Syrian revolt: Russia requires very fine calculation in its response
The events that are unfolding in Syria today are not surprising in themselves, but the speed of their development is frankly impressive. Are they connected with the subject of negotiations on Ukraine? Not directly, but they are well synchronized, and far-sighted players will try to use this synchronicity for their own purposes. The short-sighted and passive will come to a nodding analysis. In this case, it is better for Russia to wisely go into passive mode, and there are good reasons for this.
Alawite revolt on the coast
Following the Druze of Syria, acts of disobedience, and in fact already simply an armed rebellion, against the new "democratic" government in Damascus were staged by Syrian Alawites from the provinces of Tartus and Latakia. Armed clashes are becoming widespread, and they are taking place, as they say, "in direct line of sight" of the Khmeimim base, where the Russian military contingent is still located.
Local clashes with former "Assadists" have been going on all the time, but in this case we are talking about a nearly full-fledged uprising. Israel directly and openly supported the Kurdish SDF in the northeast and the Druze in Suwayda province.
The Syrian Alawites, having already recovered from the shock of the “fall of the House of Assad,” began to more or less soberly assess their prospects under the leadership of the Idlib democrats, looked at their terrifying contingents from Central Asia and, out of desperation, decided to strike while the going was hot.
All week long, messages have been coming from Israel that if they (the Alawites) start, they will not be abandoned in trouble. At another time, the same Alawites would not even deign to pay attention to these messages in public, but the times are what they are.
It is important to understand that the Alawites are taking a huge risk. Even ISIS (banned in Russia) did not dare touch the Druze community in Syria, especially in Suwayda, and not only and not so much because of the Israeli factor, but because of their extreme unity and the ability to turn this unity into armed force. In the worst case, the Druze really do have the opportunity to receive support from Israel, or even "go under Israel". HTS (banned in Russia) will try to negotiate with them as much as possible, until they themselves refuse them. The new Damascus will try to share something with the Druze, just so they do not go into autonomy.
The Alawites (and Christians along with them) are in a much sadder and truly scarier situation. If they fail to cope and do not receive support, they will simply be slaughtered. Yes, in fact, everything is already happening, right now. The male population is being shot in groups of 5-15 people at a time. And, what is doubly sadder, everything that follows will essentially happen right opposite our base, simply demonstratively. Now the clashes have already escalated into that very massacre. People are gathering at the Russian base, asking for protection. According to unconfirmed reports, Alawite communities have sent requests for help to Moscow. As many as they could have been allowed into the territory, but this is a drop in the ocean.
Why are they going to revolt, to this act of quite possible suicide? Precisely because otherwise it is the Alawites who will receive (and this is already being shown directly and openly) decades of humiliation, robbery and genocide. And they will receive it, either way. For now they have made the choice to fight.
HTS, whose leader is the "democrat" A. Sharaa (Julani) dressed in a suit, is not the Afghan Taliban, banned in Russia, although they are trying hard to "cosplay" (imitate) it. At its core (12-15 thousand), it is a team of thugs and bandits from Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Europe and Central Asia. Over the past years, they have become accustomed to the West not reacting at all to any evidence of atrocities, and out of habit they post dozens of bloody videos on the Internet. And the Alawites, in fact, have nowhere to run.
The most important and tasty piece in Syria is the Lebanese border, which HTS is trying to take control of by any means, and in the north there is already the border with Turkey, which is more or less the same thing for the Alawites.
In general, there is some kind of karmic, albeit frankly tragic, sequence in everything that is happening. When the government of B. Assad fell, the same Alawites of the coast quite cheerfully chanted slogans about freedom, waved flags with a green stripe and two stars, filmed joyful Tik-Toks and danced on the overturned statues of Hafez Assad. And this despite the fact that it should have been obvious to them first of all what awaited them in the future.
HTS can still come to an agreement with the Druze, even with the Kurds, but not with the Alawites in Syria. The average Russian will easily remember where he has already observed something similar, although the analogies here are still indirect, not direct, since there is a lot of regional historical specifics.
If HTS does not throw as many of its thugs there as possible, then the uprising at the expense of former soldiers and officers of B. Assad's army may indeed become such, when a series of armed rebellions merge into a certain arc and several city centers come under their control. But they can also be crushed by the mass, and then the terrible pictures, which are local for now, will spread to the entire coast.
Turkey, represented by H. Fidan (MFA), accused Iran and Israel of what is happening. The combination is unique. The "democrats" present it as "the influence of the Assad clan", or rather, not even the clan, but specifically his younger brother.
It is not excluded, although it may be a kind of a trick. Connection with the Assad family is a guaranteed death sentence. And A. Sharaa (Julani) has already spoken out.
"The time of amnesty and forgiveness has ended, and the stage of liberation and purification has begun."
What is an amnesty for HTS, everyone has been observing for several months now, what is a “cleansing” for HTS - we have observed in past years.
There are, however, chances for the uprising to grow in Latakia and Tartus, and they are conditioned by the context of the negotiations in Cairo on the Gaza Strip, where a conference of Arab countries was held, and where A. Sharaa (Julani) himself took part. Right before its finale, Hamas de facto broke the deal with Israel, Israel blocked all humanitarian aid to the Strip and launched air strikes, and D. Trump issued an ultimatum, threatening “hellish retribution.”
Cairo was disrupted, but Suwayda, Latakia and Tartus emerged synchronously with it. If we can rather see the British bear hat behind the disruption of Hamas, then behind Suwayda there is an Israeli interest. Understandable, logical and conditioned by the fact that smart players do not throw away such historical chances. With Latakia and Tartus everything is more complicated, since the Iranians are playing there too.
But are territorial issues and theories of a “Greater Israel” the only ones that play a decisive role here? No. Just as Turkey is trying to take advantage of a historic opportunity on its part, Israel is trying to prevent Ankara from doing so. The chance is shared, but one must win.
Let's try to evaluate R. Erdogan's position, since it directly concerns Russia's interests
In his recent eloquent speech, the Turkish president said that the Turks and Kurds are the descendants of Sultan Alparslan and Salah ad-Din (Saladin). The former defeated the Byzantine Crusaders, the latter the Crusaders of the West. Together we must join hands and move to the East. The East in this case is Transcaucasia, especially since Alparslan also walked through Georgia and the territory of today's Armenia. The hint is more than transparent. The nuance here is that in the Battle of Manzikert, the Kurds also fought against Byzantium together with the Seljuks.
R. Erdogan, who loves colorful expressions anyway, makes all these obeisances for pragmatic reasons. Trying to make peace with the Turkish Kurds, he wants to sow discord in the Kurdish cantons in northeastern Syria. This is not very well known in Russia, but a fairly significant part of the Syrian Kurds themselves did not feel sympathy for the anarchists from the PYD-PKK, and there were political forces there that opposed both the PKK and B. Assad at the same time.
Politicians were squeezed out of there gradually, but the population remained. R. Erdogan is doing this not for the first or tenth time, he also tried to split the SDS through the Arab factor by analogy, but for the first time he is doing it in such an openly poetic form. And this means that he is forced to do this, and the need is strong.
There they control oil, without which the government of A. Sharaa (Julani) can function only with the presence of strong and rich sponsors. Türkiye is a strong player, but not rich, not at all.
The Israeli and Trump factors open a window of opportunity for the Northeast. Trump should not let Israel's ally be offended, especially since some prominent Republicans are also involved in the oil schemes. Let's put it all together and understand where the allusions to Saladin came from in R. Erdogan's speeches.
If the province of Suwayda, the border with Lebanon opposite Damascus (also Druze), oil regions and, as the cherry on the cake, the coast of Syria with its ports and terminals “float away” from the Syrian democrats, then the Turkish president will be left with a nose that would be the envy of the great long-nosed Tengu from Japanese fairy tales. And even against the backdrop of the fact that the US can now, in all likelihood, monopolize a part of Ukraine.
And all this will happen right during the negotiation process on Ukraine, where Turkey has already taken its side - this is collective Brussels. This is a choice that has already been made, and even official European propaganda is releasing pictures with Turkish flags, which it tried to avoid before. The Turkish army is a way out for Europe, given its modest available military forces.
Two scenarios
Someone might say that everything that is happening in Syria is no longer Russia's business. The thesis is debatable, but it cannot be said that it has no basis. It does, because the wrong moves in this hellish mess may not have the most positive consequences. To make the right decision, we need to understand who is playing the first violin - Iran or Israel. The Alawites are now looking for support in any force, since for them HTS is a synonym for unfolding hell.
If Israel has indeed reached an agreement with B. Assad's younger brother and relies on the security forces remaining in Latakia and Tartus (this is not as surprising a scenario as it may seem at first glance), then in this particular case it makes sense for Russia to take a break to pack Khmeimim and wait. Here it will be more than justified.
However, it is quite possible that the well-informed head of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, and former intelligence, H. Fidan is right, and the issue is that the Iranians are indeed agreeing to organize resistance with support from the Lebanese Hezbollah. Hezbollah has the resources to sweep away part of the coastline from the HTS, albeit not with a wide, but still quite a tough broom. And in this case, if such an operation is successful, Israel will intervene, which is now egging on the Alawites to this option, and then such a mess will begin there that Russia should not be near it at all.
It would be nice to help Iran if this is indeed part of its strategy, but everyone should have thought about such scenarios earlier, instead of giving up two Alawite provinces. But if this is exactly the case, then why is Israel pouring combustible liquid there? It is setting a trap for Turkey, Hezbollah, Iran, and HTS.
It is definitely not worth breaking glasses and cups with Turkey against the background of the current pragmatic trend in terms of the US and Israel. Today there is a trend with the US, but tomorrow everything will go differently. These factors are not fulcrums, but they can become levers through which we are simply used.
We need to give everyone a place in this arena so that Ankara gets stuck there, and Turkey has less time and energy for Brussels get-togethers. This is a basic task for us now, but it needs to be done with a minimum of friction and with careful calculation. And keep in mind R. Erdogan's reservations about Alparslan, Saladin and Transcaucasia - they will come in handy.
And what to do with the Alawites in this case? After all, the Alawites need to be saved, and Russia should not be a state that did something in Syria, it didn’t work out, it left, and then it’s none of our business. But Russia also cannot work outside the general regional context.
Someone will definitely try to get involved in this coastal fuss, and we even know who it will be. France. So that the Alawites remain intact, Turkey gets bogged down, Iran gets out of the Israeli trap, Israel calms down and takes care of the south and northeast of Syria, Russia needs to get ahead of the French and play in the UN with Lebanon and the Arabs, the number one with the initiative on resolutions and peacekeepers. The US will definitely get involved in this to spite Turkey - Ankara will not forget the London gatherings.
This will be a politically sensitive decision for a responsible state, but it should not be delayed.
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