Aleppo fell this week to the government forces holding the city’s western half.

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http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-battle-for-aleppo-syrias-stalingrad-ends