Abdel Bari Atwan
Last weekend, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov received his Saudi counterpart, Adel al-Jubeir in Moscow for talks about the Syrian crisis. Al-Jubeir clarified the current Saudi stance which is that President Assad is part of the solution rather than the problem. The most vigorous debate within the international community these days is how to keep the Syrian state intact in order to combat Islamic State (IS). For Russia it means keeping Assad in place at least until the immediate danger is passed.
Al-Jubeir declared that Assad had enabled the rise of IS and said that a war against IS was already under way in Syria and Iraq and that the kingdom was part of it. He was referring to Saudi air strikes inside Syria.
Lavrov countered that the IS constitutes such a major threat to Syria, Saudi Arabia and other States in the region that Syria’s internal differences should be put aside in order to combat IS: ‘The process of settling accounts with each other, between the Syrians themselves, between the Iraqis themselves should be put aside for later, when the threat has diminished,’ he added. The emphasis on not involving foreign powers in the internal affairs of other countries was an implicit reprimand to the Saudi regime which is deeply engaged in a military intervention in Yemen.
The Saudi foreign minister displayed a rather imperious manner during the conference which seemed to rile Lavrov. He frowned and fiddled with his mobile phone, checking his messages and displaying obvious signs of boredom. At one point, not realizing his microphone was switched on, Lavrov was heard to mutter ‘f****** idiots’.
Al-Jubeir’s comments on Assad suggest that the Kingdom has switched back to its former position that he must go before a political solution to the crisis can be brokered but only days ago, Prince Salman seemed to be considering working with the Syrian regime in order to counter IS. Is there a secret Saudi plan to declare war on Syria within the framework of its current operations in Yemen? This seems unlikely since all parties, including the Saudis, realize that Syria is not Yemen and that Assad has managed to resist every effort to unseat him for five years and has been prepared to inflict devastating carnage (250,000 dead and counting) and wholesale destruction in order to stay in power.
The dispute over the fate of President Assad is not really between Saudi Arabia and Russia, but between the Western powers and Russia. Both parties now give priority to the eradication of the “Islamic State” as the greatest threat and are united in this at least.
Washington and Moscow have been working hard to persuade Saudi Arabia and Turkey to come on board with a revised approach which requires the Syrian system to remain intact, particularly its security and military institutions (the army), in order to prevent a recurrence of what happened in Libya and Iraq where, due to the security vacuum, the country sank into chaos and IS was able to take control. The question is whether or not the system can survive without its head – Assad – even if they all wanted to sever it which Moscow and Tehran do not.
We remember when President Assad was a friend and one of the Saudi’s strongest allies. The red carpets in Riyadh and Jeddah were regularly brushed to receive his feet and he was the only Arab leader who attended the opening of the King Abdullah University of science and technology six years ago, in the presence of the King.
Al-Jubeir’s second main point, that Assad enabled IS to thrive is out of kilter with history and reality on the ground. Everybody knows that the seed of IS was planted during the American occupation of Iraq, watered by Nouri al-Maliki’s government’s sectarianism against the Sunnis and enabled to spread rapidly into Syria and beyond by the Syrian revolution and post-revolutionary chaos in Libya.
The Saudi kingdom is founded on Wahhabism which has a great deal in common with the extremist ideology of Islamic State; as a result, Caliph Ibrahim’s group is popular with Saudi youths and much of its early financing came from Saudi sources both official and individual before Saudi authorities realised the existential threat IS offered to its own establishment.
How can Assad be responsible for the emergence of IS when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of its predecessor the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) never once set foot Syrian territory, and was the representative of al-Qa’ida in Iraq only.
It is clear that al-Jubeir, who heads Saudi diplomacy and is currently replacing the late Prince Saud Al-Faisal, does not have sufficient experience in this field, having been in post only three months. Perhaps he needs to chose his words more carefully and adapt his attitude when dealing with international heavyweights like Sergei Lavrov.
Last weekend, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov received his Saudi counterpart, Adel al-Jubeir in Moscow for talks about the Syrian crisis. Al-Jubeir clarified the current Saudi stance which is that President Assad is part of the solution rather than the problem. The most vigorous debate within the international community these days is how to keep the Syrian state intact in order to combat Islamic State (IS). For Russia it means keeping Assad in place at least until the immediate danger is passed.
Al-Jubeir declared that Assad had enabled the rise of IS and said that a war against IS was already under way in Syria and Iraq and that the kingdom was part of it. He was referring to Saudi air strikes inside Syria.
Lavrov countered that the IS constitutes such a major threat to Syria, Saudi Arabia and other States in the region that Syria’s internal differences should be put aside in order to combat IS: ‘The process of settling accounts with each other, between the Syrians themselves, between the Iraqis themselves should be put aside for later, when the threat has diminished,’ he added. The emphasis on not involving foreign powers in the internal affairs of other countries was an implicit reprimand to the Saudi regime which is deeply engaged in a military intervention in Yemen.
The Saudi foreign minister displayed a rather imperious manner during the conference which seemed to rile Lavrov. He frowned and fiddled with his mobile phone, checking his messages and displaying obvious signs of boredom. At one point, not realizing his microphone was switched on, Lavrov was heard to mutter ‘f****** idiots’.
Al-Jubeir’s comments on Assad suggest that the Kingdom has switched back to its former position that he must go before a political solution to the crisis can be brokered but only days ago, Prince Salman seemed to be considering working with the Syrian regime in order to counter IS. Is there a secret Saudi plan to declare war on Syria within the framework of its current operations in Yemen? This seems unlikely since all parties, including the Saudis, realize that Syria is not Yemen and that Assad has managed to resist every effort to unseat him for five years and has been prepared to inflict devastating carnage (250,000 dead and counting) and wholesale destruction in order to stay in power.
The dispute over the fate of President Assad is not really between Saudi Arabia and Russia, but between the Western powers and Russia. Both parties now give priority to the eradication of the “Islamic State” as the greatest threat and are united in this at least.
Washington and Moscow have been working hard to persuade Saudi Arabia and Turkey to come on board with a revised approach which requires the Syrian system to remain intact, particularly its security and military institutions (the army), in order to prevent a recurrence of what happened in Libya and Iraq where, due to the security vacuum, the country sank into chaos and IS was able to take control. The question is whether or not the system can survive without its head – Assad – even if they all wanted to sever it which Moscow and Tehran do not.
We remember when President Assad was a friend and one of the Saudi’s strongest allies. The red carpets in Riyadh and Jeddah were regularly brushed to receive his feet and he was the only Arab leader who attended the opening of the King Abdullah University of science and technology six years ago, in the presence of the King.
Al-Jubeir’s second main point, that Assad enabled IS to thrive is out of kilter with history and reality on the ground. Everybody knows that the seed of IS was planted during the American occupation of Iraq, watered by Nouri al-Maliki’s government’s sectarianism against the Sunnis and enabled to spread rapidly into Syria and beyond by the Syrian revolution and post-revolutionary chaos in Libya.
The Saudi kingdom is founded on Wahhabism which has a great deal in common with the extremist ideology of Islamic State; as a result, Caliph Ibrahim’s group is popular with Saudi youths and much of its early financing came from Saudi sources both official and individual before Saudi authorities realised the existential threat IS offered to its own establishment.
How can Assad be responsible for the emergence of IS when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of its predecessor the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) never once set foot Syrian territory, and was the representative of al-Qa’ida in Iraq only.
It is clear that al-Jubeir, who heads Saudi diplomacy and is currently replacing the late Prince Saud Al-Faisal, does not have sufficient experience in this field, having been in post only three months. Perhaps he needs to chose his words more carefully and adapt his attitude when dealing with international heavyweights like Sergei Lavrov.
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