Syria: As A Bonus It Annoys The Turks

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/syria/articles/20151201.aspx

December 1, 2015: After initially avoiding ISIL (al Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant) targets in Syria Russia has switched its air power from attacking Syrian rebels doing the most damage to the Syrian government to ISIL. The switch came in early November when Russia realized that it was indeed, as ISIL claimed, a terrorist bomb that brought down an airliner full of Russian tourists over Egypt on October 31st. Then came the ISIL Paris attack on the 13 th and suddenly France and Russia were allies in Syria and going after ISIL targets together. France is now using the same (but not identical) ROE (Rules of Engagement) Russia uses against ISIL targets and ignoring the use of human shields. Since the middle of November Russian aircraft have been hitting over a hundred targets a day and concentrating on ISIL finances. That means hitting the oil production and smuggling (oil into Turkey) operation. The American led coalition had also been attacking these oil targets but under the much more restrictive ROE and despite a year of effort had not hurt the oil income substantially. Russia also accused Turkey of quietly helping to finance ISIL by not doing more to halt the smuggling of oil into Turkey and sale of it on the black market. The anti-Turk angle has become more prominent since Turkish F-16s shot down a Russian Su-24 on November 24th.

Russia and France have agreed to coordinate air operationsin Syria. Russia has similar deals with the United States and Israel but the French arrangement goes farther than just avoiding friendly fire and collisions. Any closer cooperation with France will be difficult because France still opposes Russian aggression in Ukraine and the Russian insistence that ISIL is all an invention of the United States. This is Cold War type propaganda as is the Russian accusations that NATO and the United States are plotting to conquer (or at least seriously weaken) Russia. Meanwhile Russia sees other opportunities in the ISIL situation. Because of the ISIL threat more Western countries are willing to ignore the Assads, at least for the moment, and concentrate on ISIL. This is what Russia wants because this gives Russia an opportunity to pour more military and economic aid into Syria to make the Assads stronger. Russia points out that the Assads are still the recognized (by the UN) rulers of Syria and Russia is there at the invitation of the Assads. NATO and the United States are not, nor is Turkey which had been flying some bombing missions against targets in Syria. Technically Russian warplanes and air defense systems could be used to attack aircraft that are illegally (according to the Assads) operating in Syria. Yet Russia does not want war with NATO or Turkey because the Turks control access from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and that is the shortest water route to Syria for the Russians. Moreover Russia knows that, despite all its boasting about rebuilding the Russian military these forces are still no match for NATO, especially in Syria. 

In one case the Russians and Americans are definitely on the same side. This involves supporting Syrian Kurds fighting ISIL. This is going on near the Turkish border and as a bonus (for the Russians) it annoys the Turks. The Syrian Kurds are technically rebels but were always mainly out to protect the Kurdish minority (ten percent of the population) in Syria. Thus the Kurds would work with rebel groups sometimes, especially against common threats like ISIL. But the Kurds would do the same with the government and neither rebels nor the Assads held it against the Kurds because the Kurds are the only non-Arab minority in Syria and thus normally attacked by everyone. This includes the Turks, who are hostile to Kurds in general because the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran have long wanted to unite the territory where they are the majority into a separate Kurdish state. All the countries involved oppose this, none more strenuously than the Turkey which hosts the largest Kurdish minority in the region. Thus Turkish aircraft will sometimes cross into Syria and attack the Kurds, even as those Kurds are getting air support from Russia and the United States. The Kurds are Indo-European and ethnic cousins of the Iranians. Stuff like that counts for a lot in this part of the world. 

Shia militia and Syrian Army forces are negotiating with rebel forces in Homs province to evacuate this provincial capital. Since early October, largely because of Russian air support, government forces have advanced in the northwest around Homs, Palmyra and Aleppo as well as in the south near the Israeli border. As always, the government forces are willing to negotiate terms with rebels to gain control of a city or town in order to minimize damage to the place and avoid casualties. Government forces have also cleared most rebel forces out of Latakia province. This is where the Syrian ports are and a major objective of a rebel advance halted largely because of the Russian intervention. That has made it easier for the government forces to regain ground in nearby Hama and Idlib provinces. There are still a lot of Russian airstrikes against Hama and Idlib because the rebels there are more numerous and better organized than around Aleppo (where there has been a lot of fighting between ISIL and other rebel groups). Encouraged by its success Russia is sending more troops (several hundred intelligence, maintenance and support specialists) as well as 30 or more combat aircraft plus some more helicopters.

Russia is also upgrading its air defenses in Syria to include the new S-400 anti-aircraft (and missile) system. The S-400 entered service in 2007 when the first units were deployed around Moscow. Russia claimed the S-400 could detect stealth aircraft, implying that the hypothetical enemy is the United States. Russia also claims the S-400 can knock down short range ballistic missiles (those with a reentry speed of up to 5,000 meters a second, in the same way the similar U.S. Patriot system does.) Russia is offering the S-400 for export, an effort that is limited by a lack of combat experience for the system. Patriot has knocked down aircraft and ballistic missiles, S-400 has not. Moreover, Russia anti-aircraft missile systems have a spotty history (especially when confronted by Western electronic countermeasures.) The S-400s based around Moscow are part of a project to rebuild the Soviet era air defense system, which has fallen apart since the early 1990s. Russia continues to bring in more EW (Electronic Warfare) equipment. This gear was first noted in October as Russian electronic jamming equipment was used to jam ISIL and NATO communications. Some NATO radars and satellite signals are also being jammed. NATO is already familiar with some of these jammers, particularly the truck mounted Krasukha-4, which has been encountered in eastern Ukraine (Donbas). Russia has also brought in a lot more electronic data collection and analysis equipment to listen on ISIL and NATO communications when not jamming them. This involves jamming low orbit space satellites as well. In response NATO and Israel have deployed more EW gear and personnel and this has led to a generally unseen (and unreported) electronic war over Syria.

The Russian intervention has also helped the Kurds (and their mostly non-Moslem Arab allies) who have been able to push back Islamic terrorists they face (both ISIL and others). Russian airstrikes now include ISIL forces which had been attacking Syrian rebels who oppose ISIL (who believes it should command all rebels). The Russians were initially willing to leave ISIL alone as it attacked other rebels. One thing everyone understands is that ISIL is the primary rebel threat to the Assad government and would be the main target of Russian air attacks once the other rebels were out of the way. The problem is that non-ISIL rebels are mainly operating against or near territory that is vital to the government (the land connecting Damascus and the Israel/Jordan borders with the Syrian coast and Turkey.) Controlling the Turkish border means regaining control of Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria.

The Russian air strikes have killed about 1,500 so far, a third of them civilians, 27 percent ISIL and the rest other Islamic terrorist rebels. The civilians were being used as human shields or just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Over a year of American and allied air strikes have killed nearly 4,000 and less than ten percent were civilians. The American have more restrictive ROE that seeks to keep civilian deaths to a minimum. That appears to be changing, in part because the Russians and Arabs are much more effective and because it is obvious that the old ROE greatly limited the damaged that could be done to the enemy. Because of the old American ROE ISIL (and some other Islamic terrorist groups) used a lot of human shields, often quite blatantly (like putting them in metal cages and posting pictures on the Internet). The Russians openly ignored human shields and that means the ISIL (and other rebels) suffered much greater losses and became are more cautious when warplanes were about. Meanwhile ISIL has killed nearly 4,000 people in Syria in the last 18 months, about half of them civilians. Many of the civilians were executed for rebellion or not adhering to the strict lifestyle rules imposed by ISIL.

There are no winners in Syria but plenty of losers. The country has been devastated. What Syria has lost since 2011 includes some 300,000 dead and over 700,000 wounded or injured. Some 55 percent of the population now needs of some kind of aid (food, medical, fuel, shelter). About 35 percent of the population has been driven from their homes meaning they have no jobs and lost most personal property. Since 2011 life expectancy has been cut from 75 to 62 years. Half the school age population no longer have access to a school. Over four million Syrians have fled the country, mostly to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. GDP has shrunk by at least half since 2011 and over 70 percent of the population reduced to poverty. The economic damage can be seen in satellite photos which show that, compared to similar nighttime pictures from 2011, only about 20 percent of the lights are still visible at night. Many of the Syrians who fled the country (over 20 percent so far) will never return. There is little to return to in part because some Islamic terror groups admit that they are not attacking towns and villages in order to occupy them but simply to hurt the troops or pro-government militiamen guarding them. The rebels loot and trash the places they take and then depart before the government can organize a counterattack (by land or air). These raids also look for people worth kidnapping and holding for ransom. There are still many Syrian families with assets, although most of these are living in government controlled territory (about a fifth of the country). But there are still people you can get a decent ransom for so this is yet another reason for people with any resources to get out of Syria. What assets the family has are often then spent on smugglers who will get all or some of the family into Western Europe, where jobs and public assistance are available.

Turkey, which currently hosts over two million Syrian refugees, is now planning to absorb many of them since it looks like it will be a long time (probably decades) before the Syrian economy is capable of taking them back. Turkey has also been allowing Syrian refugees to leave (illegally) to try and reach a Western European country. These nations recently made a deal with Turkey that would pay the Turks a lot of money ($3.2 billion for starters) to at least try and block the Syrians to heading for Western Europe. This deal is also supposed to involve Turkey taking back some of these refugees.

In Syria Russia and Iran apparently agree that a negotiated peace deal is possible. Iran has persuaded Russia to drop support for removing the Assad government from power in order to get a peace deal. At one point Russia was proposing a deal that would remove the Assads but leave the Shia dominated Baath party in charge. Iran did not believe abandoning the Assads was a price worth paying to achieve such a deal and now Russia openly agrees. Currently Russia and Iran are confident that they can arrange a local ceasefire outside Damascus and then expand that deal between government forces and non-ISIL rebels. Iran is taking advantage of the growing international anger at ISIL because of that group’s use of attacks against civilians (Sunni, Shia and non-Moslem, as in Paris). In Syria one thing everyone can agree on is that ISIL has to go. The main stumbling block here is that many of the non-ISIL Islamic terrorist groups are not in agreement with each other or anyone else and believe they are on a Mission From God and cannot be expected to compromise. Negotiating with these groups is difficult and often impossible. Iran is also an Islamic terrorist organization, but one that is willing to make deals. This involves negotiating settlements in disputes with allies. One such dispute involves the Iranian supported and trained Shia militias in Syria. Russia wants to incorporate these into the Syrian armed forces, which makes sense from a military point of view. But Iran wants to maintain Iranian control over these militias and turn them into something similar to Hezbollah in Lebanon. This would mean the Syrian Hezbollah would be, like the Lebanese original, dependent on Iran for much of its cash and supplies and would, in turn, obey Iran even if asked to do something the Syrian government opposed. The Assads do not want this but given their current desperate situation they have to depend on Russia to oppose Iran on this issue.