Talmiz Ahmad: Is peace possible in Syria?

On March 13, Arab media announced that Syrian government forces had successfully taken 60% of the Eastern Ghouta area that abuts Damascus. Eastern Ghouta had been subjected to massive air assault by Russian and Syrian forces and ground attacks from different directions. Nearly 1,000 civilians have been killed and several hundred injured, with many children among the casualties.

The Syrian conflict today embraces all the major regional and international powers that are using its terrain to consolidate their regional strategic interests and shape the emerging global scenario.

The Damascus-based government of President Bashar al Assad is today backed by Iran, which has deployed the Hezbollah from Lebanon and its own forces from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well motley groups of Shia militants from Iraq, Afghanistan and even Pakistan.

The competing regional forces in Syria

For Iran, Syria is its only long-term and steadfast supporter among the neighbouring Arab nations. This alliance gives both of them heft and outreach in the turbulent region. The association has also enabled Iran to shape and strengthen the Hezbollah, thus gaining influence in Lebanon, while posing a robust threat to Israel itself.

The Assad regime is also supported militarily and politically by Russia, which entered the Syrian theatre to oppose regime change through external intervention, and then has stayed on to promote a peace process, with the backing of Iran and Turkey. For Russia, the Syrian battlefront allows it to assert the principle on non-interference in the domestic politics of other nations.

But, the Syrian intervention has also brought Russia to the heart of the West Asian security scenario. Now, President Vladimir Putin is the go-to person for all the regional nations—Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Palestine and Israel—which seek his peace-making role amidst their intractable contentions.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel are the three regional powers with an important stake in how the Syrian conflict pans out. Saudi Arabia was in the forefront of the regime-change project in Damascus from 2011. However, the Russian intervention from 2016 has convinced it about the futility of military success; it now seems reconciled to the Russia-led peace process, while it focuses on the war in Yemen.

Turkey initially backed regime change in Damascus, in support of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and allowed thousands of militants to join the various militia in the Syrian conflict. But, two years ago, it saw that the fighting had enabled the Syrian Kurds to carve out an integrated Rojava (‘western homeland’) of their own at the Turkey-Syria border, which could provide strategic depth and sanctuary to Turkey’s dissident Kurds from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

Turkey has now abandoned the regime-change project and joined Russia and Iran in backing the peace process. From 20 January this year, Turkish troops have also entered Syrian territory to take the Kurdish-controlled town of Afrin and break up the contiguity of the Kurdish homeland.

Israel’s principal concern relating to Syria is the presence of the Hezbollah and Iranian forces at its borders. It has called on Russia to ensure a cordon sanitaire at the Syria-Israel border, and has regularly launched air attacks on targets in Syria that it sees as threatening its interests. The downing of an Israeli aircraft over Syria on February 10 has now raised fears of a direct Iran-Israel confrontation.

United States vs Russia in Syria

The last major role-player in the Syrian imbroglio is the United States of America. Through Obama’s second term and the early months of the Donald Trump administration, the US showed little interest in playing a role in Syria, letting Russia take the lead in promoting the peace process. However, in recent months, as the Russian initiative seemed to have made considerable progress, US policy-makers have now come to see Russian success as harmful to long-term US interests, both regionally and globally.

In January, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made the surprising announcement that, though the Islamic State had been defeated and dismantled, the US would maintain its military presence in Syria: it would deploy 2,500 US troops in the Kurdish territories and, with generous US budgetary allocations, would build a force of about 30,000 mainly Kurdish fighters. Tillerson clarified that these forces would ensure that ISIS would not return to Syria and Iran would not be an influential presence in the country.

The most likely scenario for Syria is partition. The US is likely to consolidate itself in the Kurdish-controlled territories in the north-east of Syria, east of the Euphrates. Here, it will maintain a solid military presence that will challenge Iranian influence in Syria and prevent the so-called Iranian “causeway” from Tehran to Baghdad to Damascus, a nightmare scenario for the US and Israel, while retaining full control over Syria’s oil and gas reserves in the Deir ez Zour area.

A bleak outlook for Syria

The US will also seek to wean Turkey away from the peace process by permitting it to set up and control a “safe-zone” at the Syria-Turkey border, perhaps stretching 100 km from Afrin to Manbij, which will enable Turkey to monitor Kurdish activities at the border.

Russia will retain control over its Tartous and Hmeimem naval and air bases, but its larger regional influence will be severely undercut by the US presence, which will now seek to assert itself as the principal arbiter of West Asian affairs.

This situation will prepare the ground for the next round of regional conflict. Several commentators are predicting an Israeli/Jordanian/ US attack on Iranian interests in Lebanon and Syria, and even a direct war between the major regional powers.

Over the longer term, some commentators believe that Syria could witness an insurgency against the US “occupation” of its territory on the lines of the insurgency in Iraq from 2003, which finally led to the US defeat in that country and its ignominious withdrawal in 2011.

Whatever the battle-front, there is no prospect of peace in Syria or the wider West Asia in coming years.

The author is a former Indian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE