By: Dilip Hiro
Putin Doctrine advocates ruthlessly striking down any group that raises arms against a government
Civil wars, irrespective of how started, draw in foreign countries as patrons of warring domestic factions. War grinds on as long as outside powers maintain sufficient interest. When they conclude that their proxy is unlikely to win, or continuing investment of men and materials is not worth the costs, the conflict ends. This happened with the Lebanese civil war, 1975 to 1990. It started with an attack by a Lebanese Christian militia on a Lebanon-based Palestinian group and induced intervention of Syria, Israel, Egypt, Libya and the United States. It went through nine phases and ended only when the foreign states, except Syria, lost interest.
By contrast, Syria’s internal armed conflict, in its sixth year, is much more complex and far reaching. It started as a non-violent uprising, part of the pro-democratic Arab Spring movement in 2011, and mushroomed into a bloody war, involving Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar as well as the US and Russia.
In the region the conflict acquired a sectarian profile. The government of Assad, a member of the Alawi sub-sect, was backed by Iran, and Hezbollah. It was opposed by Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
In August 2011, US President Barack Obama called on Assad to step down. The CIA, working with Turkey’s intelligence agency, helped coordinate procurement and delivery of weapons to Syrian rebels, and later sponsored its own anti-Assad faction. Initially, Russia helped Syria diplomatically by vetoing UN Security Council resolutions – a move backed by China. Russian military intervention began in September 2015.
The Kremlin’s stance rests on the Putin Doctrine, which is that any group that raises arms against an established government is terrorist. Assad subscribes to the same doctrine. Both Putin and secular Assad are fierce opponents of any form of religious extremism as are Chinese leaders.
Historically, given its friendly relations with the Soviet Union since the early 1950s, Syria stayed out of the American orbit. After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, maintaining cordial relations with the Kremlin became “business as usual” for Syria.
Internally, levers of power are held largely by Alawis who, at 12 per cent of the population, are one-sixth the size of the Sunnis. Other non-Sunni Muslims – Ismailis and Druze – and Christians, fearful of their status in a Daesh-ruled state, have backed the status quo. Thus, about a third of the Syrian population supported the Assad regime. Another third opposed it vehemently and filled the insurgent ranks. The abiding weakness of the anti-Assad camp has been its heterogeneity – ranging from those advocating multiparty democracy to others denouncing democracy as a Western construct irrelevant to an Islamic society. To the chagrin of democrat leaders, extremist groups such as al Nusra Front, have been the best organised and armed.
Syria has the advantage of an alliance with Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution, which held during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. In 2004, the two countries signed a formal strategic cooperation agreement, allowing Iranian missile sales to Syria and ongoing intelligence sharing. A defence pact followed in 2006.
Iran helped Assad to overcome attrition in his army due to defections and casualties in two ways: It dispatched units of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to Syria and trained the 100,000-stong National Defense Forces as part-time volunteer army reserves. It also backed Hezbollah militia, experienced in urban warfare, to assist the Syrian Army retake territory lost to rebels. The cost to Tehran for these activities, estimated by Staffan de Mistura, UN envoy to Syria, was $6 billion a year.
The Iraqi government of Premier Nouri Al Maliki, permitted Iran’s overflights delivering military supplies to Syria. He shipped oil to the cash-strapped Assad regime at half the market price. He and Haider Al Abadi, his successor after 2014, allowed free flow of volunteers to Syria to protect a holy shrine in Damascus.
On the opposing side, Turkey sponsored the formation of the Free Syrian Army led by defecting officers from Syria, and provided it a safe zone and base of operations. Turkey acted as a conduit for supply of arms and other supplies to the Syrian rebels. It encouraged reconciliation among quarreling rebel factions. Initially the US supplied the Free Syrian Army with such non-lethal aid as pickup trucks and food rations, but quickly began providing training, cash and intelligence to selected commanders.
By all accounts in August 2015, Assad was on the ropes, the morale of his dwindling army at rock bottom. Strong backing by Iran and Hezbollah had proved insufficient to reverse his faltering hold on power.
To save Assad’s regime from collapse, Kremlin military planners decided to shore up air defences and boost the depleted arsenal of tanks and armored vehicles. They turned Russia’s airbase near the Syrian port of Latakia into a forward-operating base, shipping in warplanes, attack helicopters, artillery and armored-personnel carriers. They also deployed advanced S-400 surface-to-air missiles.
Within a year of this intervention, most major Syrian cities were back in government hands, and rebel-held eastern Aleppo was under attack. Morale of the Assad regime had improved, even if the size of its army had diminished. Turkey’s President Erdo?an traveled to St. Petersburg to meet his “dear friend” Putin. In a striking reversal, Turkey’s president stopped calling on Assad to step down.
It seems that the formal end to the civil war will be on pro-Assad terms. Putin acquired enhanced leverage in decisions affecting regional rival, has consolidated its influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. And the emerging Iran-Syria-Russia axis is set to challenge the United States in this oil-rich, strategic region for many decades.
Dilip Hiro is the author of Lebanon, Fire and Embers: A History of the Lebanese Civil War (St Martin’s Press, New York). His latest book on the region is A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Middle East. Views expressed in this column do no necessarily reflect those of Kashmir Patriot.
