Syrian regime reveals its impotence with Afrin own-goal

The Syrian conflict became even more complicated last week, when Turkey and the Assad regime made good on threats against each other regarding Ankara’s military operation in Afrin. 
As promised, pro-regime fighters entered the northern Syrian region to help Kurdish forces against Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels. In turn, Ankara carried out its threat to confront any such intervention, shelling a pro-regime convoy (there are conflicting claims about whether this forced it to turn back).
One could be forgiven for being confused about developments in Afrin. Turkey is fighting Kurdish forces allied to the US, a fellow NATO member. It is doing so with the blessing of Russia, which backs the Assad regime and was, until the start of Ankara’s campaign, also allied to the Kurds, who have accused Moscow of betraying them. 
Having described US-allied Kurdish forces as “traitors” in December, the regime is now apparently coming to their rescue, calling the Moscow-sanctioned Turkish operation “an aggression… against the sovereignty of Syria.”

The size and makeup of Assad’s intervention suggests that, despite opposition to Operation Olive Branch, there is no appetite in Damascus for direct conflict with Turkey’s powerful military.

Sharif Nashashibi 

 

Why would the regime want to help erstwhile “traitors” who, in control of a quarter of Syria, are now the biggest obstacle to President Bashar Assad’s repeated vow to retake the whole country? The fact that it took weeks to heed the Kurds’ pleas for help suggests he may have initially been content to sit back and watch them fight it out with his enemies, Turkey and the Free Syrian Army (FSA), while he focuses his forces and firepower elsewhere in the country. 
But perhaps the Turkish operation’s progress — including the impending siege of Afrin city — and the possibility of Ankara leaving the FSA in charge of captured (and as of this week contiguous) territories convinced Assad that he needed to get off the fence in favor of what he considers the lesser of two evils. 
After all, the Kurds have largely avoided or colluded with his forces when expedient, and so would likely be easier to strike a long-term deal with, particularly under Russian pressure, than Ankara or the FSA. Assad may view helping the Kurds as potential leverage to blunt their plans to cement their self-declared autonomy. However, the most important players in determining the Syrian Kurds’ future status is not the regime but Turkey, Russia and the US.
Or perhaps, having warned Turkey against launching Operation Olive Branch, the regime did not want to be seen, by its supporters and enemies alike, as an impotent bystander as Ankara ignored its warnings, encroached further into Afrin, and threatened to expand the campaign as far east as the border with Iraq.
But the size and makeup of the regime intervention do not suggest that it was meant to represent a real threat. There were reportedly only one or two military convoys, one of which was said to have turned back. And the fighters were not from the Syrian Army, Hezbollah or Iran, they were from the National Defence Forces, a domestic militia. 
This suggests that, despite their opposition to Operation Olive Branch, there is no appetite in Damascus, Tehran or Hezbollah for direct conflict with Turkey’s powerful military, despite much speculation about such an escalation. This would threaten the Astana diplomatic process, of which Turkey and Iran are co-sponsors, along with Russia.
As such, the size and composition of the pro-regime intervention in Afrin suggest that the aim may have been to test whether Ankara would respond and, if so, how forcefully. Turkey’s response was swift and unequivocal, and since no more pro-regime convoys have headed to Afrin, the message seems to have been received.
But Ankara made it clear long before its current operation that it considered Kurdish territorial gains and ambitions in Syria a red line. Indeed, since its rapprochement with Moscow in the summer of 2016, its priority has been to confront Syrian-Kurdish forces, supporting and utilizing Syrian rebels to that end, and not against the regime, which has been spared the kind of Turkish vitriol that was common pre-rapprochement.
The pro-Damascus intervention may have also meant to serve as a symbolic gesture of opposition to Operation Olive Branch, to burnish the regime’s self-styled image as a defender of Syrian sovereignty. And, in this regard, the regime will likely spin the Turkish shelling of the Afrin convoy as more evidence that it is a victim of foreign aggression. 
But the intervention has actually highlighted the regime’s impotence against Ankara’s campaign, and the reluctance of Assad’s primary allies to confront it. This may further embolden Turkey. 
So far, Damascus has gained nothing from its threats and actions regarding Afrin. Given that it could not have realistically hoped to do so, and that Operation Olive Branch poses no direct threat to the regime, this episode seems to have been a needless own-goal.

Sharif Nashashibi is an award-winning journalist and commentator on Arab affairs. Twitter: @sharifnash