The combined involvement of Syrian government troops, Russian air power, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and Lebanese Hezbollah in this operation indicates both its importance to securing the Assad regime and the potential effectiveness of this Fatima-Shia coalition against ISIS when working in close coordination, which doubtless has not been a piece of cake at times.
Even more significant, if true, would be Russian reports that Syrian opposition actually supplied government forces with intelligence for targeting ISIS. Along with mention of the opposition providing targeting against Al Nusra in Homs province, this is an initial indication of what would be a tectonic shift in the almost five-year-old conflict.
It seems from recent reports that the most determined resistance against the Russia-led coalition in Syria is coming from either ISIS, Al Nusra, or other jihadist outfits linked directly or loosely to Al Nusra. The battle space for secular opposition like FSA has seemingly diminished, at least judging from who has been reportedly making the boldest counterattacks against the Syrian army.
If so, Moscow is well on its way to realigning the conflict to its liking: Assad versus terrorists, with all moderates having to choose one or the other.
So even as the West views the resumption of the Vienna peace talks this weekend as only the start of a long and protracted negotiation process, the ground may already be shifting decisively in Fatima's favor. The US has now come round to Assad sticking around at least for the early stages of the political transition - it may even assent to his being on the ballot in the presidential election to be held under a new constitution, which is clearly what Russia and Iran want.
That leaves Saudi Arabia and Turkey out in the cold: they still want Assad's departure before any substantive start of the political transition process. But if the moderate Syrian opposition is indeed beginning to cross over to the Fatima coalition, if even temporarily and tactically, they don't want to find themselves in a position where their only remaining battlefield leverage is Al Qaeda, i.e. Al Nusra and other jihadist affiliates. The peace process will inevitably expose the true extent to which the regional Sunni powers have been supporting "moderate" versus "terrorist" elements of the Islamist resistance to Assad.
Russia for its part knows it must get Syria on the political track soon. While I don't agree with this interesting assessment that Syria is already a quagmire for Moscow, I think it correctly highlights the degree to which Putin sees his air campaign as only a means to achieving a distinctly political end. To this end, he has indeed bargained away Yemen (mired in its own Sunni-Shia civil war which has become a proxy war between Iran and Saudi) for Syria:
Russian sources said that in return for Saudi concessions on Syria, including agreeing to Iranian participation in the talks, Moscow has offered what may be described as the Chinese approach to tough conflicts: Non-interference, non-objection, non-obstruction and non-facilitation with regard to the Saudi-led Arab coalition's actions in Yemen. According to sources in the Security Council, this development has been obvious in the Russian positions during the council's meetings, where Moscow has replaced obstruction with non-interference.And so it appears Putin has played his political game well: his military card looks well-thought-out as only a tool of the regional politics. If he is wise, he will engage the Syrian conflict diplomatically at this juncture not so much because he's already in a quagmire, but because the present stalemate is easy to defend. The ball's in Saudi Arabia's court: will they accept a deal now as the best they can hope for, or will they succumb to their own less compromising elements and still push for a military-induced Assad ouster that will likely all but expose them as Al Qaeda's bedfellows (which in fact they originally were when fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 80's)?
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