Summit aims to avert Idlib bloodbath
REGIME NEEDS TO RETAKE PROVINCE FOR MILITARY VICTORY AGAINST REBELS
When the presidents of Russia, Turkey and Iran meet today in Tehran, all eyes will be on their diplomacy reaching a lastminute deal to avert a bloodbath in Idlib, Syria’s northwestern province and last stronghold of the opposition.
The three leaders have an interest in working together to contain a potentially catastrophic offensive by Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s forces to recapture the province, but Idlib is complicated.
The province and surrounding area is home to about three million people — nearly half of them displaced civilians from other parts — but also around 10,000 hardcore fighters, including Al Qaida-linked militants.
For Russia and Iran, both allies of the Syrian regime, retaking Idlib is crucial to complete what they see as a military victory in Syria’s civil war after they recaptured all other major towns and cities, largely defeating the rebellion against Al Assad.
A bloody offensive that creates a massive wave of death and displacement, however, runs counter to their narrative that the situation in Syria is normalising, and could hurt Russia’s longer-term efforts to encourage the return of refugees and get Western countries to invest in Syria’s postwar reconstruction.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, which supports Syria’s rebels, stands to lose the most in the attack.
Turkey already hosts 3.5 million Syrian refugees and has sealed its borders to newcomers. It has also created zones of control in northern Syria and has several hundred troops deployed at 12 observation posts in Idlib. A regime assault creates a nightmare scenario of potentially hundreds of thousands of people, including militants, fleeing toward its border and destabilising towns and cities in northern Syria under its control.
Sam Heller, senior analyst at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said if Damascus retook Idlib, it would mark its near-total victory over the opposition, but it will likely also bring humanitarian suffering and carnage on a scale not yet seen in the seven-year war.
‘Soft solution’ needed
A lot of expectations hang on the Iran summit. Staffan de Mistura, the UN’s Syria envoy, made a personal appeal to Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin to find a “soft solution to this crisis.”
“We look to Russia, Turkey, Iran to come with hope to the civilians in Idlib,” he said. “There are indeed many more babies than there are terrorists in Idlib. There are a million children.”
In the absence of US engagement, Iran, Turkey and Russia have taken it upon themselves to manage Syria’s messy civil war, and their previous meetings established so-called de-escalation zones in several areas, including Idlib, temporarily reducing violence. All these agreements were later violated as Syrian troops moved to retake those areas after pounding them into submission with air strikes.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said: “I think the military situation will become clearer after the leaders of the three countries hold talks on Friday.”