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Although Moscow left Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad without support, the turmoil in Syria could still benefit Vladimir Putin, columnist Andrey Kuzichkin writes.
On November 27, the Syrian opposition launched an offensive against cities controlled by the army loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. Events unfolded quickly, and on the night of December 7-8, Assad's regime fell, and Assad himself likely died while attempting to flee the country aboard a Russian Il-76 transport plane (according to other reports, he managed to get to Russia – ed.).
Why didn't Vladimir Putin, Syria's loyal friend and ally (in words), come to Bashar al-Assad's aid at the most critical moment and even got scolded by Donald Trump for it? Let's try to understand.
The world is now witnessing the endgame of a drama that began with the military coup in Syria in 1963, which paved the way for the Assad dynasty to come to power. The intrigue lies in the fact that both the dictator Hafez al-Assad, who became president of Syria in 1971, and his son Bashar, who took over in 2000 after his father's death, belong to the Alawite religious sect. As we know, Islam has many branches and religious and philosophical schools. However, the main branches of Islam are Sunni and Shia. If we use an analogy with Christianity, where there are Lutherans and Catholics, then the Alawites are Mormons.
Alawites (they are also called Nusairis) profess a syncretic faith in which elements of Islamic beliefs, Christianity and esotericism are combined. The holy books of the Alawites are unknown to science. Alawites themselves consider themselves Muslims, but celebrate Christmas, Easter, worship the sun, moon and stars.
Of the Syrian population, 75 percent are Sunni, who consider Alawites to be heretics, about 12 percent are Alawites and 2 percent are Shiites, who consider Alawites to be their spiritual brothers. And that is how adherents of this religion – a religion that most Sunni Muslims consider despicable – came to rule Syria. During the Assad dynasty, Alawites took over the main positions in the state, leading the army and the special services.
First, Sunni farmers suffering from drought moved to the cities, creating a critical mass of discontented people. Second, after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, groups of Sunni fighters who had kept Saddam Hussein in power moved to Syria from Iraq. Militants close to Al-Qaeda established the Islamic State in Syria with its capital in Raqqa.
Third, the corruption and violence of the ruling class have united all of Syria's religious and social groups against the Assad regime. Bashar al-Assad even wrote into the constitution that the president of Syria can only be a Sunni and declared himself a Sunni. However, no one believed him, as Alawites practice taqiyya, which allows them to conceal their true beliefs. By 2015, Bashar al-Assad had lost control of significant parts of the country in the north and the oil fields in the east. His regime was hanging by a thread. But then Putin came to the rescue.
It is worth recalling that for a long time Syria had the status of the best friend and ally of the USSR. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, this friendship faded. But a dictator knows a dictator when he sees one. Yevgeny Primakov, a prominent Arabist and intelligence officer who was a huge influence on Putin, was instrumental in restoring the Russian-Syrian friendship. In August 2015, a month after the death of Primakov, who had prepared the deal, an agreement was signed to deploy a Russian air force unit to Syria. Russia sent its troops into Syria and essentially created a new crusader state there, taking Assad hostage. But what were the real reasons for Russia's intervention in the Syrian civil war?
1. After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Putin regime fell into international isolation and had to suffer reputational damage. The «Syria project» allowed Moscow to return to the Middle East and become one of the key players there. Putin restored relations with Syria and its main ally, Shiite Iran, and forced Israel, Turkey and the United States to begin negotiations with Russia to resolve the situation in Syria.
2. Russia established two military bases in Syria: the Khmeimim air base, located 30 kilometers from the Syria-Turkey border, and the naval base in Tartus, which is only 200 kilometers away from British military bases in Cyprus. As a result, Russia's armed forces gained direct control over NATO member states and the eastern Mediterranean sector. The electronic surveillance systems deployed to Tartus are capable of detecting moving targets within a 700-kilometer radius and at any altitude. It is possible that over-the-horizon radars have also been deployed to Russia's bases.
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3. Bashar al-Assad's dependence on Moscow allowed the Putin regime to definitively thwart plans to build a gas pipeline from Qatar to Europe, as most of the pipeline would have run through Syria. That gas pipeline was an alternative to the Russian-German Nord Stream and threatened Gazprom's interests.
4. Under the cover of the Russian army, the Wagner private military company operated in Syria, engaging in illegal oil production near the Iraqi border and trafficking in art and antiquities.
5. Syria was turned into a training ground where Russia could prepare for the war with Ukraine. In Syria, 215 types of weapons and military equipment, electronic warfare and intelligence tools (during the offensive on Aleppo), and drones of various modifications were used. Cyberattacks were practiced along with internet suppression, and information warfare methods (spreading rumors, simulating panic, hybrid attacks against opposition leaders) were upgraded.
Syria became a training ground for the Russian army's cadre reserve. For example, Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, who led the military group in Syria from 2015 to 2016, was in charge of the invasion of Ukraine in April 2022. According to media reports, Col. Gen. Alexander Zhuravlyov, after participating in the Syrian operation (commander from 2016 to 2017), organized the shelling of Kharkiv. Col. Gen. Alexander Lapin (commander in Syria from 2018 to 2019) led the offensive on Lysychansk in Ukraine's Donetsk region in 2022. In 2018, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army, Valery Gerasimov, called the war in Syria a «prototype of future war».
At first, Moscow considered the Syrian conflict to be a shadow war being waged at three levels: between Russia and the United States at the global level, between Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Syria, and Iran at the regional level, and between Syrian government forces and opposition groups at the local level.
The Russian army has learned important lessons in Syria. This includes the need for mobile units and the combination of strike and offensive forces, widespread use of electronic warfare, information technology and information warfare tools. The development of precision weapons systems and practicing of long-range strikes. Emphasis on the destruction of energy and water facilities. Expanding the geography of military bases and increasing the mobility of cruise missile launchers. All this was used to the full in Russia's attack on Ukraine.
On November 27, three significant events coincided: the chief of the General Staff of Russia, Valery Gerasimov, called the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles Brown; Israel signed a ceasefire agreement with the Iran-backed Shiite movement Hezbollah; and Syrian rebels launched an offensive on Aleppo. It is highly likely that these events can be considered interconnected.
The official reason for Gerasimov's call was to inform the Americans about Russian naval exercises in the Mediterranean due on December 3. On that day, the frigates Admiral Gorshkov and Admiral Golovko fired Tsirkon hypersonic missiles, the submarine Novorossiysk fired Kalibr cruise missiles, and the Bastion coastal missile system fired an Oniks cruise missile. But this formidable lineup of arms was not used to support Syrian government forces.
In the meantime, Russian Z-bloggers panickedly reported that Syrian opposition forces had seized a large amount of Russian military equipment as trophies and had taken over arms depots. According to the bloggers, Assad's allies, Shiite military groups, had been under fire for several days from US Air Force F-15E multirole fighter jets and A-10C attack aircraft, as well as Israeli Air Force F-16Is. However, Russia did not put up any significant resistance to these American and Israeli tactical air forces.
The impression we get is that Putin has decided to discard Assad's services because further support for his regime would require Russia to commit too much of the resources needed to continue the war with Ukraine. Of course, Moscow is interested in maintaining its bases in Syria. This is probably what Gerasimov and Brown discussed. It is possible that Gerasimov informed the American side that Moscow did not intend to interfere in the activities of the Syrian opposition.
The US-led international coalition controls significant numbers of the rebel forces fighting the Islamic State in Syria. Turkey also controls rebel groups in the north, where a Turkish military contingent is stationed. Israel is increasing its presence on the Golan Heights in southern Syria. Under these circumstances, the fall of the Assad regime could lead to a mass exodus of his supporters and a new wave of refugees from Syria to Europe.
Putin is very interested in this because he considers illegal immigrants to be his tool in the war with Europe. In addition, Iran's activity could increase in Syria as, after Assad's collapse, Iran will lose the corridor to deliver weapons through Iraq and Syria to the pro-Iranian Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Post-Assad Syria will inevitably have to deal with an ongoing power struggle between moderate Sunnis, extremist Islamists and the pro-Turkish forces that actually toppled Assad. It is Turkey that stands to gain most from the rebels' victory over Assad.
The war in Syria could drag on for a long time, requiring the involvement of the United States and Western allies. While Donald Trump has said that the war in Syria is not our fight, Americans can't get out of this mess so easily. This is again in the interests of Moscow, which is convinced that the emergence of new hotspots of conflict across the Middle East will distract the West from the war in Ukraine and lead to an increase in the price of oil.
Therefore, it is quite possible that by sacrificing Assad, Putin is playing a gambit and starting a new game of chess in the geopolitical game of the Middle East.
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