Caught in a vise of imperialist rivalries

DAYS OF punishing air strikes by Russian military forces reached a new and destructive level in Syria, with the Moscow government announcing that it struck dozens of targets over the weekend.

Russian officials claim their bombs are paving the way for a political compromise and eventual stability in Syria. But they seek the "stability" of dictatorship and death, as the interests of U.S. and Russian imperialism play out in a new phase of a war that has already caused immense suffering.

"When a division of international terrorists stands near the capital," Russian President Vladimir Putin told Russian state television, "then there is probably little desire for the Syrian government to negotiate, most likely feeling itself under siege in its own capital."

Putin claims the Russian air war is targeting those terrorists--fighters for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which now controls large parts of Syria, along with territory conquered in Iraq. But according to reports from inside Syria, most of Russia's air strikes have not targeted ISIS at all, but rebel groups opposed to the Syrian government of dictator Bashar al-Assad.

THE RISE of ISIS is a direct consequence of the disastrous U.S. war and occupation in Iraq, and any Syrians in their way are paying a heavy price as the reactionary Islamists attempt to expand control over territory where they want to set up a new "caliphate."

But the Assad regime is responsible for far more death and destruction in its war against a popular uprising that began in 2011, inspired by other pro-democracy struggles of the Arab Spring. The U.S. government claimed to support the opposition to Assad, while encouraging, unsuccessfully, sections of the military to push the dictator aside, but keep the regime intact. As the government used utmost repression and violence to crush the opposition, the Syrian rebellion was transformed into a civil war.

Now, Russia is intervening with military force--and tilting the balance in favor of Assad. The air strikes have cleared the way for government forces to regain ground lost to rebel groups, including the northern village of Tak Sukayk in Hama province. This is one of several towns and cities that the Syrian Army has retaken since Russia's air campaign began on September 30.

Despite Putin's claims to the contrary, ISIS has benefited from the Russian bombardment. Last week, Russian cruise missiles, jets and helicopters hit rebel-held territory around the city of Aleppo, allowing ISIS fighters to take the area near the Syrian border with Turkey, which is the site of important routes for supplies and ISIS supporters to reach the territory controlled by the Islamists.

"While the Russians were busy attacking us, they left [ISIS] completely alone," Abu Saleh, the commander of one anti-ISIS Islamist group near the town of Hreitan, told the Guardian. "Do I really need to spell out what's behind all that?"

The rebels say that promised military aid from U.S. and European governments has never included the kind of heavy weapons, like anti-aircraft batteries, that would help them confront the Syrian military and now Russian warplanes.

As Russian air strikes batter the area, more and more civilians are fleeing, adding to the massive exodus of refugees. "The destruction is incredible, and all of them are civilian homes," said Adnan Kanjo, the head of the local council in Derrat al-Izza in western Aleppo, where Russia bombed last week. "This is the first time we see destruction at this scale. There is intense fear and terror--we can't even open our schools."

Speaking to the Guardian, Kanjo countered Russian claims that its planes are targeting ISIS, also called Daesh:

[W]e have not had Daesh here in over a year. Marea [which is under siege by ISIS] is 60 kilometers away. And al-Bab [which ISIS controls] is over 100 kilometers away. The bombing is targeting civilians. And where are the people going to go? I leave this question to be answered by the people who still have a conscience.

IN THE wake of Russia's stepped-up presence, the Obama administration announced it was changing its military strategy in Syria. On Friday, the White House acknowledged that its much-hyped $500 million campaign to train "moderate" rebel forces in Syria had failed to produce any significant results, and would be abandoned.

The goal was to train and support Syrian rebels who would agree to only use their arms to oppose ISIS, not Syrian Army forces--so that U.S. support for them wouldn't be viewed as an act of war against the Assad government. The Pentagon program was supposed to train some 15,000 in three years--so far, that number is just a handful. Now the Pentagon plans to skip the training and send small arms and ammunition to select rebel commanders, who the Pentagon says it will monitor carefully.

The U.S. also says it's retreating on its stated goal of removing Assad from power and will concentrate on a "managed" transition that might leave the dictator in place for some time. Plus, representatives of the U.S. and Russia met last weekend to discuss how to "de-conflict" airspace--after two U.S. aircraft had to be diverted last week to keep out of the way of a Russian fighter jet.

Representatives of the hawk faction of the U.S. foreign policy establishment expressed bitter frustration at what they see as too cautious of an approach to Syria. "The terms are being dictated by the Russians," Christopher Harmer, former deputy director of operations for the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, told the Christian Science Monitor. "They have 30 aircraft flying in Syria. We have far more than that. They should not be dictating to us, we should be dictating to them."

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer piled on with a commentary that said Obama was "living in a faculty-lounge fantasy world":

Why is Putin moving so quickly and so brazenly? Because he's got only 16 more months to push on the open door that is Obama. He knows he'll never again see an American president such as this--one who once told the General Assembly that "no one nation can or should try to dominate another nation" and told it again Monday of "believing in my core that we, the nations of the world, cannot return to the old ways of conflict and coercion."

In fact, Obama has rebranded U.S. imperialism--in response to the spectacular failure of the plan of neo-con hawks like Krauthammer that the American empire would dominate the world, and be celebrated for doing so. Obama's foreign policy backed away from the "regime change" agenda championed during George W. Bush's presidency after the "Bush doctrine" crumbled in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But to claim that the Obama administration has a problem with "dominating another nation" or using aggressive military force is laughable. After all, this was the president who came into office promising to end the war in Iraq, but to escalate the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan. Obama expanded the Afghan war into Pakistan with Predator drone strikes and supported regime change in Libya, carried out with a NATO-led air war.

THE OTHER factor involved in the U.S. policy toward Syria is the revolutions of the Arab Spring, which took down cherished American allies in Egypt and Tunisia.

When the wave of revolt reached Syria, Assad responded with savage violence against nonviolent demonstrations. In response, armed rebel groups formed to defend the opposition against the regime's terror, and Assad unleashed yet more violence.

The dictator also contributed to the dynamic of sectarian conflict unleashed in U.S.-occupied Iraq by portraying all regime opponents as Sunni radicals, bent on taking revenge against Shia and other religious minorities. Assad bolstered his scaremongering by releasing 1,000 Salafist prisoners from Syrian jails, knowing they would take part in the opposition on a sectarian basis.

Meanwhile, U.S. ally Saudi Arabia threw its support behind sectarian Sunni groups in Iraq and then Syria. Sections of the country's ruling elite provided financial backing for ISIS, knowing that the reactionaries would target secular Syrian revolutionaries as well as Shia and religious minorities.

For its part, the Obama administration supported the pro-democracy uprising in Syria in words--Assad was, after all, a chief ally of Iran, part of the "axis of evil" targeted in the "war on terror." But in practical terms, it hoped for sections of the regime to topple Assad, rather than the pro-democracy protesters or armed rebels that it could not control--and that might further upset the balance of terror in the Middle East, presided over by the U.S. and its favored ally, Israel.

In other words, it wasn't a lack of boldness, as Krauthammer and Co. claim, on the part of the Obama administration, but a calculation that it was better to try to maneuver a change at the top, rather than risk upending the entire regime that Assad presided over.

UNDER OBAMA, U.S. military interventions in the Middle East have been given the gloss of humanitarian aims and opposition to sectarian conflict--yet the U.S. is responsible for those stoking those very conflicts, and the American imperial agenda is anything but humanitarian.

After winning the White House on the strength of his promise to end the war in Iraq, Obama is now presiding over a new air war in the country, with ISIS as the targets. U.S. warplanes are raining bombs in defense of the Shia-dominated government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, backing up government forces fighting against ISIS on the ground. The U.S. air strikes are driving Sunni Muslims, who fear the violence and repression of the Shia-run central government, into the arms of ISIS, in spite of its reactionary politics and intolerance.

One year ago, the U.S. expanded its air war against ISIS to targets in Syria. While claiming to still seek Assad's ouster, the Obama administration has made it clear that its priority is confronting ISIS--though without ground troops it can rely on, the air war has been mostly ineffective.

Now, Russia, using the guise of the war against ISIS, has intervened to support the Assad dictatorship, and the U.S. has seemed powerless to respond. This only underscores the U.S. government's lack of commitment to its rhetoric about defending the rights and security of the Syrian people.

"Russians are here for their own interests, and there is a reason why they chose to expand their presence on [Syria's Mediterranean coast along the country's north] and focus on specific areas as part of the so-called 'war on terror,'" an Alawite officer loyal to the government told the Wall Street Journal. "I love my country and don't want to see it under a new occupation in the name of protecting us and our lands and sanctities."

But just because the U.S. appears to face a challenge with Russia's intervention on the side of the government, that doesn't mean what it has in store in Syria, if it can get its way, is any less deadly.

Meanwhile, the Syrian people--some 250,000 of them dead and more than 9 million fleeing for their lives over four-and-a-half years of war--are paying an unimaginable price.