Catastroika: What's Syria in Russian?

In realpolitik minds, Vladimir Putin casts the shadow of a shrewd player on the world stage. He opposes ‘humanitarian interventions’, while he aggressively defends Russia’s national sovereignty. Even still, it’s true Putin understands power as well as he wields it. Putin’s primary interest is in the consolidation of the state and the maintenance of its power.

As recent events in Ukraine, and less recently in Georgia, demonstrate, Putin wants to secure the body national above all else. So why is there a Russian military presence in Syria?

For decades, the Assad regime maintained itself as a wedge between the Sunni elite and the Alawite military leadership. When the uprising began it had a popular, secular and democratic character (though these elements still exist) which was comprised by a diverse base. It was during the crackdown that it spiraled into a cycle of violence, into which hordes of Sunni Islamists flooded. As the uprising descended into a bloodbath, Putin may have began counting the miles between Syria and Chechnya.

The fact that the Chechen cause of independence from Russian hegemony has drawn Islamists from the Arab world must be unsettling. The prospect of Islamic State emerging from the chaos in Syria has sent shockwaves throughout the region. It could well embolden Islamic militants in the Caucasus, as it has elsewhere. After all, jihadi groups in Libya have declared allegiance to Islamic State, just as Boko Haram and al-Shabaab have done. The Assad regime may pose a bulwark, in Putin’s view, to the tide of Islamism.

So the Syrian regime does fit into Putin’s domestic agenda. However, it’s also the case that Syria fits into Russia’s regional interests. It’s a major nexus of fuel pipelines, and it has strategic value. Syria sits on NATO’s doorstep, alongside Iraq and Iran. It has a coastline with the Mediterranean, home to the US Sixth Fleet. Russia has long looked for counterweights to US proxies in the region. Consequently, Russia has been a major supplier of arms to the Syrian regime long before the civil war broke out.

Recently, it has come out that the Russian government offered a deal, in which Assad would step down. In February 2012, Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari held talks with the envoys of the UN Security Council. The Russian representative, Vitaly Churkin, laid out a three-point plan, which included a proposal for Bashar al-Assad to cede power. This would be after peace talks between the regime and the opposition had started. The US, UK and France were convinced Assad was about to fall, so they rejected the Russian offer.

Ironically, the US continues to demand that Assad step down, and this prevents any serious negotiations. This demand helps to keep Assad in power. Otherwise it might be possible for the regime and the opposition to engage in peace talks. As Patrick Cockburn writes, serious negotiations could lead to power-sharing arrangements. It’s plausible that the Syrian regime would be willing to dump Assad to hold on. Yet, even when it was within reach the US did not jump at the opportunity. The Russian plan to drop Assad is not without precedent.

In February 2003, Putin dispatched his envoy Yevgeny Primakov to Baghdad to deliver a stern message to Saddam Hussein. By this point, Vladimir Putin had joined Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder in opposing the US invasion of Iraq. Putin told Saddam that if he would step down from his post as President, voluntarily, to allow democratic elections to take place, then he could stay in the country. It was a last ditch attempt to stop the war. Perhaps fearing a coup d’etat by his generals, Saddam Hussein quietly rejected the idea.

Alas, the failure to prevent the Iraq war has now engulfed Syria in flames. The rhizome of Islamic militancy embedded itself deep into Iraqi society before reaching into Syria in the midst of civil war. The rise of Islamic State partly comes out of Saudi-Qatari ambitions to promote fundamentalism and combat secular nationalism and republicanism. It also comes out of the Iraq war, the experience of US occupation and the sectarian rule of the Maliki government. The new fundamentalist hive took shape because all political alternatives have been snuffed out.

The region is home to over four million soldiers divided between the different states. Yet Islamic State has been left to take shape and seize huge swathes of territory. The problem is clear: you can’t defeat Islamic State without working with Assad, and you can’t defeat Assad without empowering Islamic State. How can you pretend you stand for liberal values and take sides in this fight? The West has a problem. The liberal apologists for ‘humanitarian intervention’ have an even bigger problem. But it’s not the only one.

It looks like there is no coherent strategy. The US faces a myriad set of competing interests, among its proxies, and its foes. Turkey wants Assad to fall, and it’s been willing to lend support to Islamic State. Especially as this threatens the aspirations of Kurdish nationalists. To Erdogan, ISIS are the anti-PKK. Meanwhile Iran and Hezbollah share a common interest in defending the Assad regime. In a bid to destroy the Ba’athist regime, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have funneled arms and treasure to the Salafi jihadists. So Israel is happy to watch the corpses pile up, but it fears Islamic State reaching its borders.

It’s would be much more viable for Russia to back the Syrian regime. The Russian government has longstanding connections to Iran, which in turn needs Syria to help arm and fund Hezbollah. Without this alliance, Israel might still be occupying southern Lebanon. The Iranian government also wants to keep Iraq as a sovereign and democratic country because it can easily be dominated by the Shi’a under those conditions. So it’s obvious who has the potential to forge a coherent strategy. But it would likely leave the Syrian regime (possibly not Assad) in power.

However, the reasons why the Syrian people rose up against Bashar al-Assad have not been resolved. Human rights are still a far away dream, let alone democracy. Hundreds of thousands of people have been slaughtered and millions have been displaced. It’s clear that the Putin government does not have the best interests of Syrians at heart. Peace and stability in West Asia really just chimes well with the status quo. If the global order is redefined and reconstituted, Putin could easily lose out.

This article was first published at Souciant.

Proxy Motivations.

The backbone of calls for intervention has long been Turkey. How may we make sense of this? The government of Erdogan has its own fantasies of neo-Ottoman glory and may want to reassert its authority and influence over the region it ran for so long. That goes hand-in-hand with the old aim of carving a Kurdish Republic out of the body of a nearby neighbour to answer the Kurdish question, conveniently, without handing over any pieces of Anatolia. That aim has almost been achieved in Iraq where the Kurdish province has become more and more independent of Baghdad through its oil arrangements with Turkey. The Kurds of Syria are under threat from certain rebel forces, leading to 40,000 of them fleeing to Iraq and now the bridge over the river Tigris has been closed. That doesn’t particularly worry the Turkish government. But Erdogan might like to see a conclusion of some kind hastened by force in order to cease the influx of refugees to camps on Turkish soil.

All the while the major support for the Syrian rebels comes from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Saudi royal family want to see the competing model of Ba’athism dead and has no scruples about sending swarms of Wahhabi fundamentalists into Syria to finish the job. In doing so the House of Saud hopes to see the life of the republican and secular nationalist rival snuffed out. No such thing as Arab unity when it comes to holding onto the oiliest dirt in the ‘Middle East’. The sectarianism of this war was triggered by factors not totally internal to Islam. In Syria there is a class basis for sectarianism as the military is dominated by Alawite Muslims and economic power rests in the hands of a Sunni Muslim elite. Perhaps the Saudi oligarchy hopes to see a new regime which relies on the Sunni elite in Syria and not on the military dominated by Alawites. It would be a convenient move to flood the country with arms to Islamist groups who wish to deal with the Alawite Muslim minority.

Not coincidentally the Syrian regime is the only Arab ally of Iran, an officially Shi’ite republic, to the extent of backing Khomeini in the fight with Saddam. The Iranian government is now returning the favour in pledging support to Assad and going as far as sending 4,000 troops to assist in quashing the rebellion. The Assad regime is the stable route of arms to pass from Iran to Shi’ite militia in Lebanon and Iraq. Both the Iranians and the Hezbollah are anxious at the possibility of greater isolation in a region vulnerable to the military adventures of Washington and its proxies. Hezbollah may have defeated Israel in 2000 and 2006 at a huge cost. Hassan Nasrallah will be more than aware that the Israelis are not going to forget about Lebanon any time soon. Significantly, Lebanon has refused to grant the US permission to utilise their airspace to launch the attack. The Jordanian and Iraqi governments have joined with Lebanon in this refusal. So that would effectively rule out an attack from the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain and Diego Garcia. If there is to be a strike then it will have to be orchestrated from the Mediterranean.

Meanwhile the al-Maliki government would prefer not to see Syria bombed by the US for it may stir the sectarian impulses which are already pulsating within its own borders. Perhaps Nouri al-Maliki fears a Sunni rebellion. The Shi’ite militias of Iraq have already clashed with rebel forces in the defence of Assad’s regime and have threatened further action. Likewise the Hezbollah have threatened to take action should the US start flinging cruise missiles like pebbles. On the other side of Lebanon, the Israeli government wouldn’t mind if Assad disappeared but fear what might arise in Syria if he actually does fall. The possibility of an unencumbered fight between Israel’s enemies doesn’t appeal much, but neither would free elections. Note that the Israeli airstrikes against Syria were not stepped up to take out the Assad regime; instead it seemed to be more directed towards prolonging and exacerbating the conflict. So long as Hezbollah and Iran are left vulnerable it doesn’t matter how high the mountain of Arab corpses rises.

This article was originally written for The Third Estate on September 2nd 2013.

No Earthly Ideas.

 

As Obama is still settling into his second term, many have already turned to speculate at who will be running in 2016. Speculation over a GOP candidate range from Chris Christie to Paul Ryan and beyond, whereas prognostications regarding a Democratic candidate seem to be preoccupied with Hillary Clinton. In the background you should be able to sense the lowering of expectations, a foreclosure on the very possibility of a manifested opposition. The realm of the possible narrows further, the field down closes to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden for the pollsters. Of course, it remains to be seen who is even considering running. At this point all potential candidates will shirk from announcing such a bid for fear of putting a hat in the ring too early. That's just sensible conduct for any politico. So it should surprise no one that when Bill Clinton was asked whether or not Hillary would run he responded by saying he had "no earthly idea". With that non-answer Bill demonstrates the same glibness that would win over the audience at the Democratic National Convention.

 

By 2016 BO, as the reactionaries call him, will be even more withered and white-haired than today, a far cry from the inflated Kennedy-cum-Christ figure of 2008. That figure will be an even more distant memory in four years than it is today. Not a modicum of the Messiah left, instead a mauled continuity pervades. Given the level of hopeful projections onto Obama, disillusionment was inevitable. The lowering of expectations is not unusual to Democratic politics, very often it lays the way for the politics of reaction. The disappointments of Jimmy Carter led to the Reaganites gaining office through a mediocre mandate to roll back the intrusive government. Similarly the Clinton era left the Democrats without a legacy worth defending when the Bushites were ushered into office under disgraceful circumstances. It's strangely appropriate that we find Clinton being hailed as a future candidate at this point. It's as though the despair in the awake of Obama's second term are already foreseeable. And that's true because there's so much to cry about already.

In February Democratic pollsters found Hillary Clinton leads the top GOP 2016 contenders in red states such as Alaska, Texas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Georgia. Even though Clinton had only been replaced with Kerry for a week or two at this point and the prospects of her nomination still seem way-out to those concerned by dynastic formations in apparently democratic societies. It looks like Obama is the future and Romney is the past just going by the demographic change in birth-rates. So the white populism that Clinton reached for in '08 definitely won't cut it in '16. It's plausible that she could appeal to the Latina vote simply as she's a Democrat and on the moral issue of abortion. By contrast, it's difficult to spot a spokesperson of American conservatism capable of overcoming the GOP's contradictions. The Republicans will probably have to tone down the anti-immigrant rhetoric to gain a greater slice of the hispanic vote. Then in March Reason estimated there is around 22% of support for Clinton. It seems more likely than it did a couple of months ago.

 

What might we expect from a future Clinton White House? The eminent feminist Bonnie Greer deems the Obama administration a second Clinton administration. That's one answer to the question. So if Hillary Clinton wins office it will be the third Clinton White House. With all of this in mind, we can judge the woman by her record at the State Department, as well as the period in which she was First Lady. We can set our expectations pretty low if these joint-records are to be taken as a fair representation of Clinton. And we have no reason to think otherwise. So we may gauge a few things from the Clinton record at the White House, which contains a few serious hiccups:
 

• On the campaign trail Bill Clinton was faced with mounting interest in his extramarital relationship with Gennifer Flowers. The candidate opted to see to it that a lobotomised black man was put to death.
• The first Clinton administration armed the Turkish government as it waged a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Kurds and leaving 50,000 people dead.
• Having inherited the aftermath of the First Gulf War the Clinton White House imposed economic sanctions against Iraq and starved over 500,000 people to death.
• President Clinton bombed an aspirin factory in Sudan under the pretence that it was a chemical weapons factory. In fact it's likely that the President knew full well and was looking for a neat distraction with Monica Lewinsky in the news reels.
• During this period Hillary Clinton advocated military intervention in Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1995) and Kosovo (1999). She is no dove in other words.

There is plenty more to go into, though we should probably scrutinise the Clinton record at the State Department. In office with former rival Obama the Clinton record does not fair much better. The Obama administration reacted with timidity to the Arab Awakening that threatened to unseat all kinds of bulwarks to democracy. Clinton was not a voice of dissent and described Mubarak as 'family' only to see Hosni given the boot by his generals. Clinton oversaw the NATO intervention in Libya, which rapidly escalated from a UN sanctioned no-fly zone to a full-blown and illegal bombing campaign on the side of the rebels. Though at least the campaign was on the side of a rebellion. You can't even say that about the swarms of drones Clinton sent over Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Impressed yet? And this is meant to be the best of American liberalism, its finest choice for the State Department in 2008 and its President in 2016.

 

All the while the Clintons have been more than complicit, totally supportive actually, of the decline of the American welfare state. Then there's the stomping out of the social democratic wing of the Democrats. They pioneered the method of triangulation, which goes as follows: loot the supportable planks from the Republican platform, bag the corporate funding that follows it; "test the water" with polling, all while keep the liberal Left on board with the lesser evil logic. Obama and the Clintons represent the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. Do we really need another right-wing in American politics? Aren't the Republicans right-wing enough for both parties? Expect nothing less from the people who thought that the problem in America, after 12 years of Republican government, is that the Democratic Party is too left-wing. Not only that but the American under-class have to be brought back in line, it's not warfare but welfare to be slashed and burned.

Not Forgetting the Kurds!

    For a long time Robert Fisk always rendered his references to the Palestinian homeland with quotation marks - it will be 'Palestine' until it exists as a state he righty put it. That was the case until the UN voted to bestow a limited form of statehood to the Palestinians. At that moment 'Palestine', at long last, became Palestine. There remains another stateless people in the Middle East, and there is a state that has yet to be established for the political liberation of that people. I am referring to the Kurds and 'Kurdistan'. Even though the Kurds are the largest people without a state in the world it's a cause that too often goes unheard. It's a cause which deserves a lot more support than it is given in the West. By comparison the Palestinian cause gains much more coverage - even though it's mostly framed as a defence of the Israeli position on Palestine.

 

    The Western media regularly goes on the defensive whenever Israel engages in outright aggression. Typically it's the wars, not the systematic forms of oppression that the Palestinians are subjected to on a day-to-day basis. For a long time the Kurds have been ignored, as the crimes against them constitute the constructive bloodbaths which go on in the blindspot of mass-media. Note the presuppositions of all debate on the Kurdish grievances are often schewed to the side of their oppressors. This was true of the complicit silence of the West over the campaigns of ethnic cleansing in countries such as Iraq and Turkey. Somehow the Kurdish cause became a fetish of liberal hacks looking to justify their support for the invasion of Iraq. The Far-Left in many countries campaigned against the war and conceded this ground to the pro-war camp. It made perfect sense to many of the Kurds to support the invasion with the hope of regime change and the possibility of greater autonomy for their people.

 

    It was a mistake for the radical Left to disregard the not-so-historic grievances of the Kurdish people. For it was the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein that had subjected the Kurds to a brutal attempt of extirpation by poison gas. It was a campaign which left over 180,000 people dead in the late 1980s. At that time Saddam Hussein was a recipient of enormous support from the US and Britain, who cared nothing for the victims of his slaughterhouse regime. Nevertheless, the case for Kurdish rights would later be used as part of the justifications for the interventions in Iraq made by both Bush administrations. In 1991 it was convenient for George the Elected to make quick use of the Kurdish claim to rights and promptly abandoned them soon after withdrawal. Yet the Americans created a no-fly zone over the country they betrayed the Iraqis again, with support for Saddam over Iraqi dissidents and support for sanctions which ravaged the country.

 

    This was not the first time the Kurds had been betrayed by the US. It was in the 1970s that the caretaker administration of Gerry Ford pledged support to the Kurds and compelled them into a rebellion. It was an insurgency that was only defeated once the Iranians and the Americans abruptly withdrew their support for the Kurds. Later, The Kurds actually benefited from the no-fly zone in that the dark days of the late 80s were not revisited. By that time the campaign of violence had hardened the forces of Kurdish liberation. There was a price for this breathing time, Iraqi 'Kurdistan' later found itself the door into the country for Abu al-Zarqawi. The presence of Zarqawi in Iraq (the part not controlled by Saddam) was later used to back claims that the Ba'ath Party had links to al-Qaeda. Once again the Kurds would find themselves the beneficiaries of US-led interventionism.

 

    The first election to take place in occupied Iraq during the occupation instated Jalal Talabani as President. Talabani had been a leader of the fight for Kurdish rights and autonomy in Iraq long before and amidst the savagery unleashed upon his people by Saddam Hussein. Talabani's Kurdish sisters and brothers broke into celebration in Iran and Syria. Of course, the election was only held in 2005 after a great deal of protest within Iraq and, in the end, it was arranged to ratify a series of illegal economic measures imposed on the country. The mercurial socialist Talabani had no way of undoing the reforms passed by the Americans at that time. Just as Talabani had pledged loyalty to Saddam Hussein as the strong man annexed Kuwait. Fortunately, for the Kurds, Talabani had made a wise bet, whereas the Palestinians in Kuwait had made a most unwise bet. Soon the Palestinians became victims of Kuwaiti reprisals and were ultimately expelled.

 

    It is not difficult to see why the Kurdish question has gone unheard, only to be neglected by the Left as the US invaded Iraq and exploited by liberals at the same time. Whenever the rights of Kurds have positive value for the West then the discourse will turn in their favour. So as the Kurds became a force for opposition to Tikriti gangsters and the mullahs in Tehran the apologists for Empire discovered them. It's worth mentioning that the poison gas method employed by the Ba'ath Party was first advocated by Winston Churchill. That was just as the British occupied Iraq after the state was created in the aftermath of the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It may be due to the lack of a certain plan for Kurdish emancipation that it has left the Kurdish people in an ambiguous position with regard to the American superpower. The Palestinians are certainly the victims of American imperialism.

 

 

 

    However, this should not deter us on the radical Left from standing in solidarity with the Kurds. The artificial condition of the borders of states such as Iraq and Syria lends greater weight to the case for Kurdich autonomy. The political emancipation of the Kurds may offer a way to redefine boundaries created by imperialism. It was the interests of British and French colonialists (let alone the Turks and the Russians) have always prevailed over any demands for Kurdish autonomy. This was the case when modern Iraq was created, the Kurds were first promised independence and then briskly stabbed in the back over the oil under their feet. Instead of a democratic state the Kurds were absorbed into Iraq, a state constructed without any regard for local tribal formations. And so it was the Kurdish people were left to languish in abject servitude for decades to come.

 

    We can further the cause of human emancipation without giving up on anti-imperialism. The liberation of the Kurds won't be fulfilled until the boundaries created by Empire are undermined and the economic system that sustains the situation in the Middle East has been overhauled. The bourgeois forms of liberation made possible by liberal interventionism may hold extrinsic value insofar as these means facilitate the emancipatory process. The invasion of Iraq had tremendous disvalue, the occupation was a great injustice and Iraq still lives with the horrifying consequences of its results. The intrinsic value is in the ultimate liberation of human beings. It's possible to walk a fine line on this question. It takes subtlety and sophistication. Something our discourse lacks desperately. Even if the Iraq war had been a total success then the position of the Kurds would still be one of relative insecurity. It was a military project that was never concerned Kurdish liberation.

 

    There are obvious limitations in liberal internationalism as in the precarious position it has left the Kurds in. The copious quantities of oil under the feet of men like Massoud Barzani means that the autonomy may well be subject to the whim of foreign interests. The prospects of independence are interesting right now as a new pipeline between 'Kurdistan' and Turkey may enable the Kurds to export oil without permission from Baghdad. Potentially this could give 5 million Iraqi Kurds a degree of economic independence in order to further enable greater political independence. It's not impossible for Turkey to decide that it is not in its interests to defy Baghdad and break up Iraq. After all the Turks have their own Kurds to worry about. As Patrick Cockburn reflects "Self-determination is close, but not quite there yet."