Hassan Barari

By : Hassan Barari

A truce reached at the Munich Security Conference last week requires halting the fight in blood-soaked Syria within a week. We have yet to see whether or not the commitment to a political solution is genuine. The Russians have shown no sign of slowing down their lethal air campaign on Aleppo. Skeptics suspect that President Putin will not halt his military support for the Syrian regime and that President Obama will not do anything to turn things around.

Since Russia started its campaign in Syria, it has been talking about the necessity of reaching a political solution and defeating Daesh. And yet, Russia has done nothing to help defeat Daesh while it has targeted only the moderate opposition groups. The Russian calculations could not be more obvious. For them, targeting the moderate opposition will push all forces to join Daesh and in this case Assad can claim that the battle is between his forces and Daesh. The international community then, according to this reasoning, will have no option but to support Assad.

Meanwhile, the American administration is losing leverage in the crisis. Over the last few weeks, Assad’s troops, backed by lethal Russian airstrikes, has made noteworthy advances against the moderate opposition backed by the United States. I believe that the American side shot itself in the foot when President Obama made perfectly clear on many occasions that he would never involve his troops in the Syrian crisis. The language used by Obama and his aides served as an implicit invitation to the Russians to interfere militarily in Syria. Were it not for the Russian persistent and brutal airstrikes, the Assad regime would have gone a while ago.

The coming week may have grave consequences for all. Of course, the Syrian opposition groups had no choice but to cautiously welcome the Munich agreement. But they fear that Russia will not halt its relentless bombardment of rebel-held territories and of its disgraceful airstrikes against civilians. They have the right to think so. In fact, while the deal marks the first attempt to halt the fighting and has the potentials of ushering a beginning of an end to the nightmarish bloody war, many important details remained unaddressed and all in all the deal is not without holes. For instance, we do not know exactly when the truce will start and who will enforce such a deal. “What we have here are words on paper,” US Secretary of State John Kerry warned after the agreement was hammered. “What we need to see in the next few days are actions on the ground.” Perhaps, Kerry must have noticed the actions on the ground after the announcement of the deal. The Russians have not yet changed course.

On the other hand, Assad is in a defiant mood. He said that he would not stop the fight until he conquers all of Syria. His defiance is due in part to his feeling that the fortune of his depleted army was reversed since Russian intervention began to make a difference. But, we should remember that Assad is not the one who calls the shots. Russia is! In other words, the only player that should be checked is Russia.

Perhaps it is useful to refer to the long-standing differences between Moscow and Washington over which groups in Syria count as terrorists. In practical terms, Russia considers anyone against Assad a terrorist. For this reason, the Russian airstrikes have mainly focused on all opposition groups except for Daesh. The latter one is being taken care of by the American-led coalition. Unfortunately, Russia will always find excuses to pursue its clear strategy of the military option. Hence, short of placing a price tag on the Russian negative and destructive intervention, I suspect that thousands more Syrian civilians will lose their lives in this saga.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in the Column section are their own and do not reflect RiyadhVision’s point-of-view.

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