Nazmus Sakib :
While Mr. Putin’s vanguard military apparatus was taking over Crimea, Syria’s self styled hitherto President Bashar Assad was writing a letter of congratulation for Vladimir Putin’s “wise policy” and his efforts to restore “security and stability” in Kiev after an “attempted coup” by “terrorist extremists.” What is happening in Crimea today mirrors what has happened and unceasingly happening in Syria. Russia’s military involvement in Crimea shouldn’t come as a surprise to the US or the west at large. The European Union and the United States have wanted Ukraine to tilt into their geopolitical axis, but, alike with Syria, they wanted it at a discount rate and hence now it is too late.
President Obama has said Putin will pay a price. Kerry has articulated of a “huge price.” But, a Russian president who can poison the then president of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko, who cheerfully sends superior missiles to the regime like that of Bashar al Assad, is not a man who can easily be shaken by mere words.
Indecisiveness generally seduces Mr. Putin into a cynical aggression, for he worships power and detests weakness. Vladimir Putin’s obsession is the restoration of Russia’s pride through the restoration of its lost empire. He is an apparatchik who still thinks that the fall of the Soviet Union was the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of 20th century. Putin simply does not accept that Russia’s neighbors, least of all is probably Ukraine, are independent countries. To him, they are Russia’s “near abroad”.
Putin’s message from Crimea to President Obama is this: Not one inch ahead. After NATO’s expansion into the Baltic states, after the European Union’s embrace of the likes of Poland and Romania, freed, like the Baltic states, from the Soviet empire, after the humbling by NATO of Serbia -Russia’s Orthodox ally, after all this the Russian president, as he has already made clear in Syria, is saying: “Game over.” Crimea has exposed the distressing lack of realism of President Obama’s foreign policy. From a third party observer, Obama’s foreign policy at this point in time looks like based on hope, not strategy.
Bolstered by the panorama of Mr Putin’s unfettered support, both Russian allies -Yanukovich and Assad have seen protests against them as a zero-sum game which has no destiny. When protests were brewing up against Mr Yanukovich, he could have understood that Ukraine’s place can be both in Europe without making it mutually exclusive with Russia. Instead, he tried to crush the opposition. In case of Bashar Al Assad, had he responded to peaceful protests early in 2011 with democratic transition packages instead of an iron fist, ordinary Syrians – would not be facing the current bloodbath in their recent history after the Mongol invasion of middle ages.
Assad waged a war is waged for more than two years against Syrians which has claimed at least 140,000 lives according to conservative estimates. It has become evidential facts as clear as daylight that all kinds of sadistic abuse, rape and killing in most gruesome ways are in operation in Assad’s prison. Horrifying images of starvation, brutal beatings, strangulation, and other forms of torture were found through defectors. Perhaps worst of all, Bashar al-Assad crossed President Obama’s “red line” by using chemical weapons in Syria, a “red lines” that have been a foundation of the post-1945 world order and nothing happened to him.
Moreover, a mounting number of Western analysts now sardonically see Syria as, in Mr. Obama’s words “someone else’s civil war,” where Al Qaeda and other Sunni jihadi bad guys are killing other bad guys from Hezbollah and Alawities. This was all too predictable from Assad’s side. Assad jailed and killed peaceful civilian activists but released many Jihadis from prison soon after inception of the Syrian uprisings, with the goal of altering the nature and strategy of the opposition. Renewed intelligence cooperation is exactly how Mr. Assad hopes to entice back Western support. Assad has successfully played such mind games before. He deceived European and American officials after sending jihadi fighters to kill thousands of Iraqis and many Americans in Iraq. In essence Mr. Assad expects that the fear of future jihadi terrorism will make the world forget the gruesome and one of the most barbaric massacres he hurled on Syrian people. That if he succeeds after killing tens of thousands of his own people would be a damning indictment of US and Western policy.
(Nazmus Sakib is a contributur to The New Nation)
