Russia gets a seat at the table and the US to help defeat Assad’s enemies; Turkey is pounded
ISTANBUL – The world is holding its breath watching a shaky ceasefire in Syria, part of a deal brokered by the United States and Russia.
The 7-day ceasefire, which has mostly held so far, started at midnight on Monday night, during the week of the Eid Al-Adha Muslim holiday.
Part of the deal, which the Russian-backed Syrian government agreed to, entails jointly targeting jihadist group and former A-Qa’ida branch Jabhat Al-Nusra (which recently changed its name to Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham but is still commonly known as Nusra).
Nusra is designated a terrorist group by the US and Russia, but is also the most powerful faction fighting President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, which rights groups contend is responsible for the vast majority of civilian casualties in Syria. The group was also pivotal in defending Aleppo against recent government onslaughts.
“The question is, by really targeting them, will you break the back of the insurgency targeting Bashar Al-Assad?” asks Aaron Stein, a senior resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center, in an interview with The Media Line.
Dozens of anti-Assad rebel groups, including some backed by the US, have issued statements expressing scepticism that their enemies the Assad regime and Russia would follow the agreement, and warned against targeting Nusra.
Nonetheless, the deal entails a cessation of Assad airstrikes on opposition areas and humanitarian access to devastated areas such as Aleppo. It’s also hoped that the coordination between Russian and US air strikes will put an end to the previously indiscriminate Russian strikes against Assad’s opponents that killed many civilians.
From the Russians’ perspective, the deal gives Moscow a seat at the table.
“It has placed itself, smartly and strategically, as an inevitable partner that the West and Washington need to deal with if they want to accelerate the path towards a political settlement in Syria,” Sinan Ülgen, chairman of the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM) and a former Turkish diplomat, told The Media Line.
Meanwhile Turkey, which supports the Syrian deal, has launched its own, relatively small military operation, backed by rebel groups, across the border into Syria.
Operation Euphrates Shield began on August 24, aiming to push the Islamic State away from the Turkish border as well as to halt the advance of the Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which is itself waging an insurgency against the Turkish state.
Stein says there wasn’t a huge ISIS presence in Syria along the Turkish border, and many of the towns in the region were in fact empty, but the operation has denied the Islamic State an important transit and supply route.
“The ability of ISIS to move back and forth with impunity was the issue, and that’s largely been solved with Euphrates Shield.”
Stein says the fact that ISIS didn’t put up a fight in Jarablus, the main city taken by the Turks and their allied rebel groups, isn’t at all surprising.
“They have no incentive to stand and fight against an advancing army,” he says.
“They have every incentive to pull back and just conduct harassing attacks in perpetuity until that standing army goes home. And that’s the situation the Turks are in now.”
The Turkish Armed Forces, devastated by massive purges following the failed military coup of July 15, lost six tanks in 17 days to ISIS anti-tank missiles.
“They’ve lost far too many tanks in too few days. I’m not sure if this is a reflection of the purges or the fact that this army wasn’t ready to go into Syria,” Stein says.
The air force in particular has been hit hard by the purges.
“The air force is suffering a serious pilot shortage which will affect operations, particularly for any expansion without coalition support,” Stein says.
There are also questions about the rebels Turkey is working with, the main group being the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA). But experts say the FSA, the factions of army units that rebelled against the Assad regime in 2011 after being ordered to fire on civilian protesters, no longer exists, at least not in its original form.
“The Turks are using that term [FSA] I think for political optics more than anything,” Stein says. “I don’t even know what Free Syrian Army means anymore.”
There’s been little or no political progress made in ending the five-and-a-half year civil war in Syria, in which over 400,000 have been killed. In February, a previous deal negotiated by the US and Russia collapsed.
However, Ülgen is cautiously optimistic about the recent developments.
“I think these shifts are increasing the likelihood of a political settlement.”
He says the fact that Ankara has now begrudgingly changed its own troubled Syrian policy has been a positive development.
“Turkey has belatedly realized that its objective of regime change in Syria was creating not only complications for the fight in Syria but also generating insecurity for Turkey itself,” Ülgen says.
“Now there’s more of a willingness in Turkey to have more of a multilateral effort.”
US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei in Moscow on May 7, 2013. (Photo: MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/Getty Images)