Putin gambit defines moral bankruptcy
Backing Assad pushes Sunnis into ISIL’s arms
For six blood-soaked weeks, the city was flayed by artillery and airstrikes. When thousands lay dead and much of Grozny had been reduced to ruins, Vladimir Putin declared peace had been returned to this wasteland.
The fate of Chechnya’s capital during Putin’s first weeks in office in 2000 should serve as a warning regarding his solution to Syria’s crisis. The man who began his presidency by launching the Second Chechnya War knows only one way of dealing with an uprising — the way Bashar Assad has since made his own in Syria.
So when Putin says that victory for Assad is the only way to end Syria’s agony — and that the West should rally behind this effort — no one should harbour any doubts about what this would mean. Today, Assad controls less than 20 per cent of Syria. Does Putin think his ally should reconquer the other 80 per cent?
Countless Syrians know from bitter experience what that would entail: a hail of barrel bombs from Assad’s helicopters, poison gas attacks, medieval sieges imposed on Palestinian refugee camps, the devastation of entire districts. Bluntly, a Grozny settlement would have to be inflicted on just about every town and ci ty in rebel hands.
Prising Assad’s grip from 80 per cent of Syria claimed a minimum of 220,000 lives. At least as many more would have to die for him to regain this territory.
The refugee flows Europe is experiencing would be as nothing compared with the millions who would flee the Assad steamroller.
If Putin and Iran think this is the route to peace — if they want to stand with Assad, barrel bomb for barrel bomb, gas attack for gas attack, Scud missile for Scud missile — then their choice is the definition of moral bankruptcy. Some say ruthless methods are
needed to deal with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Yet the PutinIran manifesto for Syria is exactly what ISIL wants.
Putin’s portrayal of Assad as an implacable foe of ISIL, who deserves support for that reason alone, is profoundly misleading. In truth, fighting ISIL has never been a priority for Assad.
A study conducted by IHS Jane’s, a defence consultancy, found that of 982 operations launched by the regime’s forces in 2014, only six per cent targeted ISIL. This was the year when ISIL overran swaths of eastern Syria, seizing valuable oilfields and their de-facto capital, Raqqa.
While this was happening, Assad was hurling 94 per cent of his military effort against the other rebel movements. When ISIL advanced, they often captured territory not from the regime but from rival insurgents. By using barrel bombs, chlorine gas and strike aircraft against the rebels in ISIL’s path, Assad actually helped the terrorists to gain ground.
In the Middle East, the oldest trick of the dictator-at-bay is to force his own people and the world to choose be- tween him and radical Islamists. If his enemies are not atavistic extremists, then he must make them so. In line with this timehonoured gambit, Assad has deliberately created the conditions for the rise of ISIL. He is the arsonist, not the firefighter. If Russia and Iran want to fall for this ruse, there is no reason why the West should do the same.
But there is a more important problem with this path.
The central goal of any campaign against terrorism in Syria must be to divide ISIL from the country’s Sunni majority. If Sunnis are forced to choose between ISIL and the rule of Assad — a foreign-backed Alawite dictator who has committed every possible atrocity, up to and including the gassing of children — then many will make a decision we might find uncomfortable.
Nothing would be more likely to rally popular support for ISIL than helping Assad to reconquer Syria. The vision of an army backed by Shiite Iran and Christian Russia bearing down on Sunnis in the Arabian heartland would fulfil the millenarian fantasies of the most ardent ISIL zealot. At a stroke, its pitiless world view would seem to be vindicated.
The only answer is what it has always been: Assad’s departure allowing the birth of a united front against ISIL. But the halfmeasures of the West have created a vacuum into which Putin has stepped. If they are not prepared to back their policy with force, he most certainly is. And if it ever came to pass, Putin’s plan for Syria would deliver war without end.
A choice between ISIL and a foreign-backed Alawite dictator