Bringing Syria’s Bashar Assad to the negotiating table has become harder following a widened rift between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a meeting in London today.
Kerry is moving towards providing military aid to the Syrian opposition, including body armor and night vision gear but excluding weapons, while Russia adamantly opposes anything that might strengthen the opposition fighters.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Refugee agency said its efforts to help Syrian refugees are at “breaking point” because it has received just $300 million out of a $1 billion request. Ominously, refugee numbers in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq have reached 1.3 million, up from just 30,000 a year ago, and could explode to four million by this year-end. In addition, over three million people are displaced internally. The distress of refugees and the displaced could lead to sexual exploitation of women and children as they grow more desperate for shelter and survival. Other UN agencies place the number of war dead at over 70,000 and homes destroyed at 1.3 million.
Fresh from three days of talks with Israelis and Palestinians, Kerry met Syrian opposition leaders in London before the talks with Lavrov. Washington and its Arab and Western allies are deeply concerned that the humanitarian disaster in Syria and the country’s destruction must be stopped quickly. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are throwing weapons and money at the rebels, hoping that they will either win or cause enough of a stalemate to force Assad to step down. The US has refused to provide weapons but pressure is growing for it to do so or, at least, declare a no-fly zone over the safe havens of opposition fighters.
Surprisingly, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are dragging their feet over paying $300 million each pledged earlier to care for refugees, although they strongly support the Assad regime’s downfall. Lebanon, which already has 400,000 Syrian refugees, is at greatest risk of instability because it is governed by a fragile political balance among Christians, Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims. Syria has already degenerated into a sectarian war between Sunnis, backed by their Arab Gulf brethren, and Shia Muslims. Christians are caught in the middle but lean towards the Shia Alawites, who currently provide most of Assad’s political and military power. Before Bashar’s father Hafez took over Damascus in the late 1960s, Alawites were a long-oppressed minority under Sunni rule. Bashar is now fighting for his clan’s survival and may not give up until he is certain Alawites and their allies will not be decimated by a Sunni regime.
Russia is as outraged as the West at Assad’s savage military strikes against the Sunni rebels but continues to protect his back because it fears Sunni Arab hegemony in the region. More than chaos in Syria, it fears American weapons and military diplomacy underpinning a Sunni mid-east dominated by the traditionalists Gulf royal families.
After steady defiance, Assad has indirectly acknowledged that his days are numbered. However, he sees his regime as a bulwark against long anarchy in the region. “Everybody knows that if the disturbances in Syria reach the point of the country’s breakup, or terrorist forces control Syria, or if the two cases happen, then this will immediately spill over into neighboring countries first, and later there will be a domino effect that will reach countries across the Middle East,” he told a Turkish TV station.
Lavrov has repeatedly affirmed that Russia is not Assad’s ally. In London, senior diplomats said Moscow will be relieved to see an end to Assad but not in the way sought by the US and its allies. For Russia, Assad’s fate is not the issue. The issue is ever-increasing US military presence in the mid-east and central Asia. An unusual strategic plan published in Moscow earlier this week makes clear that President Vladimir Putin feels Russia is now strong enough to start rising again as a Super Power capable of competing with the US around the world. Lavrov’s attitude in the London talks reflects this new direction. If possible, Moscow will not allow Assad to fall. If he does collapse, Putin will not allow the Sunni royal families to dominate the mid-east region, as US proxies. He will keep Shia power alive by quietly bolstering Iran.
These maneuvers may cause the rift between Washington and Moscow to widen further putting an end to President Barack Obama’s reset of relations with Russia. Obama may have to choose soon between caution towards the Syrian imbroglio or coming out boldly to use no-fly zones and weapons-aid to help the opposition capture power, as in Libya. The relationship with Moscow is going downhill anyway because of Putin’s nationalist policies.
The most important consideration for the White House at this time is to prevent radical Islamist fighters from gaining political influence after Assad’s fall. The most dangerous is the al-Nusra Front, which is suspected of al-Qaeda links and has been declared a terrorist organization by Washington. The fog of war is so dense in Syria that its transformation into a terrorist safe haven cannot be ruled out unless the Islamic regimes arming the opposition currently are clairvoyant. Against this backdrop, the widening Russia-US rift bears watching.