In the next few days, the world will know who will be the new tenant of the White House and hopefully the world will subsequently be informed about what action, if any, the new president of the United States be taking to end the continuous bloodshed and unprecedented misery in Syria.
Estimates from various United Nations agencies tell us that the death toll since 2011 is fast approaching the half-a-million mark. Additionally, more than 10 million — or more than half the total population of the country — have been driven from their homes and more than five million have fled Syria as refugees to neighbouring countries. There are currently more than 275,000 people mercilessly under siege and totally cut off from outside aid.
This dire situation in Syria urgently requires action from the United States, morally at least, whoever wind the presidential election. The Republican candidate, Donald Trump, has made it quite clear that when he becomes the next president, he would like to “get together with Russia” ... “and nock the hell out of Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant)”.
Many among Republican and Democratic senior ranks disagreed with Trump’s assumption and detested the notion of cooperating with Russian President Vladimir Putin. When asked, the spokesman for the United States House of Representatives, Speaker Paul Ryan, a leading Republican, simply produced a common view saying: “Russia is a global menace ...”.
However, US foreign policy in general is normally stipulated by the White House and not necessarily by the Congress. Therefore, it is hugely interesting to await and see what sort of relationship the US and Russia will manage to have after the election and what direction they would take.
It is quite obvious that there are serious differences between the two countries over a handful of substantial issues worldwide. But, do we know how far apart their interests are in Syria in view of the available information about these interests?
On the Russian side, there is no hidden agenda as Moscow has come out to the open from the early days, stating its position and where it stands. Since the beginning of the Syrian war more than five years ago, Putin has unabashedly supported Russia’s long-term ally, Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. The Syrian president’s brutal and continuous actions against his own people, since the peaceful demonstrations in the Southern city of Dara’a in March 2011, have not deterred the Russian president from providing the Al Assad regime with full protection from Moscow. Though there are no Russian soldiers on the ground, fighting alongside the Syrian army — this is a task taken up by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the Hezbollah militia — Russia’s air power has proven adequate to sustain Al Assad’s leadership.
Russia has a significant presence in Syria through its strong air base in Hmeimim in the outskirts of the coastal city of Latakia in the north-western region of the country. This presence has recently become limitless and timeless. Putin has lately requested the Russian Duma to ratify Moscow’s air base deal that his country had signed with Al Assad in the summer of 2015. The deal authorises the deployment of Russian forces for an “unspecified period” at the Hmeimim airfield to “maintain peace and stability in the region”, according to the Kremlin’s official document. Furthermore, the document claims that the air base is “of strictly defensive character and won’t be targeting any other country” in the region.
The document was published on Russia’s official web portal on January 14 this year. Despite the classified nature of the agreement, it was unprecedentedly made public soon after signing. It is normal procedure in Russia to keep such documents under wraps in secret files for decades, if not longer.
Surprisingly, western governments have not only failed to realise the dangers embedded in the documents, but on the contrary, they considered the bilateral Russia-Syria agreement to renew the deal to be somehow positive. It seems that an internal Nato report praised the Russian air missions over Syria to be “efficient and accurate”.
Germany’s Focus media outlet revealed in a report published last March Nato’s conclusion based on its reading of the Russian document. Citing confidential Nato analysis, Focus magazine said the Russian task-force in Syria has demonstrated “remarkable efficiency and professionalism”.
The document points out that Russia was deploying “40 warplanes and performing some 75 sorties a day, targeting Daesh terrorists”. Meanwhile, the US-led counter-terrorist coalition, deploying about 180 warplanes against Daesh, strikes only about 20 targets a day. The paper further says that though the number of Russian jets is clearly inferior to the coalition group’s, the higher frequency of Russian raids make them “more effective”. By late February this year, Russia was carrying out 60 raids daily, while the coalition was doing only about seven.
Russia began its air raids against targets inside Syria on September 30, 2015. Putin has simultaneously given orders to renovate and expand his country’s naval base in the Syrian port of Tartous. But it is commonly known that fighting terrorism is far from Russia’s main concern. President Putin’s major targets in Syria are two fold: In the short term, it seeks to prolong the Al Assad regime as long as it is politically required. But more importantly, it also seeks to re-affirm Russia as a major player in the region in the long run.
Mustapha Karkouti is a former president of the Foreign Press Association, London. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@mustaphatache
