The Syrian civil war that the world had tried to hope away and forget has again erupted into international headlines. And the West will, again, seek to find one side to praise and support.

In 2011, as the civil war emerged from a series of violent convulsions of predominantly Sunni Syrians pushed beyond endurance by Assad’s murderous regime, I travelled from Baghdad to the Kurdish regions to better understand the dynamics of the conflict. At the time, I was an Australian diplomat, working as the deputy head of mission in Iraq.

What I found reminded me of the song by The Clash. Assad – if he stays there will be trouble; if he goes it could be double. I had no sympathy for Assad’s regime, having been briefly detained and questioned by Assad’s secret police in 2006 while travelling privately around Syria, but personal prejudices had to be weighed with an appreciation for the complexity of the conflict.

What quickly became clear is that Syria and its conflict is a mosaic of combatants rather than a dichotomy of good versus evil. Loyalties usually reflect a person’s religion or ethnicity. The Sunnis hate the nominally Shiite regime of Assad; Assad himself is the inheritor of atrocities by his father’s regime against the Sunni, including the destruction of Hama and slaughter of many of its inhabitants in 1982; the Kurds want an autonomous homeland; and the Turkmen are no friends to Assad or extremist Sunnis.

Imposed upon this conflict of ingrained animosity and multiple combatants is the geostrategic game of external parties who seek advantage and/or defend their interests. The list is long, and that is just for those publicly declared to be involved: Russia supports Assad, is happy to frustrate the US, gain access to a Mediterranean port, and strengthen bonds with Iran; Turkey wants to block an independent Kurdish state that may support Kurdish aspirations in Turkey and support ethnic Turks. Qatar and Saudi Arabia support the Sunni rebels, and were famously backers of hardline Sunni insurgents at the beginning of the war who morphed into Islamic State; Israel would like to help all parties to lose in a protracted stalemate; and the US is anti-Assad, anti-Sunni fundamentalists, cautious of Kurdish aspirations and passingly mindful of the role of Turkmen.

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Three-dimensional chess played at speed and with malice. But wait, there’s more …

Joe Biden learnt from Barack Obama the danger of declaring red lines in a conflict sparse of wholesome heroes, and accordingly studiously avoided meaningful engagement. However, a new administration under Donald Trump is poised to seize control of Washington, and the longstanding shibboleths of US administrations that have guided US paralysis may be thrown to the wind.

Take, for example, Tulsi Gabbard – picked by President-elect Trump as director of national intelligence. Gabbard travelled to Syria in 2017 and met Assad, and has subsequently said Assad is “not an enemy of the United States” because it does not pose a direct threat to the US. Further, she has reportedly opposed conflict with Syria and Iran, urged the removal of US forces from Syria, and warned against Turkish aggression against the Kurds in Syria.