Pacifying the northern Sunni tribes: Contrasting Russian and US approaches

[unhappycamper]

http://atimes.com/2015/10/pacifying-the-northern-sunni-tribes-contrasting-russian-and-us-approaches/

Pacifying the northern Sunni tribes: Contrasting Russian and US approaches
By Angelo Codevilla on October 20, 2015

Vladimir Putin’s Russia is engaged in a military-political fight against the Sunni tribes that live West of the Fertile Crescent in the Arabian Peninsula’s northern tip. This population is fighting Russia (as it fought America) only incidentally as part of a larger war it is waging against its neighbors who belong to other Islamic sects. Putin, for his part, is also fighting Sunnis only incidentally in the context of Russia’s larger objectives. Putin’s objective regarding the Sunni, is to pacify them. That was also the Bush and Obama administrations’ objective. But Putin’s Russia is approaching it with methods poles apart from those of the US government.

The contrasts between America’s and Russia’s approaches are enlightening.

First: While the US government quickly confused America’s interests with those of the Sunni, Putin remains focused on Russia’s. Saddam Hussein’s regime had been a thorn in America’s side. By May 2003, the straightforward military campaign that overthrew him had taken care of America’s business in Iraq. By occupying the country as part of a “nation build” scheme, however, the US made the conflicts between Iraq’s different peoples its own. The Shia majority was grateful, (at first). The largest of the minorities, the Kurds, focused on building Kurdistan. But the Sunni, judging that the Americans had wrecked their way of life, made war on the Americans as well as on the Shia. The US, after fighting mostly against them for more than three years, tried to convince the Sunni to “buy into” the American order. The US did this by reconciling itself to the effective sovereignty of the Sunni in their regions; indeed by arming them, paying them and protecting them against the Shia. In short, by serving their interests.

To maintain and cushion Russia’s naval base on Syria’s Mediterranean shore, Vladimir Putin’s expeditionary force aims to establish a substantial enclave of Alawis (a subset of Shia) around it. The military mission is straightforward and seems destined to succeed. But that enclave can be secured for the long run only if these very same Sunni tribes, which are now at war with Russia’s Shia clients and hence with Russia, do not chew away at its edges in the future — tying up Putin and his clients’ forces. Russia’s intervention will not have succeeded until it reconciles them to the new order it’s creating. Russia’s strategy for the Sunni seems to involve the opposite of serving their interests. It aims instead to weaken them while brandishing Moscow’s capacity to enhance or to limit neighboring Shias’ capacity to hurt them.