Russia will soon begin to pay a steep price for Syrian campaign: Ash Carter

The anger of Saudi Arabia over Vladimir Putin’s intervention on Assad behalf was expressed, among other things, in a statement by fifty-five leading Muslim clerics, including prominent Islamists, urging “true Muslims” to “give all moral, material, political and military” support to the fight against Assad’s army as well as Iranian and Russian forces.

“Russia has created a Frankenstein in the region which it will not be able to control,” warned a senior Qatari source. “With the call to jihad things will change. Everyone will go to fight. Even Muslims who sit in bars. There are 1.5 billion Muslims. Imagine what will happen if 1 percent of them join.”

Saudi Arabia and Turkey lead a group of Sunni states which insist that Assad must go as a condition of any political solution to the war in Syria, and that he cannot be part of any political transition. This used to be the U.S. position as well, but in the last year the United States, Britain, and other Western countries have indicated that they would be willing to entertain the idea of Assad being part of political transition in Syria – but only for a period of few months, not years.

In response to the escalating support by Russia and Iran to Assad, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are expected to increase their financial aid to rebel groups and deliver large quantities of weapons to the rebels through Turkey.

King Salman of Saudi Arabia is scheduled to Moscow next week, but the trip was scheduled long ago, and it remains to be seen whether the king will cancel it, which will be another indication of the growing tensions between the pro- and anti-Assad camps.

The Russian defense ministry said its planes had carried out more bombing missions over Syria overnight. Military analysts studying the areas where the Russian military is bombing, and the targets of the bombing, say that as has been the case since Wednesday ten day ago, when Russia began its air campaign, Russia is not targeting ISIS forces but instead focusing on non-ISIS anti-regime groups supported by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

In Brussels, Carter said that the Russian military campaign, including airstrikes and ship-launched cruise missiles, was not targeting ISIS but represented a Russian decision “to double down on a longstanding relationship with Assad.”

“They have initiated a joint ground offensive with the Syrian regime, shattering the facade that they are there to fight ISIL [ISIS],” he added. “This will have consequences for Russia itself, which is rightly fearful of attacks. In coming days, the Russians will begin to suffer from casualties.”

Carter also said that Russian missiles had been fired without giving notice to other states in the region and came within a few miles of hitting a U.S. drone over Syrian airspace.

“We’ve seen increasingly unprofessional behavior from Russian forces. They violated Turkish airspace … They shot cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea without warning,” Carter said. He restated, however, the U.S. refusal to coordinate its own air campaign against ISIS with Russian forces because of Moscow’s emphasis on supporting the Syrian president. He said that aircraft bombing Islamist militants in Syria were re-routed at least once to avoid a close encounter with Russian planes on their way to bombing non-ISIS rebels.

Germany’s defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, said Russia must recognize that if it targeted opposition groups in Syria which are fighting ISIS, “Russia will strengthen Isis and this can be neither in the Russian interest, nor in our interest.”

The British defense secretary, Michael Fallon, said Russia’s intervention was making “a very serious situation in Syria much more dangerous.”

Military analysts say it is unclear whether the Assad regime will be able to conduct major ground operations against the rebels because the Syria army, after more than four years of fighting and without manpower reserve beyond the small Alawite community, no longer exists as an organized, cohesive force.

The army is now exclusively Alawite, as Sunni, Druze, Kurds, and Christian soldiers have deserted, and young non-Alawite Syrians no longer report to conscription centers.

Hezbollah has sent about 5,000 of its best soldiers to help Assad, but this is a tiny number relative to Assad’s needs. Iran is now increasing its own forces in Syria from the current 1,500 to about 3,000 – but these are not soldiers, but rather military advisers, intelligence officers, logistical specialists, and engineers. The Russian chief of staff said last week that if there were Russian “volunteers” who wanted to go to Syria to fight on behalf of the Assad government, there would be no way to stop them, but as is the case in eastern Ukraine, these “volunteers” are likely to number in the high hundreds or low thousands, not enough to make a difference on the ground.

“Russia is primarily targeting opposition fighters, and this could end any future peace process in Syria and strengthen the role of Islamic State and the extreme factions that do not want peace, whether they support or oppose the regime,” said the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights’ (SOHR) director, Rami Abdul Rahman.