Syria: Who will not be bombed by Russia
While the public is keen on searching for the landing site of Russian bombs, the Russian leadership is demonstrating that it has not only a stick, but also a carrot for opponents of the Assad regime.
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Yesterday, opening a government meeting, President Vladimir Putin voiced the main theses related to direct military intervention in Syria. Among them is the thesis about the “flexible position” of Bashar al-Assad in matters of peaceful resolution of the conflict:
“We proceed from the fact,” said the Russian president, “that a final and long-term settlement of the situation in Syria is possible only on the basis of political reforms and dialogue between all healthy forces in the country. I know that President Assad understands this and is ready for such a process. We hope for his active and flexible position, for his readiness to compromise for the sake of his country and his people.”
To designate Assad’s potential partners for a “final and long-term settlement,” Moscow is introducing a new term “patriotic opposition” onto the agenda. In his speech yesterday at a meeting of the UN Security Council on countering terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa, Sergei Lavrov stated the need to unite the efforts of those on whose shoulders the burden of the fight against IS lies, as it is now fashionable to say, “boots on the ground”:
“The armed forces of Iraq and Syria, Kurdish militias, armed units of the patriotic Syrian opposition, in a word - everyone who opposes ISIS “on the ground.”
This term appeared relatively recently in the rhetoric of official representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If at a meeting with John Kerry on June 30, Lavrov used the more streamlined expression “all patriotic forces,” then already in early September, answering a question from journalists about the format of the anti-terrorist coalition, he said that he would like to see in its composition also units of the “patriotic Syrian opposition, who are armed by their foreign sponsors.”
The term itself, “patriotic opposition,” evokes an association with the name of the Syrian opposition movement “Committee of Patriotic Democratic Action,” whose delegation led by Mahmoud Marai met in Moscow with Lavrov’s deputy a week before the General Assembly. Even at the beginning of the Syrian events, Marai was a member of the National Coordinating Committee for Democratic Change, which united the most moderate anti-government forces and was accused by rebels from the Free Syrian Army of having ties with Assad. A delegation from this committee already visited Moscow in 2013.
And if in reality there are no serious units of “secular” or “patriotic” opposition that would be capable of inflicting damage on the jihadists, then in the diplomatic vocabulary a certain position of “healthy forces” has already been formulated, with which, despite the presence of “foreign” sponsors,” “for the sake of his people and his country,” Bashar al-Assad is ready to negotiate.
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