30 November 2016
By Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal
Syria is unofficially divided and destabilized, thousands of Muslims have been
murdered by all ''stake holders'' in Syria, both Muslim and non-Muslim as well
as anti-Muslim forces objective of global anti-Islamism and Islamophobia.
Syrian Aleppo has finally fallen to
Russian forces favoring President Assad.
Russian intervention in Syrian war has
now almost ensured, thanks to president Putin's firm commitment to dictatorial
dynastic misrule of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad that he can just enjoy his
remaining life without even holding any referendum, let alone elections, to
continue his misrule and claim legitimacy for presidency for the rest of his
life. Apparently, for the Arab
nations and Iran, fear of America would soon be the fact of the past as the
ongoing Russian war maneuverings in Syria targeting Muslims in the Arab nation
may have impressed the rulers in the region as well as Israel looking around
with its long bloodthirsty tongue for Islamic blood, and, more importantly,
Russian effort is helping Assad stay in power against the will of the world's
super power USA. Having complicated the conflictual situation in Syria,
Americans do not seem to have clues to end the war and possibly looking to the
Kremlin to find some solution, even if not a long term one.
Syrian leader Assad's key allies Russia
and Iran could claim that the victory over rebels in Syria's second city
Aleppo advances their standing in the region in the globally.
The bombardment of rebel-held east
Aleppo by Russian forces, the Syrian army, and Iran-led militias has been
unprecedented in its intensity, even by the standards of Syria's brutal
six-year civil war. The blitz has also been effective at removing rebels
some of them backed by the USA, others Islamic jihadists ¬ from their most
significant urban stronghold in Syria.
Russia dramatically stepped up its
intervention in September last year, its first projection of hard power beyond
former Soviet borders in decades, reportedly at Iran's request. Soon after,
Obama said ''it just won't work,'' and predicted that Moscow would get stuck
in a ''quagmire.'' President
Putin, however, has pointed to Western failures in Syria, and last week told
the NTV channel that ''the world balance is gradually being restored. The
attempts to create a unipolar world failed.''
So Russia seems to have outsmarted its
arch rival USA in Syrian war but with no quick end to the conflict, they are
likely to push for a political solution if they sincerely seek peace in West
Asia. With Russia maintaining
upper handling war operations in Syria, Arab nations could now rely on Russian
terror goods instead of depending on costly US weaponry.
For Iran, that means expanding the
influence of its ''axis of resistance'' against the USA, Israel, and their
allies. For Russia, it marks a critical step toward restoring past influence,
even as American power projection and willingness to engage in the Middle East
declines. ''This is what really matters to Iran and Russia, that the
political, geo-strategic project of the anti-Assad and anti-Iranian position
has failed, and it has been buried in the Aleppo rubble,'' says a Middle East
expert at the London School of Economics who has studied the history of ISIS.
''Syria really could be a signpost for the emergence of a new international
system.'' Iran has supported
Assad from the start with advisers losing numerous high-ranking officers
along the way and mobilized the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah. It has also
marshaled thousands of Shiite militiamen from Iraq, Afghanistan, and even
Pakistan to fight in Syria. Few
predict that the departure of rebel forces from Aleppo means the end of the
Syrian war, which will continue as a guerrilla fight on many other fronts. And
analysts say there are limiting factors to the current ascending influence of
Iran and Russia. The brief cease-fire that fell apart did so amid wrangling
between Russia and Iran about how and whether rebel fighters all of them
considered ''terrorists'' by pro-Assad forces and tens of thousands of
trapped civilians could be evacuated from the remaining sliver of ground they
control. The Assad ''victory''
in Aleppo has also been dented by Islamic State (IS) fighters' recent
recapture of Palmyra, the ancient city held and damaged by IS earlier in the
war that was reclaimed by Assad forces with great fanfare last spring. ''There
was big hope that this victory in Aleppo would shatter the morale of the
Syrian opposition, and it would begin to crack, and there would be serious
defections,'' says a defense columnist for Novaya Gazeta in Moscow.
Iran faces its own challenges, not least
because of uncertainty about how a new government under President Donald Trump
may improve ties with Russia at Iran's expense. So it, too, is inclined to
seek a political solution. The perception in Tehran is there is no military
ending in Syria. In other
words, since Assad has won the nasty battle and would stay forever, it is a
good time to go for a negotiated solution, because from a position of strength
it is easier to convince Assad to give concessions, rather than a position of
weakness. Some conservative factions in Iran revel in the Aleppo victory of
''resistance,'' that view ''is not going to be shared universally. Iranian
forces are also overstretched. We know there is no light at the end of the
tunnel. ''Any tactical closeness of Russia and the US may hurt Iran, and so
their preference would be to quickly turn that victory into a negotiated
solution. That is to say if
USA, Russia and Syria think seriously about ending war and rebuild the economy
of Syria and strengthen Mideastern politics and economy.
President Assad is celebrating his most
significant battlefield victory so far, even though Iran-Russia squabbling
interrupted what was supposed to be a final cease-fire, and images showed
block after block of pulverized neighborhoods punctuated by terrified
citizens' please on social media ''save Aleppo.''
Assad told Russian television that
liberating Aleppo doesn't end with liberating the city itself, it needs to be
secured on the outside. The next target, he said, ''depends on which city
contains the largest number of terrorists.'' But the strategic reverberations
of Aleppo's fall reach far beyond Syria's second city and signify a retooling
of power dynamics in the Middle East.
It is here that Russia and Iran invested
military power and orchestrated an outcome they desired, preserving the Assad
regime and preventing a takeover by USA or ISIS and even greater chaos. At the
same time, they defeated the half-hearted effort pursued by anti-Islamic USA
and its allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar to remove Assad by backing
rebel groups. There was a
triumphant tone in Iran, as well. ''Resistance paid off; the horns of America
and House of Saud broken,'' ran one headline in the hard-line Kayhan
newspaper. ''The liberation of Aleppo is the defeat of all political, military
and arrogant powers in one spot of the Muslim world, where the flag of
resistance has been hoisted,'' declared Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami, the deputy
commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard.
The human cost continues to grow, with
the fight for Aleppo and its years of regime barrel bombing in the city
contributing heavily to the war's death toll of some 470,000. Among reports of
atrocities on both sides, the UN said that 82 civilians had been killed by
pro-Assad troops as well. Heavy shelling of the city resumed with the collapse
of a Russia-announced deal for the departure of rebel fighters. n''For Aleppo
they gathered everything they could. Hezbollah brought in two fresh brigades.
The Russians organized a Grozny-type very heavy barrage that worked. But at
the same time, the Syrian second-rate infantry was overrun in Palmyra, caches
of weapons were seized, intervened in the morale-crushing effect of Aleppo.
Yet as Russia stepped up its
intervention in Syria, the quagmire scenario grows, along with the risks.
Russia waited a bit to launch the final hit on Aleppo. An official from the
Kremlin had explained in May that it will be a bloodbath in Aleppo and Russia
had to make a serious political decision. As the extent of that bloodbath
sinks into the Sunni Muslim world, there can also be repercussions over
murdering Sunnis in Syria. There is none indeed to shed tears over the
genocides of Muslims anywhere in the world, including Syria or Turkey or Saudi
Arabia. Millions have been slaughtered by fascist forces led by USA and EU and
supported by Israel and its state terror ally India.
Another limit may be the cost for
Russia, which one general recently said has shipped 700,000 tons of terror
goods like military equipment and weaponry to Syria via the Bosporus waterway
in Turkey. The problem is how long Russia can maintain such a policy, when it
runs out of resources with Western sanctions remain in place and
notwithstanding Russian efforts to end or at least ease they refuse to end the
economic punishment of the Kremlin. And that is a serious burden on the
Russian navy and the Russian budget. There is also the problem of Russian
morale here just of American prestige.
Russia's experience in other conflicts,
therefore, is behind its push for a political settlement.
The Syrian army is thinly spread and
dispersed in many areas. Assad can never impose his centralized control on all
of Syria anymore. In fact, what we see today as a significant military gain
for Assad, could, experts say, easily mutate in a year or so into Afghanistan
of the 1990s. And Russia knows this.
A year ago the Kremlin appeared to be
stepping up its role in the Syrian crisis, possibly laying the groundwork for
a new strategy against ISIS in the region. In order to achieve meaningful
results on the ground, Russia would need to send thousands of well-trained
troops to Syria as well as a significant amount of military equipment.
Presently there are well less than one thousand of Russian personnel operating
in the country, and judging by recent images of Russian landing ships crossing
the Bosphorus, trucks and armored personnel carriers. The news of Russian
troops appearing across Syria has appeared in numerous media outlets around
the world in recent days. The
financial burden of engaging in fighting in order to help Assad's army regain
ground without any guarantee would be extremely heavy on the Russian budget.
Some suggested that just as in previous years, Russian specialists are merely
training Syrian President Assad's army to use Russian equipment that Moscow
keeps sending to Syria, while others went as far as to suggest that
newly-arrived Russians are fighting on the front lines alongside the Syrian
army. Only a few months ago,
reports suggested that Russia could have been changing its Syria strategy and
might abandon Assad. Russia even withdrew its diplomatic staff from Damascus
and stopped honoring its agreement with Syria to maintain Russian-made fighter
jets. But now there is no denial that in recent months Russia has slightly
intensified arms deliveries to the Assad government. In fact, the latest data
shows that in the first 8 months of 2015 Russian southbound landing crafts
passed the Bosphorus 39 times, compared to 36 times in the same period of
2014.
Russia and Syria reactivated the 1980
''friendship'' treaty that sees Moscow taking over the Latakia air base.
Russia has reportedly delivered its newest BTR-82A armored personnel carriers
(APCs), Ural trucks and shipments of firearms to the Syrian government. It has
also allegedly started assembling prefabricated buildings for 1,000 military
specialists in Latakia to establish a broad anti-ISIS coalition. Russia has
been continuously delivering cargo to Syria, both humanitarian and military.
As well, Russia could be setting up a mobile air traffic control unit.
The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed
that Moscow continues to provide military equipment per previously signed
contracts; in addition, Moscow continues to send Russian military specialists
to train the Syrian army to use this equipment. Some reports suggest that most
equipment that Russia delivers to Syria these days is intended for the
military base in Latakia.
The moot question is will the
anti-Islamic nations , condign Arab countries, leave Syria even without going
for the rebuild costly operations from Syrian resources by dividing the
construction-destruction works among all of them, and China and Israel- the
anti-Islamic nations waiting for orders?
Clearly Russia has firmly stay put in
West Asia including Mideast and the Sunni Gulf states are already singing
military deals with Moscow, pushing the US super power, the traditional
shareholder in the region, to sideways.
Russia's expanded role in Syria is
yielding some benefits. Moscow is being courted by Persian Gulf countries like
Saudi Arabia, and is rebuilding ties with Turkey and Egypt all of them
traditional US allies. Palestinian leaders have also requested Putin's help in
convincing arrogant fanatic Israeli PM B.
Netanyahu to resume peace talks a role
long played by Washington. Israel just wants bogus talks and it abruptly
cancels by putting conditions, difficult for the Palestinians to accept. Comments 💬 التعليقات |
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