So, we have had the much-anticipated meeting of all the players in Vienna. The playing field, of course, is Syria. With the civil war entering a fifth year, and over 200,000 people killed, and half of its population displaced, Syria was in an urgent need of some sort of solution to the quagmire that it has become. The embattled President Assad was recently forced to concede that his regime was running out of personnel available to fight.
The Syrian conflict is very much sectarian in nature, with the minority Alawites holding the reins for a long time. Alawites are Shias, and have always been backed by Iran, the guardian state of Shias of the world.
And as was expected, the Iran-backed Hezbollah always had its nose in Syrian affairs. Besides, Syrians have traditionally had the backing of the Russians, the principal armament-supplier of the Baathist regime of Assad and his long deceased father, Hafez, as well.
Ever since civil war erupted in Syria, the US with its regional allies (Saudi Arabia and Israel) have provided arms and intelligence support to a group of Sunnis called the Free Syrian Army (FSA). They have not dealt with Iran, but provided air support to the FSA. The FSA, formed originally of soldiers who defected from the regular Syrian army, gradually attracted fighters from various parts of the vicinity and even Jihadis from the west.
The FSA splintered, as was expected, and from its strictly Sharia-abiding faction arose the monster of IS with its dream, or ambition, of establishing a Caliphate. Its leader, Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi, started running the organisation like a Mafioso operation. IS gained control of vast swathes of both Iraq and Syria and started gaining substantial revenue from the Iraqi oil fields, selling mainly to Turkey.
Turkey was tolerant of IS excesses from the very beginning, since it wanted Assad out and the Kurdi unity to be destroyed.
The autonomous Kurdi regions of northern Iraq are the only positives to have come out of from the disastrous decade-long invasion of Iraq by the US. The Kurdi Peshmerga fighters have been giving IS a hard fight, but were lacking in firepower.
IS, on the other hand, with heavy weaponry pillaged from the Iraqi army, which were given to them by the US, kept gaining ground. The US has constantly declined to put “boots on the ground” to fight the menace of IS. Obama did not want to run into a huge deficit like George W Bush had done by spending trillions in the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Iran has surreptitiously been aiding Assad with military personnel. The new offensive launched by the Syrian government forces in the country-side south of Aleppo has shed light on Iran’s growing role in Syria’s civil war. Officially, Iran denies it has deployed any combat troops in Syria, but a week before the offensive began, it was reported that hundreds of Iranian troops had arrived in Syria in preparation for an imminent assault on rebel-held areas.
Into this morass, entered Putin. With Obama not taking any direct action, he seized the chance to make Russia’s presence felt, militarily, and also stand beside old ally Assad. The Russians started bombing, ostensibly, only IS strong-holds, but reports show that they have caused over 500 civilian deaths. The Russians seem to be in no mood to relent.
With matters in such dire straits, the ancient country of Syria turning to rubble, the Americans called the Vienna summit. However, the major fighting forces -- the Syrian regime and the “freedom fighters” -- were not on the table. Despite various objections, the US made the prudent decision to call Iran to the meeting, realising that a solution to the Syrian problem cannot be solved militarily.
Americans also want to keep the Kurdi regions on the road to prosperity. It is becoming gradually apparent that the solution to the problem of Syria, and also Iraq, will come only through the whole region dividing along sectarian lines with the Shia portions under the control of the Iranians, and the Kurdis taking control of the northern parts of both Iraq and Syria.
And what has come out of the Vienna summit?
“The US is sending Special Forces to Syria to assist anti-government rebels in fighting the so-called Islamic State (IS), officials have said. There will be ‘fewer than 50’ forces deployed in the region to ‘train, advise, and assist’ vetted opposition forces. This will be the first time US troops are working openly on the ground in Syria.”
This can only mean that the US will most likely help the Kurds regain the land that they have lost to IS. They are going to allow Syria to sort its problems out. But what they fail to realise is that even 50 boots mean “boots on the ground” in Syria.
And war will rage on. People will keep dying. Refugees will be running helter skelter.
War is not like the glitzy gunfights on TV screens, war is the ultimate misery of people, with guts and gore galore, bullets flying, making a whistling sound before entering the body, the skull, piercing the eardrum.
War is body bags coming home wrapped in a national flag that holds no more meaning, war is the displacement of peoples, death of the fleeing, slaughter of the innocents, “September on Jessore Road” written by Allen Ginsberg, the bodies of babies washing afloat on a beach that was meant for fun and frolic.
War makes “far from the scene of the crime” arms dealers rich, while the wheat fields are strewn with corpses instead of golden wheat sheaves.
War makes the glistening desert sand turn dark with blood at the midday sun. War makes refugees, whose nightmares keep going even after they have woken up from a few hours of slumber.
Peace in the Middle East? Keep on dreaming, lest you wake up to a reality that is unpalatable.