1 Name Withheld A New Middle East Professors Sarah Eltantawi and Amjad Faur Regional Repercussions of the Syrian Civil War My thesis is that foreign intervention in the Syrian revolution and subsequent civil war has turned one countries internal strife into a conflict that has polarized the region and soured relationships between states that were not in direct conflict with one another, as well as Syria s previously good relations with Turkey. Each of these states has vastly different ideas of what Syria should look like and who should govern it, and are each heavily invested in their own visions to the point that they feel they cannot compromise. All of these factors are preventing the conflict from being resolved. My paper will focus on the states which have exerted the most influence on the conflict, namely, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, and Russia. I will do my best to explain the historical reasons for these nations support of particular factions in the war, as well as how they are supporting the factions. I will not focus on the United States role in the conflict, as its influence on the Syrian civil war could best be summed up by what it has not done, namely, intervention along the lines of what happened in Libya to remove a brutal military dictator, and not what it has done, which has been minimal, apart from its role enforcing the Kurdish groups in Syria s north and northeast against the Islamic State 1 and lackluster funding and arming of various factions in the Free Syrian Army, as well as an attempt to create its own armed faction in Syria which cost five hundred million US dollars and lasted less than a week, resulting only in Islamist factions on ground gaining control of US-made arms. 2 1 Stevens, Michael, and Aaron Stein. "The YPG: America's New Best Friend?" - Al Jazeera English. June 28, 2015. 2 Youssef, Nancy A. "U.S. Sidelines Its $500M Syrian Rebel Army." The Daily Beast. August 10, 2015.
2 The Syrian conflict began in 2011 with protests calling for democracy, human rights, and an end to government corruption, as in so many other states in the region during the period that is now known as the Arab Spring. Impromptu protests erupted in the Syrian capital, Damascus, after a shopkeeper was assaulted by police on February 17 th, where as many as five thousand people turned out, chanting slogans including Syria s people will not be humiliated. 3 Unlike in Tunisia and Egypt, however, the Syrian regime was not willing to bend to the demands of the protestors, and instead responded with a great deal of violence from the very beginning. This violence is best exemplified by the Syrian regime s response to fifteen schoolboys, ages 10 to fifteen, writing graffiti with the slogan which had helped to topple the Tunisian and Egyptian governments: Al Shaab yureed eskaat al-nizaam, which in English means: the people demand the fall of the regime in the city of Deraa. The Syrian regime imprisoned the boys on March sixth and tortured them for two weeks, prompting protests around the country. 4 From there, things escalated rapidly. On March 20 th protestors ransacked and burnt down the Baath Party headquarters, the Palace of Justice, and several other municipal buildings in Deraa. In response, the regime launched a major operation to kill or capture the protestors, who had established a hospital and a headquarters of their own in the al-omari Mosque. A bloodbath followed, with at least five people killed and many more injured and captured. Images of the bloodstained mosque spread on social media, adding further fuel to the fire, and provoking protests across Syria which elicited equally violent responses. 5 A vicious cycle emerged in which people at funerals for those killed at protests would in turn be fired upon by the Syrian army and Syrian security forces, whose funerals would then also be fired upon. These funeral 3 Lister, Charles R. The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. p 12 4 Mcleod, Hugh, and Unnamed Syrian Journalist. "Syria: How It All Began." GlobalPost. April 25, 2011. 5 Ibid, Oxford University Press, 2015 p 13
3 marches came to include tens of thousands of people, and were entirely unarmed, facts that did not shield them from being fired upon. 6 Many soldiers of the Syrian Arab Army refused to fire on Syrian civilians and formed groups of their own to oppose the regime, the sum total of which were referred to as the Free Syrian Army, which began as a broadly secular and pro-democratic organization. It took many months for the opposition to take on sectarian characteristics, which is best made by Charles L. Lister in his book The Syrian Jihad: Al Qaeda, The Islamic State, and the Evolution of an Insurgency, and his evaluation of the conflict through the summer of 2011: It is worth emphasizing at this point that despite the still dominant roles of Alawites and the Assad family within Syria s governing elite, the country was largely stable along its very varied ethnic and sectarian lines. Bashar al-assad had in fact fostered a partial integration into officialdom of not only Sunnis, but also members of Syria s Christian, Druze, and even Kurdish communities. As such, while sectarian undertones have certainly ingrained themselves promininently as fundamental elements within the civil war in Syria, the revolution did not initially develop along sectarian lines. 7 In a cynical effort to be able to brand the protestors and newly armed opposition as Islamist extremists and terrorists, the Syrian government released hundreds of prisoners with jihadist leanings. Extremely early in the revolution, on March 26 th of 2011, the Syrian regime released 260 mainly hardline Islamist prisoners from Sednayya, a notorious prison. 8 The reasons for Turkish support of rebel groups in Syria are multifaceted. Up until the Arab Spring, Turkey had attempted to maintain a good neighbour policy, and had succeeded in doing so. By refusing the United States the right to move military hardware through its territory or use bases within the country during the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, Turkey had managed to secure the goodwill of much of the Arab and Muslim world. On top of that, Turkey has long been viewed as a moderating factor on the Umma, or wider Islamic community, due to 6 "'Nine Killed' at Syria Funeral Processions." - Al Jazeera English. April 23, 2011. 7 Ibid, Oxford University Press, pg 30 8 Ibid, Oxford University Press, pg 53
4 its long history of Sufism and tolerance of other sects and religions. Turkey s good neighbour policy was built to last, but since the Arab Spring, and due to the policies of the AKP, the ruling party in the country, and its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has greatly compromised its reputation and reignited centuries-old conflicts with several of its so-called good neighbours. Turkish influence in Syria goes back to 1071CE, when the Seljuk Turks under Alp Arslan defeated the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Manzikert. This secured eastern Anatolia, and began the gradual Turkification and Islamization of Syria. The victory greatly increased the pressure on remaining Byzantine holdings in the Levant, and is widely agreed to be the beginning of the end for the Byzantines. From there, the Seljuks conquered Antioch and other cities that today lie on the Turkish-Syrian border, by the end of the eleventh century. Finally, in the early sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire, the successor state to the Seljuk Turkish empires, took control of Syria. From 1517 through to the end of the First World War in 1918 Syria was under uninterrupted Ottoman control. For these four hundred years Syria was relatively stable and prosperous, and favoured for its productive agricultural land and rich history. After the First World War the new Turkish state sought to dominate its southern neighbour, taking Hatay, a majority Arab province in Syria s northwest, from Syria in 1938, a sticking point that has never been forgotten by either side. Adding to these fraught relations, both sides were on opposite sides of the Cold War, with Turkey firmly in the western camp as a member of NATO and Syria being the Soviet Union s most consistent ally in the region. Perhaps worst of all in the eyes of Turkey was Hafez al-assad s support of the PKK, or the Kurdistan Workers Party. This support lasted for over a decade, with PKK fighters using Syrian territory to launch and retreat from attacks, as well as arms shipments and extensive training, and came to a head in 1998 when Turkey threatened to invade Syria over their support,
5 which subsequently diminished. Indeed, the expulsion of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the PKK and the accepted figurehead of Kurdish self-determination in Turkey, from Syria, allowed relations between the two countries to improve greatly in the early 2000 s. Bashar al-assad was the first Syrian head of state to ever visit Turkey, and for a time it seemed that the two countries were on track to peacefully resolve their disputes. It took the start of the Syrian Civil War to degrade tensions between the two countries, which quickly spiraled out of control. Now, in the eyes of Turkey, Syrian support for Kurdish self-determination has resumed full-swing, with the Syrian regimes de facto acceptance of the YPG/YPJ, aka Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, controlling large swathes of territory. This is exacerbated by the YPG/YPJ s history of collusion with the PKK, and indeed direct cooperation between the two in fighting ISIS and occasionally other (often Turkish-backed) rebel groups in Syria. The Syrian Civil War also led the PKK to relocate around two thousand fighters from their bases in Qandil in northern Iraq to Syria, to help the YPG/YPJ and to escape Turkish airstrikes on their training camps. Turkey and Syria share a border that is over a thousand kilometers long and both countries fear each other directly interfering in their domestic affairs. In my analysis, what Turkey fears most is Kurdish control over its entire southern border; a fear that is not entirely unfounded. With Turkish-Kurdish relations at breaking point, conservative, religious Turkish faction, which control the government through the AKP, have made it clear that they view Kurdish control of border regions, particularly those inhabited by ethnically Turkmen Syrian citizens, as a red line, and have even hit Kurdish forces within Syria with artillery, particularly in Azaz, in order to make their point, and Afrin, the Kurdish-majority and governed enclave in Syria s northwestern-most corner from linking up with the rest of the Kurdish-controlled enclaves in the north and northeast, which would cut Turkey off from being able to reinforce their favoured rebel groups. This is despite the
6 fact that those same Kurdish groups are the frequent beneficiaries of US airstrikes, particularly against VBIEDs, or Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices, which are the Islamic State s most deadly and effective weapon. US airstrikes have taken out upwards of five VBIED s in a day, as well as VBIED factories. 9 Additionally, the US directly aided the Kurds in the siege of Kobani, which has entered the popular lexicon as the Kurds Stalingrad, during which the city was almost entirely destroyed. Turkish-Syrian relations are also greatly strained by the issue of water resources. In the 1970 s Turkey dammed both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, sharply reducing the amount of water that Iraq and Syria received, as well as damaging habitats and historical patterns of agriculture in both countries. The full impact of these dams was perhaps not fully felt until 2008-2011, when the most intense drought in decades destroyed much of the agriculture and forced mass migrations to cities, particularly in Syria. 10 As much as forty percent of the agricultural workforce in Syria was forced to abandon their jobs, adding to the seething unrest caused by rampant corruption and wealth/income inequality. The rapid desertification of large swathes of Syria has turned it into an importer of food for the first time in its history, with devastating consequences for the communities that relied on those regions, which in this case were predominantly Sunni tribespeople in Syria s east, near the Euphrates. That in tandem with the steadily increasing religiosity of those communities is a major factor in the now intensely religious nature of so many of the rebel groups in Syria. 9 "Airstrikes Target ISIL Tactical Units, Staging Areas." U.S. Department of Defense. May 7, 2015. 10 Al-Masri, Abdulrahman. "Turkey s Control of the Euphrates Might Lead to Disaster." Middle East Monitor. June 23, 2014.
7 At first, Turkey s support for the opposition in Syria was limited to the Free Syrian Army, whose headquarters they helped establish and protect in Istanbul in 2011, and as shown by the following quote: The FSA had long established its senior leadership in refugee camps on the Turkish side of the border, with the full cooperation of Turkish intelligence, while the extensive networks of old smuggling routes had been used to cross into and out of Syria throughout late 2011 and early-to-mid 2012. 11 However, as time went on, Turkey, with a relatively moderate religious party in government under Erdogan, was happy to support a moderate Islamist insurgency in Syria. With the gradual weakening of the FSA, Turkey shifted its support to more hardline Islamist factions within Syria, and looked the other way when it came to international jihadist recruits using Turkey as a way to enter Syria. Erdogan calculated that the Assad regime s fall would be worth an Islamist-dominated Syria post war. Due to the law of unintended consequences, Turkey s reluctance to deter or arrest would-be jihadists traveling across its soil lead to the tenfold strengthening of the so called Islamic State and Jabhat al-nusra, Al Qaeda s favoured faction in the Syrian Civil War and one over which it exerts a great degree of control over in terms of grand strategy. More recent efforts to stem this flow have been complicated by the perceived need to continue to allow foreign fighters to reinforce rebel groups in Syria that Turkey continues to support. Turkey shifted its unilateral support for the FSA to being the protector and benefactor of Syria s Islamist opposition, as the following quote proves: Intriguingly, and in an explicit sign of how Turkey had become a dominant influence behind determining northern opposition dynamics at this stage of 2015, when it was sent to this author separately by two rebel signatories, the English version of the RCC statement signed by thirty-seven of the most powerful armed groups in Syria appeared to have been distributed from an email within the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 12 11 Ibid, Oxford University Press, pg 78 12 Ibid, Oxford University Press, pg 351
8 Turkey has put itself in a position where it has managed to anger many of the most powerful actors in the region. Hezbollah, for one, which had no interest in Turkey before the Syrian Civil War is now fighting Turkish-backed groups on behalf of the regime, a fact that it is unlikely to forget and more than likely to respond to violently. Even more importantly, Iran, a country with which Turkey has had relatively good relations, now devotes countless resources, human and otherwise, to preventing Turkish designs on Syria from being realized. Finally, Kurdish population in Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran have all been inspired to join the YPG/YPJ and PKK in order to fight against very real Turkish aggression against Kurds both within and outside of its borders. Finally, Turkey has now incurred the wrath of ISIS and Jabhat al Nusra by allowing US airplanes to be based at the Incirlik air base, which has been expressed in the form of suicide bombings across Turkey, from the south to Ankara and now to Istanbul as well, targeting Turkey s tourist industry and reputation as a safe country for westerners. Additional consequences of Erdogan s policy in Syria and regarding Kurds in general will no doubt result in extensive violence across Turkey, especially now that Kurds are spread out across the entire country and no longer strictly relegated to the southeast. This was exemplified in the Ankara bombing of March 17 th of this year, when a Kurdish splinter group from the PKK called the TAK killed thirty-seven people in a bombing that could be heard several kilometers away. 13 Furthermore, Erdogan s actions have alienated Turkey from the European Union and the United States, two of its most important allies historically, and will perhaps permanently prevent Turkey from joining the EU, which has been a goal of its wider civil society for decades. Erdogan, in my reading, overplayed his hand, thinking that being a part of NATO gave him a 13 "Ankara Blast: Kurdish Group TAK Claims Bombing." BBC News. March 17, 2016.
9 free hand to carry out an interventionist foreign policy in regards to Syria. It has instead jeopardized its position in every conceivable way, as it is now viewed as a liability by all of its allies and as an existential threat by its enemies, who, on the whole, had been warming to the Turkish state. A ceasefire had been signed with the PKK and had been broadly respected, with Kurdish language rights partially restored and the allowing of Kurdish political parties to operate in the open. This was still true as recently as the spring of 2015, when the HDP, the main Kurdish party, had been able to secure the backing of much of Turkey s left and cleared the ten percent threshold to enter parliament for the first time. Now, however, the HDP are being branded as terrorists and terrorist sympathizers, and calls for stripping their parliamentary immunity have been made, as well as stripping terrorist supporting Kurds of their citizenship, a stance which would have been unthinkable even a year ago. Erdogan has been forced to search for support to his right, with supporters of the MHP, or Turkish Nationalist Party, being his chief targets. The MHP has a long history of paramilitary violence against Kurds 14, which helps to explain Turkey s bombing of the Kurds across three countries. Erdogan seeks near-dictatorial power and has proved that he will stop at nothing to achieve it, even if it means reigniting a civil war against the Kurds. This outcome would be particularly dangerous in the current climate, and yet with Kurdish militancy proving so successful in Syria it may well be a future development. Syria and Turkey both know that in a direct armed confrontation between the two countries armies, Turkey would emerge the victor. This has been the case since Syria s independence from France. During the Cold War Syria had the backing of the Soviet Union, which prevented Turkey from taking advantage of its military superiority. With the end of the Cold War, and with uncertainty about the status and depth of the new Russian Federation and 14 Macdonald, Alex. "Increasing Tensions See Resurgence of Turkey's Far-right Street Movements." Middle East Eye. September 14, 2015.
10 Syria s relations, Turkey felt comfortable enough to threaten invasion in 1998 15. Turkey still clearly views Syria through this post-cold War lens in which its power is no longer checked by a superpower and it can act as a major regional power with no recourse, which explains why it shot down a Russian fighter jet over the Turkish-Syrian border in November of 2015 16. This brazen attack backfired immediately, with Russian diplomatic and military support for the Assad regime only becoming more entrenched, on top of drastically harming Turkish-Russian relations, and even provoked sanctions on Turkey by Russia, a major trading partner and source of tourists. In short, Turkey provoked the Russian bear, with nothing positive to show for it, and in effect cleared the path for even greater support for Syria from Russia, as doing so became far more popular in Russian media and society. Indeed, Putin s Russia is exploiting the Syrian Civil War for all it is worth in terms of propaganda, painting the regime as a last bulwark against perceived Sunni militancy. The roots of the Iranian-Syrian alliance go back only as far as 1979, when Iran experienced its Islamic Revolution, causing the fall of the Shah and the establishment of a theocratic republic. Iran s revolution shook up the geopolitical map of the Middle East, and turned a reliable ally of the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia into a stalwart rival. Shortly after, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran with the backing of the United States and most of the rest of the Arab world, Syria proved to be a vital ally. Syria cut its pipeline with Iraq in order to deprive it of a major source of its economic lifeblood, as well as sharing advanced missile technology and supplying it with a great deal of weaponry. In a sense, Iran can be seen as paying Syria back for its support during the Iran-Iraq War through its unconditional support for the Syrian regime from the start of the protests through to the current state of the civil war. 15 Danforth, Nick. "A Short History of Turkish Threats to Invade Syria." Foreign Policy. 16 Nissenbaum, Dion. "Turkey Shoots Down Russian Military Jet." Wall Street Journal. November 24, 2015.
11 Syria and Iran s relationship also deepened due to their shared involvement in the Lebanese Civil War. Iran s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp, or IRGC, with Syrian backing, established Hezbollah, a Shia paramilitary group and contemporary political party that has controlled large swathes of southern Lebanon since the early 1980 s, and which is viewed as one of Israel s chief threats, with countless missiles under its control aimed at it. Hezbollah has also used violence as a political tool within Lebanon, carrying out assassinations, including that of Rafik Hariri, the Prime Minister of Lebanon who is largely credited for rebuilding Beirut after the civil war, in 2005, among others. Syria was largely blamed for the assassination, which led to its army being ejected from the country as a result of the Cedar Revolution, in which about a million protestors demanded full independence for Lebanon, which they largely achieved. Syria and Iran s military alliance was cemented on June 16 th 2006, when the two countries agreed on a mutual protection pact, in which an attack on either country would be treated as an attack on both. Since the start of the Syrian Civil War, Iran has been very open in their support for the Syrian regime, and ended up supplying them, along with Hezbollah, with much of their manpower, weaponry, and expertise, as shown by the following quotes: Not only could Hezbollah and the IRGC provide supplementary personnel for the Assad regime s offensive military operations, but their high level of training and experience would be put to use in building a brand new paramilitary force that would play a predominantly defensive role, thereby freeing up the army to go on the offensive. Proregime municipalities and city districts had independently established protection militias from early on in the conflict, but the decision was made in Damascus in mid-2012 to centralize this within a National Defense Force (NDF) trained mainly by the IRGCC and its Quds Force. 17 The increasingly visible presence of pro-regime militias and Iranian-backed paramilitary personnel in the early months of 2013 was beginning to herald a strategic rebalancing. Regime and pro-regime forces had begun to stabilize parts of Damascus and the southern 17 Ibid, Oxford University Press, pg 90
12 governate of Deraa, while Homs city and much of its immediate countryside, as well as the western highway to the Alawite heartlands of Tartous and Latakia were well consolidated. As such, the regime remained the dominant power across most of Syria s urban centers and had regained or consolidated its power in the country s central and western region. We thought that Assad had been defeated in the winter of 2012, said Abu Mustafa, Ahrar al-sham s chief of external relations, but at that time, Iran directly interfered in the revolution to fight Syrians and this stopped the regime from falling. 18 Indeed, Iran supported the NDF and other armed factions to such an extent that they even flew many of them to Iran for urban guerilla training. The NDF grew to 50,000 strong by April of 2013, and is now estimated to have well over 100,000 members. This Iranian-trained force controls large swathes of territory, and work closely with Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Iran s influence over Syria is shown most blatantly by the fact that they have negotiated with armed rebel groups within Syria to establish truces and resolve territorial disputes without any presence of Syrian negotiators. The following quote from Lister, talking about a major ceasefire in Idlib province in Syria in August of 2015, demonstrates Iran s, as well as Turkey and Saudi Arabia s influence through their own funding of Ahrar al-sham, over negotiations: In addition to the fact that Ahrar al-sham had risen to represent the entire Syrian opposition in multilateral negotiations, the role of Iran and the total absence of Assad regime involvement in the talks was also particularly noteworthy. Iran had been assuming more and more of a command and leadership role in Syria s most strategic battles for some time, but the exclusion of Damascus from negotiating over Syrian territory underlined Tehran s broader assumption of control. 19 Iran also puts a great deal of pressure on Afghan refugees to fight on the behalf of the Syrian regime. These refugees are largely of the Hazara ethnic group, a remnant of the Mongol conquest of Central Asia, and are predominantly Shia, making them prime targets for use 18 Ibid, Oxford University Press, pg 330 19 Ibid, Oxford University Press, pg 378
13 defending Bashar al-assad s Alawite regime. Iran has sent thousands of these people, with many complaining that they were forced to go to earn their and their families right to permanent residence in Iran, as well as financial incentives which are sorely needed by the refugees, who have no legal right to work. 20 These people are then used to defend Shia holy sites, which are often targeted by jihadi rebels, and particularly the Islamic State. This pressure on young Afghani men in Iran has been a major reason for the exodus of Afghanis to Europe, with Afghans making up the largest national group after Syrians attempting to make it to Germany and Sweden via land and sea routes. The Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and now Russia once more have maintained their quest for warm-water ports for several centuries. Their obsession with them is natural without warm water ports a country cannot maintain a fleet year-round, sharply limiting their projection of power in both their region and the wider world. A desire for major warm-water ports was likely the main consideration between Russia s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula back in early 2014. It was a major motivating factor of their invasion and occupation of Afghanistan as well, and had it been successful it would have placed them just a few hundred miles from the Indian Ocean. During the Cold War the Soviet Union maintained naval bases in Syria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Vietnam, Angola, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Guinea, and what was Yugoslavia. Today, the only one that still remains is at Tartus in northwest Syria, and must be seen as a main motivating factor for continued Russian assistance to the Syrian regime, along with Russia s air bases that work in tandem with its navy. 20 Solomon, Erika. "Insight: Syrian Government Guerrilla Fighters Being Sent to Iran for Training." Reuters. April 04, 2013.
14 Soviet influence in Syria dates back to 1955, when Syria was invited by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev to join a pro-soviet military and economic bloc. Turkey mobilized its army along the Syrian border in an attempt to prevent the alliance from taking shape, but Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister to whom the Molotov cocktail owes its name, threatened Turkey and caused them to back down. Soviet military aid climbed into the billions of dollars by 1968, though the USSR declined to help Syria and their Arab allies in the disastrous 1967 War with Israel, despite hinting that they would support Syria in the event of war. The relationship continued after the 1971 coup that brought Hafez al-assad to power. In 1972 the Soviet-Syrian pact was updated and strengthened, and the Soviets upped their arms shipments. In the 1973 War with Israel the Soviets nearly intervened on Syria and Egypt s behalf, but backed down when the United States under President Richard Nixon made it clear that they would enter the war on Israel s side if the Soviets did so. After the war the Soviets mended their ties by giving Syria some the most advanced weapons of the day, including longrange missiles and aircraft that to this day are still used by the Syrian Armed Forces. Soviet-Syrian relations deteriorated significantly throughout the 1970 s and 1980 s, with official Soviet press chastising Syria for its intervention in the Lebanese Civil War. The criticism escalated without much effect on Soviet arms shipments to Syria until the mid-eighties when Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev took over and subsequently called for a significant decrease in both economic and military aid. 21 Gorbachev was highly critical of what he regarded as Syria s obsession with fighting Israel, and made it clear that the Soviet Union would no longer support Assad s efforts to achieve and maintain military parity with Israel. Soviet military aid dried up altogether by the end of the Soviet Union, with Syria having to pay in cash for its 21 US Library of Congress. "Syria - Relations with the Soviet Union." Syria - Relations with the Soviet Union.
15 weapons. However, even when relations between the two countries were at their nadir, the Soviet Union continued to provide Syria with important diplomatic cover and maintained an official alliance, as formalized in the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation of 1980, which officially mandated mutual military assistance. Relations under Gorbachev can be understood as the Soviets seeking greater influence over Syria in exchange for continued support, in contrast to the previous policy of handing them a blank check without providing direct military assistance in the event of war. After the breakup of the Soviet Union Russo-Syrian relations steadily improved. Russia forgave three-fourths of Syria s debt, and in exchange Syria has allowed Russia to expand its military bases, and has given them the right to station nuclear-armed ships at Tartus, which they briefly did in 2008. With Putin s political rise the importance of Syria has grown exponentially. Now that the Russian regime sees itself, rightly or wrongly, as an embattled country, it views Syria as a crucial ally. Russia has also used the Syrian Civil War to distract from its problems in Ukraine, and to deliver crucial propaganda victories, which the Russian regime relies on to keep its approval rating high. With its bases in Syria it can project its influence across the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, and it signals to other countries that with Russia as an ally they can get away with whatever they please. As a result, Iran has made itself a bedfellow of the Russian regime, allowing them to fire ballistic missiles across their territory into Syria, as well as acquiring Russia s most advanced anti-ballistic missile technology. 22 In short, the Russo-Syrian alliance has allowed Russia to make itself a critically important player in the region, and has allowed it to counter the United States great deal of influence, especially in regards to Israel. Indeed, the Russian people are again seeing themselves as the inhabitants of the only country 22 Bodner, Matthew. "Iran Seeks Russian Fire Power Business." The Moscow Times. March 4, 2016.
16 which stands up to the United States and its cronies, a position which the Soviet Union maintained for decades. Russian influence in Syria must also be seen as a main factor as to why Bashar al-assad responded to the protests in Syria in the way that he did. First of all, he knew that he had a more or less unconditional veto from Russia in the United Nations Security Council, which would prevent any unified action on the part of the United Nations to sanction his regime, as happened in Libya in 2011 when dictator Muamar Gaddafi lacked the same sort of international protection and as a result ended up killed in a horrifying manner by rebels once they reached Libya s capitol, Tripoli. Secondly, he knew that he had an unlimited supply of weapons and ammunition, as well as the parts to replace military equipment that was damaged. He also knew he could count on Russian military expertise, in terms of training and advice, as well as the latest military equipment, including drones, advanced fighters and bombers, and anti-tank and anti-personnel weapons, whereas the rebels he would be fighting would have little to no access to such advanced technology. Indeed, air superiority has proved to be the Syrian regime s greatest asset, with the ever-present threat of barrel bombs dropped from helicopters that are perfect for Syria s terrain and faster than any of their American counterparts, namely the Hind MI-24, which saw so much action in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation and was so feared by the Mujahedeen. Additionally, the Russian armed intervention in Syria that began in September of 2015 can be seen as the fruition of Assad s strategy when his forces came close to losing Latakia province, the site of so much of Russia s infrastructure in the country and the largest concentration of the religious group that Assad hails from, the Alawites, he was able to count on thousands of Russian airstrikes to turn the tide of the war in his favour. The situation is in the process of unfolding but it looks as though Russia is preparing to use its air force to help Assad
17 in a final push on Aleppo, which if successful would likely prove the death knell for the revolution and prevent the armed opposition from achieving any of its goals, especially that of replacing Bashar al-assad with a figure more palatable to all sides. Although Russia has no love lost for Assad himself, preserving the two countries economic and military ties is of the highest level of priority for Putin s Russia. If Russian intervention is seen as a success, Russia s pedigree as an ally will increase dramatically, as well as its status an arms exporter. Staunchly opposed to Russia and Iran s designs on Syria is Saudi Arabia. Their role in the conflict has been to back some of the most extreme rebel groups in Syria with huge amounts of money and weapons. This is complicated by the fact that extremely wealthy Saudis often give large amounts of money and weapons to armed groups independently of the central government; something which has no doubt contributed to the proliferation of armed factions in the Syrian conflict. Unfortunately, although Saudi Arabia does try to prevent funds from reaching the Islamic State, there is a long history of prominent Saudis transferring their money through Kuwait, which is seen as the most lenient of the Gulf States when it comes to financing international terrorism. 23 According to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, private Saudi contributions to Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic State of Iraq, the two forerunners to the Islamic State, were the largest source of income for the group(s) until they took over infrastructure and sources of cash of their own, such as oil fields, the selling of antiquities, the jizya, (a tax on non-muslims levied in exchange for protection), extortion, robbery, etc. Had the Saudi Arabian government done more to clamp down on this funding early in the Syrian conflict it could have drastically weakened hardline Islamist groups in Syria, but due to their policy, which can be summed up as Assad must go, no matter who replaces him, and which meant 23 Boghardt, Lori Plotkin. "Saudi Funding of ISIS." - The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. June 23, 2014.
18 turning a blind eye to private funding of armed groups in Syria, the Islamic State has now taken on an economic life of its own which has left it far less dependent on outside sources of income. The Saudi Arabian government itself has been a primary backer of many of the groups that coordinate most closely with the Al Nusra Front, or Al-Qaeda s local enterprise in Syria. The reasons for this support are manifold, but stem largely from the fact that Saudi Arabia actively promotes an extremely conservative version of Sunni Islam around the entire world, and has for several decades. Saudi Arabia does this by sponsoring religious schools, or madrassas, and by sending Saudi-trained Imams to them to influence local populations. In addition, many millions of people from around the Muslim world go to work in Saudi Arabia, especially men, due to its incredible oil wealth, and when they return to their home countries they often bring their newfound conservatives beliefs with them. The effect that the combination of active support for conservative Islamic factions combines with people who went to Saudi Arabia bringing back conservative values is best exemplified by the fact that prior to the 1950 s very few Egyptian women wore the veil, but after countless Egyptians had gone to work in Saudi Arabia and returned, veiling became immensely popular, with more than ninety percent of Muslim Egyptians now wearing them in public. 24 According to Patrycja Sasnal, the head of the Middle East and North Africa Project at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, at least ten million and as many as over twenty million Egyptians worked in Saudi Arabia between 1970 and 2010, adding up to a quarter of the population and perhaps half of the overall male population. The people who went to Saudi Arabia to work were paid far more than those who remained in Egypt, but had to adapt to vastly different social mores, including the total separation of men and 24 Sasnal, Patrycja. "Saudi Arabia: On the Inside Track in Egypt - The Globalist." The Globalist. July 31, 2015.
19 women in the workplace, compulsory veiling, and, perhaps most importantly, obligatory prayer in mosques which were by definition staffed with Wahhabi imams. These same beliefs have been exported to Syria, where local rebel groups now actively enforce Sharia law through a largely Wahhabi lens, something that was almost completely foreign to Syria before the war. In terms of backing arch-conservative Islamist groups on the ground, the Turkish and Saudi Arabian governments can largely be said to be on the same page. Both back hardline Sunni groups which openly aim to establish an Islamic state in Syria. The two most prominent of these are Ahrar al-sham and Jaysh al-islam, who together, along with tens of other groups, make up the Islamic Front, the largest and most powerful umbrella group on the ground in Syria. Both groups are in an alliance with the Al-Nusra Front, but are not designated as terrorist groups by the United States largely due to Turkish and Saudi influence. The most prominent difference between the two countries approaches is in regards to the Free Syrian Army, which Turkey puts far more resources into maintaining and supporting, whereas the Saudis solely support groups like Ahrar al-sham, Jaysh al-islam, and the like. Due to the two countries collaboration, the jihadi groups tend to cooperate with the more secular FSA against the Islamic State and the Assad regime for fear of stepping on their respective backers toes, although their visions for what Syria should look like differ drastically, just like it is with Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia and Turkey s shared strategy is already backfiring in several ways, along predictable historical lines. Much like what happened during the Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan, when the Saudi Arabian government gave its blessing to thousands of Mujahedeen fighters to fight the Soviets, as well as free plane tickets, arms, and cash, Saudis and many Turks, including those in the highest echelons of government and business, today seem willing to back groups that oppose Bashar Al-Assad, no matter how brutal their behavior. As a result, terrorist
20 attacks against Saudi and Turkish citizens have proliferated, with both the states and their considerable minority populations the main targets of the attacks. The stage has been set for these to continue indefinitely, as battle-hardened veterans of the war in Syria return home with the view that the Saudi and Turkish governments are illegitimate due to their perceived lack of sufficiently conservative Islam. In 2015 alone four suicide bombings targeted police and worshippers in Saudi Arabia, destroying two Shia mosques and one Sunni mosque which was inside of a military installation, and a police checkpoint. In Turkey the same story is playing out, with the worst terrorist attacks to ever occur on Turkish soil being perpetrated by the Islamic State. One occurred at Sur, where thirty-one people were killed when a suicide bomber targeted a meeting of leftists who were planning to help build Kobani. 25 To say that Turkey s good neighbor policy has failed would be an understatement. However, to say that it has failed across the board would be inaccurate. Turkey maintains good ties with the Balkan states, including Greece, which historically were its most contested relationships, with fighting against Greece in the Turkish War of Independence in 1923, as well as multiple revolts against Turkish rule of Greece during the Ottoman Empire. Turkish acceptance of Bosnian and Kosovan refugees during the breakup of Yugoslavia greatly improved the perception of Turkey in both countries, and strengthened the argument that Turkey was a responsible power which could perhaps join the European Union, a long term goal of Turkey. Additionally, Turkey was able to drastically improve relations with Albania following the fall of the USSR and communism more generally. In the case of Bulgaria, which had been another of its staunchest enemies over the centuries, its joining of NATO in 2004 heralded a new relationship with Turkey, also a member of NATO, in which the two have become and remained close 25 Peker, Emre. "Suicide Bomber Kills at Least 31 in Turkish Border Town." WSJ. July 20, 2015.
21 allies. 26 Finally, the AKP pursued and still pursues a policy of reconciliation between Northern Cyprus and Cyprus, a conflict which had erupted as a result of Greco-Turkish squabbles, and which is one of the sticking points when it comes to Turkey s potential joining of the EU, of which Cyprus is a member. What have changed are Turkey s relations with those to its north and east. The most recent Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davotoglu, as recently as 2008, cited relations with Syria as one of the most striking examples of Turkey s success in the region. and went on to say that the two nations shared a common destiny, common history, and common future. 27 The most striking thing about his statement is that, through the policies of the AKP during the Syrian revolution and subsequent civil war, Turkey is indeed binding its destiny with that of Syria, while directly helping to make it one of sectarian violence; something that historically was extremely uncommon, with large-scale sectarian and ethnic conflict only occurring rarely until the rise of the concept of nationalism and the subsequent Balkanization of the Ottoman Empire s holdings in Europe, as well as the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians during and to a large extent as a result of the First World War, and Russia s large-scale arming of Armenian partisans before and during the war. The rise of Turkish nationalism within the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century also played a major role in the genocide, with Turkish leaders of the Ottoman army encouraging Kurdish groups to attack, dispossess, and often kill Armenians. According to Gencer Ozcan, a professor at Bilgi University in Istanbul who has taught courses on Turkish foreign policy and Middle Eastern history, Turkey s good neighbour policy 26 "From Rep. of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs." Republic of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs. May 2014. 27 7 Bülent Aras and Rabia Karakaya Polat, From Conflict to Cooperation: Desecuritization of Turkey s Relations with Syria and Iran, Security Dialogue (2008) p. 495
22 lasted until at least April 2011, just after the start of the Arab Spring, and was heralded as one of the major achievements of the AKP. He cites the parties 2011 election manifesto, which reads: We made friends, not enemies. We fulfilled Mustafa Kemal s [the founder of modern Turkey] motto Peace at home, peace abroad, which used to be so far from the reality and turned Turkey into a country which makes friends, not enemies. We attached as much importance to peace abroad as we did to peace at home. While our country s foreign policy used to be run on the basis of the assumption that Turkey is surrounded by enemies, we turned this imagination and psychology into the policy of Zero Problems with the Neighbours. We solved problems that were thought to be insoluble, formed friendships people thought could not be formed. 28 Just five years later, and as a direct result of Turkey s actions in Syria, Turkey s good neighbour policy with both Iran and Russia can be accurately said to be in tatters and rags. In conclusion, the sum total effect of these different powers intervening in the Syrian Civil War is that it has become intractable. Each side has enough backing that they are able to hold territory and launch major offensives, and with so many other players, like the YPG/YPJ, the Al Nusra Front, and the Islamic State, none of whom want the Syrian state to be strengthened or even intact, it is all but impossible to even get the most important factions to sit at the same table with one another, let alone to find a solution to the conflict which is even remotely acceptable to all. Consequently, there is no end in sight to the Syrian Civil War. Major Russian and Iranian intervention, rather than deliver a death-blow to the opposition, has instead entrenched the war and prevented any one side from forcing another into a position where they have to make major concessions. Each side has far too many eggs in their respective baskets, and cannot afford to give them up for fear of strengthening the other parties which whom they are rivaled. The only sure thing is that tens of thousands more Syrians will die at the expense of 28 Ozcan, Gencer. "Policy of Zero Problems with the Neigbours." Turkey: A New Power in the Mediterranean 59 (2012).
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25 Sasnal, Patrycja. "Saudi Arabia: On the Inside Track in Egypt - The Globalist." The Globalist. July 31, 2015. Accessed May 29, 2016. http://www.theglobalist.com/saudi-arabia-middle-eastextremism-egypt/. Solomon, Erika. "Insight: Syrian Government Guerrilla Fighters Being Sent to Iran for Training." Reuters. April 04, 2013. Accessed May 29, 2016. http://www.reuters.com/article/ussyria-iran-training-insight-idusbre9330dw20130404. Stevens, Michael, and Aaron Stein. "The YPG: America's New Best Friend?" - Al Jazeera English. June 28, 2015. Accessed May 29, 2016. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/06/ypg-america-friend-isil-kurds-syria- 150627073034776.html. US Library of Congress. "Syria - Relations with the Soviet Union." Syria - Relations with the Soviet Union. Accessed May 30, 2016. http://countrystudies.us/syria/68.htm. "Airstrikes Target ISIL Tactical Units, Staging Areas." U.S. Department of Defense. May 7, 2015. Accessed May 29, 2016. http://www.defense.gov/news-article-view/article/604661. Youssef, Nancy A. "U.S. Sidelines Its $500M Syrian Rebel Army." The Daily Beast. August 10, 2015. Accessed May 29, 2016. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/11/u-s-shelvesits-500m-syrian-rebel-army.html. Al-Masri, Abdulrahman. "Turkey s Control of the Euphrates Might Lead to Disaster." Middle East Monitor. June 23, 2014. Accessed May 29, 2016. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20140623-turkeys-control-of-the-euphrates-might-lead-todisaster/