Tangle deepens in Syria war

The tangle of Syria is getting deeper. What started as a bloody crackdown on peaceful protesters mutated into a multifaceted proxy war that triggered Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War II and facilitated the rise of IS and its global campaign of terror. It has grown into an international proxy conflict. There are regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia as well as global powers such as the US and Russia. There are foreign militias fighting alongside Syrian militias. And there are Kurdish militias. There are crisscrossing alliances and rivalries. Even the countries and groups ostensibly on the same side often have very different goals and strategies.
Russia entered into the fray quite late. And it was not just to prop up its long-time ally. Moscow wanted to counter the growing western influence and to alter their game-plan. It’s been almost a year since Putin stunned the US and its allies by entering the conflict turning the tables on western and regional powers intent on regime change.
And now Vladimir Putin seems to be on the cusp of a pivotal victory in Syria’s civil war that would make it much harder for the US to achieve its stated goal of ousting Bashar Al-Assad without a major military escalation.
Assad’s troops, backed by Russian air power, are bearing down on rebels entrenched in Aleppo, Syria’s most populous city before fighting erupted in 2011. Reclaiming Syria’s commercial capital would give Assad control over all major population centers and cement his hold on a contiguous swath of land from Turkey to Jordan that makes up almost half of the country.
But with the rebels managing to break the siege despite their lack of air power and despite the huge imbalance of power in favor of the Russians and the Iranians and the regime is by itself proof that this is a battle much harder to win than the Russians or the Iranians thought.
At the same there are other developments which are casting doubt over any solution to this raging war in the near future. The growing rapprochement between Turkey and Russia will add another head to this hydra-headed war. Turkey may soften its stand on Assad’s ouster. And this will further weaken the anti-Assad rhetoric.
Also, Obama’s failure so far to either destroy IS or topple Assad has frustrated many current and former US officials who backed a plan to arm rebels with
advanced weaponry after a cease-fire negotiated by Moscow and Washington collapsed.
Dennis Ross, Obama’s senior Mideast adviser in 2009-2011, said last week the US should punish Assad for breaking the truce by bombing airfields and bases where no Russian troops are present.
Also, Obama’s reluctance makes it clear that Assad won’t be forced out, leaving the next president with few good options for dealing with a Kremlin-backed leader at the epicenter of extremism.
And it is going to elicits huge rethink in the US and a whole set of relationships between the US and partners in the region like Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The next administration will likely be left confronting a situation where a weakened but still powerful Syrian government under Assad controls the former population centers.
Meanwhile, Putin and Assad have been gaining an unbeatable advantage since Russia unleashed an unprecedented amount of firepower. Russia’s backing for the siege of Aleppo and the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe raises doubts about its commitment from pulling the situation back from the brink.
Even with a victory at Aleppo, though, Assad would face an insurgency not unlike what the Americans encountered in Iraq a decade ago.
There are so many weapons floating around in Syria right now that there’ll always be an insurgent element able to take those weapons and use them.