BEIRUT, Lebanon — Eleven weeks after Moscow
launched its first airstrikes in Syria, the scream of Russian warplanes have become so
familiar in rebel-held areas that even children recognize them. But the
military map of the conflict has changed little, and the Kremlin’s forces have
become another set of players in a civil war that seems to defy solution.
While the air campaign, begun in a burst of
enthusiasm on Sept. 30, has blunted rebel advances, it has had minimal effect
on the jihadists of the Islamic State, the declared target, and it has made an
already dire humanitarian crisis even worse.
Instead, the campaign’s greatest effects may
have been on the political fortunes of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, who has leveraged Russia’s intervention to make himself a necessary
interlocutor in efforts to end the Syrian civil war.
Yet his gambit in Syria is proving to be a double-edged sword. It
has come at great expense: in Russian lives, resources, a dangerous clash with
Turkey and other costs that could grow significantly in the months ahead.
Russia, like the United States, has found that airpower alone has done
relatively little to shift the status quo on the ground, leaving it dependent
on the distant hope that a political process can find a way out.
For now, as the United States pushes for new
peace talks between the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and the opposition, everyone involved
realizes that Mr. Putin’s cooperation has become essential, though not
necessarily a guarantee of success.
“With this military escalation, the Russians
have put themselves back at the center of the Syrian equation and at the
forefront of the diplomatic stage,” said Noah Bonsey, a Syria analyst with the
International Crisis Group, “But on the ground, returns on their military
investment have proven limited and are unlikely to improve.”
Frederic C. Hof, a former State Department
official for Syria in the Obama administration and a senior fellow at the
Atlantic Council, said “what matters is ground power, and that is where we have
not seen anything terribly significant in the regime-Russian combination so
far.”
On Monday, the European Union delayed a decision on whether to renew its sanctions against
Russia, as cracks appear in the once-unified support for punitive measures
against Mr. Putin. Secretary of State John Kerry was in Moscow on Tuesday, as well, seeking
to narrow the gaps with Mr. Putin so that new peace talks on Syria can be
scheduled for early next year.
But Mr. Putin has paid a price for this
improvement in his diplomatic standing, and is likely to soon feel just as
pressured as President Obama and European leaders to find a political solution
to the Syrian conflict.
As it struggles economically because of low oil
prices and international sanctions, the last thing Russia needs is a quagmire
requiring continued investment while possibly souring the mood at home and
fraying relations with other countries.
Already, Russia has seen hundreds of citizens
killed in the terrorist bombing of an airliner as it left the Egyptian resort
of Sharm el-Sheikh, and relations with Turkey were ruptured after Turkish
fighter jets shot down a Russian warplane. In addition to the loss of life, the
disasters cut the Russian public off from their two favorite and most
affordable vacation spots, just as they are beginning to feel the pinch of
inflation.
And there remains the possibility of blowback by
Russian-speaking jihadists, thousands of whom have joined the ranks of ISIS and could seek to return home to carry out
attacks.
So while it remains true that the United States
and Europe need Mr. Putin to deal with troubles around the world, in
Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, it is becoming
increasingly clear that Mr. Putin might need their help, too.
Mr. Kerry met for nearly four hours on Tuesday
evening with Mr. Putin in the Kremlin, in talks intended to smooth differences
over a planned round of Syria negotiations set to take place in New York on
Friday.
Among the issues to be decided in the run-up to
the proposed talks is which of the dozens of militias fighting in Syria should
speak for the Syrian opposition, and which should be designated terrorist
organizations.
The United States, Mr. Kerry said, was not seeking
Mr. Assad’s ouster per se, but rather considers it unlikely he can preside over
a successful settlement.
Moscow said at the start that it was going after
the Islamic State, which controls territory in eastern Syria and in Iraq. But
instead it has mostly bombed rebel forces in the country’s northwest, near the
threatened stronghold of Mr. Assad and his Alawite sect, leading many to
conclude that its primary goal is to sustain his rule.
In some areas, like near the government-held
coastal enclave of Latakia, Russian air support has helped stop rebel advances.
And south of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, government forces have gained
territory, although most of it is sparsely populated.
Perhaps the government’s greatest achievement
since the Russian airstrikes began was to break the siege by Islamic State
fighters of the Kweiras military air base near Aleppo. But even that is
unlikely to greatly affect the course of the wider war.
In rebel-held territory, the Russian campaign
has added a new level of terror, creating a fresh wave of civilian refugees and
damaging critical infrastructure, according to opposition activists and
international monitors.
“The Russian bombing is worse than that by the
regime,” said Shadi al-Owaini, an anti-government activist in northwestern
Syria whose office was recently destroyed by what he thinks was a Russian bomb.
Residents of opposition areas had grown
accustomed to attacks by the Syrian government, but the Russian airstrikes have
proved to be more accurate and destructive, Mr. Owaini said.
So many have fled that some villages are now
nearly empty, and those who stay avoid unnecessary movements. “In the past, I
used to drive my car around,” he said. “Nowadays, no way, we
will be bombed immediately.”
Russian jets have also targeted supply lines
that connect rebel areas with Turkey and infrastructure like water treatment
plants, international monitors say. A strike believed to have been carried out
by a Russian warplane took place at a fuel market in Idlib Province on Tuesday,
destroying tanker trucks, setting huge fires and killing 16 people, according to the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict from Britain through
contacts in Syria.
Yet for all that, analysts say, the strikes have
yet to lead to major shifts in the front lines that divide the country.
Aron Lund, the editor of the Syria in Crisis blog published by the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, said the Russian strikes could eventually have a
cumulative effect by exhausting rebels and damaging their bases and
infrastructure.
So far, he said, their concrete effects have
been few. “Given the level of investment this represents for the Russians and
the fact that you can only cross this boundary once, the regime and the
Russians must have hoped for more radical change.”
Like the United States in its entanglement with
ISIS, Russia is relearning the old lesson that no matter how damaging,
airstrikes can accomplish little in the absence of reliable ground forces to
take and hold territory.
After nearly five years of conflict, Assad
forces are exhausted and lacking the manpower to gain significant ground.
For now, at least, the United States is pressing
for Russian cooperation on peace talks. Russia has agreed in principle to push
for talks but dismisses most of the Syrian opposition as terrorists, and it
remains unclear if Moscow will agree to talks with a new opposition body formed in Saudi Arabia this month. Also
unclear is if Russia will agree to the departure of Mr. Assad in some
transitional process — a condition the opposition insists on.
But if there is little change on the
battlefield, Mr. Putin’s resistance may begin to dwindle.
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