Two sides to the Syrian conflict
International headlines are full of news, views and analyses on the pros-and-cons of Russia's entry into the Syrian civil war. With more than 70 percent of Russians backing Putin in his Syrian adventure, it is understandable why Russia has gone in with a big bang. While all that is going on, there is of course another side to this whole scenario and which has everything to do with profits, and that is natural gas. Rewind to 1989; two countries viz. Iran and Qatar begin exploration of a gas field buried 3km below the Gulf of Persia with a potential "51 trillion cubic meters of gas and 50 billion cubic meters of liquid condensates, it is the largest natural gas field in the world. Approximately one-third of its riches lie in Iranian waters and two-thirds in Qatari ones," an article in Foreign Affairs declares.
In 2009, Qatar proposed to build a pipeline that would send their share of the gas through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria to Turkey. The aim was to reach Europe and effectively provide a second source of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the infrastructure which had been built up since '89 and would give Europe a choice to wean itself away from cheap Russian gas. Syria refused to be party to it and Russia wasn't too keen on the project either. Qatar isn't the only player in the Middle East with massive natural gas reserves. Iran is another major contender from the same South Pars/North Dome gas field that Qatar developed and proposed its own pipeline that would take Iranian gas through Iraq and Syria to Europe through the Caspian Sea (falling under Russian sphere of influence). The Iranian proposal met with Russian approval and going by what has been published in international media, agreements were signed in 2012 and required infrastructure were to be completed by 2016.
Coming back to the conflict in Syria, reports of Qatari involvement in funding of groups opposed to the Assad regime surfaced in 2011. Eventually many other players in the region have gotten involved, including the Saudis and Turkey. While Turkey is seemingly aligned to the United States (US) in the fight against IS, it appears that the country is more interested in containing the Kurds than IS. Indeed, the Islamic State (IS) boasts some 30,000 foreign fighters, most of whom have made it to Syria using Turkey as a transit point. The US, which never appeared to have a clear-cut Syria policy, is reeling from a public relations disaster of having funded a ghost army that has cost the US taxpayer $500 million in man and material and produced some 54 "fighters", who appear to have suffered a 90 percent casualty rate and it is unclear how many are still "fighting", not to talk about the military arsenal that seem to have walked over to IS.
Enter Russia with some of their latest military hardware and which has gone on a rampage that is heavily reminiscent of the American blitzkrieg which CNN brought to a world audience during the first Gulf war in 1991. Needless to say, it props up both Russian morale and provides a showcase for all these new and untested military equipment, which will undoubtedly help in Russian foreign military sales. Many a political commentator have gone to great lengths to portray Russian intervention in Syria as one that is designed to send a strong message to Washington that Russia demands respect; that it is no longer a unipolar, but a bipolar world, where the US must pay heed to what Russia thinks. All those arguments hold true.
But as history will testify, wars are almost always about profits, human rights seldom figure big in such conflicts. When we talk about natural gas supply to such a big market as continental Europe, what is one regime-change, if it paves the way for billions of dollars of business per annum? While Russia plays hardball and some Arab nations begin arming groups of their choice to take down Russian military assets deployed in the field, the conflict in Syria is evolving from a low-intensity civil war to that of a full-blown proxy war. What has many people worried is that unless a political solution is thrashed out in the near term, this conflict could become another Afghanistan. Indeed, this could be worse than Afghanistan in the sense that IS has demonstrated that it is the true successor of Al-Qaeda. With reports coming in that the Taleban in Afghanistan are now getting "advice" from IS, this militant outfit is well on its way to becoming the king of the global jihadist movement.
It is time to stop fighting. With all major world players actively engaged in Syria, unless leading powers can set aside their differences about which party they will negotiate with, Syria could very well make the Afghan war look like a walk in the park. A united and undivided Syria would be very nice. However, given the bloodletting that has been allowed to go on for nearly five years, a Yugoslavia-type solution may be the next best thing to settle for. But for that to happen, sincere efforts are needed by the permanent members of the UN and their regional allies to come to the negotiating table and thrash out a deal that will be adhered to.
The writer is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star
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