realclearworld Newsletters: Mideast Memo
That all roads now appear to lead to Moscow must please Russian President Vladimir Putin. Just days removed from his powwow with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Russian President received his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Kremlin on Wednesday to discuss the worsening situation in Syria.
Turkey has expressed concern about Russia's increased military presence in Syria, and has its doubts about Mr. Putin's true intentions in the war-torn nation. having long insisted that embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad must step down as a precondition for any political solution in Syria, Ankara must now contend with an Assad regime that will have Iranian support on the ground and Russian coordination in the air. The presence of Russian fighter jets in the country likely means the end of the West's inchoate notion of a no-fly zone along the Turkish border.
Israel, for its part, is concerned that Russian involvement in Syria signals a solidification of the already assumed alliance between Moscow, Iran, and the Shiite militant group Hezbollah. Able in the past to intercept arms transfers that may have occurred between Syria and Lebanon, the Netanyahu government now worries that Russia's involvement makes Hezbollah untouchable. Elliott Abrams of the Council on Foreign Relations explains:
"A Russian alliance with Iran and Hezbollah is bad enough in principle. It is worse in practice, for Israel has long had a policy of interdicting arms transfers from Iran or Syria to Hezbollah. All those Israeli bombing runs in Syria (bombing runs our own military says are just too difficult and dangerous, if not impossible, due to Syrian air defenses) are aimed at blowing up such transfers.
"Will Israel be able to do that if Syria and Hezbollah have new Russian anti-aircraft weaponry, manned by Russians?"
The United States has also seemingly resigned itself to Russia's larger role in Syria. Whereas U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry once accused Moscow of enabling President Assad's "terror" tactics, the secretary now claims that Washington and Moscow "share the same goals."
But they don't, of course. Washington and Istanbul want Assad gone, and see his continued presence as a destabilizing one; Israel wants to disempower Assad's allies and secure its own borders. All of this may still come to pass, but none of it now without Moscow's consent.
Russia's military buildup in Syria is designed, in other words, to force the hands of all the involved parties on the question of Assad. Its own Syria policy a shambles, the United States may have little recourse but to accept the new reality on the ground, and work with Moscow to avoid unintentional confrontation. (Indeed, the U.S. has already walked back its previously staunch position on Assad, and the tone on Assad's future has become much more equivocal in Washington.)
While all of the other actors in Syria have spent years talking past and over each other, Mr. Putin simply, and swiftly, changed the subject: Forget about Assad, and focus on jihadists. It's a unifying purpose among the unlikeliest of allies. But it is no more likely to resolve the ongoing crisis in Syria.
Around the Region
Barzani's plea. Facing mounting economic woes, Kurdistan Regional Government President Masoud Barzani is begging his people to stay. Rudaw reports:
"The war, and the economic and other strains associated with it, have hit hard at Iraq's autonomous Kurds, who were planning their own independent nation before the start of the war.
"Adding to the strains has been a disturbing trend of migration, with the Iraqi Federation of Refugees saying in July that some 300 Iraqi Kurds were leaving every day in search of better lives in the West.
"‘I understand the demands of the youth,' Barzani said. ‘I call on the youth of the Kurdistan region to stay in their homeland. The crises are tough, but they can be resolved also,' he said."
Emerging India and the emirates. Kadira Pethiyagoda of the Brookings Institution interprets the significance of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent visit to the United Arab Emirates:
"In pursuing an intensified strategic partnership with the UAE and the Gulf, India has two key advantages over other great powers, which Modi emphasized in his visit. The first is India's peaceful, pluralistic and tolerant image among many in the Middle East. The concluding bilateral statement sought to highlight this soft power, referencing support for sovereignty, non-interference and peaceful resolution of conflicts. It highlighted parallels between India and the UAE as multicultural societies and highlighted the values of tolerance and peace as inherent in all religions. Modi visited the Grand Mosque, and notably, the UAE agreed to allot land to build a Hindu temple, a major step forward in the eyes of Modi's domestic constituencies.
"Secondly, India has a diaspora population of seven million across the Gulf region that is central to the functioning of Gulf states. Modi tipped his hat to them in his speech at a stadium hosting 50,000 of the 2.6 million Indians in the Emirates."
Saints and smugglers. Journalist and author Elizabeth Dickinson explains how Syrian expats have pooled their resources to smuggle millions of dollars of aid into Syria through the use of small coordination committees known as tansiqiyas:
"Many members of the diaspora were longtime opponents of the Syrian regime; a few had made fortunes for themselves. And just as spontaneously as the local uprising had organized, the diaspora began to coalesce into their own tansiqiyas -- in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Kuwait City, Doha, Jeddah, and elsewhere. Like so many of the first activists in 2011, many in the Syrian diaspora saw the initial uprising as a singular chance for a different kind of Syria. Mostly of an older generation, they watched, awestruck -- even embarrassed -- by how young people stood up to the regime they had run from. But while those who fled Syria hadn't fought Assad and his soldiers back then, they could do so now using a weapon few inside the country could wield: money."
Dickinson's new essay, "Godfathers and Thieves: How Syria's Diaspora Crowd-Sourced a Revolution" -- from which the above is excerpted -- is available for purchase on Amazon Kindle.
Why are Israelis so darn happy? Ben Caspit takes a look at the surveys and studies and comes up with an explanation:
"[T]he existential hardships and constant threats looming over Israeli society are responsible for the bursts of adrenalin that energize and spur Israelis on. Everything in Israel is to the extreme, honing the senses, awakening existential instincts, galvanizing people and making life much more interesting and challenging than in the (relatively) calm, peaceful and affluent Western countries.
[...]
"Life here is interesting, even fascinating, and that makes Israel a difficult place to live, dangerous, somewhat loony and apparently an optimistic and happy place as well."
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