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Trump keeps dismissing Syria as just ‘sand.’ Experts say that’s wrong — ‘and just sad.’

By Miriam Berger | Published October 17 at 1:04 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 17, 2019

President Trump has a penchant for referring to Syria as simply “sand.”

He did so Wednesday when he dismissed the significance of the United States’ pulling out troops from northeastern Syria, a move that enabled Turkish troops to march in and unleash a domino effect of political and humanitarian crises while reducing U.S. influence in the region.

Syria has “got a lot of sand over there,” Trump said. “So there’s a lot of sand that they can play with.”

He’s used similar language before.

“We’re talking about sand and death, that’s what we’re talking about,” Trump told reporters in January.

To be precise: Syria has dusty — not sandy — deserts. (And the area, once widely known as part of the Fertile Crescent, also has a rich history of agriculture.)

While about two-thirds of Syria is classified as desert, it’s more of a dusty semidesert than the stereotypical rolling-sand-dunes-style desert, according to experts.

“Syria is a dry country,” said Syrian environmental journalist Muhammad Fares. “It has fertile areas in other ways.”

Fares distinguished between Syria’s dusty and dry semidesert (called badia in Arabic) with the sandy sahara (which means desert in Arabic) found in other Middle Eastern and North African countries, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco.

“There’s been plenty of opportunity for successful agriculture [in Syria] over a long period of time,” noted Colin Kelley of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) at Columbia University. “Even though we know that the area is aridifying due to climate change, it’s certainly not only desert.”

The disputed Golan Heights — which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and the Trump administration controversially recognized as annexed Israeli territory in April — is particularly renowned for its lush, rolling green hills and apple and grape orchards.

There is one area where Trump could find his sand: western Syria, where there are two mountainous coastal cities, Latakia and Tartus, home to sandy beaches and nearby Russian military bases.

Moreover, northeastern Syria, which borders Turkey and was the direct target of Trump’s latest comments, is in fact one of the least desert-y parts of Syria. This area is historically part of the Fertile Crescent, where scientists say agricultural and herding society began 12,000 years ago.

“The real significance of the Kurdish-controlled northeast is that that’s the traditionally wheat and cotton basket of Syria, as well as the part of the country that has a significant chunk of the oil,” said Peter Schwartzstein, a journalist and fellow with the Center for Climate & Security.

There is a connection between Syria’s climate and conflict, just not the Orientalist Arabs-fighting-in-sand image that Trump’s word choice may conjure up, experts said.

Kelley was part of a team of scientists that published a report in 2015 analyzing how decades of Syrian agricultural policies forced an overuse of groundwater that led to a major drought in 2006. They argued that the drought then destabilized the country’s economy and society, setting the stage for much of the dissatisfaction that drove people to the streets in 2011.

“President Bashar al-Assad’s liberal economic policies increased destabilization by removing fuel and food subsidies that many rural families depend on for their livelihoods,” the study concluded. “These policies continued despite the drought, making agricultural work unsustainable, thus inducing mass migration of rural families to cities.”

Fares, the Syrian journalist, said he sometimes laughs when he hears Westerners describing Syria as just a country of sand and camels. But more often, “it’s really just sad,” he said.

In addition to its human cost, the Syrian conflict, now in its eighth year, has worsened many of the country’s already dire environmental issues, such as desertification and deforestation.

Fares said Trump’s comments upset him most because it felt “as if there are no people” in Syria. He likened the mind-set to how the Syrian government, which has been accused of committing war crimes, sees Syria’s people and environment.

“It’s the same way the Syrian regime looks at the country,” he said, as just “resources to exploit.”

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Trump’s puerile letter to Erdogan should give every American the chills

By Henry Olsen | Published October 17 at 2:40 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 17, 2019 |

I rarely comment upon President Trump’s communications style, preferring instead to focus on his policies or political standing. But I’m making an exception for his letter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It is puerile and insipid — an excellent example of why so many people in Washington think Trump is not up to the job.

Let’s start with his opening sentence: “Let’s work out a good deal!” Trump’s view of human nature is famously transactional, and he doesn’t disappoint here. For him, it seems there is nothing but the art of the deal. He apparently views politics as nothing more than a series of ad hoc deals, strung together with no glue binding them together other than the momentary advantage each dealmaker gains from the pact. That might be the way businesspersons think, but it is certainly not the way serious politicians and statesmen behave.

Political leaders always have some aim in mind beyond the deal itself. For some, it is keeping or extending power. For others, it is the accomplishment of some task consistent with a set of articulated principles. But for all, any deal must be seen as consistent with those larger aims. Trump’s letter ignores this basic political instinct.

Look at the world from Erdogan’s point of view. Turkey has a long, troubled relationship with the Kurds living in its own country. It has suppressed the Kurdish language; sporadically carried on a guerrilla war against Kurdish separatists within its borders and beyond; and views the Syrian Kurds as in league with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a group it considers a terrorist organization. A man focused on wiping out a threat to Turkish territorial sovereignty isn’t worried about what Trump calls the “slaughtering” of “thousands of people”; he might actually welcome it.

A nationalistic war against a longtime enemy could also shore up Erdogan’s flagging political standing at home. His party, the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, lost control of many major cities in local elections this year, including the capital, Ankara, and Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul. His own job approval ratings are also in decline, dropping to only 44 percent by early September, and both he and the AKP had seen support drop below 40 percent by early October. A military victory against the Syrian Kurds, then, might be exactly what Erdogan wants.

Trump’s letter shows no understanding of any of this. Instead, he tries to persuade the Turkish strongman to negotiate by alternating insults — saying Erdogan could be viewed as “the devil” and is merely playing “a tough guy” — with platitudes such as “history will look upon you favorably.” Serious political men, and Erdogan is certainly that, look at a such jejune mishmash incredulously. It is mind-boggling that the president of the United States thinks Erdogan could be deterred by name-calling or attracted by an ego massage.

It is also beyond comprehension that Trump thinks empty threats could do the trick. Trump conflates his own ego and U.S. interests when he vastly exaggerates U.S. power and tells Erdogan that he could destroy the Turkish economy. According to the World Bank, Turkey’s exports to the United States were only about 5 percent of its total in 2017.. It also imported much more from Russia and China than it did from the United States. Trump would have to get international cooperation to make sanctions or tariffs really hurt the Turks, something he will likely find difficult in light of all of the other conflicts he has instigated with many of the countries whose cooperation he would need.

The letter damningly confirms many of the traits that the president’s critics have long assumed: It shows Trump to be uninformed, narcissistic and naive. It shows him as obsessed with process and uninterested in substance, craving the applause of a multitude whose identities he does not know. It is the sort of note one could imagine coming from a clique leader in a movie about high-school angst, such as “Mean Girls” or “Heathers,” not a man who has access to the nuclear button.

The announcement of a five-day cease-fire could lead Trump backers to say the letter worked, but it’s hard to make that claim stick. The letter is dated Oct. 9, more than a week ago. It was clearly intended to forestall exactly what we have seen over the past week. Even if that argument were correct, it would still reveal disturbing things about how the president views politics and American power.

Trump’s instincts have sometimes produced great success, such as when his threats of tariffs shocked Mexico into assisting the United States to reduce illegal border crossings. He has also been successful taking the advice of competent aides, such as during the negotiations that produced the 2017 tax cut or in his decision in February to walk away from a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un without a deal. But this letter shows what can happen when Trump acts on his own without counsel. That sight should give every American the chills.

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