Message in missile strikes

An analyst from the prominent US think tank, Brookings, termed the recent missile strikes on Syria “an attempt at therapy to salve our anguished conscience.” The context is the military action in Syria, carried out through cruise missiles and aircraft on April 14 by the US, UK and France in reaction to the reported chemical weapon (CW) attack by the Syrian government on the township of Douma, held by the rebel forces, which killed 43 civilians on April 7 and injured many more.

So far, Russia and Syria have denied that CWs were used and alleged that the strikes are a conspiracy to label Syria as ‘rogue.’ However, President Donald Trump ordered missile and aircraft strikes against three Syrian targets suspected to be facilities for research, development, and manufacture or storage of chemical weapons. The strikes, however, were a typical case of too little too late in a war that has raged for the better part of seven years and gets more complicated every few months.

Having said this, the strikes were not without strategic messaging, a rather expensive one in dollar terms. Nevertheless, it was potentially a message without which the Western allies assessing the emerging balance of power in the Levant would get upset and the ethical stand taken by the US and much of the world on the use of weapons of mass destruction (of which CWs form a part) would get diluted.

So what exactly is involved here? It is well-known that the Syrian Civil War, which commenced purely as an internal struggle for the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has been complicated by the entry of various terror groups, the menacing presence of ISIS (Daesh) and the direct entry of Iran and Russia on Assad’s side. The US assiduously kept away from direct military involvement after the disastrous experience in Afghanistan and Iraq but backed the Free Syrian Army which is the rebel element, essentially Sunni. The backing of Saudi Arabia and Israel to this segment has added weight to the Sunni element. On the other hand, there is the Alawite segment of Assad; Alawites are closely linked to the Shias although their beliefs are not completely in consonance with Shia belief.

For a long time, the manifestation of the sectarian war within Islam, between the Sunni and the Shia segments has played out in Syria through a system of proxies. Iran, which is 98 per cent Shia, backs the Alawites. In addition, there is a large segment of Shias in Iraq. So, the contestation for the Levant, the area from west Iran stretching to the Mediterranean through northern Iraq and Syria into Lebanon, is, in essence, a sectarian contest between the influence of Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.

The Levant has always been considered a strategically important territory as it connects Europe to the Middle East. With the Daesh vanquished physically (it exists strongly in virtual space) in north Iraq and Syria, Russia entering Syria in 2015 to back Assad its old ally, and the dominant presence of the Hezbollah (Shia) in Lebanon, it is Shia power all the way through the Levant. A potential final victory for Assad in the Syrian civil war means a victory for Russia and Iran. However, it is not as simple as that. There is the combined might of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the US, supported by France and UK, which backs the rebels, but they are on the losing side as the ground situation is hurtling towards an eventual victory of the Russia-Iran-Syria (Assad) combine.

Syria has been accused of having employed CWs once earlier but that was the early part of the civil war and nothing conclusive emerged from the inquiries by the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The latest chemical attack, allegedly carried out on the orders of the Syrian president, is different and raises questions. Was Assad in a tearing hurry to clear the last stronghold of the rebels? Wouldn’t Russian advisers have cautioned him against the hurry to achieve victory through the employment of CWs? It is most likely that Russia’s strategic assessment to Syria would not have advised the use of weapons from the family of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) as this would involve linking this with the Iran Nuclear Deal which President Trump is hell-bent on dismantling. So, it can always be argued that it happened outside the purview of Russian advice.

The question to be asked then is what were the West’s concerns and what was it trying to achieve through the missile strikes? Ethically, the Western allies, in this case, were messaging their abhorrence for CWs and possibly perceived that their lack of action would only lead to emboldening others who had the potential to use CWs even against their own population. That is the ethical argument. The strategic one is that with progressive deterioration in Russia’s relations with the West, from the Ukraine stand-off to the Salisbury nerve attack in the UK this year, there was bound to be some form of retaliation to highlight the western concern. Israel and Saudi Arabia, who are both ranged against the emergence of Iranian power in the Levant, would obviously give their backing. These interests converged and gave way to the missile and air strikes which were majorly neutralised by the presence of Russian protection systems. Thus, without too much blood and gore the West made its statement in the ongoing war.

The author commanded the 15 Corps in Jammu and Kashmir. Views are personal.