Russia’s bold Syrian adventure

S P SETH

An important recent development in the increasingly complex Middle East imbroglio is Russia’s open military intervention in the Syrian theatre. Moscow has been known to support the Bashar al-Assad regime in all sorts of ways but had refrained from jumping into the fray militarily. It is now conducting aerial bombing of rebel positions, storing and deploying heavy armaments at its naval base in Syria and is even said to have some ground troops for limited operations. Moscow’s justification for this is multi-fold. First, it is doing this at the invitation of the legitimate Syrian government of President Assad. Second, it is doing it to fight terrorism, which the Assad regime has been doing on its own. Third, its timing would appear to be dictated by the seemingly imminent danger to the Assad regime from multiple jihadi and rebel forces converging on it.

For Moscow, even though IS is the main target, it is pointless to be splitting hair to determine who is who is who among the jihadis because, in the end, they are all terrorists wanting to create an even bigger blood bath of their presumed enemies. And they are also a threat to Russia and its interests as some among them are former Chechen rebels and commanders now fighting for IS and other jihadi groups. Russia would hate them and IS to score even more gains, with the prospect of some of the Chechen rebels and their new compatriots returning to settle old scores with the Russian state. Therefore, it is not simply bravado on Russia’s part to help Assad regime, it is also in its self-interest to deal with them as far away from the country as is possible.

There is also an important geopolitical reason. President Putin has never forgotten and forgiven the collapse of the Soviet state as a global power. He called it the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20^th century. Its shrunken version, the Russian state, he has been presiding over for much of the new century, has been facing further pressures to constrict and constrain its role, including a perceived threat from an expanded NATO that now also include some eastern European and Baltic countries that were either once under the protective Soviet umbrella or its integral part. Which led Moscow to push back when Ukraine was sought to be included in the European Union, with the prospect of its subsequent inclusion in NATO. The crisis in Ukraine is still unresolved for which Russia is facing a slew of economic sanctions from the US and its European allies.

Though there is no direct connection between Ukrainian and Syrian crises, Syria happens to be the only Middle Eastern country where Russia still has a naval base that allows it to maintain and project a countervailing and/or bridging role, and has economic interests. And it is not just Assad’s Syria that is welcoming of Russia’s interventionist role against IS and other jihadist outfits, Iran and Iraq are also part of this new coalition with Russia apparently in the lead role. Moscow reportedly will coordinate intelligence with Baghdad and likely with Tehran in the midst of reports that Iranian forces are already on the ground helping the Syrian regime.

In the situation as it is developing, both Moscow and Washington are keen to push back and destroy IS. But the important difference is that while Moscow would like this to be done through the agency of the Assad regime as the only functional entity committed to it, the US and its coalition allies would rather see Assad step aside in favour of a broad coalition of preferably secular US-supported elements. At the most, they might tolerate a role for Bashar al-Assad during the “transitional” phase when a new replacement arrangement is worked out. Moscow is not wedded to Assad per se but doesn’t see any workable “transitional” arrangement emerging out of the medley of jihadi groups and the occasional secular elements that are, in any case, being subverted or over-whelmed by IS.

President Obama says that President Putin is entering a “quagmire” with his air strikes in Syria and by hitching his wagon to the Assad regime. At another level, the US and its allies are highly critical of the reportedly Russian targeting of non-IS jihadi groups, including some of its favoured and supposedly secular elements like the Free Syrian Army. Though Moscow says it is primarily targeting IS, its foreign minister Sergey Lavrov was unapologetic for hitting other terrorist groups like al-Nusra and the likes. Asked to define other terrorist groups while he was in New York, he said, “If it looks like a terrorist, if it acts like a terrorist, if it walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist, it is a terrorist, right?” In other words, Russia’s definition of a terrorist group is quite wide to include almost all the rebels fighting the Syrian regime. Which invites sharp criticism from the US and some of its allies. But, in some cases, the comment is more nuanced.

For instance, Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop is more pragmatic. She reportedly has said that, “President Putin maintains that Assad is not their man and they are talking about the stability of the regime, rather than the survival of Assad per se.” As if she were standing up for Russia, Bishop went on, “Their [Moscow] concern is that if Assad is removed there will be created a vacuum and there is no one they can identify who could step up and run that part of Syria.” She believes that “there is a common view that Daesh [IS] is a devastatingly successful terrorist organization, that cannot be allowed to prevail.” And within that wider parameter Russia’s larger role, even envisaging a place for a reconstituted Syrian regime (without Bashar al-Assad, perhaps), would need to be recognized. And that goes for Iran too as a participant at an international conference, though one can see how Saudi Arabia, Qatar, other Gulf kingdoms and Turkey will be horrified at such a prospect.

The US, even if it were to heed Julie Bishop’s sensible interpretation of Russia’s important role (as it is of Iran), is likely to find itself vetoed by its Arab allies. Obama might be right that Russia would likely find herself in a “quagmire” with military intervention as has the US in Afghanistan, Iraq and now against IS, but such an outcome would be disastrous with IS eventually emerging as the dominant force not only in the Middle East but also in the Muslim world. And with its own freakish interpretation of Islam, it would need to be confronted and defeated. And that is only possible with a united international front where the US, Russia and other stakeholders recognize that the real enemy is IS and not the Syrian regime which, undoubtedly, is brutal in its own context. And that would be confronted when the larger IS threat is contained and/or beaten.

But don’t hold your breath about a united international front to confront IS. Russia’s intervention in Syria seems to be reviving elements of the old cold war, with NATO expressing deep concern about recent Russian incursions into Turkish air space for their Syrian bombing raids “despite Turkish authorities’ clear, timely and repeated warnings.”

Note: This article as first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au

Saudi Arabia, US and the Middle East

S P SETH

The backdrop to the Saudi King Salman’s recent US visit was largely a pervasive fear of Iranian regional ambitions, augmented due to the US nuclear deal with Iran. Which meant, as far as Riyadh was concerned, that the US was wavering in its absolute commitment to contain, prevent and stop Tehran from destabilizing the region to establish its own regional primacy. Until the nuclear deal, which envisages withdrawal of international economic sanctions against Iran in return for serious curbs on its nuclear ambitions, Iran was increasingly becoming an economic basket case with not much capacity to play a serious regional role, though it still managed to scare some of its Arab neighbours. And that is how Saudi Arabia, its Gulf allies and Israel, for its own reasons, wanted things to continue, hoping that, over time, this will seriously weaken Iran’s clerical regime and/or bring it down, thus ensuring the stability of the Saudi-led and overseen conservative political order in the Middle East. Having failed to prevent the US-Iran nuclear deal, Riyadh sought to show its displeasure in all sorts of ways, including an earlier absence by King Salman at an Obama-hosted Gulf summit in the US designed to assure its Middle Eastern allies that its regional strategy remained essentially unchanged despite the nuclear deal with Iran. Which is that they will have virtual US defence umbrella, including all sorts of advanced weaponry the US would continue to sell to refurbish their defence.

What sort of threat(s) Iran poses is generally left vague apart from a general sense that Iran is somehow a malevolent regional force out to destabilize/destroy its Sunni Arab neighbours. And its evil designs are seen in Syria, its support and arming of Hezbollah and in Yemen where Saudi and its allied forces are bombing the Houthis, said to be establishing their control over the country with Iranian support. And, of course, Iran is also supposed to exercise influence and control over Iraq’s Shia regime. In all these places, though, the so-called Iranian proxies are in a precarious situation, with the US largely working against them.

The one possible area of strategic convergence between Iran and the US is the expanding IS control in parts of Iraq and Syria. The US regards IS as a greater danger ideologically, politically and strategically than other scattered jihadi elements in the region. Its appeal to many disaffected Muslim youth, particularly in the west, is quite fetching as seen in their recruitment to the cause at home and on the ground in the region. And so far, despite massive US aerial targeting of IS assets in Iraq and Syria and the engagement of the US-trained and equipped Iraqi army against the enemy, IS seems to be doing pretty well. The US objective to degrade, destroy and ultimately annihilate IS doesn’t appear to have made much headway, if at all. In the midst of it, Iranian trained and equipped Shia militias seem to be the only effective counterforce with real potential to push back IS. And the US is quite supportive, if not encouraging, of Iranian role. Which makes the Saudis jittery about the future strategic evolution of the region where Iran might come to have an influence on US regional policy.

Even though the Saudis recognize at some level that IS also has Saudi monarchy as its target, as seen in a series of recent explosions in the kingdom, they tend to gloss over it by regarding Iran as a bigger threat. During his recent US visit, King Salman seems to have been reassured, to the extent possible; that the United States doesn’t have any short or medium term plans to make Iran into a strategic friend/ally. And it is showing this by selling huge amounts of weaponry to Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies. In 2014 alone, Saudi Arabia, now the world’s biggest arms buyer, reportedly spent $80 billion on arms purchases, much of it from the United States. And the UAE spent $23 billion on arms purchases. The Gulf States are awash with sophisticated foreign arms, most of them from the United States with trainers, consultants and any number of experts and handlers hired to do the job if and when necessary.

With almost no real strategic road map to bring about stability and security to the region, such seemingly ad hoc deployment of military resources is a further invitation to disaster in a region that is already on the brink in more than one way. And Riyadh still feels threatened and worried about some perceived change in the US Middle East policy. Bruce Riedel, a US strategic analyst at the Brookings Institution, has this to say of Saudi bombing of Yemen, where they fear the Houthis are engaged in a proxy war for Iran: “What the Saudis really want from Obama is unquestioning and complete political support for their war and its enormous carnage. [And] They have it—and the Yemeni people are paying for the Iran nuclear deal.” The US needs to go out of its way to assure the Saudis that its overall Middle Eastern strategy of supporting their friends and allies remains uncompromised by the US-Iran nuclear deal.

And this in a way might encourage Saudi Arabia to further push the limits of its regional primacy. As Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi reportedly told reporters in Washington in April 2015, “The dangerous thing is, we don’t know what the Saudis want to do [after Yemen]. Is Iraq within their radar? That’s very, very dangerous—the idea that you intervene in another state, unprovoked, just for regional ambition is wrong.” He added, “Saddam did it before—see what it has done to the country.”

In other words, the Middle Eastern situation is becoming messier and messier with not much thought, if any, being paid to exploring political solutions. And an important reason for this is the proliferation and easy access to weapons all around for state actors from the United States and other external powers, and to Jihadis of all sorts from their regional benefactors and promoters. And IS helps itself to these weapons and treasures by raiding and capturing such a vast array of weapons all around. No wonder that there is no prospect anywhere in sight of any sort of political solution. And here we haven’t even dealt with the increasingly dangerous situation in Syria, and Turkey’s no-holds barred offensive against the Kurds.  

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au 

       

Turkey’s political calculus

S P SETH

Turkey’s President Recep Tayip Endogan with his Ottoman complex, which requires him to play a determining role in the old domains of the Ottoman Empire, has not quite found the role that suits his temperament. He is still testing the waters as his recent attacking role simultaneously against IS and the Kurds testifies. His earlier attempts to shape Middle Eastern politics following the Arab Spring didn’t make much headway. In Syria, for instance, he wanted Bashar al-Assad’s regime to make way for the rebels, which the Syrian leader simply ignored. He then wanted the US to get rid of the dictator when he ignored Obama’s ‘red line’ by using chemical weapons.

True, the US too wanted to get rid of the Syrian dictator but didn’t find any reliable and effective alternative among the rebels to replace the Assad regime. The situation got murky with multiplicity of rebel groups of varied hues of jihadi credentials, often at war with each other.  The US found it difficult to distinguish between the secular nationalists and downright extremists. Not surprisingly, Washington started wavering, not sure if betting on these heterogeneous groups was a good idea. Therefore, its enthusiasm regarding immediate removal of the Assad regime slackened, though he was and still is the odious dictator. Such wavering on the US’s part enraged Turkey, and Ankara reckons it led to the rise of IS to become the menace it is today.

The rise of IS and its territorial expansion across the border between Iraq and Syria has created some difficult problems for Turkey. As a US and NATO ally, it was expected to be an integral and active part of the coalition against IS. But Turkey had reservations about playing an active military role, including providing bases for US aerial attacks on IS positions in Syria, which didn’t endear it to its western allies. From Turkey’s viewpoint, the collaboration between the Kurds and the US against IS had created a virtual alliance between the two.  And this was seen to be strengthening Kurdish nationalism straddling Iraq, Turkey and Syria.

Earlier, in 2013, Turkey and Kurdistan Workers Party---commonly known by its acronym, PKK---the militant Kurdish movement for an autonomous/independent Kurdish region within Turkey--- had entered into a ceasefire, which had largely held. But when IS operatives attacked a cultural centre in a Turkish border town killing 32 people, most of them young Kurd activists keen on helping their compatriots in their reconstruction work across the Syrian border, that seemed to have settled the argument for Turkey to go after both IS and the Kurds. The reported killing of a couple of Turkish soldiers around the time was blamed on the Kurds. And Turkey unleashed a barrage of aerial strikes against PKK mountain hideouts in northern Iraq, where they had fled and established military camps across the Turkish border. At the same time, Turkey also expanded its operations against Kurds in southeastern Turkey. In other words, it was a virtual declaration of war against the Kurds, inside and outside Turkey. At the same time Turkey was also attacking IS positions, even as it allowed the US to use its bases for aerial attacks and more intensive surveillance.  

This has put the US and NATO in a tight spot. The use of Turkish bases has certainly made operations against IS more effective, and Ankara’s offensive against IS a valuable addition to the US-led coalition. The downside, though, is that by declaring a war on the Kurds, it tends to undercut an important US ally on the ground in the war against IS. In other words, while the US gains Turkey as an active ally, the Kurds will be fighting war on two fronts against Turkey as well as IS. And they happen to be the one really effective force standing up to IS on the ground. And by going after Kurds, Turkey appears to be helping IS. If so, Turkey is using this situation to finish off and/or weaken the Kurdish autonomy/independence movement by abandoning any pretense of political reconciliation with its Kurdish community for which there had been some forward movement in the last few years.

Concerned with perceived Kurdish empowerment from a virtual alliance with the US against IS, Erdogan’s Turkey was also shaken by the recent parliamentary elections in which the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority. The sizeable vote of over 13 per cent for the predominantly Kurdish party gave them a number of seats in the parliament, making it difficult for the AKP to form a government. Losing parliamentary majority has upset Erdogan’s plans to use parliament to change the constitution to become Turkey’s executive president. And by raising the spectre of a security threat to the country both at home and abroad from Kurds and IS, he is seeking to create a national emergency to subvert the political process in the country. For instance, there is talk of stripping Kurdish members of the Turkish parliament of their parliamentary immunity, ostensibly for security reasons. Or else, hold new parliamentary elections against the backdrop of a national security threat to rally people around the ruling party. We will soon know which way Erdogan will sway— stripping the Kurdish parliamentary members of their immunity or hold new elections. Probably, he will do both successively. 

At the same time, the US and NATO would find it difficult to criticize the Erdogan government for going after the Kurds on charges of terrorism. PKK is branded a terrorist organization in many countries. Already the US is saying that Turkey has a right to defend itself, more or less absolving it of extreme measures. It is extraordinary that up to now IS was considered the biggest threat. Turkey has now changed the calculus to its advantage by putting the focus also on the Kurds, at least when it comes to its security. Turkish’s induction as an active US partner against IS might even prove a liability by completely muddying an already murky picture.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au  

What drives Islamic State?

S P SETH

Islamic State (IS) is the stuff that nightmares are made of. We don’t know much about its working, though some recent studies and reporting is starting to throw some light on it. What is generally known about IS, though, is that it is a killing machine given to beheading, maiming and whatever else might create the maximum fear among its enemies. And as part of creating fear, it encourages its followers/sympathizers to act in any way that will terrorize people, such as a ‘lone wolf’ attack and/or blowing up Shia mosques. These and other acts are designed to make even ordinary people going about their ordinary lives imbibe a sense of terror lurking anywhere and everywhere. Saudi Arabia is a case in point, where IS activists/jihadis wrought havoc recently in a series of explosions targeting the country’s Shias and their places of worship. Saudi Arabia has reportedly arrested hundreds of suspected IS operatives.

Another recent example is the bombing of a cultural centre in a Turkish town on Syria-Turkish border targeting Kurdish activists gathered there to help their fellow Kurds across the border in reconstruction of their shattered lives and battered town. This has brought Turkey into direct conflict, surprisingly, with both the Kurds and IS. Ankara was hoping they would tear each other out, with Turkey standing aside as an observer and/or occasionally nudging one or the other in the desired direction. It has obviously not worked. And IS continues to make waves. So much so, here in Australia, the country’s prime minister is warning people that IS is coming after each and everyone.

In a similar situation when al Qaeda sprung upon the world stage with the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, they were seen as larger than life. And despite the elimination of Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda brand is still around here and there. However, it is largely eclipsed by IS. And one important reason is that, unlike al Qaeda, IS a territorial entity where its writ runs while al Qaeda leadership was on the run or sheltering in Pakistan after the US invasion of Afghanistan. And by continuing not only to exist but, at times, to expand their territory and message, IS tend to perpetuate their cause and myth. And by announcing their self-styled caliphate, they have pronounced a future to revive and recreate the glory of an Islamic past.

Which resonates with many Muslims even though most Muslims would be appalled by their methodology of terrorist violence. And it resonates with many Muslims because they feel a great sense of injustice and humiliation since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the caliphate. The period following that saw the division of the remnants of the Ottoman territory of the Middle East into British and French colonial outposts, and the emergence of an independent Israel out of the Palestinian territory. The imposition of a Jewish state largely supported by the US and its allies in the midst of a Muslim world, only added to the outrage and humiliation of a people that were still wrestling with their downsizing. And this hurt continues with Israel still running riot with the Palestinian land by building more and more settlements to virtually negate the idea of a sovereign Palestinian homeland. The IS is championing the Palestinian cause too, even seeking to supplant Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The oil rich states of Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners are also in IS’s sight. In other words, IS is tapping into the deeply humiliated psyche of the Muslim world.

But in the process it is also antagonizing many in the Muslim world by its wanton and ghoulish use and display of violence. And such representation of Islam certainly doesn’t strike chord with many Muslims. It is important to remember that Muslims are not an undifferentiated lot that might fit into an image created and projected by IS. While most of them follow their faith, their interpretation and practice of their religion is practical and reflect local characteristics. Besides, they have their national and sectarian divide and differences. Therefore, this fundamentalist view of a global Muslim community just pining to rally under the IS flag is overly done.

Having said this, it is also worth noting that within their territorial entity, IS is trying to run a brutal, but in its own way, efficient governing machine that works as long as those under its control follow rules and edicts couched as Islamic precepts. According to Tim Arango, reporting from Istanbul quoting one Raqqa resident (IS’s de facto capital in Syria), “You can travel from Raqqa to Mosul and no one will dare to stop you even if you carry $1millon.” It is partly because the IS functions at a certain level according to their own raw morality but, partly, because of widespread fear of draconian punishments if caught. Arango adds that, “Now there is a limited sense of order…, a low bar, perhaps, but a reality amid years of war and anarchy…” against the backdrop of more than ten years of war in Iraq and a brutal civil war in Syria for the last 4 years. This makes people feel that “[in IS] there is a functioning state.” And as long as people “avoid any dissent, they can largely go about their lives.”

According to a new book, Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate, by Abdel Bari Atwan (to be published in September and previewed in The New York Review of Books), the IS is a well structured entity with two deputies (formerly members of  Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party) who assist the caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi with a hierarchical structure down the line. There are said to be advisory councils and several departments run by committees, with leaders of each department sitting in Baghdadi’s “cabinet”. And the most powerful of these councils is the Sharia Council, which is said to oversee draconian implementation of the penalties for “crimes against God’s limits” that include amputations and capital punishment.

According to Atwan’s account, the display of horrific atrocities put up on the Internet are part of a coherent strategy. To quote the author, “Crucifixions, beheadings, the hearts of the rape victims cut out and placed upon their chests, mass executions, homosexuals being pushed from high buildings, severed heads impaled on railings or brandished by grinning ‘jihadist’ children… these gruesome images of brutal violence are carefully packaged and distributed via Islamic State’s media department.” He adds, “As each new atrocity outdoes the last, front page headlines across the world’s media are guaranteed.” With an estimated force of anywhere between 30,000 and 100,000, IS has certainly been able to create a larger than life image through gruesome images that also strike terror and revulsion among people.

At the same time, for its followers IS is “an emotionally attractive place where people ‘belong’, where everyone is a ‘brother’ or ‘sister’…” and where the glory of ‘martyrdom’ is within easy reach. And this governing machine has its own sources of revenue through illicit sale of oil and through taxes. Its budget is said to be managed by an Economic Council. In January 2015, for instance, overall receipts were reported to be $2 billion, with a surplus of $250 million added to the war chest. Therefore, it is a well-oiled machine in all its aspects and seems to strike a chord among a section of the dispossessed and disenchanted among the Muslim youth in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. Those working for it and affiliated with it feel empowered striking terror among its hapless victims.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au