New Analysis: U.S. needs to reflect failed policy as Syrian war enters sixth year

As Syria's civil war dragged into its sixth year on Tuesday, a flicker of hope has arisen to end a conflict that has sucked in global powers, spewed out a flood of refugees, and fueled the rise of the Islamic State.

Diplomatic momentum is gaining traction. One day earlier, the long-stalled peace talks pencilled in by the United Nations, resumed in Geneva. Russia, in a surprise move, ordered the withdrawal of the "main part" of its forces from Syria beginning Tuesday, the fifth anniversary of Syria's first peaceful protest.

Amid these tentative signs of peace, analysts say the United States should take stock of its failed intervention in Syria, change its course of action and work with other actors to give peace a chance.

Specifically, they believe the United States should end its mistaken push for unilateral regime change, step back and let the United Nations take the rein in resolving the Syrian crisis.

ILL-CALCULATED POLICY

Five years ago, few would have expected that the anti-government protests inspired by what was dubbed the Arab Spring could descend into an all-out, nasty war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced a staggering 50 percent of Syria's entire population.

It would be unfair to put all the blame of the festering unrest in Syria on the United States and its allies, but Washington's ill-calculated policy has changed the course of the war -- for the worse.

"The U.S. and its allies mostly caused this war. When protests broke out against (Syrian President) Bashar al-Assad in March 2011, they decided quickly to overthrow Assad," Jeffrey D. Sachs, professor of Sustainable Development with Columbia University, told Xinhua.

That's because nudging Assad from power would tilt the region's balance of power to the U.S.'s advantage, as Iran and Russia, both of which are viewed as adversaries by Washington, would be bereft of an important ally in the region, he said.

Osama Danura, a Syrian political researcher, said since the very beginning, the U.S. rhetoric has been biased in favor of a magnified insurgency in Syria, accusing the Assad administration of being illegitimate and inflaming the tensions.

U.S. policy has been the main drive behind the chaos and the conflict, Danura said.

While many think tanks criticized the Obama administration for its inaction over Syria, Sachs believes otherwise. "I believe that the United States has been very active together with its allies, but in covert ways led by the CIA," he said.

U.S. President Barack Obama reportedly authorized the Central Intelligent Agency (CIA) to arm Syria's rebels in 2013. The covert operation went awry amid skepticism that most of the weapons and ammunitions ended up in the hands of terrorists.

"This has been a stupid and failed policy. It has led to a massive war," Danura said.

According to a 2015 report by Amnesty International, weapons made in at least 25 nations, including the United States, made their way into the hands of extremists.

Meanwhile, the seesaw between the Syria government and the fractured opposition on the battlefield created the power vacuum that has been exploited by the extremists.

In June, 2014, IS burst onto the international scene when it declared the establishment of an Islamic "caliphate." It later overran large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq and claimed responsibility for the murder of numerous innocents.

The United States, along with its regional allies, has played a role in the creation of extremist groups like IS, Danura said.

LET UN DECIDE

"The United States in general wants to remove any regime deemed to be not sufficiently friendly to U.S. interests, using violent regime change if necessary. The Libyan disaster is another example of the failures of U.S.-led regime change," Sachs added.

The consequences of the failure have been so profound in Syria that even the worst has been beyond the imagination.

According to the United Nations, over 250,000 people have been killed and over one million injured since the onset of the crisis in 2011. More than half of all Syrians have been forced to leave their homes, brewing the world's worst refugee crisis that has overwhelmed neighboring countries.

Until the recent cease-fire -- which is already quite fragile -- Syria has become a killing field of many jihadist groups and renegade paramilitary radical groups such as IS, Sachs said.

Syria is now a complicated, multilayered war field where opposition forces fight the Assad government, the U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters battle with the IS, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are pitted against Iran in a proxy war, and the U.S. and Russia are vying for influence in a geopolitical contest.

At the moment, a fragile cessation of hostilities has largely held for 19 days and the UN-mediated peace talks resumed in Geneva on Monday, with the UN envoy warning the only available Plan B is a "return to war."

"The key change of policy is for the United States to give up on regime change, in other words, to stop trying to overthrow Assad," Sachs said.

"The entire Syria matter should be governed by the UN Security Council. In fact, all of the P5 (the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council) have the same deep shared interest in ending the bloodbath, and starving the jihadists, including IS, Al-Nusrah, and others, of funds and weaponry."

For the longer term, the P5 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) should encourage local regional powers -- Arabs, Turkey and Iran -- to find a long-term modus vivendi, he said.

"This is absolutely possible. The region needs development and investment, not war. All regional powers need to learn to live with each other. The P5 can help. Outside powers like the United States should step back and encourage peace to develop through regional compromises and accommodation," Sachs added. Enditem

(Che Hongliang at Damascus also contributed to the stor