Russia in Syria

What is Russia doing in Syria?

Like the Syrian Civil War, Russia's latest intervention has many causes. One of them is internal Russian politics, something about which I am ignorant, but I suppose that Preident Putin thinks that he will be politically strengthened by his country's significant intervention in Syria.

Russia, like the USSR before it, has been a consistent supporter of the Baathist government in Syria for many decades. Syria has benefitted by receiving both military support and a shield in international diplomacy when Russia would veto any significant attack on it at the UN. It has meant for Russia that it has an ally in the middle of a frequently anti-Russian Arab world, It has allowed Russia to have a small naval base on the Mediterranean, although this has not been a much used asset over the decades.

With the eruption of the Syrian revolution in 2011, the two states which backed the government were Russia and Iran. Russia supplied the weapons, and Iran was significant in sending in military personnel, with reports of Iranian, Afghan and Pakistanis fighting as Syrian forces. Alongside them were Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, heavilly supported by Iran. In many ways Iran was taking much of the load of the actual fight.

Spiegel's Christoph Reuter recently wrote an important article about why Russia has intervened so dramatically.( http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/syria-leader-assad-seeks-russian-protection-from-ally-iran-a-1056263.html ) The essence is that Iran was treating Syria as an Iranian colony or even a province, as it has been doing with central Iraq. The difference between Iraq and Syria is that Syria's population is not significantly mainstream Shia. There is a significant Ismaili presence, and of course many of the ruling elite are Alawite, but there are far from being Iranian style Shia. Alawites have no mosques and their cult is scarcely Muslim, with their women avoiding headwear and a normal (and often religious) consumption of alcohol.

From Iran's point of view we need to remember the theological battle going on in the region between Shia Iran and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia.

Saudi's aggressive planting of Wahhabi preachers throughout the Sunni world, including the take-over of mosques from Kenya to London, is well known. Its radically extreme form of Islam is alien to that found anywhere outside of central Arabia, but it is aggressive and well-funded. Its brand of Islam is to be seen as a basis for much of the violence racking the Muslim world. Certainly, if you had walked down the streets of Aleppo or Damascus a decade ago there was real contempt among serious Muslims for this extreme version which was seen as barbaric and inauthentic. But Wahhabism has been preached widely in mosques, on the streets and on the internet and has gained support.

Iran has been doing similar things on a smaller scale, but its preachers have been trying hard to turn the ordinary Shia, Alawites and other non-Sunni Muslims in Syria and Lebanon into Iranian style Shia, and also to convert Sunni Muslims in the same direction. There are reports of Iran bringing in Shia migrants from other countries into Syria to change the demography.

In terms of the war, the government of Syria is clearly losing. Most of its young men try to avoid the army, or are not trusted to fight. Bashar has been under pressure from the Iranians, and so he turned to Russia who have no serious theological interest in Syria, but plenty of reasons to value it as a client. (Some Russians see this partly as a war to protect the Orthodox Christians, but this has not been said by the Patriarch himself, and the Russian Church is not in Putin's pocket, despite the western view to the contrary) By making Russia the main fighter in Syria, Iran has been reminded that Damascus is not one of its provinces, and that it has other friends, and the public and aggressive Russian intervention is a clear statement of this.

European commentators have forgotten that religion is really important in most of the world. The basis of Russia's intervention in Syria is the struggle between the conservative Iranian Shia preachers and the radical Wahhabi Saudi Arabian preachers. Assad's relatives value their relaxed pragmatic Alawite religion and most Syrian Muslims, whether Sufi or not have an understanding of Islam, with its art and high culture and urban sophistication which is centuries away from the radical extremity which Saudi wealth promotes.