Category Archives: Syria

Russia in Syria: What damage will it do?

Julian Borger writes: Sending troops and military hardware into the middle of another country’s civil war to prop up a ruthless and despised dictator rarely turns out well for anyone, and all the signs suggest that Vladimir Putin’s adventure in Syria will be no exception.

Not all the damage Russia wreaks will be self-inflicted. There are likely be plenty of other losers. Most analysts agree that in the absence of a very quick pivot to diplomacy leading to a real political transition in Damascus, the intervention is likely to prolong the conflict and escalate it, drawing other regional powers in more deeply.

The only beneficiaries may be Islamic State (Isis) recruiters, who can only be grateful for the Russian orthodox church’s designation of Putin’s expeditionary campaign as a “holy war”. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Russia estimates its air strike campaign in Syria could last three to four months, the head of the lower house of the Russian parliament’s foreign affairs committee said on Friday.

“There is always a risk of being bogged down but in Moscow, we are talking about an operation of three to four months,” Alexei Pushkov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, told French radio station Europe 1. He added that the strikes were going to intensify. [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: Russian warplanes have struck targets deep inside the Islamic State’s heartland province of Raqqa for the first time, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday.

The strikes were carried out against an Islamic State training camp and a command post near the city of Raqqa, expanding the scope of a three-day old air campaign that had previously focused on attacking rebel groups opposed to the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

Those attacks continued Friday, with one U.S.-backed rebel group in the northwestern province of Hama saying its bases had been hit for the sixth time in three days by Russian jets.

Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for Russia’s Defense Ministry, said the Raqqa strikes took place overnight Thursday and were among 18 sorties conducted over the previous 24 hours, bringing to 30 the total number of raids since Moscow launched its air campaign in Syria on Wednesday. [Continue reading…]

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Iraq PM open to Russian airstrikes on ISIS

FRANCE24 reports: Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told FRANCE24 in an exclusive interview broadcast on Thursday that he is open to allowing Russia to carry out air strikes against Islamic State group militants in Iraq.

“Not yet. It is a possibility. If we get the offer, we will consider it,” Abadi told FRANCE24.

“It is in our interest to share information with Russia. Russia has a lot of information. The more information we gather the more I can protect the Iraqi people,” Abadi added. [Continue reading…]

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Wake-up call on Syrian army weakness prompted Russian intervention

Ian Black writes: Syrian military weakness, painfully exposed over the last few months, is the main reason for direct Russian intervention in the war – whether its goal is to strike at Islamic State or, more likely, to take on any rebel force fighting Bashar al-Assad in order to shore up his position and stave off demands that he step down.

Officials and analysts say Moscow decided to deepen its involvement after the fall of the northern towns of Idlib and nearby Jisr al-Shughour in May served as a “wake-up call” about the parlous state of the Syrian army. Both were taken by the Jaysh al-Fateh (the Victory Army), a coalition of Islamist rebels.

Russia’s move was prompted in part by Assad’s other main ally, Iran, which plays a powerful though discreet role in Syria but is usually reluctant to commit its own forces. “The Iranians told the Russians bluntly: if you don’t intervene, Bashar al-Assad will fall, and we are not in a position to keep propping him up,” said a Damascus-based diplomat. [Continue reading…]

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How Russia bombed a UN Heritage Site in Syria

NOW reports: An area of over six square kilometers ignited all of a sudden. The whole region was ablaze in seconds. Kafranbel-based Raed Fares said he has seen the town being bombed by the Syrian regime before. “But I have never seen anything like this in my life,” he told NOW, minutes after the Russian jets had bombed the outskirts of his town. “I don’t know what kind of missile this was, but the impact was huge, scary.”

The Russian jets showed up around noon on Thursday and the bomb hit an archeological Byzantine complex in the vicinity of Kafranbel. “It used to be a refugee camp until recently, but the Free Syrian Army brigades returned the civilians to their homes in the towns in the area so that the historical monuments wouldn’t be damaged,” he said.

Kafranbel is a small town in Syria’s Idlib Governorate. Before the war it was home to roughly 15,000 people, mostly Sunni Muslims. It was Syria’s largest producer of figs and a major producer of olives. It also sits on a dead Byzantine city and is surrounded by some of the famous Forgotten Cities, the 700 abandoned settlements in northwest Syria between Aleppo and Idlib that were abandoned between the 8th and 10th centuries. Serjilla, Shanshrah, and Al-Bara are close to modern-day Kafranbel. The Russians bombed Shanshrah, a UN World Heritage Site, twice on Thursday. [Continue reading…]

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Will Russia’s move ruin Erdogan’s plan for Syria?

Kadri Gursel writes: Ankara is now likely to be forced to end the de facto situation — virtually a no-fly zone — it has enforced casually in border areas since 2012. In June 2012, after a Turkish reconnaissance plane was shot down by an air defense system in Syria, Ankara announced new rules of engagement, including the interception of Syrian aircraft flying close to Turkish airspace. There has been no indication so far that these rules of engagement have changed. Since the summer of 2012, Turkish media have occasionally reported incidents of Turkish fighter jets taking off from their bases to chase off Syrian planes and helicopters flying “too close” to the border.

Ankara-backed Islamist groups fighting Assad’s regime have emerged as the main beneficiary of these rules of engagement, which have effectively served as a Turkish air cover for their military and logistical operations in border regions.

Now, the following question arises: Will Ankara stick to its rules of engagement if airplanes approaching the border have the Russian star on their wings? My guess is that the rules of engagement will not be enforced against Russian aircraft, thus ending the de facto air cover for the rebels.

Similarly, Ankara’s intention to create a safe zone along the border stretch from Jarablus to Azaz inside Syria has become completely meaningless since the Russian intervention. [Continue reading…]

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Obama’s failure to develop a coherent strategy left the field open for Putin

David Ignatius writes: [After the P5+1 successful concluded the Iran nuclear deal] President Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry were hopeful about working with the Russians on a “managed transition” away from a weakened President Bashar al-Assad. “I do think the window has opened a crack for us to get a political resolution in Syria, partly because both Russia and Iran, I think, recognize that the trend lines are not good for Assad,” Obama told reporters at the White House on Aug. 5.

Back then, the enthusiasts for greater Russian involvement in the Middle East included many traditional U.S. allies who also seemed eager to play the Russian card. Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman traveled to Moscow; so did United Arab Emirates leader Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir met with Kerry and Lavrov in Qatar. An ominous sign of what was really ahead — a Russian-Iranian alliance to bolster Assad — came with the Moscow visit of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force. But otherwise, this looked until a week ago like a diplomatic love boat.

Obama and his allies failed to anticipate that Russian President Vladimir Putin would come armed to the negotiating table — and prepared to use his weapons to gain military leverage. Putin embodies a kind of muscular diplomacy the United States disdained over the past three years of halfhearted attempts to train and equip the Syrian opposition. Obama’s failure to develop a coherent strategy left the field open for Putin.

The speed and decisiveness of Russian action appear to have taken the administration by surprise, prompting Kerry to voice “grave concerns.” A U.S. official said the intelligence community predicted that Russia would provide indirect support to Assad, such as training and advisers, but that “direct military intervention was not considered the most likely” response.

A source close to Assad’s regime blasted what he claimed was chronic American misunderstanding of Syria. “The scandal is how amazingly incompetent American intelligence is,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Not only were U.S. officials predicting until weeks ago that the Russians could abandon Assad . . . U.S. intelligence could not even pick up on what the Russians were doing, the logistical, technical, military and manpower preparations . . . [to] execute such an unprecedented mission.” [Continue reading…]

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Life in the ‘Islamic State’

In this five-part project, the Washington Post’s Kevin Sullivan reports on key aspects of daily life in the so-called “caliphate,” including the failing economy, the devastated education system, a justice system based on violence and fear, and the constant terror faced by women and girls.

Life in the ‘Islamic State’: Spoils for the rulers, terror for the ruled

The white vans come out at dinnertime, bringing hot meals to unmarried Islamic State fighters in the city of Hit in western Iraq.

A team of foreign women, who moved from Europe and throughout the Arab world to join the Islamic State, work in communal kitchens to cook the fighters’ dinners, which are delivered to homes confiscated from people who fled or were killed, according to the city’s former mayor.

The Islamic State has drawn tens of thousands of people from around the world by promising paradise in the Muslim homeland it has established on conquered territory in Syria and Iraq.

But in reality, the militants have created a brutal, two-tiered society, where daily life is starkly different for the occupiers and the occupied, according to interviews with more than three dozen people who are now living in, or have recently fled, the Islamic State. [Continue reading…]

Women in the ‘Islamic State’: ‘Till martyrdom do us part’

Somewhere in Syrian territory controlled by Islamic State militants, a jihadist from the Netherlands posted a cheerful photo on Twitter, showing off an Oreo cheesecake that she had made.

It was a fizzy propaganda moment that she shared with others who might be thinking about traveling to Syria to join the cause. It also had a very Islamic State twist: The cheesecake was photographed next to a grenade.

About 200 miles to the south, in an oven-hot refugee camp in Jordan, Rudeina, 17, said her life under the Islamic State in northern Syria, which she fled in April, was miserable. She said she stayed inside her house near the city of Raqqa, the Islamic State capital, for more than a year, terrified that if she went outside she would be abducted and forced to marry a foreign fighter.

“They cut the Internet, but we didn’t even want it anymore,” she said. “If we looked at the Internet, we would see people living in the outside world. That made us sad. Seeing the outside world was just another sorrow.” [Continue reading…]

Justice in the ‘Islamic State’: A climate of fear and violence

Islamic State militants dragged the blindfolded man into the main square in a town near the city of Raqqa, their self-proclaimed capital in Syria. It was Friday, right after prayers, when the market was filled with people. The fighters loudly announced that the man was a government spy, and they pulled off his blindfold so that everyone could see his face.

Nabiha, a 42-year-old woman who fled the town in April and now lives in a refugee camp in Jordan, recalled her disgust as she watched the militants force the man down on a wooden block normally used to slaughter sheep, then raise a heavy butcher’s cleaver.

“It was just one swing,” said Nabiha, who asked that her last name not be used, fearing for her safety. “His body went one way, and his head went the other. I will never forget it.”

The Islamic State uses its brutal and often arbitrary justice system to control the millions of people who live in its territory. By publicly beheading and crucifying people suspected even of disloyalty, the militants have created a culture of horror and fear that has made it virtually impossible for people to rise up against them. [Continue reading…]

Economy in the ‘Islamic State’: Where the poor starve and the tax man carries a whip

Before the Islamic State captured Faten Humayda’s town in northern Syria nearly two years ago, a tank of propane gas for her stove cost the equivalent of 50 cents. But as the militants settled in, the cost shot up to $32, forcing Humayda, a 70-year-old grandmother, to cook over an open fire in the back yard.

“It used to be paradise,” she said, describing her former life along the Euphrates River, while sitting in a metal hut in the Azraq refu­gee camp in Jordan, where she arrived in May with the help of smugglers.

The Islamic State has tried to do what al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups never attempted: establish an actual state, with government institutions and a functioning economy. Although the militants have had some success at governing, millions of people under their control find food, fuel and other basics of daily life either impossible to come by or too expensive to afford. [Continue reading…]

Education in the ‘Islamic State’: For boys, God and guns; for girls, God and cooking

War closed most schools in Yahyah Hadidi’s home town in 2013, as battles raged between Syrian rebels and the government.

Hadidi, a recent college graduate with a passion for education, decided to do something about it. He started conducting impromptu classes in an abandoned school in his neighborhood, drawing more than 50 boys and girls each day.

Then the Islamic State arrived in early 2014 and ordered all schools closed.

Hadidi was crushed, and he asked for permission to reopen his school, in the village of Manbij between the northern cities of Raqqa and Aleppo.

He said a large, bearded fighter from Saudi Arabia told him that if he wanted to teach, he could conduct religious education classes at the mosque, for boys only, under Islamic State supervision. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey can’t be Europe’s gatekeeper

Sinan Ulgen writes: Next week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey will visit Brussels and tell his European Union counterparts that Europe must act decisively if it wants to stop the massive flow of refugees leaving his country and entering the European Union by land and sea. Turkey is willing to help halt the exodus, but the union cannot expect it to do so if European governments offer Turkey little in return.

Unlike Europe, Turkey decided to adopt an open-door policy for refugees at the beginning of the Syrian crisis in 2011. It did so out of humanitarian concern and a misplaced optimism about the weakness of the Assad regime. But now the refugee population in Turkey has grown to approximately two million.

Turkey’s ability and willingness to accept this huge number seems to have lulled European policy makers into complacency. Their vision for dealing with the tragic consequences of the Syrian war has, it seems, been limited to hoping that Turkey will act as an eternal buffer zone for Europe. That is a pipe dream. [Continue reading…]

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Putin enters Syria’s quagmire

Joyce Karam writes: In September of 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin took to the pages of the New York Times to warn the United States that a potential strike against Syria “will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders.” Two years later, Moscow starts out its own bombing campaign in Syria, targeting so far moderate rebels in an attempt to save the Assad regime and improve its geopolitical stature.

Russia’s political posturing aside, Syria today is no place to achieve grandiosity, or claim victories in the Middle East. It is a humanitarian disaster unseen in recent Arab history, a magnet for mercenaries from Afghanistan to Nigeria, and a breeding ground for extremism. If anything, Russia’s intervention on behalf of the Assad regime and aided by Hezbollah and IRGC, will only prolong the conflict, prompt further escalation while derailing the path to a political settlement.

The first day of Russian air strikes targeting anti-Assad moderate rebels, leaves no doubt that Putin’s entry into the Syrian war is primarily about saving Assad and not fighting ISIS. Putin is not even shy about it, telling Charlie Rose last Sunday when asked if the goal is to save Assad, “That’s right, that’s how it is…we provide assistance to legitimate Syrian authorities.” Problem is these authorities have lost all their legitimacy, and Syria can’t be saved absent of a major political compromise that neither Assad nor Russia have been willing to make.

For Russia, compromising on Assad is a sign of weakness and a redline in its negotiations with the West. Throughout the conflict and while Putin would make public statements that “we are not that preoccupied with the fate of Assad’s regime”, it is the exactly fate of Assad regime that halted the progress. Russia has rejected a timetable for Assad to leave power, and is against an overhaul of the Syrian security apparatus that it has invested in since the 1970s. [Continue reading…]

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Foreign intervention escalates: Iranian troops arrive in Syria for ground offensive backed by Russia – sources

Reuters reports: Hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria in the last 10 days and will soon join government forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies in a major ground offensive backed by Russian air strikes, two Lebanese sources told Reuters.

“The (Russian) air strikes will in the near future be accompanied by ground advances by the Syrian army and its allies,” said one of the sources familiar with political and military developments in the conflict.

“It is possible that the coming land operations will be focused in the Idlib and Hama countryside,” the source added.

The two sources said the operation would be aimed at recapturing territory lost by President Bashar al-Assad’s government to rebels.

It points to an emerging military alliance between Russia and Assad’s other main allies – Iran and Hezbollah – focused on recapturing areas of northwestern Syria that were seized by insurgents in rapid advances earlier this year.

“The vanguard of Iranian ground forces began arriving in Syria: soldiers and officers specifically to participate in this battle. They are not advisors … we mean hundreds with equipment and weapons. They will be followed by more,” the second source said. Iraqis would also take part in the operation, the source said. [Continue reading…]

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The West cannot escape the effects of Middle East turmoil

Nouriel Roubini writes: With the US on the way to achieving energy independence, there is a risk that America and its Western allies will consider the Middle East less strategically important. That belief is wishful thinking: a burning Middle East can destabilize the world in many ways.

First, some of these conflicts may yet lead to an actual supply disruption, as in 1973, 1979, and 1990. Second, civil wars that turn millions of people into refugees will destabilize Europe economically and socially, which is bound to hit the global economy hard. And the economies and societies of frontline states like Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, already under severe stress from absorbing millions of such refugees, face even greater risks.

Third, prolonged misery and hopelessness for millions of Arab young people will create a new generation of desperate jihadists who blame the West for their despair. Some will undoubtedly find their way to Europe and the US and stage terrorist attacks.

So, if the West ignores the Middle East or addresses the region’s problems only through military means (the US has spent $2 trillion in its Afghan and Iraqi wars, only to create more instability), rather than relying on diplomacy and financial resources to support growth and job creation, the region’s instability will only worsen. Such a choice would haunt the US and Europe – and thus the global economy – for decades to come. [Continue reading…]

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Why Putin gambled on airstrikes in Syria – and what might come next

By Scott Lucas, University of Birmingham

For those watching closely, the signal for Russia’s first airstrikes came in a statement early on September 30 by Kremlin spokesman Sergei Ivanov, just after the upper house of the parliament authorised military operations:

To observe international law, one of two conditions has to be met – either a UN Security Council resolution or a request by a country, on the territory of which an airstrike is delivered, about military assistance.

In this respect, I want to inform you that the president of the Syrian Arab Republic has addressed the leadership of our country with a request of military assistance.

Within hours, witnesses were reporting that Russian jet fighters were bombing parts of Hama and Homs Provinces in western Syria. Activists said scores of people – almost all civilians – had been killed, disseminating videos and photographs of slain or injured children.

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Top NATO general: Russians starting to build air defense bubble over Syria

The Washington Post reports: While Russia’s stated goal in moving into Syria is to fight the Islamic State, NATO’s top commander believes Russia’s new presence includes the first pieces of an intricate layer of defensive systems deployed to hinder U.S. and coalition operations in the region.

“As we see the very capable air defense [systems] beginning to show up in Syria, we’re a little worried about another A2/AD bubble being created in the eastern Mediterranean,” said Breedlove to an audience at the German Marshall Fund Monday.

A2/AD stands for anti-access/area denial. During the early stages of warfare, A2/AD could have been a moat around a castle, or spikes dug into the ground — anything to keep the enemy off a certain swathe of territory. In the 21st century, however, A2/AD is a combination of systems such as surface-to-air missile batteries and anti-ship missiles deployed to prevent forces from entering or traversing a certain area — from land, air or sea. [Continue reading…]

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Russian air strikes target Assad regime’s opponents

Reuters reports: Russian air strikes in Syria are targeting a list of well-known militant organizations, not only Islamic State, the Kremlin said on Thursday, a day after the launch of its aerial campaign opened up a volatile new phase in the conflict.

Moscow had previously framed its campaign as primarily aimed at Islamic State militants, saying it feared Russian and other ex-Soviet citizens who belong to the group would shift their focus to their home countries if they were not stopped in Syria.

But on Thursday, after the United States and rebels on the ground suggested Russian strikes had so far not focused on Islamic State, it said its operation was pitched more broadly.

“These organizations (on the target list) are well-known and the targets are chosen in coordination with the armed forces of Syria,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, when asked if Russia and the West had different views on what constituted a terrorist group. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: The start of the Russian air campaign against Syrian rebels on Wednesday unfolded in territory largely off limits to journalists, but at least some of the bombing runs appear to have been well documented on YouTube. Within hours of the first sorties, Russia’s Air Force released aerial views of some strikes, and footage recorded by militants and activists on the ground appeared to show the impact of the bombing.

Perhaps the most contested footage was uploaded by the Russian Defense Ministry and showed what officials described as evidence of three strikes “against Islamic State terrorist organization positions in Syria.”

However, an analysis of the topography shown in the video by a team of Russian bloggers who honed their craft parsing social media evidence of the war in Ukraine suggested that the strikes had taken place in a part of Syria controlled not by the Islamic State but by rival insurgent groups that oppose both Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, and the Islamic State. [Continue reading…]

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‘They were torturing to kill’: Inside Syria’s death machine

Garance le Caisne writes: For two years, between 2011 and 2013, the former Syrian military photographer known only as Caesar used a police computer in Damascus to copy thousands of photographs of detainees who were tortured to death in Bashar al-Assad’s jails. The media have run numerous stories about the man who managed to smuggle astonishing evidence of crimes against humanity out of the country – at great risk to himself and his family – but he had never been interviewed.

Month after month, for two years, this man, who has remained anonymous, took photographs of tortured, starved and burnt bodies. His orders were to photograph the bodies in order to document prisoners’ deaths. He then secretly made copies and transferred them on to USB keys so that he could smuggle them out of his office, hidden in his shoes or his belt, and pass them to a friend who could get them out of the country.

The terrorists of Islamic State proclaim their atrocities on social networks; the Syrian state hides its misdeeds in the silence of its dungeons. Before Caesar, no insider had supplied evidence of the existence of the Syrian death machine. And these photos and documents were damning.

I had to find Caesar. The spectacular advances made by Isis, and the growing number of terrorist attacks by its followers, were drowning out revelations about the Syrian regime’s atrocities. The conflict had already left more than 220,000 dead. Half of all civilians had been forced out of their homes, others had been shelled, their towns and villages besieged by Assad’s army. Caesar’s pictures could put Damascus’s abuses centre stage again. He had to be found. Journalists from all over the world were already looking for him. I knew it would be hard – and it was. Twice I almost gave up. But I kept going, because it was imperative that this man should talk. His testimony was essential if we were to understand the horror at the heart of the regime. [Continue reading…]

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Five reasons why including Assad in a ‘managed transition’ will fail

Neil Quilliam writes: Yesterday President Barack Obama called for a political transition in Syria that would leave Bashar al-Assad temporarily in power. It is a proposal that seems to enjoy support among other Western leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and UK Prime Minister David Cameron.

Though a bad policy, the move should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Syrian history. The Assads — father and son — have learned that if they dig in and wait for the tide to turn, they will not only survive, but prosper. As Bente Scheller argues, they are masters at the ‘waiting game’.

Assad’s back was firmly against the wall when he crossed US President Obama’s red line in the summer of 2013 by using chemical weapons, but then Russia stepped in to save him and embarrass the US. The subsequent advance of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in June 2014 handed Assad another opportunity to sidestep international opprobrium, which he used to intensify atrocities against civilians. Since the US-led anti-ISIS coalition came together and prioritized degrading and destroying that organization, Assad’s regime has, in effect, been let off the hook. This despite the Syrian regime being responsible for more civilian fatalities and injuries than ISIS — at least 110,000 according to some sources.

Although Western leaders may grit their teeth, they are now willing to allow Assad to be part of a ‘managed transition’. Their own transition to accepting Assad is the result of a combination of factors, namely the likely longevity of the civil war and its impact on the EU in terms of refugees, unerring Russian and Iranian commitment to securing the regime, and their own diplomatic shortcomings. Western powers, it seems, have no answers, haunted as they are by the ghosts of interventions past. In short, they have nothing left in their diplomatic tool bag and begrudgingly accept that Russia and Iran are better positioned to impose a settlement; one that includes Assad. [Continue reading…]

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Is Putin using Syria to distract Russians from hardships at home?

Alan Philps writes: In Moscow, enormous efforts are in hand to raise spirits. During the balmy evenings, spectacular sound and light shows are projected on to such monuments as the Bolshoi Theatre and St Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square, all with a strongly patriotic soundtrack.

With people enjoying the last of the warmth before the onset of winter, it is hard to detect a sense of impending doom. But the storm clouds are gathering. With inflation at 16 per cent, the oil price low and Russia unable to borrow from western financial markets, the only real prospect is gradual impoverishment of the poor and middle classes. The super rich can move their wealth abroad and speak confidently of Russia’s “resilience”, which they say is always underestimated by the West.

So far the grim economic prospects have been cushioned by the undeniable popularity of the annexation of Crimea, territory that most Russians believe is a historic part of the Motherland and came under Ukrainian rule by accident. For the past year, the mood has been: there may be no cheese – or even worse, there may be cheese made with palm oil – “but at least Crimea is ours”. Television, a powerful tool of state propaganda, has pumped out the story of American and European connivance with Hitler-loving Ukrainian “fascists” to threaten Russia.

But Mr Putin’s Ukrainian adventure is stuck. The separatists he has supported in the east of the country are a rough and unruly bunch, and incapable of uniting the local population. As he tries to focus attention away from Ukraine, he has found a new enemy and new adventure in Syria. [Continue reading…]

The Daily Beast reports: Until recently, one-third Russians said they had no interest at all in Syria. Just 18 percent welcomed the idea of providing military support to Bashar al-Assad, according to a national survey this month by Levada Center pollsters.

Public opinion did not seem a significant factor in Vladimir Putin’s decision-making Wednesday: No sooner had the Russian president returned from his meetings and speech at the United Nations in New York then he asked the Russian senate to allow him to use the country’s military for foreign combat missions.

Yet not many understood the purpose and targets. “Here is what’s going on,” Aleksei Venediktov, editor in chief of Echo of Moscow radio, told listeners while broadcasting from New York. “There are two countries where ISIS is fighting. They cross two borders in Iraq and in Syria. Putin told us straight away, at the United Nations, about Iraq—that Iraqi authorities asked for its participation in the coalition because ISIS comes and goes from Iraq and back to Iraq, so the planes would fly to the Iraqi border. That is why the foreign countries are not specified.”

While senators voted in favor of the president’s decision, Echo of Moscow listeners had their own vote online. The vast majority—81 percent—did not approve of Russian military participation in Syria’s civil war. [Continue reading…]

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Bombing Syria

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