The EconomistOctober 26th 2019 Middle East & Africa 452 29th to withdraw to a depth of 30km along
the whole border and disarm. Russian and
Turkish forces will then begin patrolling
the border together.
In less than three weeks Russia has
helped Mr Assad retake much of the north-
east, played peacemaker and deepened the
wedge between Turkey and its natoally,
America. As ever, Mr Putin proved adept at
taking advantage of American mistakes.
For years America has wavered over Syria.
Mr Putin, by contrast, steadfastly backed
Mr Assad. Russia, as a result, has emerged
as the chief arbiter in Syria and a major
power-broker in the region.
Mr Erdogan is no doubt pleased. As ex-
pected, nato’s second-biggest army pre-
vailed over the lightly armed ypg. A week of
war and a couple of ceasefire deals have re-
duced the Kurdish proto-state in Syria to
ashes. But his victory is hardly complete.
Turkey aimed to create a 440km buffer
zone stretching from the Iraqi border to the
Euphrates. What it has now is one-third of
that. The agreement with Russia permits
the Syrian regime to retake the remainder
of the Kurdish areas.
Turkey will have to cope with the dip-
lomatic fallout from its offensive. Several
European countries have stopped selling it
arms. Its relationship with practically
everyone in Washington, aside from the
president, has been strained. Many in Con-
gress are still itching to impose crippling
sanctions. Reports of atrocities committed
against Kurds by the mercenaries deployed
by Turkey keep pouring in.
Mr Erdogan also faces a headache in
Idlib, where the Assad regime is gearing up
for an offensive that may send another mil-
lion people, as well as tens of thousands of
hardened jihadists, fleeing toward the bor-
der with Turkey. So far, and at Turkey’s be-
hest, Russia has persuaded Mr Assad to
postpone the bloodbath. Mr Putin may try
to squeeze yet more concessions from Tur-
key before giving the regime a green light.
None of this seems to perturb Mr
Trump. “Sometimes you have to let them
fight a little while,” he said, referring to
Turkey and Syria’s Kurds. “It’s like two kids
in a lot, you got to let them fight and then
you pull them apart.” Bizarrely, he also
tweeted about how America “secured the
oil” in Syria. Aides have tried gamely to put
a positive spin on a ruinous policy. James
Jeffrey, America’s special envoy for Syria,
claimed that the tomato-throwing crowds
were Mr Assad’s supporters, not Kurds—
never mind that some spoke Kurdish.
At this point, though, it is unclear why
the likes of Mr Jeffrey still bother turningup to work. In a strategic sense, the Syrian
civil war is over. There will be horrors to
come in Idlib, but the rebels in that bleak
corner of Syria cannot unseat Mr Assad.
Many Arab states have already begun mak-
ing overtures to him, either for economic
reasons or in the vain hope of acquiring
some influence. And now Mr Putin has
forced Turkey to come to terms with the re-
gime. Countless Syrians will suffer for it. 7Buffer zone
SYRIAIRAQDamascusTURKEYJORDANISRAELLEBANONMed. SeaEuph
rate
sAleppoTurkey ’s proposed
“safe zone”Te l A b y a dRas al-AinIdlib
GovernmentKurdsJihadistsRebels
(US backed)Turkish troops/
Turkish-backed
Syrian rebels100 km
Areas of control
October 21st 2019
Source: IHS Conflict MonitorI
n south africanpolitics it is a feat to
make the African National Congress
(anc) look harmonious. Yet over the past
week the Democratic Alliance (da), the
country’s main opposition party, has
done just that. On October 20th Helen
Zille, its outspoken former leader, was
elected to chair the da’s federal council, a
key party post. That decision prompted
the da’s Herman Mashaba to resign as
the mayor of Johannesburg. Two days
later Mmusi Maimane, the party leader,
also said he was stepping down.
The resignations of the da’s two most
prominent black politicians ultimately
reflect the party’s failure to resolve its
position on the most emotive of South
African issues: race. In the 1990s the
Democratic Party (dp), the forerunner of
the da, was an avowedly liberal move-
ment. In the view of its then leader, Tony
Leon, the best way to tackle the poverty
and inequality left by apartheid was
through economic growth and education
reform, not, for example, affirmative
action. “Race is a red herring,” stated the
manifesto of the dp in 1999.
Whatever the merits of that stance, it
gave the dpa clear brand. It became the
main repository for white and mixed-
race voters, increasing its share of the
national vote from 2% in 1994 to 10% in- In the early 2000s, after evolving
into the da, it took power in Cape Town,
then became the kingmaker in the West-
ern Cape, which remains its power base.
Yet if the dawas to challenge the
anc’s hold on national politics it had to
win over black South Africans, who make
up 81% of the population. Ms Zille, who
took over from Mr Leon in 2007, groomed
Mr Maimane to succeed her in 2015. The
party shifted its position on affirmative
action. In 2019 the da’s manifesto stated
that the party “supports a programme of
race-based redress”.
So long as the dakept increasing its
vote share at elections, the tension be-
tween its mostly white liberal core and
its newer members was kept subdued. It
won 27% of the vote in local elections in
2016, its best ever performance. But that
success was aided by widespread con-
tempt for Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s
former president.
After Cyril Ramaphosa took over as
president in February 2018 fractures
began to multiply within the da. It was
harder for Mr Maimane to distinguish
his party from an ancled by the moder-
ate Mr Ramaphosa. He was soon accused
of leading an “anclite” party. This was
the worst of both worlds. Many black
voters still viewed the daas a “white
party”, an impression not helped by Ms
Zille’s tweets about the legacy of colo-
nialism being not “only negative”. At the
same time many white voters were turn-
ing away from the party because of its
race-based policies.
The result was its dismal perfor-
mance in elections in May 2019. The da
lost a few hundred thousand white votes
to the Freedom Front Plus, a conservative
outfit, while failing to attract the sort of
black middle-class voters Mr Maimane
was supposed to pull in. Since then his
days have been numbered. Now those of
the da itself might be, too.The limits of liberalism?
South African politicsJOHANNESBURG
The main opposition party implodes over its approach to raceMelancholy Mmusi