Roger Carstens, the Biden administration's top official for the release of Americans held abroad, arrived in Damascus, Syria, on Friday for a high-risk mission: making the first known personal contact with the interim government and asking for help in finding American journalist Austin Tice has disappeared.
Thais was kidnapped in Syria 12 years ago during a civil war and brutal rule now deposed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. For years, U.S. officials have said they do not know for sure whether Tice is alive, where he is being held, or by whom.
The State Department's top diplomat for the Middle East, Barbara Leaf, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, accompanied Carstens to Damascus as a gesture of greater engagement with Hayat Tahrir al-Shamknown as HTS, a rebel group that recently toppled the Assad regime and is emerging as a leading force.
Also with the delegation was Senior Middle East Advisor Daniel Rubinstein. They are the first American diplomats to visit Damascus in more than a decade, according to a State Department spokesman.
They plan to meet with HTS officials to discuss the transition principles agreed by the US and regional partners in Aqaba, Jordan, the spokesman said. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken went to Aqaba last week to meet with Middle East leaders to discuss the situation in Syria.
During the search and release of Tyce and other American citizens who disappeared under the Assad regime is the ultimate goal, US officials are playing down expectations for a breakthrough on the trip. Multiple sources have told CBS News that Carstens and Leaf intend to communicate US interests to senior HTS leaders and learn all they can about Theiss.
Rubinstein will lead American diplomacy in Syria, interacting directly with the Syrian people and key parties in Syria, the State Department spokesman added.
Diplomatic contact with HTS comes at an uncertain time in the volatile, war-torn region. The two sources even compared the potential danger to expeditionary diplomacy of the late U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who led rebel outreach in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 and was killed in a terrorist attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound and intelligence post.
US Special Operations Forces, known as JSOC, provided security for the delegation as they traveled by car across the Jordanian border and en route to Damascus. HTS assured the convoy that it would be granted safe passage while in Syria, but the threat of attacks by other terrorist groups, including ISIS, remained.
CBS News declined to publish this story for security reasons at the request of the State Department.
The dispatch of high-level US diplomats to Damascus represents a significant step in rebuilding US-Syrian relations since the fall of the Assad regime less than two weeks ago. The U.S. embassy in Damascus has been suspended since 2012, shortly after the Assad regime brutally suppressed an uprising that turned into a 14-year civil war and drove 13 million Syrians to flee the country in one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.
The US formally recognized HTS, which had ties to al-Qaeda, as a foreign terrorist organization in 2018. Its leader, Mohammed al-Jalani, was designated a terrorist by the United States in 2013, and before that he was in an American prison in Iraq. .
Since Assad's ouster, HTS has publicly demonstrated an interest in a new, more moderate trajectory. Al Jalani even spilled his military name and now uses his legal name Ahmed al-Sharaa.
U.S. sanctions on HTS linked to named terrorists make coverage somewhat difficult, but they have not stopped U.S. officials from making direct contact with HTS at the direction of President Biden. Blinken recently confirmed that US officials had been in contact with HTS representatives before Carstens and Leaf's visit.
“We have heard positive statements from Mr. Jolani, the leader of HTS,” Blinken told Bloomberg News on Thursday. “But what everyone is focused on is what is actually happening on the ground, what are they doing? Are they working to create a transition in Syria that will involve everyone?”
In the same interview, Blinken also seemed to discount the possibility that the U.S. could help lift United Nations sanctions against HTS and its leader if HTS forms what he called an inclusive, non-sectarian government and eventually in the end will hold elections. The Biden administration is not expected to revoke the US's terrorist designation until the end of the president's term on January 20.
Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder announced Thursday that the U.S. currently has about 2,000 American troops in Syria as part of the mission to defeat ISIS, far more than the 900 troops previously acknowledged by the Biden administration. There are at least five US military bases in the north and south of the country.
The Biden administration is concerned about this thousands of ISIS prisoners Held in a camp known as al-Hol, he could be released. It is currently guarded by the Syrian Democratic Forces, Kurdish allies of the US, who are wary of the newly powerful HTS. The situation on the ground is changing rapidly after Russia and Iran withdrew their military support for the Assad regime, resetting the balance of power. Turkey, a sometimes problematic US ally, has been a conduit for HTS and is becoming a power broker.
A high-risk mission like this is unusual for the normally risk-averse Biden administration, which has consistently pursued low-key diplomacy. Blinken approved the trip by Carstens and Leaf, and the respective congressional leaders were briefed several days ago.
“I think it's important to have direct communication, it's important to speak as clearly as possible, to listen, to make sure we understand as best we can where they're going and where they want to go,” Blinken said Thursday.
On a press conference In Moscow on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had yet to meet with Assad, who fled to Russia when his regime fell earlier this month. Putin added that he would ask Assad about Austin Theis when they meet.
Tice, a Marine Corps veteran, has worked for several news organizations, including CBS News.
