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Russia’s “Quagmire” In Syria Turns Out To Be A Well Designed Campaign
Recent "Official Washington" headlines:
The above was all nonsense and propaganda. It represented the typical self delusion of the Washington establishment. The Russian government and military knew exactly what they were doing. After some 100 days of Russian military support for the Syrian government the results are coming in. They look well. The Islamic State lost most of its oil income and is reduced in its capabilities. The Syrian army and its allies are progressing against they various enemies on several fronts. The costs of Russia's expedition is relatively small.
This reality is now setting in.
Three months into his military intervention in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved his central goal of stabilizing the Assad government and, with the costs relatively low, could sustain military operations at this level for years, U.S. officials and military analysts say.
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"I think it's indisputable that the Assad regime, with Russian military support, is probably in a safer position than it was," said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity. Five other U.S. officials interviewed by Reuters concurred with the view that the Russian mission has been mostly successful so far and is facing relatively low costs.
The U.S. officials stressed that Putin could face serious problems the longer his involvement in the more than four-year-old civil war drags on.
Yet since its campaign began on Sept. 30, Russia has suffered minimal casualties and, despite domestic fiscal woes, is handily covering the operation's cost, which analysts estimate at $1-2 billion a year. The war is being funded from Russia's regular annual defense budget of about $54 billion, a U.S. intelligence official said.
With the Russian help time is now in favor of the Syrian government's position. As longer it takes to get to some negotiated end-state with the various groups supported from the outside, the less power on the ground and the less say in the outcome will those groups and their sponsors have. The Islamic State and several other Salafi groups like Ahrar al Sham will shrink back into underground terrorist forces. These will be able to continue random attacks but will not be able to hold ground. Unfortunately incidents like today's triple suicide bombing in Homs, which killed some 50 civilians, will continue to occur for some time. The biggest challenge will be the defeat of al-Qaeda in Syria under the name Jabhat al-Nusra. That group has pushed roots into the local ground and population and will be the hardest to eradicate. It will have to be isolated from its sponsors and all resupply before it can be defeated. Local intelligence will have to penetrate the group to go after its leadership.
Russia has not yet brought its full power to bear in Syria. It waits until a more complete intelligence picture has formed to pursue smaller and smaller opposition units. This may take some additional month. The big government offense against its enemies in Idleb province and city is also still in preparation. Unless some unforeseen exterior event happens it will be the major move over the next six month.
“To me that looks like Erdogan has lost touch with reality.”
Well, maybe he believes they can create own reality, to paraphrase Karl Rove. But Turkey, today, is no different of the rest of the world’s states, oppressive, totalitarian with feudal ruling system.
Here in this interesting interview is given picture of Turkey and wider by PKK leader.
http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2015/12/24/cemil-bayik-il-n-y-a-aucune-raison-que-nous-mettions-fin-a-la-lutte-armee-dans-l-etat-actuel-des-choses_4837446_3218.html
Founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which he is now one of the main leaders, Cemil Bayik agreed to meet with Le Monde in the isolated mountains of Qandil, on the Iraqi-Iranian border, home to the headquarters of the Kurdish armed movement. Established in 1978 in Turkey, the PKK book a guerrilla war against the Turkish state since 1984, claiming to defend the interests of the Kurdish minority. After a short cease-fire launched in 2013, hostilities resumed last summer. The success of the civilian component of the Kurdish movement in elections in June blocked the institutional process as a wave of attacks hit sympathizers and fellow of the Kurdish movement, the PKK attacks attributed to the Turkish state. Meanwhile, hostilities resumed in the Kurdish cities of Turkey where the Kurdish movement unilaterally declared independence and sent armed militants to protect it. The violence, which have increased in intensity this fall, fall within the context of a regional conflict in which the PKK is a central player. Fighter Ankara, the Kurdish movement is also in the front line of the organization Islamic state (EI) through his Syrian allies who have the support of the international coalition against EI.
Since last August collapse of the peace process between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Turkish state, several Kurdish cities in Turkey are immersed in a state of chronic violence. Armed PKK militants who have declared it unilaterally local self-confront the army and the Turkish security forces in street battles that reach these days in Diyarbakir unprecedented intensity. Any hope of a return to negotiations is it doomed?
The Turkish state is no longer in a logic of negotiation or solution but removal of the Kurdish movement. The first agreement that was reached between the Kurdish movement and the government Dolmabahce Palace 28 February 2015 was denounced by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The choice we now offer the following: surrender or eradication. We will not surrender. We will resist. We carry this existential battle that we will continue to pursue with all the means and resources in our possession. We plan to soon announce the creation of a Revolutionary Resistance Front coming with other organizations within and outside of Turkey, which I can not reveal any names but share our struggle and will fight with us against the Erdogan regime. The Kurdish regions of Turkey have turned into battlefields. The cities are attacked by tanks, special forces, snipers. The Turkish state are destroyed houses, historical monuments and openly kills civilians. This happened in the cities of Syria in recent years, now occurs in a comparable way in Turkey. On behalf of the restoration of public order, the Turkish state is about to commit a massacre he wants to adopt a legal form. Its aim is to empty the Kurdish cities of their inhabitants as they did campaigns in the 1990s, destroying thousands of villages. Also, we reserve the right to send additional fighters soon in Kurdish cities in Turkey as our duty to protect our people. Erdogan is also prepared to use all possible forms of pressure so no one raises his voice against his policy towards the Kurds. In order to buy the silence of European countries, he brandished the weapon of refugees by threatening to let them pass to the EU, knowing that lurk among them members of the Islamic state.
Channels of communication with Ankara are there forever?
All channels of communication with the Turkish state are closed. We no longer have any contact. We wanted to build a bridge between the Kurds and the state through our civil movement, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) which participated in the last elections and thanks to the action of our President Abdullah Öcalan who played a role in the negotiations since his detention on the island of Imrali. However, since April 5, 2014, Mr. Öcalan is silenced and could not meet with our civil movement. The results of the elections of June 7 [who saw the Kurdish movement achieve a historic score on an opening program to the Turkish institutions and society] were the embodiment of our will for peace. Erdogan has not accepted the results, and we returned to a state of war.
Abdullah Öcalan has played a major role in launching the peace process in 2013. If he was able to speak again, could it work for an output current military escalation?
We know our leader, he would never make a call to disarmament. Anyway, it is to us that the decision belongs. We are on the ground, we see what is happening from a practical point of view. There is no reason for us to end the armed struggle in the present state of things. On the contrary, in the months that followed the civil war in Turkey will worsen. It falls within the context of a regional war in which everyone pursues its interests and that nobody in the region can stand aside. Developments in Turkey, Iraq and Syria belong to a single conflict. The Middle East will experience a new era after the war. Kurdistan is the Middle East from the center, between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. That is why we consider that the heart of the regional war is underway in Kurdistan and that this war will continue to intensify before leading them to a new situation.
As such, how the PKK, which is present in the north of Iraq he positioned relative to the apparent willingness of Ankara to play a greater military role?
We consider that the Turkish state’s ambition to dominate northern Iraq by forming a Sunni Front that will replace the Islamic state. It claims to support the forces fighting the Islamic state in this region but actually wished advance its own interests. In this project it seeks to attract the Kurdistan Democratic Party [KDP] which militarily controls the regions between Mosul and the Turkish border. We see this as an attempt to divide the Kurds and threaten the PKK in Iraq. Moreover, Turkish politics arouses unanimous rejection of other Iraqi and regional forces and Russia. The Turkish state decides to send troops on Iraqi territory without the approval of Baghdad even as he killed in the name of its territorial sovereignty a Russian plane that had flown over the border for a few seconds.
The special relationship between Turkey and the KDP of Massoud Barzani they may strengthen existing tensions and lead to clashes between Kurdish forces?
Turkey aspires to use the KDP against our movement. That is why Massoud Barzani was received with all the consideration in Ankara on December 9, shortly after visiting Saudi Arabia. I hope he will not fall into this trap. We do not want a war between Kurds. I also hope that a meeting will soon be organized between the PKK and Barzani although hopes for a positive outcome are low. The KDP is the only Kurdish organization which supports Turkey in its projects in Iraq. He runs the risk of being isolated because the behavior of Turkey in Iraq is unacceptable.
Are the Russian-Turkish tensions bodes well for the PKK? Do you hope to get the support of Moscow whose views oppose that of Ankara on the regional scene?
We must have tactical relations with all forces in the Middle East and keep our online without choosing one side or the other. The Cold War is over, we can have convergences of interest with powers that seem to conflict.
Among these tactics relationships, coordination of military allies of Syrian Kurdish PKK with Washington led coalition has significantly increase their territory in the northeast of the country in fighting the Islamic state. Is the relationship of the US with Turkey within NATO could condemn this cooperation?
No action is possible against the Islamic state in Syria without the support of Kurdish forces which are most effective on the ground. The United States are perfectly aware. They represent the only secular component involved in the Syrian conflict and are the basis of the fight against the Islamic state in the country. I can not think that Washington will end its relationship with the Syrian Kurds only in deference to Turkey. For example, decision-Rakka can not be considered without the support of the Syrian Kurdish forces.
Posted by: Neretva’43 | Dec 29 2015 0:22 utc | 36
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