Why is Putin in Syria?

By Ian Simm

Russian airstrikes against anti-government and Islamist militants in Syria have brought into focus President Vladimir Putin’s intentions in the country.

With Syria home to a mere 2.5 billion barrels of oil reserves, small by Middle East standards, hydrocarbons do not figure to be of much relevance in this power play. Instead, the efforts to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad – opposing the line taken by the West, which has backed ‘moderate’ rebels – appear to be based in three major strategies: those of politics, defence and economics.

Map of Russian airstrikes in Syria (September 30-October 5) - Courtesy of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW)

 

Politics

That Putin has taken matters into his own hands is hardly surprising though. Relations between Moscow and the West are at a post-Cold War low in the wake of the contentious annexation/reclamation (depending on one’s point of view) of Crimea. Russia’s willingness to take a lone stand in international matters is a show of strength both for those at home and abroad, but aside from political one-upmanship Putin has sufficient incentive to take military action.

The missiles being fired at targets in Syria from Russian warships 1,500 km away in the Caspian Sea must to fly over Iranian and then Iraqi territory to reach their objectives – these countries are also key to the initiative to eliminate the extremists. Tehran is another strong ally of Moscow, and Iran’s regional influence has grown significantly in the last 18 months, and it holds considerable control in the corridors of power in Shia-majority Iraq.

Iranian and Kurdish fighters have so far been the most successful in stopping and reclaiming ground from militants in northern and western Iraq. With no sign yet of a major breakthrough on the ground though, Baghdad has now reportedly asked Russia to target militant-held locations in Iraq. Also buoyed by Russian involvement, on October 11, the Iraqi air force reported that it had carried out its own attack on an Islamic state convoy in the Anbar province, killing several of the group’s highest ranking members, but missing leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Defence

Syria is a long-time ally of Russia, and the ports of Latakia and Tartous are the country’s only foothold in the Mediterranean. Even from a purely selfish point of view then, Putin can claim to be looking after Russia’s own best interests, and the same can be said of the move to tackle the jihadists.

I understand from Russian diplomatic sources that several of those closest to Putin believe that jihadism is the single most significant threat to the country’s national security.

Russia has a longer history than most in dealing with Islamic separatism and extremism, having fought a war in Afghanistan and two with Chechnya and quelling uprisings in former Soviet republics in Central Asia, all within fairly recent memory.

In order to stop the expansion of the group’s influence, it will take a concerted and single-minded effort to cut off their revenue streams and thereby disincentivise sympathisers. It is therefore, little surprise that Russian and Western-backed coalition air attacks appear to have focused on the group’s infrastructure, including oilfields, pipelines and processing facilities expropriated from firms operating in Syria.

In addition, to ensure that the effort against the militants is unified, Putin may see the reported attacks on anti-Assad rebels as necessary to strengthen the government forces’ position prior to a major ground offensive. Russia is unlikely to take part in a ground offensive, but it has shown willingness to at least provide covering fire. As a result, Western-backed rebels will be looking to their sponsors for more funding and weaponry to fight back.

Economics

In a 2007 cable released by WikiLeaks, former US Ambassador to Syria, Michael Corbin admitted the comparative fruitlessness for international oil companies (IOCs) of doing business in Syria. “Senior managers of both Shell and PetroCanada in Syria have admitted … that their presence in Syria is due in part to its strategic location next to Iraq.” He added that the firms saw Syria as a platform to move into Iraq – “this includes training Syrian staff envisaged as a core of workers willing to work in Iraq once the market opens.”

Indeed, the onset of internal conflict in Syria in 2011 was enough for most firms active in the country to leave, and even the closeness of ties between Damascus and Moscow have not proved strong enough to keep Russian firms interested. Plans announced in late 2013 by private Russian firm SoyuzNefteGaz to explore a 2,190-square km area of Syria’s Mediterranean waters, made little progress, and the company’s chairman announced last month that the effort would be dropped. The conflict has driven oil production down from around 380,000 barrels per day to less than 10,000 bpd in four years.

It may be though, that with Iran’s impending return to global markets from the economic wilderness, Moscow sees the situation in Syria as an opportunity to work together with Tehran, thereby building political ties that could bear fruit for Russian companies. The country’s firms stand to benefit more than many others from the lifting of sanctions on the Islamic republic – likely in March or April next year. 

While Corbin’s conclusion was apt – “Economic considerations rarely, if ever, trump political interests in Syria” – the country may eventually prove to have been a litmus test for changing dynamics in the region.

Behind the shroud: Russia stands guard against Islamic incursion

Largely out of sight of the mainstream media, militant Jihadist groups continue to seek to create a caliphate in the Caucasus, in south-west Russia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. The al-Qaeda-affiliated Caucasus Emirate group was officially formed in 2007, originating from the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and Caucasus Front organisations, and also includes the Vilayat Dagestan (Dagestan Governorate) of the Islamic State.

Today, the group is made up of a small group of militants in Dagestan, loyal to Abu Usman Gimrinsky (also known as Magomed Suleymanov), who took over as emir in April after the death of Ali Abu Muhammad al-Dagestani (Aliaskhab Alibulatovich Kebekov).

Gordon Hahn, advisory board member at the US-based Geostrategic Forecasting Corp., said recently: “The Caucasus Emirate has been greatly weakened, with a decline beginning in 2012 first due to the emigration of fighters and potential recruits to Syria and Iraq,” and those remaining have yet to accept the Islamic State’s (IS) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – who Abu Usman frequently calls an ‘imposter’ – as their Caliph.

By 2014, the number of attacks carried out by the Caucasus Emirate had fallen to less than 25-33% of the number attained at its peak in 2010-11.

“This year, Caucasus Emirate emirs representing an overwhelming majority of the mujahedin defected to IS/Daesh and recently the latter accepted them into its fold as the Vilayat Kavkaz (Caucasus Welayat or Governate) of the Islamic State (CWIS) with its leader being the former emir of the Caucasus Emirate’s most powerful network, the Dagestan Vilayat, Abu Muhammad Kadarsky (Rustam Asildarov),” Hahn said.

Danger in numbers

Therefore, it is now this unified CWIS that poses the greatest threat in the region, but while Russia, having defeated Islamist groups in the latter of the Chechen wars, is well aware of this, it appears, publicly at least, to have done little more than ban selected Islamic literature and adopt minor punitive measures to prevent the spread of jihadism.

These steps, according to Mairbek Vatchagaev, Co-editor in chief of the Caucasus Survey and Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation, are misguided. “Russia perceives the jihadists in the North Caucasus as some group that manipulated from abroad. It is naïve and even criminal to do so,” he said. He added that these do not take into account people’s longing for a feeling of inclusion, and by ostracising Islam as a whole, more young people are pushed towards jihadism.

Hahn said that he expects that the formation of the CWIS will lead to a rise in the number of suicide attacks in the Caucasus in the next year. “Moreover, whatever is left of the original Caucasus Emirate may seek to one-up the CWIS and radicalise its tactics, returning to the use of female suicide bombers and more attacks on civilians.”

He added: “It remains to be seen what if any new measures are being undertaken by the Kremlin, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAK) and FSB to counter this likely growing IS/Daesh threat, which has just emerged in the last few months and weeks. It cannot be excluded that Moscow will attempt to strengthen counter-terrorism co-operation with the West, given their common interest and the Kremlin’s ability on occasion to compartmentalise as demonstrated in its role in the questionable and risky, albeit, Iran nuclear agreement despite the ongoing conflict over Ukraine.”

Missing the point

While the spread of jihadism in the Caucasus is by and large overlooked by most mainstream media channels, Vatchagaev said he believes that many of the analysts who do cover the North Caucasus “assume that the Islamic State will be presented in the region by those who return from Syria and Iraq.”

He argued that this is not the case. “No one is coming back. Those who have been in the North Caucasus have themselves become part of the system created by al-Baghdadi in the Middle East,” adding that Moscow must accept that the Islamic State has a cell in Russia in the form of the CWIS, the threat of which should not be underestimated. “Islamic State does not have any public framework restrictions in achieving its goals, and is therefore far more dangerous than the former Caucasus Emirate.”

In Russia, the largest concentrations of Muslims are in the northern Caucasus, Tatarstan, Bashkiria and Moscow, while Islam has a significant influence in the Volga region thanks to radical Uzbek and Kazakh groups. Tatars are also involved in such movements, in an effort to realise the unity of the Turkic world.

It is though, not just Russia that should be concerned about the spread of Islamic extremism. “I suspect that the other post-Soviet state to be most affected by the Caucasus Emirate and CWIS threats is Azerbaijan, where the Caucasus Emirate already has undertaken attempted attacks, as in the 2012 Eurovision plot to attack Baku,” said Hahn. CWIS emir Abu Muhammad was a leading figure in the Dagestan Vilayat, which organised the plot.

Influencing an area that stretched from the Azov Sea near the Russian border with Ukraine, down to Abkhazia in western Georgia, and the country’s Pankisi Gorge, and from Artezian, south of Astrakhan down to the border with Azerbaijan, the reach of the Caucasus jihadists was sizeable even before the formation of the Islamic State-aligned CWIS. With competition between it and the Caucasus Emirate likely to be fierce, the countries neighbouring jihadist ‘territory’ in the Caucasus must take more dramatic steps to prevent any further spread.

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