Prominent Russian Analysts See Two Options For Syria.

Federalisation Or Balkanisation: The Russian publication, Russia Beyond The Headlines (RBTH), on Feb. 26, 2016, came out with this proposal by Grigory Kosach, an expert on Arab politics, a professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities, and a senior analyst Vadim Kozyulin of an independent Russian think-tank. Their views were publicly endorsed by one of Russia's deputy foreign ministers. (RBTH is sponsored by the Russian government's official newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Below are extracts and under-lining by APS:

"There is a nagging suspicion hanging in the air [in Syria] that the fragmentation of the country along ethnic and sectarian lines leaves no other option but to introduce a federal systemand create three autonomous regions, which would remain part of a unified Syria The day after the news of the Russia-US truce deal circulated, the Hawar News Agency, the main media outlet of the Syrian Kurds, published an interview with Ilham Ahmed.

Ahmed is a member of the Executive Council of the Democratic Society Movement (TEV-DEM) in Syrian Kurdistan, which operates out of Rojava, a de facto autonomous region for the Kurds in northern Syria. The question was whether truce will hold, despite violations by both the Russian and Assad forces who had killed over 135 Syrians by March 6: The key revelation amounted to an admission that there was an understanding among all stake-holders that the partitioning of Syria without actually breaking it apart was the only sensible solution. Allegedly, it was more than simply an "understanding", but more akin to a road-map.

According to Ahmed, Syria would essentially consist of three entities. Northern regions would belong to the Kurds; southern regions with Damascus as its capital would accommodate Alawites, Druze, Christians and others; and the centre would be allocated to the Sunnis. All three would have their own parliaments.

Syria's Fragmentation History: Weighing the likelihood of a regulated federalisation of Syria as a sound alternative to its chaotic "balkanisation", Kosach has invoked historical precedents: "In theory, the federalisation of Syria is feasible. It has been a patchy formation from the very beginning. There is a precedent. France, granted a mandate to rule over Syria by the League of Nations, split territories along regional and ethnic lines". Kosach referred to the situation in 1920 when the French, pursuing an agenda of self-interest and out of fear for the rise of Arab nationalism, applied "political fragmentation" by creating separate proto-states in Syria. Apart from the states of Aleppo and Damascus, ethnic Druze were allowed to have their own political unit under the patronage of France. Under the French, the Alawites had a special administration in the mountain district behind Latakia.

Kosach said: "It was a tale of two cities, or rather a contest for supremacy between Aleppo and Damascus, both claiming the right to be the capital of an amalgamated Syria. Actually, the political and business elites of the two cities looked to different foreign partners and patrons. Damascus was focused on Lebanon and Arab countries to the south, while Aleppo sought benefits from dealing with Kemalist Turkey. Under certain circumstances, they could have parted ways".

At this point, it is worth recalling what Russia's Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin said in New York: Don't assign too much importance to Assad's words.

Now, Kosach noted, the fundamentals have changed drastically. Syrian Kurds seem to accept the concept of autonomy within the Syrian state. Will President Assad or his successor be happy with such an arrangement? Will it not provoke Turkey into some sort of "preventive strike" to suffocate even an embryonic statehood for the Kurds?

Turkey's fear is the emergence of such a state on the regional political map and, even more worrisome for Ankara, is that it could be in the close vicinity of its own restive Kurdish regions in south-eastern Anatolia. Kosach adds: "The feasibility of a federal administrative alignment in Syria is conditional on the progress to be made at the inter-Syrian dialogue".

A Kurdish official refers to the recent opening of a representative bureau of Syrian Kurdistan in Moscow and says it is a sign of a "constructive dialogue" between the two sides. From a legal aspect, there are no "two sides". The bureau is not a diplomatic mission but the office of a "public organisation". Yet, the ball has been set into motion. Does Moscow stand to win or lose?

Vadim Kozyulin, a senior research fellow at the PIR Centre, a Moscow-based independent think-tank, in a comment to RBTH, argues that, if the federalisation scenario unravels in the long run, Russia has nothing to lose but can count certain gains. He says: "Although Syrian Kurds have never publicly declared their intention to strive for a separate statehood, the situation might evolve along the same route as in Iraqi Kurdistan. Formally it might be called autonomy, having all the attributes of a state within a state: government, legislation, military formations (PeshMerga), viable sources for the regional budget, etc. Syrian Kurdistan could follow this example".

In the context of Syria solidified as a unified state, just as proposed by world powers in November 2015, Kozyulin says the relatively workable co-operation between the Alawites and Christian minorities with the Syrian Kurds can be ensured provided their willingness to compromise is guaranteed. Yet, he says, this depends on whether the Kurds in the northern regions limit their ambitions to the benefits brought about by a wide or wider autonomy.

Co-operation with the formal central authorities in Damascus by Sunni Arab tribes opposed to Assad but referred to as a "moderate", is far from guaranteed.

The concept of a Sunni state after the partition has been proposed by John R. Bolton, a neo-con scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who served as the US ambassador to the UN from August 2005 to December 2006. Bolton, in an article published in November 2015 in The New York Times suggests: "the best alternative to the Islamic State (ISIS) in north-eastern Syria and north-western Iraq is a new, independent Sunni state".

Bolton views this scenario through the lens of "creating a credible alternative" to ISIS which he defines as "Sunni-stan". De facto it would mean a mono-religious entity with Shi'ites and Christians assigned to a subordinate status. Bolton says this looks like an ISIS "light" version, which "could be a bulwark against both Assad and an Iran-allied Baghdad". Iran's Safawi extremists, who were defeated in the Feb. 26 elections, regard Bahrain and the rest of the six-state GCC bloc, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen as "external provinces" for the Shi'ite theocracy (as explained in see news10IrnVote7Mar16 and rim3IrnAoE7Mar16).

All this is rejected by the US-led coalition including the Saudi-headed GCC bloc and 57-state Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC) in which Iran is the only Shi'ite member. The Saudi-led OIC Sunni front is the main pillar to any settlement; now it is involved in the Northern Thunder drill from late February to March 10. The military exercises, located in Saudi Arabia's northern region of Hafr al-Baten, involve a 20-state coalition which had deployed 350,000 ground troops, 20,000 tanks, 2,500 war-planes, advanced SAM units and hundreds of attack and logistics helicopters. These are the biggest military war-games in the history of the Greater Middle East (GME). The exercises are part of plans to send an overwhelming US-commanded set of forces to finish off ISIS in Syria, Iraq and Libya and then re-establish the status quo in these countries without any of the partition schenarios.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir on March 7 repeated what he said in Paris two days earlier: "Assad has to leave at the beginning of the [Syrian transition] process [as agreed in June 2012 by the Geneva-I peace resolution]. There is a transitional body, power shifts from Assad to the transitional body, and then he goes". UN-led talks between Assad's regime and its Syrian opponents, due to resume on March 10 in the Geneva-III [opening of negotiations], to set up a transition process to end the country's five-year-old war. The UN-brokered international road-map fore-sees a transitional authority by mid-2016 and elections by mid-2017.

The chances of implementing another peace plan - a sustainable Sunni autonomy as part of a unified Syria - will be meager as long as ISIS remains a robust military machine and an alternative for radicalised Muslims. But if moderate Sunni groups opposed to ISIS and are fighting it on their soil are enabled to set up a separate ruling unit in Syria, would it not contribute to forming a united front against the arch-enemy?

Kozyulin says Putin would be wise to back the ambitions of moderate Sunni groups, stressing the need for Russian diplomacy to be flexible: He adds: "Taking into account the entrenched animosity of Syria's Sunnis majority towards Assad's regime, Moscow would be wise to positively engage them".

A unified Syrian state is the fairest and most sustainable option. But given the accumulated wrath and the legacy of blood vendettas typical of every civil war, it could be too late. For the moment, the political and military pendulum in Syria is in motion. It can swing either way: either federalisation or balkanisation.

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Publication:	APS Review Oil Market Trends
Geographic Code:	4EXRU
Date:	Mar 7, 2016
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