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Vladimir Ahmedov

Syrian partition

The war in Syria is promised to be a long. And today each party of conflict builds its own strategic plans for this country.
Today Syria is divided into four parts each of them runs by the conflicting parties that control a large part of the country. Those main parties are Assad’s regime and its allies, ISIL, JAN (an-Nusra Front) and FSA with its allies.
Amazing that Hezbollah like in previous Soviet Union builds its strategy on Syria on 5 year plan. In accordance with this plan Hezbollah creates its arsenals and defense factions in Syria. Hezbollah doesn’t want that prolonged Syrian war may affect its position in Lebanon and has no desire to pay the human and logistic price for its presence in Syria.
That’s why Hezbollah’s leadership has recently adopted a plan according to which a special framework should be sett for Syria and that country must be put in place under a separate authority affiliated to the Shura Council, first of all to its Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.
More over Hezbollah has stepped away beyond the Lebanese borders and is trying to consolidate its strategic presence not only in Syria but Iraq and Yemen as well. But nevertheless the presence of Hezbollah representatives and separate units in above mentioned countries in which they can run their special operations they all in a way or other are connected to Lebanon because all those four scenes (Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi and Yemeni) are in touch.
But as Syria till now remains a mains a battle scene Hezbollah has decided to establish there a military force from more over 50 thousands fighters which they plan to recruit from the different strata of the Syrian population mainly from Syrians that have recently under massive and aggressive Iranian propaganda have converted to Shia’a, in addition to different sects of Christians, Druze and even Sunnis modeling the Resistance factions in Lebanon. At the same time high ranking Hezbollah operatives are in constantly touch with the command sources in Syria and Iraq to guide them form Lebanon.
Regards these global jihadist plans of Hezbollah in the Middle East one may wonder is front with Israel still open and what differ so much Hezbollah from ISIL in view of ideological doctrine proclaimed in their political plans?
It’s very obvious that these ambitions Hezbollah plans may see the light and be effectively implemented only with the guidelines and help form Iran that consider Levant as it’s high priority of its national security and a key element in its global fight with Sunnis for dominance in the region.
Thus according to some reliable sources in Syrian opposition in the country and abroad, Iran has lunched recently the special program to create in Syria parallel to Syrian national army new special fighting forces under the name “National security units” (NSU).
It has become now very clear that national Syrian forces are severely damaged (if not to say ended as a real army) and loses in its personnel overcame any reasonable limits. More over regimes calculations to correct this situation by lunching a new recruiting campaign at calling the reserve troops has failed even in Tartous and Latakia.
Reportedly those new forces (NSU) are supposed to be overseen directly by officers from Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRG) and Hezbollah officers as well. Those units will be deployed over the different areas in Syria. This very fact may indicate that Iran now acts in Syria with so called “open face” and need no more to hide in shadow like it did in the past two years. On the other side it demonstrates Iranian keenness in Syrian affairs and shows that Iran tends to take under its full control all security and administrating strategies in Syria.
This new Iranian “perestroika” and “openness” (praying Rahbar will follow Gorbachev’s policy in other fields) in Syria marks in fact a very peculiar situation for the Syrian army on the ground where NSU with the help of some Baath factions (for décor, of cause, or where lays Iranian official ideology of “velaity fakih” and secular, Arab nationalism of Baathism?) will replace the national defense forces and represent the main military force. Assad’s Syria may forget about its national sovereignty. According to the same sources NSU will pay for their officer salaries between 30-50 thousand Syrian pounds monthly and gives some other incentives.
In establishing its new army in Syria Tehran counts on that call (first of all in Iran) for mandatory (reserve) military services that supposed to cut down the monthly salaries of their national defense forces (a very dangerous and controversial measure in our view) and on calling mercenaries form all over the world promising them new adventures and opportunities to gain some money. Iran wouldn’t be Iran (at least in their strategic planning) if it didn’t tray at first its plan. Some knowledgeable sources claim that in September-October Iran has already established one of such unite in Golan region under the name of “Suweida Shield faction” (SSF). But it wasn’t successive much due to the lack of the support from local population. No doubt that this time Iran will teach this lesson and act more accurately
In view of these new Iranian-Hezbollah inventions in Syria one may wonder what the real difference between them and ISIL or JAN who act the very same way and apply the same tactics in concurred areas of Syria. Is it only ideology that serves at first and foremost to mobilize local population and win their support? And who said that Shia’a unlike Sunnis is less keen to Jihadism? May be those who missed lectures about the first decades of Arabs history after Prophet’s death or those who forgot His parting wishes cited in al-Quran: “…. don’t divide in your faith (religion)”? (Author apologizes if he wasn’t correct in citing Quran’s texts).
And one more word. Some times an author couldn’t help from some sort of “fascinating” of Iranian policy in the Middle East and in Syria in particular. And let my Syrian friends, especially those who suffer from Assad’s barbaric policy blame me on those word.
But from my Russian point I sometimes think what ever we were able to implement that same strategic planning, political wisdom, analytical perditions combined with such an adamant will and some sort of cynics (in one punch) in our politics in Syria.
May be we could save thousands of lives, preserve the regime and its military, forced them to provide some simplest reforms (demanded by the most of Syrians) and help to avoid the damaging and partition of Syria and emerging ISIL and other Jihadists factions. May be if we could act more decisively, press more on Assad and his inner circle, think more about our strategic goals as a State (not group of interests) we could avoid what we witness now in Ukraine and force our American partners to think twice before meddling in our “cosa nostra” in Ukraine.
Or may be in my 50-th I’m yet naive sometimes, – the fact that enjoys me. But for sure upsets my closest and some “friends” (in the hood).
By Vladimir Ahmedov (PhD) senior researcher form Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies whose views don’t necessarily reflects the official position of Institute.