Russia appears to have 'gone ballistic' in Syria — and it may be helping ISIS
Russia
is showing no signs that it intends to forgive and forget Turkey’s
decision to down a Russian warplane two weeks ago. A stepped-up Russian
bombing campaign in the Bayirbucak region of northwest Syria, near the
strategically important city of Azaz, has primarily targeted the
Turkey-backed…
Business Insider
Mon, Dec 7, 2015, 10:59pm EST - US Markets are closed
Russia appears to have 'gone ballistic' in Syria — and it may be helping ISIS
By Natasha Bertrand
7 hours ago
Russia is showing no signs that it intends to forgive and forget Turkey’s decision to down a Russian warplane two weeks ago.
Moscow
has chosen to retaliate for the incident asymmetrically, hitting
Turkish economic and military interests instead of engaging in a direct
conflict with Ankara that might lead to a military confrontation with
NATO.
But the Russians appear
to have “gone ballistic" in their determination to wipe out Turkish
influence in northern Syria and help regime forces reach Aleppo, a UN
official told McClatchy on Monday.
A stepped-up Russian bombing campaign in the Bayirbucak
region of northwest Syria, near the strategically important city of
Azaz, has primarily targeted the Turkey-backed Turkmen rebels and
civilians — and the Turkish aid convoys that supply them.The strikes are in-line with an objective Russia has had since the beginning of its air campaign in Syria — namely, to undermine Turkey’s Syria policy of bolstering rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and to prevent the Turks from establishing a "safe zone” for displaced Syrians that might hinder the regime’s efforts to take Aleppo.
That city is the second-largest in Syria and divided between government and rebel forces. The Assad regime launched a large-scale offensive to retake the city in mid-October with help from Russia and Iran.
(Google Maps)
“There has been an uptick in bombing in northern Syria as part of the reaction to the downing of the Su-24,” Boris Zilberman, a Russia expert with the Washington, DC-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider in an email.
He continued: “Providing an opening for Assad to advance to Aleppo or any other advances is consistent with Russia’s strategy all along. The situation with Turkey is an excuse to double down.”
Indeed, the increased airstrikes on Turkish interests and allies in northern Syria is as much about hastening a vital win for the Russia-backed Syrian regime as it is about getting back at Ankara.
“If
there is going to be a partition in Syria, and Assad is going to build
his own state in Latakia, Bayirbucak is a strategic point and the
Turkmen will have to be driven out,” Abdurrahman Mustafa, president of
the Syrian Turkmen Assembly, told the Independent last week.
(Reuters) 
Russia, for its part, insists that its planes have only ever targeted “terrorists.” But Turkey had complained previously about Russia bombing villages in northwestern Syria that are predominantly inhabited by civilians and Turkmen rebel brigades battling Assad — not members of al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra or ISIS.
“Putin’s
larger immediate goal is to shut down Turkey’s link to Aleppo, thereby
preparing the way for Assad (perhaps even in coordination with the
PKK-affiliated Kurds) to besiege and eventually recapture the city,”
Middle East expert Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for
Defense of Democracies, wrote last week in Tablet.
Metin Gurcan, a Turkish military expert, expressed a similar sentiment in Al-Monitor
late last month. He noted that the Russian operation near the border
helps Russian and Syrian troops clear northern Latakia of opposition
fighters — a necessary prerequisite to “further Syrian regime and
Russian moves toward Idlib and Aleppo.”Additionally, Gurcan wrote, the bombing campaign helps the Assad regime “secure more defensible, expanded territory before an eventual cease-fire, as recommended in the Vienna meetings, goes into effect.”
There is little Turkey can do about Russia’s bombing campaign near its border without provoking a situation in which NATO would be forced to come to its defense.
In moves evidently meant as a message to deter Turkish jets from shooting down Russian planes in the future, Russia reportedly equipped its
jets flying in Syria with air-to-air missiles for self-defense. It
also sent a state-of-the-art S-400 missile system to the Russian
Hemeimeem air base near Latakia — about 30 miles south of the Turkish
border.
(Thomson Reuters) 
An S-400 defense missile system appears to be driving out of a cargo plane at Hmeymim airbase.
The
US-led anti-ISIS coalition — of which Turkey is a part — may intervene,
however, if it sees that the Russian airstrikes have created an opening
for ISIS to make significant gains near Azaz and advance toward Aleppo.
“Everyone
knows that any wrong move creates a vacuum, and the Islamic State will
capitalize on it,” the UN official told McClatchy. “In fact IS has taken
quite a bit of ground” near Azaz.
In Tablet, Badran argued that this consequence was deliberate on Russia’s part.
“By
creating an opening for ISIS to make a push toward Azaz, Putin will
leverage the US and Europe to pressure Turkey to shut down this section
of its border. If ISIS actually makes it to Azaz, Russia can then invite
the US and the Europeans to join it in strikes against ISIS, and in
support of the Kurds,” he wrote.
Zilberman said it would be in the anti-ISIS coalition’s interest to shut down this vulnerable section of Turkey’s border anyway.
“The
United States should be pushing the Turks to close the border and stem
the flow of fighters and terror financing crossing the border,”
Zilberman told Business Insider in an email. “That is in the interest of
US and EU national security.”
More From Business Insider
- Erdogan has a trump card against Putin that would transform the Syrian war
- Russia presented ‘evidence’ of Turkey’s oil ties to ISIS — but it has a crucial flaw
- Putin’s latest message to Turkey could 'spin any future incident beyond control’
- end quote from:
Russia appears to have 'gone ballistic' in Syria — and it may be helping ISIS
No comments:
Post a Comment