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FROM 2012: What Russia Fears in Syrian Conflict

December 10, 2024

Three years before it intervened in Syria, Russia feared an Islamist takeover in Damascus would lead to widespread chaos in the region, like a new Afghanistan in the Levant, reported Joe Lauria in 2012.

This article was originally written for The Wall Street Journal, whose editors rejected it. In the spirit of why Consortium News was founded, I offered it to Editor Robert Parry. Bob published it on June 26, 2012. 

This was only one year into the Syria uprising, with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremists groups getting increasingly involved. Russia’s fears described here rose to the extent that President Vladimir Putin, in his last address to the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015, publicly called on the United States to join Russia in a military campaign against the common enemy of ISIS, al-Qaeda and other jihadists, the way the U.S. and the Soviet Union fought together against Nazism.

The Obama administration arrogantly rejected the proposal out of hand with some American commentators calling it “Russian imperialism.” Odd to invite your adversary to join your imperial adventure. 

In fact the United States was in alliance with al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups trying to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and did not want to fight them. This became clear to me by Feb. 16, 2012, four months before this article was written, when I had the temerity to say so on the PBS NewsHour.

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
June 26, 2012

Russia’s unyielding support for Damascus throughout the 16 months of Syria’s escalating crisis has earned Moscow strong condemnation from Washington and other Western governments, but the reasons for Russia’s implacable position have never been fully explained by Moscow or its critics.   

Washington’s latest tension with Russia over Syria came last week in a face-to-face meeting between President Barack Obama and President Vladimir Putin. The week before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Russia’s assertion that it sold only defensive weapons to Damascus “patently untrue.”

That was after Clinton had accused Russia of shipping attack helicopters to Syria to crush the rebellion, a charge denied by Moscow. The New York Times then reported that Russia was only returning repaired helicopters sold to Syria decades ago.

In February, Susan Rice, the top U.S. diplomat at the U.N., used undiplomatically strong language to say the U.S. was “disgusted” by Russia’s veto of a Security Council resolution that would have condemned the Syrian crackdown.

The tough talk appears designed to embarrass Russia, especially after the recent upsurge in fighting and a string of grisly massacres blamed on Moscow’s client.

But until now Russia’s motives for defending Damascus have remained largely a subject of speculation, with the U.S. media seemingly disinterested in exploring it.

Against Regime Change

Assad meeting Putin in Moscow, Nov. 20, 2017. (Kremlin photo/Wikimedia Commons)

Russian officials say their position is based on an adamant opposition to regime change, particularly if it is led by Western military intervention, as in Libya. Moscow’s support for the Syrian regime has not changed though it has recently inched away from President Bashar Al-Assad leading it.

Analysts routinely cite three additional reasons for Moscow’s Syria policy: Russia’s millions of dollars a year in legal arms sales to Syria, Russian naval access to a port at Tartus on Syria’s Mediterranean coast and a desire to maintain its last ally in the Middle East.

But a clearer image of Russia’s stance comes into focus when put in the context of Moscow’s 30-year struggle against encroachment into its sphere of influence by militant Islam. The support at times given
these groups by the U.S. and Gulf Arab nations has opened a three-decade rift with Russia that began in Afghanistan and has run across the Northern Caucasus to the Balkans and now into Syria.

Russia is opposed to regime change in Syria not only on principle, but because the likely new regime would be headed by an Islamist government inimical to Russian interests, analysts and diplomats say.

“You can talk about arms sales, and the port, but the real thing that Russia is worried about is an Islamic government coming to power in Syria,” said a senior Western diplomat, who would only speak on condition of anonymity because of the current tension in Western-Russian relations.

“Russia is obviously concerned about Islamic regimes and perhaps most important of all it is terrified of chaos,” said Mark Galeotti, who chairs the Centre for Global Affairs at New York University. He said chaos and anarchy in the Middle East fuels the rise of Islamic extremism.

“Russia feels that the West doesn’t know how to handle regime change and that the outcome is almost invariably the kind of the chaos from which Islamic extremist movements arise,”  Galeotti said.

The dominant member of Syria’s opposition is the Moslem Brotherhood, suppressed for 40 years by President al-Assad and his father Hafiz al-Assad before him. The discord in the Syrian opposition arises largely from differences between the Brotherhood and secular liberal groups, the Western diplomat said. 

The emergence of al-Qaeda affiliated groups, responsible for several bombings, has added a menacing dimension.

“There is a general sense in Moscow that if Syria fell to extremists’ hands the whole Middle East could explode, which is also a security concern for the Russians,” Galeotti said.

Afghanistan Roots

The Soviets launch their withdrawal from Afghanistan, May 15, 1988. (V. Kiselev /RIA Novosti archive/Wikimedia Commons)

Russia’s struggle against Islamism has its roots in the 1979 to 1989 Afghan conflict, in which the Soviet Union ultimately failed with helicopter gunships and ground troops to defeat militant mujahedeen, armed with weapons, cash and intelligence from Washington, Riyadh and Islamabad. Shoulder-fired American Stinger rockets came to symbolize the conflict as they blasted Soviet helicopters out of the sky.

Russian troops withdrew in defeat in February 1989. The Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991 with analysts pointing to the Afghan debacle as a primary cause. Out of the war emerged Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, which later came to wreak havoc on its former sponsors.

Washington policymakers typically employ a short-term foreign policy that later comes back to haunt them, analysts said. From the Islamists’ point of view it is hard to turn down American arms and financing when policies are aligned, and then implement its agenda once it is helped to seize power.

“Afghanistan [under the pro-Moscow regime] was a secular government, women were not forced to cover, they were given suffrage, yes it was a dictatorship, but the U.S. helped overthrow [it] and replaced it with a religious, dogmatic theocracy that destroyed Afghanistan,” said Ali al-Ahmed, director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington.

“They are doing the same thing in Syria,” he said, predicting a failed state with uncontrolled, armed groups threatening the region. “You will see Afghanistan emerging in Syria next door to Israel and it will
be a huge, huge problem for the United States,” with Lebanon devolving into the equivalent of Pakistan, he said.

The unfortunate choice in Syria is between a Russian-backed secular dictatorship, which allows freedom of religion and protects Christians, Alawis and Sunni businessmen, or a U.S.- and Gulf-supported religious dictatorship with even fewer freedoms, al-Ahmed said. “They are repeating their history and Russia was both times on the other side,” al-Ahmed said.

The collapse of the Soviet Union after the Afghanistan defeat opened former Soviet republics in the Caucuses to an Islamic insurgency helped by the U.S. and the Gulf that still troubles Moscow.

“Chechnya is a classic example of what goes wrong when things go out of hand,” said  Galeotti. “The West thought they would be politically supporting nationalists, reasonable figures and they wind up creating a situation in which Islamic fundamentalists, terrorists and suicide bombers found a haven.”

A Chechen fighter stands outside the Government Palace during a brief lull in hostilities in Grozny, Chechnya, Jan. 1995. (Mikhail Evstafiev/Wikimedia Commons)

In the Balkans, Russia defended its traditional Slavic and Orthodox Christian Serb allies, against separatist Croatians and Bosnian Muslims, whom the International Criminal Court accused of hosting an
al-Qaeda unit known as the “El Mujahedeen.”

Dmitri Simes, a former adviser to President Richard Nixon who heads the Center for the National Interest in Washington, says he still hears “a lot of anger” from Russian officials over what “the Clinton administration did in the Balkans.”

He see a parallel in Syria where Russian officials are especially concerned about the fate of Christians if Islamists take over.

“They are concerned that Muslim fundamentalists, not just the Moslem Brotherhood, but people more extreme might come to power and it would be destabilizing for the region,” Simes said in a phone interview. “But as Syria is not a Russian neighbor a possible massacre of Christians would be seen as a greater problem.”

Russia might be willing to do a deal to try to ease out  al-Assad, which it sees as a liability, if the U.S. would offer something in return, such as an agreement on missile defense, he said. “If that was made clear to Russian officials perhaps Putin would be prepared to deal,” Simes said. “But he is simply told that his position is morally inferior.”

In the absence of a deal Moscow strongly fears Western military intervention to overthrow yet another Russian ally, Simes said, leading to chaos.

Moscow is willing to deal because it had “no great sympathy for Assad even before he was in full massacre mode” and is backing away, realizing that “a regime like Assad’s is not in the long run
sustainable,” said Galeotti.

“If it were clear that regime change were not on the cards, I think Russia would be a lot more willing as allies and interlocutors,” he said. “They are digging their heels in because they feel that the only
policy the West is willing to push is regime change.”

Moscow would ideally prefer “a controlled, steady reformist who could in some ways manage the process and not allow Islamic fundamentalists to dominate the narrative,” Galeotti said.

Russia thinks Washington’s motive to remove al-Assad is to weaken Iran at almost any cost,  Simes said.

The U.S. does not publicly discuss what it believes Russia’s motives are for backing Syria, leaving the impression that moral deficiency makes it complicit with Damascus.

The closest the U.S. has come to acknowledging Russia’s fear of an Islamist regime in Syria and America’s own apparent tolerance for it came from a cryptic remark by Clinton in the U.N. Security Council chamber last March with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sitting across from her.

“I know there are those who question whether Islamist politics can really be compatible with democratic and universal principles and rights,” Clinton said. “Our policy is to focus less on what parties call themselves than on what they choose to do.”

Lavrov did not respond.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.

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When I took my son to the Democratic Convention in Chicago Robert Reich Aug 20 Friends, I thought the most powerful speaker last night was Shawn Fein, president of the United Autoworkers, who electrified the crowd by calling Trump a “scab.” Hillary Clinton’s speech was more moving than rousing, as she reminded everyone of her fight to smash the glass ceiling and envisioned Kamala on the other side of it. But the most emotional point of the evening for me was Joe Biden’s intense summation of what he has accomplished and what the nation is up against. It was a fitting and sad goodbye. It all reminded me of the last time I was in Chicago’s United Center, for the Democratic national convention of 1996. I had brought along my elder son, Adam, then 15 years old. Adam followed me around as I addressed state caucuses over breakfast (Adam: “How many breakfasts are we supposed to eat, Dad?” Me: “None. We don’t have the time.”). He trailed me as I spoke to the Black and Hispanic and women’s caucuses over lunch (Adam: “Can we eat now?” Me: “No time. We’ll eat back at the hotel.”). And when I spoke to delegates during late-afternoon receptions (Adam: “What are these weird little things?” Me: “They’re called hors d’oeuvres.”). In the evenings, he traipsed after me on the crowded convention floor. (Adam: Why are these people here if they already know the ticket is Clinton-Gore?” Me: “To have a big party.” Adam: “So that’s what they mean by a political party?” Me: “Exactly.”) He even learned how to elbow his way to news reporters and their cameras (Adam asked them: “Would you like an interview with the Secretary of Labor? He’s right here. They often responded: “No thanks.”) Adam wanted to know about the inner-workings of the convention. I explained that there were really three conventions happening simultaneously. It’s much the same, today. The first was the Democratic convention, which he and I attended. It occurred in the caucuses and delegate meetings in the mornings and early afternoons and on the convention floor for four hours or so each night — involving a boisterous crowd of delegates along with several thousand activists: teachers, trade unionists, and local Democratic pols from around the country. They all loved politics and most cared about America. The second was the financial convention, of which Adam and I would get only a glimpse. It met in the skyboxes — amid sober groups of corporate executives, partners in major law firms, Hollywood celebrities, and Wall Street investment bankers. They loved influence and cared mostly about their bottom lines. They allowed a cabinet member and his teenage son in for a few moments but they really wanted face time with Bill, Al, and Hillary. And then there was the prime-time convention, which Adam and I could have watched on television from our hotel room — or from home. It usually occurred between 9 and 10 pm and featured a few celebrities and political big-wigs speaking from the stage of the convention center, reading from teleprompters, who were beamed into millions of homes across America. I told him that the three conventions had almost nothing to do with each another. They occurred simultaneously but they occupied different slices of American politics. When the stars of the prime-time convention spoke their lines, thousands of delegates and attendees at the Democratic convention would listen to the biggest names (as they did last night) but spent most of the time greeting each other and trading gossip. Meanwhile, at the financial convention in the skyboxes, the big donors feasted on shrimp, lobster tails, and caviar. The Democratic convention was the least important of the three. After all, Bill and Al were already the nominees. The purpose of the prime-time convention was to give Bill and Al free airtime to advertise their campaign, and the financial convention was meant to ensure they’d have ample paid airtime between then and Election Day. After a day of listening to my afternoon speeches to various caucuses, Adam knew my lines by heart. He stood unobtrusively in the back of the rooms where I spoke, lip-synching my words. My most important role at the convention was doing what those people who wear Mickey Mouse and Goofy costumes do at Disneyland — pose for snapshots with my arm around attendees. “Mr. Secretary, would you mind if I took a quick shot of you and Edith?” I was a character in the costume of a Clinton cabinet member. Adam took it all in with patience and good humor. I was grateful to him. It was a heavy load for a fifteen-year-old; he lightened the load for me. I loved showing him that bit of how American politics worked. He hasn’t forgotten. Adam is now the father of a fifteen-year-old — my granddaughter — a feisty young woman with strong political convictions of her own, who’s all in for Kamala.

Kamala Harris, For the People: Images from the Convention Joyce Vance Aug 20 Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance. Speaker after speaker saluted Joe Biden. And Hilary Clinton spoke like the true leader that she is. And in a quick, quiet moment, Harris’ best friend growing up was accompanied to the podium by her own Mom, who told Harris, “your Mom would be proud of you.” UAW President Shawn Fain told the convention, “Kamala Harris is one of us.” The camera panned out to catch union workers in the audience, carrying union signs and wearing union hats, some, gruff-looking men who nodded vigorously in agreement. AOC gave a rousing speech, one that reminded me of how very good she is at this, telling younger voters, especially voters concerned about Gaza, why they should support Harris. Why they had to. It was a fairytale first night for the Democrats. Hillary Clinton finishing up to “Fight Song” was chef’s kiss. I’m lucky enough to have a friend at the Convention, the talented Tim Durkan, who shared a few of his pictures from today with me. They are such amazing little slices of the action that those of us who are watching at home on TV wouldn’t be able to see otherwise that I want to share them with you. Tim was quick to agree. You can find more of his work here. These photos are from the Black Caucus this afternoon. Maxine Waters, who has served California's 43rd district in Congress since 1991. Fire! Governor Walz joined and spoke to a standing room only crowd. You can see the former football coach in this one! If there was a dry eye when women shared their stories about what the absence of choice about their own medical care meant for their health, it wasn’t in my house. There was tape of Harris saying, “We trust women to make decisions about their own bodies.” We trust her to make sure we will be able to again. President Biden closed out the night and brought down the house. Joe Biden: “Are you ready to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz?” Absolutely! “I’ve got five months left in my presidency. I’ve got a lot to do. I intend to get it done.” The crowd: “We love Joe. We love Joe.” Biden called selecting Kamala Harris the best decision he’d made in his whole career. Red signs across the room read, “Thank you Joe.” I think a lot about voting, possibly too much. I try to encourage others to vote every chance I get. Today, it was a friend’s kid who was visiting over morning coffee and women voters in Maine who gathered on Zoom before the start of the convention tonight. Use vote.gov to encourage people around you to register. A new law in Georgia permits counties to eliminate Sunday voting. Sunday voting, known as “souls to the polls” in the deep South, makes it possible for Black voters who work on Tuesdays to march straight from church to vote on their day of worship. Their votes are prayers. We should all demand, including in states like mine that don’t have early voting and no-excuse absentee voting, the right to go souls to the polls, in whatever for that takes for us. Go from your church, your temple, your mosque. Have a voting brunch or a neighborhood walk to the polls. Do whatever it takes. Voting should be easy. It should be encouraged. But far too often, it isn’t. Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock told the audience: "A vote is a kind of prayer for the kind of world we desire for ourselves and for our children, and we are stronger when we pray together." “I need American children on both sides of the track to be okay.” After tonight, I can’t wait to vote for the world I want for my children. We’re in this together, Joyce