The slaughterhouse called Syria

Threatened by the pain of war and the agony of those whom you love, the civilian population of Syria continues to pass their days and nights amidst horror and uncertainty.

Strategic analyst Alia Chugtai has indicated after careful research that since March 2011, fighting has killed an estimated 465,000 Syrians, wounded one million more and forced about 12 million people - or half the country's pre-war population - from their homes. At present, intense bombing is continuing in the towns of Douma, Misraba and Harasta near the front lines.

More than 1,400 civilians are believed to have been killed in rebel-held Eastern Ghouta (an area east of Damascus) enclave alone since Syrian government forces stepped up their bombardment a month ago. About 400,000 people have been living in this District under siege by government forces for almost five years now. They are desperate and have survived in the midst of starvation and squalor. For the thousands of families trapped there, it has been an overcast existence. Under siege since 2013, as the last rebel stronghold near the capital, it has become the target of relentless bombing by the Syrian government. Jaish al-Islam, Faylaq al-Rahman and Ahrar al-Sham are the largest armed groups in control of the Eastern Ghouta suburb. Al-Qaeda offshoot, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly known as al-Nusra Front) also has a minor presence. They have, however, not been welcomed by the other groups.

A general survey of the existing scenario indicates the following structural paradigm within Syria:

The main cities under government control at this point of time are: Aleppo, Latakia, Tartus, Hama, Homs, Damascus, Palmyra, and Abu Kamal. After the battle for Raqqa, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS, remains in control of the area near Abu Kamal, surrounded by government forces westward and Kurdish forces in the east. Elsewhere, in northern Syria, pro-Assad fighters have been sent to the Kurdish enclave of Afrin to confront an offensive by Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels.

Other groups fighting in Syria include Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, Iran-backed Hezbollah, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) dominated by the Kurdish People's Protection Units. They control Afrin, Raqqa, Qamishli and Hasakah. There is also the the Free Syrian Army, a loose conglomeration of armed brigades formed in 2011 by defectors from the Syrian army and civilians aiming to topple President Bashar al-Assad. Since the battle of Aleppo, this group has remained in control of limited areas.

This ongoing turmoil has made one factor common for the neighbouring region of Europe. The repercussions of Syria's war now extends beyond the country's borders and has hardened public opinion on migration and led to a tectonic shift in politics. This has become evident in the rise of populism and xenophobia in France, Germany, Austria, Italy and Netherlands. Arab Spring and its consequences in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and elsewhere have changed the world. One needs to refer here to data originating allegedly from the Italian Interior Ministry. It suggests that more than 650,000 refugees and migrants in the past five years have arrived in Italy from Syria, other Middle Eastern countries and North and sub-Saharan Africa.

The anger in Italy, crippled by an anemic economy and perennial political paralysis, was reflected in its latest general election on March 4. The stridently anti-migrant party, La Lega, or the League, more than quadrupled its share of the fractured electorate, winning 17.4 per cent of the vote. Its leader Matteo Salvini has advocated forcibly rounding up and sending hundreds of thousands of foreigners back to their home countries. He is also opposed to any attempt to save those in the Mediterranean trying to reach Italian shores.

In this context, Ben Wedeman from the CNN has noted that while some Europeans have welcomed the refugees with open arms, many more did not. The sudden shock to the European body politic of more than a million refugees and migrants in 2015 pushed sentiment far to the right in Europe, and the reverberations were felt as far away as the United States. During the campaign leading up to the 2016 US presidential election, candidate Donald Trump rallied against Syrian refugees as a Trojan Horse, warning supporters at a rally in Rhode Island to "lock their doors" to protect themselves from Syrian refugees.

Strategic analysts have been following the unraveling of Syria and the neighbouring region very carefully. Some of them are admitting that President Assad might be gradually winning the civil war in Syria. They are, however, also pointing out that even if he eventually gains control, he will be presiding over a broken country.

This evolving scenario appears to have started in the summer of 2015. Tim Lister has noted that at this stage, President Bashar al-Assad was losing ground due to his army having to fight on multiple fronts amid desertion and exhaustion. Islamist rebel groups on the other hand were threatening to cut key routes connecting regime strongholds. It was at this point that Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force went to Moscow. He pointed out there that the war was going badly, despite the involvement of pro-Iranian militia and the Lebanese Hezbollah fighting on the side of the regime. His discussions in Russia led to greater involvement in the conflict by Russia. The tide of Syria's conflict began to change, gradually but remorselessly, in the regime's favour. This has been possible because both Russia and Iran have underpinned a scorched-earth campaign that has broken the back of the resistance, but has also laid waste to Syria.

It appears that Russia's motivating factor was the anxiety that Assad might be overthrown and that Syria, long an ally of Moscow, would become a failed state, another Yemen. Kremlin defence strategists calculated that a combination of Russian air power and Iranian militia on the ground could reverse the course of the war. Such a decisive show of strength would be in direct contrast to the existing US ambivalence toward the moderate rebel groups who had approached the US for help. In September 2015, at the UN General Assembly, Russian President Vladimir Putin also sternly observed that western intervention in the Middle East had been a disaster. He commented that "Instead of democracy and progress, there is now violence, poverty, social disasters and total disregard for human rights."

In the subsequent months, we have seen how the Russian air force has targeted moderate rebel groups supported by the United States and the Gulf countries fighting Assad. In late 2015, Russian planes were often flying nearly 100 sorties a day. As expected, the US and human rights groups accused Moscow of indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure, especially hospitals. However, the joint operations slowly turned the situation towards Assad. Gradual success has also encouraged several thousand Hezbollah militia, as well as Iranian Quds fighters, joining the Syrian army to begin to roll back rebel gains in the north and northwest. Possessing few weapons that could take out planes or tanks, the rebels began to lose ground. The Assad regime also appears to have benefited from divisions and in-fighting among rebel groups.

The world in general and the stake-holders in the Middle East in particular have been monitoring the Geneva peace process with growing despair. While successive calls for ceasefires have failed, regime forces and their allies have embarked on a new strategy.

The regime has moved its focus away from ISIS and the Kurds and focused solely on the spine of Syria -- north from Damascus to Homs and Hama. This has been accompanied by intense aerial bombardment of the northwestern province of Idlib. This has helped keep rebel groups off balance in that sub-region. Such a changed strategic dynamics on the part of Assad also allowed the Syrian army by mid-2017, fortified by Russian-supplied hardware and supported by Hezbollah and Iranian fighters, to close in and recapture eastern Aleppo. Assad and the Russians have also turned their attention to ISIS-held areas such as Deir Ezzor, not least because they are oil-rich. Putin also appears to have persuaded Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to being part of a plan to create what has been termed as "deconfliction zones", which refer to areas that can be treated with lower priority until Assad can muster the resources to attack them.

The intensity of Russian participation and support has been underlined by the Chief of General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov. According to him, Russian aviation has carried out 19,160 combat missions and 71,000 strikes since the beginning of its involvement in Syria. Their Defence Ministry has also indicated that over 48,000 service members had ?gained combat experience" in Syria.

The political opposition to Assad has continued to fume and vent their anger from exile. However, they virtually do not have any armed wing inside Syria. Bashar al-Assad apparently has the upper hand right now. It is also clear that the West might disagree with him, but they do not have any viable alternative to his rule that could garner broad international support.

However, there is also the other side of the coin. Even if Assad manages to eventually gain control of most of Syria, he will have to preside over a broken country, whose reconstruction could cost at least $150 billion or even more. In these troubled times, it is also more than likely that international donors and investors will refrain from coming forward to give aid to Syria until a credible political settlement is worked out i.e., acceptable to all stakeholders. It is also not credible that Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or UAE would put money in a country that is actively supported by Iran. That leaves Russia and that is also most unlikely.

Only one thing is true. After seven years of conflict in Syria, all that we have is a toxic legacy of extremism, distrust and abject poverty.

Muhammad Zamir is a former Ambassador and an analyst specialised in foreign affairs, right to information and good governance.

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