Despite positive achievements made in the battle ground, the shadow of a proxy war still wanders in the international scenario.
Fighters of the Kurdish of the Committee…Fighters of the Kurdish of the Committees for the Protection of the Kurdish People (YPG) AFP PHOTO ALICE MARTINSALICE Martins/AFP/Getty Images
The Atlantic contributing editor, Dominic Tierne, released an article in which he boosts the criticism to Russian intervention in Syrian conflict. An imminent “loss” for Russia, support to an “ailing regime” and a wrong approach to a long-term settlement in Syria were some of the arguments the article was based on to justify the disapproval against Russian operations to contain and defeat Daesh.
But how accurate were those statements made by Tierne?
It’s definitely a fact that the Syrian-led antiterrorist coalition, altogether with its Russian and Iranian allies and Lebanese Hezbollah as well have made important advances in the fight against the Islamic State in Syrian territory by retaking large territories that were under control of the jihadists mainly in in the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama, Idleb, Homs and the suburbs of Damascus.
After almost five years of gruesome combats, the Syrian army has finally been able to launch a large offensive against Daesh and literally hundreds more of jihadist groups with the coordinated and effective efforts of its allies. However, when there are big interests comprised in a conflict like this, criticism will always remain.
More than once Syrian conflict has been qualified as a proxy war between the world’s two major powers nowadays: the US and Russia, and that implies, of course huge loads of condemnation coming from the West mainly.
While Russian analysts claim that 2016 will not probably be the year in which Syrian conflict will come to an end, but definitely there will be important victories in many fronts, there are other sectors that keep focusing their efforts on criticizing Russian role in the operation against ISIL, asking Moscow to give up on its efforts of supporting Assad government and at the same time pushing them to act in compliance with the UN-backed peace talks brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry sometime early in the new year. Also, Tierney warned that actually, “a loss for Putin” might only lead to the conflict’s escalation.
Still remains unclear how are the patrons of this conflict going to keep providing support to extremists to destabilize the region even more, not only the US, but also countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey that have (somehow) until now shown an indisputable double standard in their actions that aim to thwart the advance of radical extremism and at the same time they provide them of all the necessary means to enhance war in an already devastated nation to hide darker interests lying behind.
Writtetn by Lisbeth Mechter