Wild Turkey: Syria’s Blindside

Wild Turkey: Syria’s Blindside
Jim Kavanagh

The sudden jihadi offensive in Syria is a disaster. It is, first of all, a disaster for the Syrian people. It's also a disaster for the Palestinian people, Hezbollah, Iran, and the entire axis of anti-Zionist resistance. And it's a disaster for Russia (and China) and the project of replacing unipolar American hegemony with multipolarity based on a new BRICS-based global political economy.

It's a disaster that challenges all the parties involved to recognize that what they might have more comfortably treated as parallel but separate conflicts are elements of one big, unavoidable war that is going to require new strategies from each and from all of them together—strategies that reconcile the interests of each with the interests of all. If that is possible.

It does no good to downplay the disaster-in-progress in Syria. In short order—what can aptly be called a blitzkrieg—jihadi forces have taken control of Aleppo, a city of over 2 million people and one of the oldest continuously habited cities in the world, and Hama, a city of a million people, with—and this is the crucial point—no significant resistance from the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).

We can comfort ourselves by saying it’s a tactical retreat and the Russian, Iranian, Hezbollah, and the Iraqi PMU cavalries are on the way. These are potentially formidable forces, and we all saw how Russia and Hezbollah helped the SAA defeat what seemed an unstoppable jihadi offensive from 2011 to 2019.

But, a) “Helped” is the operative word.  The SAA fought like hell during that time, resisting every assault from a panoply of forces supported by the U.S., Israel, NATO, and Gulf monarchies, until Russia and Hezbollah came in and turned the tide. This time, the SAA melted away from two major Syrian cities in a week, despite knowing that the Idlib jihadis were arming up for an offensive. As I write, the jihadis are threatening Homs and have the momentum. There may not be enough time for Russian, and/or Iranian, and/or Iraqi forces to assemble and organize an effective defense, let alone counteroffensive, before Damascus is breached. Something has gone seriously wrong with the SAA, whether complacence, incompetence, and/or corruption (per Alexander Mercouris, who reports that the SAA Aleppo contingent simply defected), and foreign forces cannot replace what was a disciplined, dedicated SAA. If Assad needs an extended commitment of masses of foreign troops (which Russia never supplied) to stop the jihadis, Assad is toast. Russia and Iran can help Syria; turning it into a protectorate of Russia or Iran is another thing entirely.

And b) Russia, certainly, is kinda occupied elsewhere, in a way it wasn’t in 2015. It’s true that its military is larger, stronger, more experienced, and more capable that it was, but it is engaged in a tough, years-long fight in what it considers its homeland against a continuously armed US/NATO proxy force, and every diversion of military resources from that will cost. For Russia, Syria is important, but Ukraine is existentially important.  

For Iran and Hezbollah, Syria is an existentially important ally, but they, too, are engaged in fighting, and are taking hits on other “home” fronts they are loath to weaken further. Each of these allies have constituencies and commanders who will resist committing major resources that are needed closer to home, especially if Syria’s own armed forces are in disarray.

Perhaps, as Syrian Girl suggests, it’s been a tactical retreat, per Russia’s Ukraine tactics, to overstretch jihadi lines and prepare for an Israeli “buffer zone” invasion (which is quite likely). Or perhaps, as the NYT’s “prominent Iranian analyst” Mehdi Rahmati says: “Iran is starting to evacuate its forces and military personnel because we cannot fight as an advisory and support force if Syria’s army itself does not want to fight…Iran [and this would also apply to Russia] has realized that it cannot manage the situation in Syria right now with any military operation and this option is off the table.” We will all find out soon, the hard way.

I am not hopeful, and I find the prospect of a jihadi victory under Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) horrifying. It is a victory for the Zionist colonial project, as articulated forty years ago in the Yinon plan, “that sectarian-based states become Israel's satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation.” That plan was taken up by the U.S. as a constituent of its imperialist project, driving all the “ridiculous endless” wars whose purpose was, as revealed by Wesley Clark, to “take out seven countries… starting with Iraq and Syria and ending with Iran”—on behalf of Israel.

The first piece I published online twelve years ago was on Syria, in the context of U.S. threats to attack Syria because of chemical weapons. In it, I said:

The pretext is, or should be, obvious: If Israel or the US invades a rebellion-weakened Syria, it won’t be to destroy chemical weapons, but to destroy the Syrian army tout court, and eliminate the Syrian state’s ability to provide any significant resistance to future Israeli or American attacks, or any significant material support to other targets, like Iran, Hezbollah, or Palestinian resistance groups. 

Anyone who doubts how the US/NATO-Saudi project for Syria helps complete the Zionist dreamscape need only take a look at how the Israeli Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon gleefully assesses its effects.  He predicts, “Syria’s fragmentation into provinces, adding that Lebanon will suffer the same fate in the future.”  And he’s seconded by ”a high-ranking Israeli officer” who, assuring us that “there is evidence of this development,” “predict[s] the formation of an Alawite district in the coastal region, which would include the cities of Tartous and Latakia…[and that] a Sunni province would also be formed as would a Druze one in Jabal al-Druze.” And, not wanting to leave anyone out, he adds that, “there is a possibility of the formation of a Kurdish province in northern Syria.”  As Ayalon sees it, “the Arab world is passing through a phase that will restore it back to the way it was before World War I ….[ruling] out the possibility of the emergence of an Arab alliance that would stand in opposition to Israel in the next 10 to 15 years.”

While it is, at this point, unlikely that the Assad/Baathist state can survive in any recognizable form… It is also virtually certain that it will be weak, divided, utterly dependent on foreign patronage, laid bare to the predations of international capital, incapable of providing any support to Palestinian resistance, and defenseless against the at-will incursions of the Israeli army and air force.  It is possible, if the Israelis have their way, that it will devolve into a collection of confessional bantustans. 

That train was interrupted in Syria by Russia’s intervention in 2015, but not derailed, and, as Philip Giraldi said, when Trump acceded to his Zionist/Deep State masters and mistresses (as he always will) : “The real reasons for maintaining a U.S. military presence in Syria all have to do with Israel, which has long supported a fracturing of that country into its constituent parts …to weaken it as an adversary.”

It is, indeed, horrifying to me that this “frozen” Zombie war has been resurrected and may finally drain the life out of the last professed secular socialist state of the Axis of Anti-Zionist Resistance. There is no doubt that, whatever the HTS “rebels” or their supporters may profess, their victory will be one crafted by the U.S.-Israel axis for that purpose—destroying the Syrian state on behalf of Zionism.

It is particularly disgusting that the wild card that played itself into the horrific hand presently being dealt in the region (Gaza, Occupied Palestine, Lebanon) is Turkey, a powerful country of the region that was not and could not have been forced, but chose—against its own professions—to secure a major win for the US-Israel Zionist project.

We can, however, thank Erdogan for clarifying to everyone what game they are playing. Many were comfortable thinking there were two trains running on parallel but separate tracks, whose itineraries could be managed independently. There was the US/NATO-imperialism train, whose course was being decided in Ukraine, and there was the US-Israel Zionist train, whose course was being decided in Gaza, Lebanon, and occupied Palestine. Russia could fight US/NATO imperialism in Ukraine without being anti-Zionist. USrael could carry on a genocidal ethnic cleansing and colonialist state destruction in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria irrespective of how things were going in Ukraine and Eurasia. The epitome of this was Russia thinking it could protect its anti-imperialist interests (including the general interest of national independence) and Israel’s Zionist interest in Syria at the same time. OK, Bibi, you can attack the Syrian-Hezbollah alliance, just don’t attack our forces or the Syrian government directly. We won’t oppose the Zionist project or your attempts to protect it in Syria; you don’t threaten the Syrian government or our relation to it. I’m not Zionist and I’m not anti-Zionist. I’m anti-Western colonialist hegemony.

How’d that work out?

Erdogan himself played this ambivalence, renouncing Israeli aggression in Gaza while keeping the oil flowing to the Jewish state and manning, arming, and organizing the jihadi army in the Idlib redoubt. By releasing that army for the final offensive against Syria—and, to be sure, it could not have happened without his control and support (“Opposition forces are advancing towards Damascus. We hope that this advance will continue without any incidents.")—Erdogan has definitively merged his Turkish neo-Ottoman ambition with the longstanding marriage of American imperialism and Israeli Zionism. The longstanding partners may have some wariness about this obviously untrustworthy interloper, but in the moment it makes for a convenient and reciprocally satisfying arrangement, a real geopolitical power throuple.

The parties betrayed by Erdogan are, above all, the Palestinian people, and also of course Russia and Iran. But Turkey is not a player who can be easily spurned. It’s militarily well-endowed and economically potent, much more than casually hooked up with Iran and Russia. It has long been an important economic partner for Russia, and has been heavily wooed as a key member of the BRICS project. And it’s already a part of China’s Belt-and-Road initiative.

Nor can we forget that it controls the Dardanelles and has blocked US and NATO access to the Black Sea during the Ukraine conflict. Which is kind of important to Russia.

You can see how important Turkey is by how little it’s mentioned in Iran’s or Russia’s critical statements about the jihadi offensive. Iran calls it an “Israeli” action, ignoring the elephantine pasha who's been feeding arms and fighters into Idlib, while Russia, which has been frustrated by Assad’s refusal to talk with Erdogan, emphasizes in its statements that a resolution of the situation must take Turkey’s concerns into account.

All of which is to say that Turkey is a respected ancient civilization, firmly occupying a crucial geopolitical corner, that nobody wants a fight with.

But when does avoiding a fight become losing the fight? Erdogan has betrayed Russia on the Azov prisoners. Now, he has demonstrated that he was a Mid-East Poroshenko and Astana was his Minsk, an opportunity to rearm Syria’s/Russia’s (and the world’s) enemies (in conjunction with the U.S. and Israel) until there arrived a propitious moment for attack. That arrived with the Israeli-Lebanon “ceasefire” on the back of the Gaza holocaust and the weakening attacks on Hezbollah and Iran, combined with Russia’s full hands in Ukraine. An unexpected, because astounding, level of treachery. Is Russia’s response really going to be Astana 2?

If Syria is lost to the Erdogan-sponsored Jihadi forces, Russia, Iran, Lebanon, the Axis of Resistance, and the Palestinian people will have lost something very important, something that cannot be recovered without a fight, a more deadly fight than would have been required to prevent the loss.

One might say, Not so bad for faraway Russia. If one is terminally short-sighted. The U.S. hegemonic control of the world—of one of the world’s most important regions—will be significantly strengthened; the multipolar project will be weakened.

Sure, not terminally. Russia is defeating Ukraine and the U.S./NATO will have to accept that. (Or initiate a nuclear war, which I’m not betting against.)  All the powerful forces that are undermining U.S. hegemony and the Zionist project in the long run are still at work.  But I’m getting a little tired of evoking the ever-receding “long-run” for the millions of people who can’t wait.  One month in, we thought the slaughter in Gaza could not, could not be allowed to, continue; we’ve now been watching an intensifying holocaust in Gaza for over a year and, however brave they tell me Hamas is, nobody can tell me when that will stop. We are watching Lebanon be demolished by Israel at will, and however brave and potent they tell me Hezbollah and Iran are, nobody can tell me when that will stop. Six months from now, Syria will be broken into a collection of bantustans with an Israeli-occupied “buffer zone,” and the former Russian naval base at Tartus will welcome the Sixth Fleet. Six months from now, the only people living in northern Gaza will be Jewish settlers. A year after that, the whole of Gaza. And we’ll be proclaiming that Zionism is doomed. When, how long after the Palestinians and non-jihadi Syrians are expelled or exterminated, does the long-run arrive? By whose hands?

All this will happen unless there is a fight.

This is the end of any negotiations: The Turkish president said his proxies “will continue to #Damascus@.

Either Turkey (How said is supporting Gaza), the #US and Israel (hitting all supply roads) prevail or #Iran (paid heavy price with its allies for Gaza) and #Russia prevails.…

— Elijah J. Magnier 🇪🇺 (@ejmalrai) December 6, 2024

What Erdogan taught us and every nation involved and onlooking (yes, China), when he resolved his ambivalence about Zionism by merging his neo-Ottoman project into the US-Israeli Zionist project, is that you must decide. Because U.S./NATO imperialism has incorporated Zionism as an integral part of its project (even if it didn’t have to), you cannot be anti-imperialist without being anti-Zionist, you cannot defeat imperialism without defeating Zionism. They are twin enemies of humanity. Israeli Zionism and U.S. imperialism are boosting each other in the Middle East, with Turkey’s help, in ways that are repercussing around the world. The U.S. and Israel are the United States of Zionism. If you want to fight one, you have to fight the other. And you have to fight, or lose to both.

I can blame no nation for not wanting to get into a deadly fight with the United States of America and the United States of Zionism. They all have very good reasons. I can say to nations like Russia, Iran, and China what they already know: You’re already in it.

Paraphrasing the great strategic thinker: All of us who had a sure-fire, long-run, inevitable plan involving  Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Russia, China, and/or the Fourth Turning just got punched in the face. Sucker punched. By the United States of Zionism. With the hand of Turkey.

You didn’t see it coming.

I really hate to tell you, but nothing is inevitable.

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