Scaling back in Syria
Smadar Perry/Ynetnews/Published: 03.15.16
Op-ed: While Russia is significantly reducing its presence in Syria, Putin has no intention of backing out completely: Moscow will retain control of its strategic assets in the divided country, and a good deal of its influence as well.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin dropped his Middle-East changing bomb on Monday, he made sure to point out what he left for himself. Yes, he’ll start scaling down the Russian military’s presence in Syria starting Tuesday morning, but he’ll still keep hold of the Tartus port, his country’s only naval base in the area. He’ll also still have the airport at Hmeymim and the Air Force base in Latakia. A retreat, yes, but one that preserves strategic assets.
Putin has conducted business in Syria without much sentiment towards Bashar Assad. The Kremlin profilers have recently described the Syrian President as an illegitimate, weak, tired, and stressed leader. After all, Russia has been the one holding the reins in his fragmented country for the past six months, and didn’t do it for Assad’s benefit, but in order to protect Moscow’s strategic interests.
Even if Syria were to change its face and Assad were to disappear, Russia isn’t planning on letting go of its assets, which could extend its reach into every corner of the Middle East.
It’s important to take note of the meeting held in Amman this week, with fairly little press attention, between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry. Even though Washington claimed on Monday that the government did not know about the Russian retreat in advance, there are those who claim that Moscow gave Washington an update about the decision, which led the White House to issue optimistic statements regarding the Geneva talks between the Syrian government and opposition representatives.
However, the talks are of little consequence. It’s hard to believe the two sides will be able to stitch together a deal. The power in Syria will still reside in the hands of the Russian President and his aids, with Obama keeping his distance.
Putin doesn’t care if Syria eventually becomes a federation that consists of three cantons. Russia intends to keep “Alawitestan” (the part of Syria run by Assad, who is an Alawite Muslim), the axis that connects Damascus with the shoreline in the north. What happens in the Kurdish region or the Golan Heights will be Hezbollah’s purview, without Russia there to stabilize things.
Assad gave a weak, mumbling response on Monday. As far as he’s concerned, the decision comes at a particularly bad time: The Russian forces’ entry into Syria at the end of September coincided with the retreat of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Assad’s allies, which returned to Tehran and left Hezbollah alone on the field of battle. However, now that he hears the complaints in Beirut’s Dahiyeh district, Assad knows he can’t trust Nasrallah’s men fully.
It’s interesting to see if Assad will be able to convince Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, to return his men to the region. In addition, it’s unclear whether Tehran will issue a command to Hezbollah, ordering a reinforcement of the Syrian regime, or what the heads of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra have in mind.
According to Putin the Russian forces have achieved all of their goals in Syria. What he’s really saying is that Russia is tired of confronting ISIS and paying a price for his clashes with Jabhat al-Nusra, which is the local al-Qaeda franchise. Putin, who follow’s Obama’s passive conduct, has also reached the conclusion that the bleeding mud of the war in Syria, which is going nowhere, could cost him politically at home.
In any case, even if many fighters are packing up and moving out – the Russians aren’t leaving Syria. They’re just scaling down.
Russia seeks to reassure Israel over Syria pullout plan
Reuters/Ynetnews/Published: 03.15.16
While Moscow’s deputy ambassador stresses his country will ‘do everything so that Israel’s national security interests are not harmed in the process,’ IDF chief notes ramifications of Russian move aren’t clear yet. A Russian diplomat sought to reassure Israel on Tuesday that its security would not be harmed by the winding down of Moscow’s intervention in the Syrian civil war, but the IDF’s chief of staff said the ramifications were not yet clear. Israeli officials have privately said Russian forces sent in last year to help Syrian President Bashar Assad turn the tide against a now five-year-old rebellion also served to restrain his anti-Israeli allies – Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia.
Israel was further helped by a hotline to the main Russian airbase at Hmeymim in Syria, which let it continue covert strikes to foil suspected Hezbollah or Iranian operations against it on Syrian turf without fear of accidentally clashing with Moscow.
Russia blindsided world powers on Monday by announcing that the main part of its forces in Syria would start to withdraw. Russia’s deputy ambassador to Israel on Tuesday described the two countries’ Syria coordination as remaining intact. “We will try to ensure that this (Syria) crisis is resolved, and we will also do everything so that Israel’s national security interests are not harmed in the process,” the envoy, Alexey Drobinin, told Ynet, without elaborating. He clarified that the Russian decision was made in an effort to promote negotiations between the sides. “Russia is sending a clear message to everyone involved in the Syria crisis – it’s time to give political dialogue a chance, a change for an internal Syrian dialogue between the government and the different factions in the opposition,” he said. He also asserted that despite the fact Russian forces were leaving the war-ravaged country, their mission has not yet ended. “In order to defeat ISIS, the Nusra Front and other terror organizations, we have to put together an extensive international coalition with the US, European countries, and Arab nations. Russia cannot do the work for everyone,” Drobinin stressed.
In separate remarks to Army Radio, Drobinin said Russia would maintain its military presence at Hmeymim airbase as well as a Mediterranean naval centre at Tartus. “Israel is a neighboring country. It cannot be indifferent to what is happening in Syria. We take this into account, of course,” he said. “We have an ongoing dialogue with the Israeli side on all levels – the military level and diplomatic level.” Zvi Magen, formerly Israel’s ambassador to Moscow, told Ynet that “the discussion is not the withdrawal of troops, but the announcement that they will stop fighting, and that has a different type of meaning. Russia is probably not going anywhere, but it was more important for Putin to announce that he is now stopping the fighting.”‘Israel had no prior knowledge about Russia withdrawal’. Israel has occasionally fired across the Golan Heights in response to spillover shelling or bombed advanced arms it suspected were to be transferred to Assad’s Lebanese guerrilla allies, Hezbollah. Past strikes in Syria, attributed by foreign sources to Israel, killed Syrian troops as well as Hezbollah fighters – though the exact number remains unclear. President Reuven Rivlin was due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday. Drobinin said that would be “a very good opportunity to air opinions and provide answers for any questions the Israeli side might have”. Rivlin’s role is largely ceremonial. His Russia trip was set before the Syrian withdrawal announcement. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government declined to be drawn on the issue. But the IDF’s chief of staff, Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, told members of Knesset that Israel had no advance knowledge of Russia’s pullback plan, whose impact he deemed hard to gauge.”At this stage, humility and caution are required in trying to understand the vector in which the Syrian theatre will develop with the exit of Russian forces,” Eisenkot told members of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in a closed-door briefing. Eisenkot said that the Russian intervention had so far strengthened Assad’s position in ceasefire talks with rebels. Israel has voiced doubt about the truce prospects in Syria, which it anticipates will end up partitioned on sectarian lines. Eisenkot predicted that the Russian withdrawal would be carried out gradually, but not fully, with Moscow maintaining two bases in Syria while thinning out overall troop deployments.
*Attila Somfalvi contributed to this report.
