Powers divided on Syria crisis
Al-Assad focus of debate on solution
AFLOOD of desperate refugees and images of a toddler lying dead on a beach have thrown Syria’s chaos into stark relief, but global powers are still far from seeing eye-to-eye on a solution to the conflict.
Despite a renewed sense of urgency, major players in the West, Persian Gulf, Russia and Iran are pursuing vastly different military and diplomatic tactics on the Syrian crisis.
As political pressure mounts over the refugee exodus and the jihadist threat posed by the Islamic State group, both France and Australia are planning to extend a bombing campaign against the jihadists to Syria.
And after killing two British jihadists in a drone attack in Syria, Britain is also mulling air strikes there.
Middle East experts say the narrow focus on IS is a mistake, and that efforts should concentrate on dealing with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after a four-year civil war that has turned cities to rubble and left 240 000 dead.
“It is not a problem of capability, it is a problem of strategy,” Emile Hokayem, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), said.
“Adding more British, French, Australian planes will destroy more IS targets but won’t deal with the fundamental problems of why IS is expanding.”
The three countries are already bombing IS targets in Iraq but had resisted joining the US, Canada and Gulf allies in doing the same in Syria so as not to provide support to al-Assad.
More than a year after the campaign was launched, and thousands of air strikes later, the coalition has failed to stop IS from seizing the key Iraqi city of Ramadi and Syria’s Palmyra, home to a Unesco-listed world heritage site.
While the countries involved, many of whom have prickly relations, agree that IS is the enemy, they cannot agree on al-Assad’s role in any resolution to Syria’s civil war.
“The fact that they have the same enemy doesn’t mean that they all give the same priority to fighting that enemy the same way,” Hokayem said.
“We still see very fundamental divergences between the US, Turkey and the Gulf states.”
And hopes that Iran’s return to the international fold after a nuclear deal with the West could lead to a fresh diplomatic push – along with Russian efforts – are likely to fall flat.
“If anything, Russia and Iran are strengthening their support for al-Assad at this point,” Hokayem said.
While the coalition is focused on combating IS, Russia is pushing for a diplomatic solution in Syria that would include al-Assad and fears are growing in Washington that Moscow is boosting military support to the regime.
The West, the Syrian opposition and some regional powers, including Saudi Arabia, believe al-Assad must step down immediately for there to be any hope of reconciliation.
Iran, which provides financial and military support to Syria, has also proposed a peace plan to end the four-year war but insists any initiative to end the conflict would have to recognise “the pivotal role of al-Assad”.
The UN Security Council last month adopted a new push for peace in Syria, where an uprising against al-Assad’s government in 2011 became a civil war.
Hokayem says it is not the IS jihadists that are pushing Syrians to flee, but the war waged by al-Assad, whose air campaigns have left many Syrian cities in ruins.
The UN refugee agency estimated some 5.6 million Syrians are internally displaced while some four million have fled the country.