Military success in Syria gives Putin upper hand in US proxy war

Russia seems winning on the new chessboard

The Syrian military was foundering last year, with thousands of rebel fighters pushing into areas of the country long considered to be government strongholds. The rebel offensive was aided by powerful tank-destroying missiles supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Saudi Arabia.

Intelligence assessments circulated in Washington that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, was losing his grip on power.

But then the Russians arrived, bludgeoning CIA-backed rebel forces with an air campaign that has sent them into retreat. And now rebel commanders, clinging to besieged neighbourhoods in the divided city of Aleppo, say their shipments of CIA-provided antitank missiles are drying up.

For the first time since Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Russian military for the past year has been in direct combat with rebel forces trained and supplied by the CIA. The American-supplied Afghan fighters prevailed during that Cold War conflict. But this time the outcome has been different. Russia’s battlefield successes in Syria have given Moscow, isolated by the West after its annexation of Crimea and other incursions into Ukraine, new leverage in decisions about the future of the Middle East. The Obama administration is now talking with President Vladimir V. Putin’s government about a plan to share intelligence and coordinate airstrikes against the Islamic State and other militant groups in Syria, and Mr Putin has thus far met his goals in Syria without becoming caught in a quagmire that some, including President Obama, had predicted he would.

But even Mr Obama has expressed wariness about an enduring deal with Moscow. “I’m not confident that we can trust the Russians or Vladimir Putin,” Mr Obama said at a news conference, adding that whenever you are trying to broker any kind of deal with an individual like that or a country like that, you have got to go in there with some skepticism.

At the same time, some military experts point out that Mr Putin has saddled Russia with the burden of propping up a Syrian military that has had difficulty vanquishing the rebels on its own.

The Russian campaign began in September 2015, after a months long offensive by CIA-backed rebel groups won new territory in Idlib, Hama and Latakia Provinces in northern Syria. And here once again a duplicitous role of Washington can be seen: Those groups sometimes fought alongside soldiers of the Nusra Front, which until recently are officially affiliated with al Qaeda.

Some of the rebel groups boasted at the time that powerful TOW antitank missiles provided by American operatives were a key to their success. For several years, the CIA has joined with the spy services of several Arab nations to arm and train the rebels at bases in Jordan and Qatar, with the Saudis bankrolling much of the operations.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment about any American assistance to Syrian rebels, Washington Post reported on 11th August 2016.

But Lt Col Fares al-Bayyoush, a former aviation engineer who heads the rebel group Fursan al-Haq, said during an interview in May 2015 that his group would receive new shipments of the antitank weapons as soon as the missiles were used.

“We ask for ammunition and missiles, and we get more than we ask for,” he said.

Yet the advance also created problems for the fractious assortment of rebel groups, as it allowed the Nusra Front to gain control over more areas of northern Syria. The Obama administration has officially forbidden any Nusra fighters to receive weapons or training. But the group has at times shown greater prowess against the Syrian government forces than the CIA’s proxies.

Moreover, they have shown that they can and will destroy or sideline CIA-backed rebels who do not agree to battlefield alliances. Moscow cited the battlefield successes of the Nusra Front to justify its military incursion into Syria as a campaign to fight terrorism, even if its primary goal was to shore up Mr Assad’s military against all insurgent groups, including the CIA-backed rebels.

The Russians began a rapid military buildup in September 2015, and launched an air campaign that targeted the Syrian rebel groups that posed the most direct threat to Mr Assad’s government, including some of the CIA-trained groups. By mid-October, Russia had escalated its airstrikes to nearly 90 on some days.

About 600 Russian marines landed in Syria with the mission of protecting the main air base in Latakia; that ground force has grown to about 4,000 throughout Syria, including several hundred Special Forces members.

It took some time for the Russian intervention to have a significant impact on the Syrian battlefield, prompting Mr Obama to predict that Moscow might become bogged down in its own Middle East conflict.

The CIA moved to counter the Russian intervention, funneling several hundred additional TOW missiles to its proxies. One rebel commander had said in October 2015 that his group could at that time get as many missiles as it wanted.

But Russian firepower eventually overwhelmed the rebel groups in the north. By early this year, attacks by Russian long-range bombers, fighter jets, attack helicopters and cruise missiles allowed the Syrian army to reverse many of the rebel gains and seize areas near the Turkish border that many thought the government could never reclaim.

The flow of CIA arms continued, but the weapons proved too little in the face of the Russian offensive.

Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer who now studies Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the Russians had built a capable intelligence network in Syria, giving them a better understanding of the terrain and location of rebel forces. That has allowed Russian troops to call in precision airstrikes, making them more effective against the rebels.

The mismatch has been most acute in the last several months, with Syrian government forces, with Russian help, laying siege to the rebel-held parts of Aleppo.

Losing their foothold in Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city, would be a big blow to the rebels.

Syrian and Russian jets have carried out an indiscriminate pounding of Aleppo, including attacks on six hospitals in and around the city over the past week.

Rebel groups in recent days have made surprising gains in a new offensive to try to break through Syrian military lines encircling Aleppo, but if it fails, rebels inside the city will face a choice between enduring the siege or surrendering.

“We are using most of our weapons in the battle for Aleppo,” said Mustafa al-Hussein, a member of Suqour al-Jabal, one of the CIA-backed groups. He said the flow of weapons to the group had diminished in the past three to four months.

“Now we fire them only when it is necessary and urgent,” he said.

Another commander, Maj Mousa al-Khalad of Division 13, a CIA-backed rebel group operating in Idlib and Aleppo, said his group had received no missiles for two weeks.

“We filed a request to get TOW missiles for the Aleppo front,” he said, but the reply was that there were none in the warehouses.

Rebel leaders and military experts say that perhaps the most pressing danger is that supply routes from Turkey, which are essential to the CIA-backed rebels, could be severed.

Mr Putin has achieved many of his larger goals, to prop up Mr Assad’s government, retain access to the longtime Russian naval base on the Mediterranean Sea and use Syria as a proving ground for the most advanced Russian military technology.

Some military experts remain surprised that Mr Putin took the risky step of fighting American-trained and equipped forces head on, but they also assess that his Syria gamble appears to be paying off.

It is the type of Cold War-era battle that Mr Obama, in October 2015, insisted he did not want to enter, what a disparity?

“We’re not going to make Syria into a proxy war between the United States and Russia,” he said. “This is not some superpower chessboard contest.”

On the other side, Reuters reported on 17 August 2016 that:

Russia used Iran as a base from which to launch air strikes against Syrian militants for the first time on 16 August 2016, widening its air campaign in Syria and deepening its involvement in the Middle East.

In a move underscoring Moscow’s increasingly close ties with Tehran, long-range Russian Tupolev-22M3 bombers and Sukhoi-34 fighter bombers used Iran’s Hamadan air base to strike a range of targets in Syria.

It was the first time Russia has used the territory of another nation, apart from Syria itself, to launch such strikes since the Kremlin launched a bombing campaign to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in September last year.

It was also thought to be the first time that Iran has allowed a foreign power to use its territory for military operations since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The Iranian deployment will boost Russia’s image as a central player in the Middle East and allow the Russian air force to cut flight times and increase bombing payloads.

The head of Iran’s National Security Council was quoted by state news agency IRNA as saying Tehran and Moscow were now sharing facilities to fight against terrorism, calling their cooperation strategic.

Both countries back Assad, and Russia, after a delay, has supplied Iran with its S-300 missile air defense system, evidence of a growing partnership between the pair that has helped turn the tide in Syria’s civil war and is testing US influence in the Middle East.

Relations between Tehran and Moscow have grown warmer since Iran reached agreement last year with global powers to curb its nuclear program in return for the lifting of UN, EU and US financial sanctions.

President Vladimir Putin visited Iran in November 2015 and the two countries regularly discuss military planning for Syria, where Iran has provided ground forces that work with local allies while Russia provides air power.

Although several countries in the region have flirted with strengthened ties to Russia, Moscow has made little headway in fulfilling its ambitions for greater Middle East sway. Syria has long been an exception, historically purchasing Russian arms and hosting a Russian naval facility on the Mediterranean.

Tehran, in addition to their joint support for Assad, has seen strategic advantage in relations with post-Soviet Russia, sharing a desire to counter US influence with increased trade and energy cooperation. The Iran nuclear deal allowed Russia to fulfill a years-old agreement to sell Iran its powerful S-300 air-defense missile system.

Last year, Russia and Iran signed a military cooperation deal focused on training and on fighting terrorism. On 14th August 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top Middle East envoy arrived in Tehran to discuss bilateral relations. Russia has also requested the use of Iranian airspace to fire cruise missiles at rebel targets in Syria.

Iran has long banned foreign militaries from establishing bases on its soil. But the raids appeared to signal a budding alliance that would expand Russia’s military footprint in the region.

Until now, Russia’s long-range bombers, which require longer airstrips, had to be launched from Russian territory more than 1,200 miles away. Now, those same bombers need to fly only about 400 miles from Iran to Syria, Iran’s Fars News Agency reported on 15 August 2016. The shorter distance, using less fuel and allowing a bigger payload, will allow Russia to intensify its air campaign against rebel-held areas.

The Russian defence ministry has confirmed that its bombers had taken off on 16 August 2016 from the Hamadan air base in north-west Iran. To reach Syria, they would have had to use the air space of another neighbouring country, probably Iraq.

The ministry said 16th August strikes had targeted Islamic State as well as militants previously known as the Nusra Front in the Aleppo, Idlib and Deir al Zour provinces. It said its Iranian-based bombers had been escorted by fighter jets based at Russia’s Hmeymim air base in Syria’s Latakia Province.

Russia’s state-backed Rossiya 24 channel said the Iranian deployment would allow the Russian air force to cut flight times by 60 percent. The Tupolev-22M3 bombers, which before 16-8-2016 had conducted strikes on Syria from their home bases in southern Russia, were too large to be accommodated at Russia’s own air base inside Syria, Russian media reported.

Russian Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bombers flew in formation during the Victory Day parade, marking the 71st anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, above Red Square in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2016. Russian Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bombers fly in formation during the Victory Day parade, marking the 71st anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War-II

“As a result of the strikes five large arms depots were destroyed … a militant training camp … three command and control points … and a significant number of militants,” the ministry said in a statement.

The destroyed facilities had all been used to support militants in the Aleppo area, it said, where battle for control of the divided city, which had some two million people before the war, has intensified in recent weeks.

“It is much heavier,” Reuters reported, “There is no weapon they have not dropped on Aleppo, cluster bombs, phosphorus bombs, and so on.”

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war, is divided into rebel and government-held zones. The government aims to capture full control of it, which would be its biggest victory of the five year conflict.

Russian media reported on 16 August 2016 that Russia had also requested and received permission to use Iran and Iraq as a route to fire cruise missiles from its Caspian Sea fleet into Syria, as it has done in the past.

Russia has built up its naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean and the Caspian as part of what it says are planned military exercises.

On the other side Washington has said that it only makes more difficult what is already a complex, contentious and difficult situation, adding that it was “unclear” whether Russia planned to continue using the Iranian base, or the operation was a one-off.

On the same day, Secretary of State John F. Kerry raised concern over the flights in a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.

Under the terms of a US-Russia agreement to “deconflict” their flights over Syria, the US military was notified in advance that the bombers would pass across Iraqi airspace and through Syria, according to Col Christopher Garver, the Baghdad-based spokesman for US forces in Iraq and Syria.

State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner called the flights “unfortunate, but not surprising or unexpected.” Like other Russian strikes in Syria, he said, the Russian bombers predominantly targeted moderate opposition forces fighting against Assad.

Another worry: US nukes at Turkey airbase at risk of capture

Some 50 nuclear weapons owned by the United States and stored at a Turkish air base near the Syrian border are in danger of falling into the hands of “terrorists or other hostile forces,” a think tank said in a new report released on 15 August 2016.

The Incirlik air base in southern Turkey is situated just 110 kilometres, or 70 miles, from the northern border of Syria, which is now in its sixth year of a deadly civil war.

Washington has stored approximately 50 nuclear bombs at the base that the US uses to conduct air strikes and drone strikes against the Syrian official forces helping the militant groups backed by Washington.

Turkey gave the US permission to use Incirlik in July 2015. Germany, Britain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar also all have aircraft stationed at the air base for the fight against Syria’s official forces.

Whether the US could have maintained control of the weapons in the event of a protracted civil conflict in Turkey is an unanswerable question, and also very horrifying.

The US military, which does not publicly detail where it stores its nuclear arsenals across the world, keeps such weapons at Incirlik as a symbol of Washington’s dedication to the NATO alliance, of which Turkey is a member, as well as the stockpile acting as a deterrent against Russia.

There are significant safeguards in place… But safeguards are just that, they don’t eliminate risk. In the event of a coup, it’s not known for certain that the forces would have been able to maintain control, and that is a big question mark.

The department of defence said in a statement that it had taken the requisite measures to prevent such stockpiles from falling into the hands of dangerous and enemy groups, but would not comment about specific locations.

The circumstances in the region are now clear that Russia has practically jumped into the war, so the hazard remains.

Washington has always played a duplicitous role, on one side taking action against al Qaeda and on the other side providing them armaments to fight against the Syrian official forces. So, worry remains with the Pentagon.

Russia, history shows, always stand firm with his allies, unlike Washington, which usually retreats in difficult times, leaving allies alone to face the challenge.

Washington, with its duplicitous role, is extensively involved in disrupting the peace of the Middle East Region since long, basically starting from Iraq, then Egypt and Libya, favouring the militants. But, this time, Russia has a strong hold and will win on the chessboard, which can lead to a peaceful Middle East once again.