Now that the Syria news has almost disappeared from the international headlines, eclipsed by the coronavirus spread, a key question is how far the pandemic will affect the capability of forces involved in the Syrian theater to act and what will be the combined outcome of the ongoing war and the disastrous health situation.
The war
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, Russian servicemen returning from Syria are being routinely tested, and not accidentally.
The waterfront area of Tartus – the western Syrian port town hosting the Russian navy base – has been proclaimed a restricted area for the locals.
Although hardly in response to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ appeal for a global ceasefire, the epidemic is steadily creating a strategic uncertainty around any future military advancement on the ground. Despite some little skirmishes, the agreement between Turkey and Russia regarding ceasefire and joint patrols seems for now to hold.
The Turkish diplomatic effort worked this time, not the least due to the success of an unprecedentedly powerful drone attack that knocked out a significant portion of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s ground forces and exposed the potential vulnerability of their Russia-propped air shield. In light of this success, Turkey has now emerged as the second most important global drone power.
Importantly, all drone systems are home-made and advanced. This ruse has also helped Turkey steer clear of a direct confrontation with Russia while mobilizing only a limited – mainly verbal – U.S. and NATO support.
It is only a tactical achievement, however, which has neither secured Idlib from any potential similar assault in the future nor addressed the current humanitarian crisis in and around the area.
In the absence of any serious international plan for the future of Syria, Turkey’s left with no other option but to play a long game. The nature of this game is simple – whatever Russia’s current status as the main power broker, and its immediate goals in Syria – these will expire one day.
Meanwhile, Turkey will always be part of the local geography. The story of Iran is telling in that sense. It used to be Assad’s earlier savior and partner of choice, and now is weakened by sanctions and material losses in a de facto war with Israel and the U.S. and an increasingly hopeless tussle for influence over Syria with Russia. M
Most recently Russians made Assad cancel his regional Baath party elections in order to vet the Iranian stooges.
The virus
By early April, despite several officially reported cases, the Assad regime was still officially in denial of the epidemic.
Then rapidly, a town of Manin some 14 kilometers north of Damascus, was locked down and later Sayyidah Zainab area – a Shia holy site.
A curfew was also imposed, supposedly nationwide.
Even the government of Assad regime opponents in the Turkey-controlled Idlib has enforced a ban on Friday mosque prayers.
The town of Manin is predominantly Sunni Muslim and located less than 10 kilometers from the notorious Sednayah prison site, where thousands of regime opponents have been tortured and died throughout the war.
In Syria nowadays every detail prompts a reading from the perspective of the ongoing civil war. Whether or not these were mere coincidences – the situation will help legitimize the regime’s command and control governing style.
It has, however, no monitoring or testing tools – no means of knowing what is going on in the fragmented reality on the ground. Areas fought back from the rebels are now controlled by various ostensibly loyal warlords.
The regime and its Russian allies are also responsible for the collapse of much of the healthcare infrastructure in the country.
Their military aircraft spent five years meticulously eliminating every hospital or in the rebel-controlled zones. By the same token, the health crisis that appears to justify an excessive policing and authoritarian tendencies even in the democratic countries will help legitimize a further abuse of power by various warlords who control both the areas recaptured from the rebels and those that remain under the rebel control.
It is clear in the meantime that the health situation of a million new refugees living in camps like the one that popped up on the Turkish border in the aftermath of the recent Russia-supported regime attacks on Idlib – is simply disastrous.
Conditions in these vast fields of makeshift dwellings are dire: they lack any means of sanitation, water, food or medicines and cramped to the extent that precludes any semblance of social distancing.
Should there be a single case of contraction, all will be sick in a matter of days.
It’s hard to imagine what these people – many of whom are fleeing the war, not for the first time – are now going through.
Deprived of any semblance of normal life that their peers enjoy right across the fence, maturing early in fear and desperation – the youngest among them will bring a sour harvest a decade or so from now on the seeds of wrath that are now being planted in the hearts.
It isn’t so difficult to guess who they will blame for the war that damaged their livelihoods, when the Assad regime will inevitably expire, is it?
The West will yet for a long time remain simultaneously the preferred safe haven and the ultimate scapegoat for the entire Middle East.
The pandemic also throws light on the allegiances of various local parties.
For Assad, Russia is its best hope, while Iranians paradoxically now became a threat. All cases of contamination in Syria are surely attributable to an excessive Iranian presence.
The self-proclaimed Kurdish autonomy in northeastern Syria, now fighting the Turks, has appealed to Iraqi Kurdistan for assistance in confronting the novel coronavirus.
The much-aspired common Kurdish homeland in some ways appears more of a reality than Assad’s sovereign state resuscitated by his Russian and Iranian allies.
According to recent polls, among the refugees living abroad, less than 10% may be considering a return to Syria in any foreseeable perspective. Those who have recently fled from Idlib will for a long time remain in a painful limbo. The virus suspended indefinitely their escape to the north.
For now, they are pressed against the wall – the protective fence of the Turkish republic.
