RUSSIA AND SYRIA TIES IN FOCUS AFTER NEW ROLE FOR ENVOY
▶ Appointment signals effort by Moscow to consolidate gains
President Vladimir Putin has appointed Russia’s ambassador in Damascus as special representative for Syria, as signs of discord in the alliance between the two countries emerge, undermining Moscow’s efforts to consolidate its gains there.
Pro-government media in Damascus and Moscow reported on Monday that Alexander Efimov was made Special Representative of the Russian President for the Development of Relations with the Syrian Arab Republic.
On behalf of Mr Putin, Mr Efimov will be pulling strings tied to Syria’s complex societal mix and the regional and international powers involved in the nine-year conflict there.
An Arabic speaker, Mr Efimov, 62, will also be managing Russia’s surrogates in Damascus.
But the Syrian government has been adept at making the most of its position as the meeting point between Russia and Iran and is playing on rivalries between the two countries.
Some Russian media outlets recently suggested Syrian officials were incompetent. The criticism prompted public criticism of Russia in pro-Syrian government areas for the first time since Moscow intervened militarily to help prop up President Bashar Al Assad’s regime in 2015.
Ayman Abdel Nour, a Syrian political commentator, said the appointment of Mr Efimov helped to streamline the chain of command reporting to Mr Putin and “signals annoyance with the Syrian regime”.
“By appointing Efimov as his viceroy, Mr Putin is telling the Syrian regime to get its act together,” Mr Abdel Nour told The National.
The Russian intervention five years ago restored areas of Sunni rebel territory to the control of the government in Damascus, leading to the deaths of thousands of civilians, according to Syrian human rights campaigners, but failing to secure peace on Moscow’s terms.
Russian officials are involved in everything from promoting their confidantes in the Syrian security apparatus to counter Iranian influence, to forming proxies and forging ties with Kurdish militias largely allied to the United States in northern Syria, as well as armed Druze in the south of the country.
An economic dividend promoted by Russia has not yet materialised, damaging a government drive supported by Moscow to lure Syrian refugees back to “the bosom of the homeland” and increase pressure on Western and Arab countries to pay for reconstruction.
Understandings with Turkey on sharing the spoils in northern Syria have been tested, while US forces maintain control most of Syria’s oil fields.
Europe has been united on reconstruction despite Russian pressure, refusing to finance any significant rebuilding without what continental powers view as a credible political solution.
Russia has had to cede significant ground to Iran, which has more lethal militia allies on the ground than Assad loyalists aligned with Moscow. Tehran has been also supplying Syria with energy costing of billions of dollars annually and it will have its price.
Intensification in recent weeks of Israeli air strikes on Iranian-linked targets in Syria, with little objection from Moscow, have further undermined the Russian-Iranian equilibrium in Syria, although Iran’s overall sphere of influence in Syria appears to be holding tight.
A collapse of the Syrian pound and scant hard currency flows from Russia, as well as criticism in Russian media of the economic management of the Syrian government, appeared to dent the purported invincibility of the alliance.
The Syrian pound has fallen from 50 to the US dollar on the eve of the Syrian revolt against Assad family rule in March 2011, to 1,650 now.
Russia’s ties in Syria date to the 1950s, when the country began to lean toward the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
A 1963 coup brought mostly Alawite officers to power and destroyed Syria’s communists, but Moscow cultivated ties with the country’s new junta regardless.
Among them was Hafez Al Assad, who trained on Mig fighter jets in Russia and became defence minister before mounting his own coup in 1970, ushering in five decades of Assad family rule.
As ambassador to Syria since 2018, Mr Efimov has been promoting Moscow’s line that the conflict pits a legitimate government against terrorists.
Mr Efimov told the Russian news outlet Sputnik last month that western calls on the United Nations to channel aid into Syria through border crossings not controlled by the Syrian government undermined the country’s sovereignty.
He also dismissed human rights campaigners who called for the release of political prisoners held by the regime, to at least shield them from the coronavirus, as they are, in his words, “opponents of the legal Syrian authorities” who are “deliberately making use of the situation around the pandemic of the deadly disease to implement their well-known goals”.
Days after Mr Efimov renewed Russia’s support for the Syrian government, a rift within its innermost circle became public.
The president moved against his maternal cousin, the billionaire Rami Makhlouf, who regional financiers said is the ruling family’s money man. They said the president could not have moved against Mr Makhlouf without the support of Maher Al Assad, Bashar’s brother, who is de facto commander of the Syrian military.
The feud forced Russia into more micromanagement of Syrian affairs.
Reports emerged of Russian military police accompanying Syrian secret police in the arrest of some of Mr Makhlouf’s business managers and in the seizure of his assets.
Russia’s state-owned RT television channel deleted from its website an interview with a dissident Syrian businessman who said Mr Makhlouf’s father, Mohammad Makhlouf, who is in Moscow, had received commissions on Syria’s state oil sales before he moved to Russia.
Rami Makhlouf has, in the last few weeks, posted three Facebook videos calling the Syrian security apparatus an instrument of repression and hinted that targeting him has damaged the power of the Alawite sect that has dominated the state since the 1960s.
Some in the Syrian opposition said Mr Makhlouf could not be doing such public relations damage to the Assads from inside Syria and that he must have fled abroad.
But Mr Abdel Nour said Moscow has an interest in keeping Mr Makhlouf’s room for manoeuvre inside the country.
“The Russians have made it clear there is a ceiling to how much the regime can act against Rami,” Mr Abdel Nour said.
“They are preventing his arrest because he can become useful in keeping Bashar under check.”
At the highest echelons of Russian government, criticism of ‘incompetent’ Syrian officials appears to have been heard