All eyes are now on Vladimir Putin's intervention in Syria. Now 2 weeks into Russia's bombing campaign to prop up the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, the Russian strongman has met with the Saudi defense chief Prince Salman (son of the new King Salman).
Of course, the positive niceties were stressed, i.e. assurance that Russia and Saudi are working closely to bring an end to the destructive conflict, to ensure Syria doesn't become a permanent haven for jihadist terror groups ISIS and Al Qaeda's affiliate Al-Nusra Front. But quite openly, Prince Salman reiterated Saudi's opposition to any peace settlement that leaves Assad in power. It's way too early, in other words, for Riyadh to concede that Russia's entry into the conflict has tipped the scales decisively in favor of Assad's political survival. What Putin was looking for in this meeting was some hint of flexibility - perhaps a Saudi acknowledgment that Assad's ouster will have to be a gradual and phased process that leaves him in control until international monitors can regulate fair elections. But that would have been a clear concession of Russian victory and it seems Saudi is now doubling down for an intensified proxy war against the Moscow-Tehran-Damascus axis - the Axis of Fatima.
So these next weeks will be crucial. Putin's strategy is very simple: keep squeezing Al-Nusra and the so-called "moderate" Syrian rebels that are directly and openly supported by Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Turkey, so that their territory in northwest Syria is chiseled off both by Assad's resurgent forces from the south and opportunistic ISIS elements from the east. This will secure Assad's regime for the foreseeable future and offer Russia - and the world at large - the best hope to contain ISIS to the sparsely populated desert swathes of Syria and Iraq.
The formation of a new US-backed rebel coalition centered around the Kurds is likely a recognition of the new reality by Washington: the "free Syrian" forces and "moderate" Sunni jihadists, along with their more overtly terrorist fellow travelers like Al-Nusra, are in an increasingly untenable position in their northwest Syrian corridor between Homs and Aleppo. Once they lose control of the main M5 highway linking all these major west Syrian cities all the way down to Damascus, they will have to resort to underground guerrilla tactics, else flee and abandon the whole area altogether to regroup with the only other non-ISIS, anti-Assad strongholds in the Kurdish far north, northwest and northeast. This latter outcome is the more likely, and that's probably why US efforts have now shifted to this new Kurdish-centered coalition.
But only the extreme northwestern Kurdish sector will have a direct front against the Syrian regime: the north-central and northeastern sectors are sandwiched between ISIS and Turkey, Kurdistan's historic enemy. Thus, any new Kurdish-led anti-ISIS, anti-Assad coalition will in effect be mostly an anti-ISIS coalition - and one that will also have to deal with a hostile President Erdogan of Turkey behind their backs. With this eventuality, Assad's survival is all but assured, and he can even think of turning the clock back to 2010, i.e. the time when he and Erdogan were regional rivals who could at least recognize each other's rule over all the pesky sectarian separatists under their nationalist dominions. They will have every incentive to wipe out the remaining Kurdish-Sunni rebel enclave stuck between them in the far northwest - and it will be a piece of cake if they cooperate with Russian support.
In conclusion, more likely than not, Washington's decision late last week to abandon its existing Syrian rebel army effort was a grudging acceptance that regime change in Damascus is no longer possible. Unfortunately, the new replacement strategy centered around the Kurds will probably do little to restore lost US regional influence. Don't expect the Beltway to suddenly embrace the cause of "Free Kurdistan" in Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq as its new trump card and effectively declare war against the other important players in the common fight against ISIS.
For now, it increasingly seems only a matter of time until Assad reclaims his country's northwest and mop up any die-hard Sunni jihadists that choose to remain. He will deal with any sanctuary towns and villages with his customary brutality and wholesale population cleansing. With Russia and Iran fully behind him, he now has little reason left not to turn any remaining non-compliant Sunnis in the northwest into terrorists...terrorists who will soon have no choice but to join ISIS if they hate him more than they fear the caliphate's already legendary reputation for sowing dread within its own ranks.
Keep the civilians of Syria's northwest in your prayers...whoever is left is in for a very rough stretch that could see additional hordes of them flee across the Turkish border.
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