Syria\u2019s President Bashar al-Assad may turn out to be the biggest beneficiary of last week\u2019s massacre in Paris. That\u2019s because the renewed urgency with which Western powers are prioritizing the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) \u2014 the lowest common denominator among outside powers intervening in Syria \u2014 appears likely to defer any effort to oust the Assad regime.
\n\u201cI\u2019m seeing signs that France might reconsider its foreign policy with regards to Syria,\u201d said Karim Emile Bitar, a Paris-based analyst with the Institut de Relations Internationales et Strategiques. France had, two years ago, taken a lead among Western powers in pushing for Assad\u2019s ouster, even urging the United States to participate in a more muscular military intervention to restrain the regime\u2019s forces and facilitate a rebel victory. Now, however, the talk in Paris is of coordination with Russia, which has been conducting its own air campaign against both ISIL and other enemies of the Assad regime, a longtime client of Moscow.
\nUntil now, France, the U.S. and their Arab allies who all oppose Assad have avoided aligning their own military efforts against ISIL with Russia\u2019s.
\nBut with Russia and France both ramping up retaliatory airstrikes against ISIL \u2014 both countries flew sorties over Syria on Tuesday \u2014 such differences may narrow. Moscow acknowledged for the first time Tuesday that a Russian airliner that crashed in Sinai two weeks ago was downed by a bomb, adding to its own incentive to target ISIL, which had claimed responsibility.
\nFriday\u2019s massacre in Paris has amplified calls among French politicians for coordination with Russia \u2014 and Assad \u2014 against ISIL. \u201cMost right-wing politicians are in favor of getting closer to Putin to solve the Syrian crisis,\u201d Bitar said. \u201cThe lesser evil narrative … is triumphing because of these [Paris] attacks, so Assad and Putin are among the victors.\u201d
\nFollowing Moscow\u2019s acknowledgment of the plane bombing, Putin said, “Our air force’s military work in Syria must not simply be continued. It must be intensified in such a way that the criminals understand that retribution is inevitable.”
\nSyrian opposition figures believe the French and others are taking the bait set by ISIL.
\n\u201cThe main goal is to force France to change its stances, to escalate its campaign in Syria,\u201d said Fahd Al-Masri, a Syrian opposition figure based in Paris. \u201cAny terror attack carries a political message. Everyone\u2019s priority now is to fight terrorism, not topple Bashar al-Assad, who is the reason for the birth and development of terrorism in Syria.\u201d
\nFrench President Francois Hollande is expected to make the case for more sustained international action against ISIL when he heads to both Moscow and Washington later this week.
\nEscalated military action against ISIL is being planned in parallel with a greater diplomatic effort to resolve the Syrian civil war by drawing in all the international players backing Syrian factions. Last month, Iran was invited to join talks for the first time, after an apparent shift by the U.S. and its allies over Tehran\u2019s inclusion \u2014 an option long opposed by Iran\u2019s chief regional rival Saudi Arabia, which supports Syrian rebel groups opposed to Assad.
\nOn Saturday, just a day after the Paris attacks, diplomats from 19 nations meeting in Vienna agreed on a broad framework for ending the Syrian conflict, prioritizing a cease-fire. And that framework made no mention of ousting Assad. Further discussions, which would include Syrian opposition figures, are expected soon.
\nU.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that the attacks in Paris \u00ac\u2014 as well as those in Turkey and Lebanon before them, all claimed by ISIL \u2014 could compel the regional actors to pursue a dual track of continuing to target ISIL positions in Syria while ramping up diplomatic efforts to end the Syrian conflict between the Assad government and non-ISIL Syrian opposition groups.
\nBut until now, intractable differences over the fate of Assad have stymied efforts to broker a political solution.
\nRussia and Iran, Assad\u2019s principal backers, have at various points indicated that Assad could eventually depart as a part of a transition process agreed on by Syrians, but have pushed back against any effort to make his departure a perquisite for a political solution \u2014 which has put them at odds with Assad\u2019s regional enemies. Syrian opposition groups balk at the notion that Assad could be allowed to remain in power during a transition period.
\n\u201cAgreement would need some consensus on the future of the Assad clan \u2014 which Russia and Iran regard as legitimate rulers and the U.S., France and U.K. still, with weakening resolve, regard as a main provoker of Sunni jihadism,\u201d David Gardner wrote in the Financial Times on Tuesday. \u201cYet Vienna seems the best hope that external actors now steering by narrow interest and spinning compasses in Syria may, after Paris, conclude the stakes are too high not to agree.\u201d
\nRussia and Assad, on one hand, and France, the U.S. and their allies on the other, are unlikely to directly coordinate actions against ISIL until traction on the peace track continues. But the renewed global campaign against ISIL may nonetheless end up allowing Russia and Assad a greater say over the terms of a Syrian peace process than the West and its Arab allies would have liked.<\/p>\n
With additional reporting by Michael Pizzi.<\/em> Syria\u2019s President Bashar al-Assad may turn out to be the biggest beneficiary of last week\u2019s massacre in Paris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c43-analyses"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nSource: Aljazeera<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"