News that Syrian President Bashar Assad made a trip this week to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin took most observers by surprise and increased speculation about Russian intentions in a country that has been plagued by civil war for more than four years.
The trip -- ostensibly intended to reaffirm the two nations' resolve and commitment to the war -- was reportedly Assad's first outside of Syria since the start of the 2011 uprising.
"Ultimately, it is the Syrian people alone who must have the deciding voice here," Putin said in a statement released by the Kremlin.
"If it were not for your actions and decisions," replied the Syrian president, "the terrorism that is spreading through the region now would have made even greater gains and spread to even wider territories."
However, research conducted by the Institute for the Study of War suggests that Russian airstrikes over the past month have been primarily focused on rebel positions held by forces opposed to Assad, and not on those positions held by the so-called Islamic State group.
"The regime is launching probing attacks in Jebel al-Akrad and the al-Ghab plain, likely in order to fix rebel forces in Hama and Latakia Provinces," writes the Institute's Genevieve Casagrande. "This effort will prevent rebel forces from reinforcing positions in Aleppo Province, where the regime and its allies have launched their main effort."
Reports on the ground seem to support this conclusion, as rebel forces supported by the West and a handful of Gulf states now find themselves under attack by government forces bolstered by Russian air power and Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
"The regime's offensive may be divided into three main axes: the northern countryside of Latakia, al-Ghab plain and the northern countryside of Hama. IS has no presence in these areas controlled by opposition forces," reports Al-Monitor's Mohammed al-Khatieb from Hama.
Optics rather than accuracy are of course the real aim of such summits, and for Moscow, hosting Assad demonstrated that Russia is still a serious world power, and that the Kremlin can chew its proverbial bubble gum and walk at the same time.
"Moscow, which feels shut out by the West because of the Ukraine crisis, is keen to show its detractors it is pursuing military and diplomatic tracks simultaneously, and Putin spoke to several regional leaders after meeting Assad," writes Reuters Moscow correspondent Andrew Osborn. "He talked by telephone to the kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, as well as the presidents of Egypt and Turkey to brief them on the details of Assad's visit."
If Assad's Russian jaunt served to clarify the Kremlin's position, it only added to the strategic uncertainty now facing policymakers in the United States. Mideast expert Aaron David Miller explains:
"Russia and the U.S. do have a common objective in countering Islamic State. Should Mr. Putin ultimately decide on easing Mr. Assad out of office as part of a political transition, Washington might benefit. But if the Russian goal is a rump state controlled by Mr. Assad, the U.S. will find itself unable to defeat Islamic State or remove Mr. Assad, the jihadists' greatest enabler."
Indeed, if anything is to be divined from the Moscow meet, it's that Russia will have the final veto on events in Syria.
Around the Region
Spring versus State. Michael Young examines the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings and spots a pattern in the countries where the movements went most awry:
"The Libyan and Syrian regimes understood the implications of what they did in 2011 when they provoked civil wars to retain power once their populations rose up against them. They saw that war would not only serve to heighten solidarity within the regime's ranks by increasing polarisation; but also that as security broke down the ensuing vacuum would mean chaos, making the regimes appear almost palatable in contrast."
[...]
"Post-revolutionary societies aspire to stability after a period of upheaval. Security institutions, on the contrary, require endless tension and threats to justify their existence and the rules they enforce. That is why for revolution to succeed, this contradiction between the aims of both sides must, first, be resolved.
"In democracies there are means of accountability to keep the security bodies in line. But in much of the region proper institutions of accountability simply do not exist, allowing the instruments of repression to push their advantage. This dilemma will continue to profoundly define the Arab world."
Bibi's mufti theory. Zack Beauchamp of Vox takes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to task for saying that the Holocaust was the idea of Jerusalem's onetime grand mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Beauchamp:
"The clear implication is that without al-Husseini, Hitler would simply have expelled the Jews in Nazi-controlled territory, not murdered them. It's true that al-Husseini was a virulent, murderous anti-Semite who was in contact with Hitler. But according to virtually all reputable historians, it is not true that he inspired the Holocaust.
"Netanyahu's apparent effort to pin the Holocaust on Palestinians has become such a controversy that even the German government spokesperson, extraordinarily, condemned the comments: ‘We know that responsibility for this crime against humanity is German and very much our own.'"
And by standing athwart the historical majority, the prime minister appears to be following in his father's footsteps, writes the Times of Israel's Raphael Ahren:
"In insistently characterizing al-Husseini as a key player in bringing about the Holocaust, the prime minister is thus endorsing a controversial, minority view among historians -- in the best Netanyahu family tradition. Benzion [Netanyahu], an expert on the history of Spanish Jewry, argued that the Marranos -- also known as bnei anusim or conversos -- didn't observe Jewish laws and rituals for long. Marranism, he argued against the prevailing scholarly opinion, is basically a myth."
The Middle East's Puritans. Observing the many lines that have been drawn in the sands of the fractious modern Middle East, author Malise Ruthven argues that America finds itself allied with the region's religious purists:
"For all its extremist elements with Shia militias in Iraq attacking Sunni districts and Sunni imams prevented from leading prayers in Iran, Shia Islam is more akin to Catholicism in the sense that it is far less iconoclastic. Where the Islamist militants of Isis, fuelled by an extreme version of Wahhabism, legitimise the destruction of Palmyra on the grounds that the relics of antiquity are idolatrous, the Shia Hezbollah have occupied the region surrounding the great temple of Jupiter in the Lebanese town of Baalbek for decades without engaging in iconoclastic destruction.
"Given the Wahhabi record, it seems paradoxical, not to say tragic, that the west has chosen to ally itself with the fount of iconoclastic puritanism."
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