Making the weather in a Proxy War

Fragile tightrope though it might be, the so-called “cessation of hostilities” in Syria was holding this past week, despite a smattering of truce violations. But the eyes of diplomats and other observers were more on the relationship between superpowers Russia and the United States than on the belligerents in the five-year-old Syrian Civil War—clearly a growing misnomer, considering the conflict’s grave international repercussions and implications.

With the cessation of hostilities pact reached last month more between regional and global leaders than among the multiple belligerents in the actual war, Moscow and Washington suddenly find themselves having become strange bedfellows—an odd state of affairs after events not only in Syria but also in Ukraine and elsewhere that have had the two nuclear powers at each other’s throats more since 2014 than at any other time since the Cold War era of a quarter-century ago. On first glance, this should be good news. And to a certain extent it is, since their decision to actually sit down and talk about how to end the Syrian war has brought an at least temporary lull in the fighting. And in a crumbling nation on the brink of collapse and dissolution like Syria is, a lull in the fighting for any reason whatsoever can’t help but be considered “good news”.

What’s worrisome, however, is how, exactly, each superpower side in this increasingly obvious proxy war will make use of this break in the storm to its own advantage—and, as such, to the almost certain long-term detriment of the Syrian people.

The BBC, for instance, quoted Lieutenant General Sir Simon Mayall, a former senior Middle East expert for the British government, as saying that his concern about the pact was that it seemed to be all about “the Russians making the weather.” What he meant by this was that it was Putin and Moscow calling the shots now in Syria, since the Russians have not only gotten involved in international airstrikes—far surpassing any air action taken by the US-led coalition—on “terrorist” targets, but have also taken a strong lead in this latest truce and negotiation progress. This action on Moscow’s part is clearly not out of any altruistic, humanitarian fervor, but because Russia has everything to lose should dictator Bashar al-Assad be ousted and is, therefore, scrambling to remain on the cusp of every international process taking place in the Arab country, so as to stay several giant steps ahead of Washington and its at least potential allies in the region.

Speaking of the Russians, General Mayall also told the BBC that, “It was in their gift to offer a ceasefire on behalf of the Assad regime. That slightly worries me in a part of the world where the Americans have been the guarantors and the people who make the weather.”

For Washington’s part, in its earliest clashes with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government over Moscow’s attempts to help Assad thwart the Syrian popular uprising, the Obama administration was adamant that “Assad must go.” But in this latest approach to the Syrian question in which Russia and the US find themselves sharing charge of the “cessation” process, the US is suddenly conceding that, perhaps, at least “for the time being”, Assad can stay. Why? Because the direct threat to America security isn’t Assad or even Putin—who, clearly, has acted in the past few years like a diplomatic and military loose cannon—but the international terrorist group Islamic State (ISIL), which is just about everybody’s headache, but especially the West’s.

Pretending that Assad can form a practical part of any sort of transition toward peace and democracy in the Arab country, after the heartless dictatorial cruelty with which he has treated his own people, falls at least within the ballpark of “things delusional”. But for now Washington appears to think that not raising Moscow’s hackles is a safer bet than the superpowers going head to head, and as we said before, Assad poses no clear and present threat to the United States. Furthermore, when it comes to a choice between Islamic State and Assad, Washington appears to agree with Moscow that Assad is the lesser of two evils. The point is, however, I think, that it shouldn’t be up to either Washington or Moscow to decide whether Assad stays or goes. That choice should be the exclusive province of the Syrian people, and the Syrians are the ones who are having the least say in how the tragic, nightmare, five-year-old civil war will be resolved—if at all.

In spite of the relative initial success of the US and Russia-backed “cessation of hostilities”, at least 135 people have been killed since it came into effect a week ago. This week started off with rocket and mortar attacks on the Kurdish residential area of the city of Aleppo, one of the most heavily targeted urban areas of the war. A Kurdish rebel spokesman said at least nine civilians had been killed and dozens more wounded in the attacks. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is monitoring the Syrian War, said that more than 70 rockets and mortar shells were fired during the attacks, adding that they had been carried out by several armed groups, including the Islamist al-Nusra Front, which has been excluded, along with ISIL, from the truce by both Russia and the United States. Without a doubt, the extent to which ISIL is linked to—or separate from—the possibility of peace in Syria must be considered a factor that forms a major sticking point in Syria’s troubled outlook. But it should not take precedence over the Syrian people’s legitimate claim to liberty and their call for an end to forty years of tyranny.

Along these lines, the so-called “cessation of hostilities” has provided, if nothing else, an immediate possibility for common everyday Syrians to express themselves publicly for the first time in a very long time. For people in some of the worst-hammered rebel-held areas of the country, the fragile truce has offered them their first opportunity in years to turn out in public en masse without being bombed by Russian-supported government forces or Islamist insurgents. And despite the terrible punishment that they have been subjected to over the course of the last half-decade, turn out they did this past week, in more than a hundred mass demonstrations calling not only for peace and democracy but also for unity among nationalist rebels. Above all, they repeated their call for Assad to step down or be removed.

There was clearly a message for the superpowers in last week’s protests as well: that after nearly 300,000 deaths, millions injured and mutilated, the country in shambles and the displacement and/or exile of half the population, the Syrian people are not about to allow the superpowers or anyone else to hijack their revolution, which began as a peaceful protest and a massive grassroots movement toward an independent democracy. Any attempt to ignore this fact—whether in seeking to entertain Russia’s strategic regional interests or in deference to Washington’s War on Terror—is to turn a blind eye toward the fundamental causes behind the Syrian Civil War and toward the right to self-determination of the Syrian people. Pretending to “save” Syria by ignoring the will of its people will doom to certain failure any external attempt to find a solution and end the conflict. At best, any such “solution” would render only a temporary lull in the violence, since, as every true world peace advocate knows, lasting peace cannot be imposed, it much be justly conceived and jealously guarded.