The military campaign against Islamic State is being reduced to a vicious sideshow as the Syrian civil war enters a new make-or-break phase.Russian military involvement has been a game-changer – saving Bashar al-Assad’s forces from near collapse, blatantly attacking western-backed opposition forces, and supplying T-90 tanks to Assad’s army closing in on Aleppo. For the western allies, time is running out. The agenda is being shaped by Russia, Assad and Iran, which have formed a de facto alliance to maintain the old Syria and – despite the supposed ceasefire agreed by the big powers in Munich last Friday – are not dissuaded by the death and destruction involved. The Syrian Centre for Policy Research estimates that Syrian war deaths are now more than 400,000. Over half Syria’s 22 million citizens are internal or international refugees. The civil war, not the Isis phenomenon, is responsible for about 90% of these deaths and displacements, and the attacks of Assad forces are believed to be responsible for over three-quarters of them. Today came news ofair strikes on a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital that the organisation blamed on Syrian government or Russian forces.
The accord in Munich was to impose a “cessation of hostilities” on the warring parties within a week. The Russians warned darkly that a third world war would be inevitable if nothing was done. The Saudis warned, less credibly, that they were ready to intervene on the ground in Syria.
But in reality the Russians think they need just a few more weeks to wipe out the anti-Assad opposition, and the ceasefire they urge cannot take effect soon enough to prevent that. The Saudis, more concerned with their failing war in Yemen, know they cannot tip the balance against the Russia-Assad-Iran axis. The US, the Europeans and the UN can only hope that they can this week firm up ceasefire arrangements – at least to create a process that might help them navigate out of the mess. The trick will be to convince the Russians that they have more to gain from an immediate ceasefire than plunging forward.
The alternative would be to accept that Assad and his backers in Moscow and Tehran will emerge as winners from this civil war – and then deal with Isis in Syria, while western forces crush the movement in Iraq and elsewhere. But this would be paying a high political price. Western policy across the Middle East, and elsewhere, would be severely undermined, and an Assad victory would be unlikely to bring even a sullen peace to Syria.
Britain’s involvement in the region to counter the Isis phenomenon in 2014 was understandable and not necessarily wrong. David Cameron is right to say the campaign against Isis is making progress.
For all its barbaric videos and apocalyptic boasting the group is under pressure. There have been no easy victories since it moved into undefended Palmyra in May last year. It is losing ground to Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria. The battle of Mosul, the centre of Isis in Iraq, is not far away. It is being dislodged from its siege of Deir ez-Zor in Syria, and Kurdish forces are moving closer to the Isis “capital” in Raqqa. The economic infrastructure that Isis has created is being dismantled: last month the group halved the salaries of its mujahideen, and it is becoming paranoid about spies and traitors.
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