Russia’s
grip on Syria tightens as brittle ceasefire deal leaves US out in the
cold
At
the peace talks in Munich and on the ground in Aleppo, two things
became clear last week: Moscow was running the show and Assad’s
opponents felt abandoned by Washington
Alec Luhn in Moscow,
Martin Chulov in Gaziantep and Emma Graham-Harrison
Sunday 14 February
2016 00.05 GMT
Russia’s economy
may be stumbling as oil prices fall, but in a week of extraordinary
military and diplomatic turmoil over the war in Syria, President
Vladimir Putin has proved that his global influence and ambitions
have only been sharpened by financial troubles.
For now he seems to
be calling all the shots in Syria’s civil war. Russian jets allowed
Syrian government troops to break out of a stalemate in Aleppo,
cutting supply routes into a city that has been a rebel stronghold
for years.
Analysis Isis has
been thwarted militarily. But now it could seize chance to advance
In Syria, Islamic
State has failed to reclaim Idlib and western Aleppo, but the
military landscape is changing – probably to the benefit of the
extremists
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With hundreds of
thousands of people facing siege in the ruins of Aleppo, and Europe
fearful that thousands more fleeing to the border could trigger a new
influx of refugees, top diplomats gathered to agree a flimsy
ceasefire deal.
Russia wrung so many
concessions out of others around the table that the deal seemed more
an endorsement of its role in Syria than a challenge to it.
Hostilities would not stop for about two weeks and, even when they
did, bombing campaigns against “terrorists” could continue.
That effectively
allows Russia to continue bombing as before, since it has always
claimed only to target extremists, while focusing more of its bombs
on President Bashar al-Assad’s opposition than on Isis or
al-Qaida’s Syrian operation, Jabhat al-Nusra.
Opposition groups
have already said they cannot accept the ceasefire if it does not
halt Russian airstrikes. “No negotiation can take place while
Russia is bombing our people,” said a senior member of one major
Islamist opposition group.
“It is a certainty
that Russia will continue to attack us while claiming to target
al-Nusra. They claimed that their campaign in Syria was to fight Isis
but, so far, 85% to 90% of their attacks were against the moderate
revolutionary groups, with a high percentage of civilian targets.”
So when Russia’s
foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told the world’s diplomats this
weekend that the ceasefire was more likely to fail than succeed, even
fellow diplomats saw it as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Asked by the
conference moderator to say how confident he was that weapons would
be put down within a week, Lavrov estimated only a 49 out of 100 hope
of success. British foreign secretary Philip Hammond, sitting
alongside him, was quick to point out that Lavrov’s remarks made
the chance of a temporary halt to fighting “somewhere close to
zero”.
“Unless Russia
over the next days is going to stop, or at least significantly scale
back that bombing, the moderate armed opposition will not join in
this process,” Hammond said. “They cannot be expected to join in
this process.”
What unfolded in
Munich looks set to have put the seal on something that has become
increasingly apparent over the past months. Moscow is back as a big
player in the Middle East, while Washington looks humbled, a shadow
of the great power that once dominated events in the region. The cold
war is back, as the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, said on
Saturday – and for now Russia seems to be in the ascendancy.
Critics warned from
the day the ceasefire was announced that Moscow had outmanoeuvred
Washington and was simply using the negotiations and the deal to
consolidate gains, a tactic honed by Russian forces in Ukraine.
The US may have lost
more than political capital. The ceasefire risks costing them the
trust of the few moderate opposition groups left on the ground, who
feel abandoned by a country that promised support.
“The people that
the Americans had been trying to sponsor are now targets of an enemy
that bombs without mercy or discretion, and the Americans don’t
have a problem with that?” said one Free Syrian Army member in
Aleppo, who declined to be named. “They never deserved our trust.”
Russia, by contrast,
has doubled down on Assad. Around the time Lavrov was handing down
his grim prognosis for the ceasefire, a missile cruiser left the
naval base in Sevastopol in Crimea. It was heading towards the
Mediterranean to join the Russian fleet there, a public shoring up of
an already strong military presence. Refugees who had recently fled
Isis rule said that the failure to challenge Assad and Russia could
even put the west’s main goal in Syria – the routing of Isis –
at risk. If other opposition groups are driven out, it will shore up
the claim of Isis to be champions of the country’s Sunnis. “You
will not find anyone in this camp, especially those who have arrived
this month, who supports Isis,” said the man, who gave his name
only as Jameel. “But most of them accept that at least they tried
to protect us, Syrian Sunnis, who the world has abandoned. It is very
dangerous to let them fill this role. And I think the world is blind
to the immorality of it.”
And despite the
terror inflicted by the group, which has prompted thousands to flee,
many still say they would chose rule from Raqqa over rule from
Damascus.
“No matter what
[Isis] does, no matter how bad they are, they are not as bad as the
regime. They [the government] are the first enemy. They are why Syria
is ruined, and they are why I am in this camp,” said 20-year-old
Khalil Efrati, who had left his Raqqa home around three weeks
earlier. “Yes, Isis are merciless and they do horrific things, but
the regime does worse.”
Putin’s long-term
aims are hard to assess, analysts said, in part because the Kremlin
itself may not have a clear vision for Syria, beyond protecting
Russian prestige and influence. The president is known as a clever
tactician, rather than a strategist with a grand vision, hard-nosed
in negotiations and quick to react to the situation on the ground.
Russian airstrikes
in Syria
“The task of
Russia is to preserve the Assad regime, not necessarily with Assad at
the helm, but an acceptable regime that would protect Russian
interests,” said analyst Alexei Makarkin, deputy director at the
Centre for Political Technologies in Moscow. “If Russia doesn’t
have an ally in the Middle East and influence there, then it’s not
a great power, they think.”
Moscow is haunted by
memories of the Nato bombing campaign in the former Yugoslavia, which
led to the ousting of ally Slobodan Milošević and brought an abrupt
end to its influence in the Balkans. “We don’t want to help
dismantle Assad and then be told to leave, like what happened in
Serbia,” Makarkin said. Reviving Assad’s campaign after months of
setbacks is a show of Moscow’s power as a patron, its willingness
to spend money on friends, and ability to sow problems for enemies.
In practical terms it also secures the military port in Tartus, which
Russia has operated since Soviet times, and its new Khmeimim airbase
near Latakia, vital to Russian ability to project power in the Middle
East.
Now Russia is viewed
with hatred by most Sunnis, Assad would be perhaps irreplaceable as a
regional ally. “He is changing the place of pieces on the board,
and he’s searching for weak spots,” said analyst Masha Lipman. “I
think the goal was larger, to make the world acknowledge that Russia
is a strong player in the international arena, and then Russia’s
possibilities change.”
Support for Assad
also fits the Kremlin’s policy of opposing regime change around the
world. Putin described the revolutions in post-Soviet states as
western attempts to expand their influence, and argues that the Arab
spring only led to bloody chaos. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan has accused Russia of planning to create a mini-state around
Latakia, the Assad family’s ancestral homeland on the coast, and
attacking Turkmen there.
But Russia, which is
battling separatist movements at home, insists it does not want to
split Syria; Assad himself in a rare recent interview also said he
planned to recapture all the country, and recent advances in Aleppo
make that seem more likely.
Moscow might support
a restructuring that gives regions more autonomy, however, because
once Assad is confirmed in power they are likely to seek some kind of
long-term settlement. A “frozen war”, like the one that is
destabilising Ukraine, would be expensive to maintain from a
distance, and Russia sees Syria not as part of a traditional sphere
of influence to be controlled at all costs, but as a site to confront
the west, Lipman said.
Even if the west
continues to shy away from direct confrontations, however, Russia’s
dominance may not continue unchallenged.
Saudi and Emirati
special forces troops are being sent to join opposition fighters on
the ground, US defence secretary Ash Carter said on Friday, and Saudi
Arabia is sending bombers to a Turkish airbase near the border.
Officially, the
ground troops would be helping opposition groups trying to retake
Raqqa from Isis, but those groups are also enemies of Assad and could
be expected to turn their guns and expertise on Damascus if they are
able to storm the Isis capital.
Turkey last year
shot down a Russian jet that strayed into its airspace, and Medvedev
called for Russia and the west to step up cooperation. “We have
fallen into a new cold war,” he told the Munich conference. That
may be underestimating the dangers, one Nato member and staunch US
ally warned.
“We are probably
facing a hot war,” Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaitė told
the conference. “Russia is demonstrating open military aggression
in Ukraine, open military aggression in Syria. There is nothing cold
about this; it is very hot.”
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