The three key external national actors in the Syrian crisis tried to regain control of the rebellion on Saturday by calling for renewed direct dialogue between the country’s President Bashar al-Assad and opposition groups, adding that it would be “inadmissible” to use terrorists to gain control of the country.
Meeting on the margins of the Doha Forum, in Qatar, Turkey, Russia, and Iran urged the Syrian opposition to heed the call to end the fighting and to preserve Syria as an integrated and united country.
Amid reports that Russian diplomats are fleeing Damascus in the face of the lightning opposition advance, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Russia “was trying to do everything possible to prevent terrorists from prevailing even if they claim not to be terrorists”.
He also suggested fresh efforts would be made to persuade Assad to normalise relations with Turkey, including over Ankara’s demand that it can intervene to prevent Kurdish forces using northern Syria to mount attacks inside Turkey.
Earlier this year, Assad had refused to speak to Turkey so long as Turkish forces remained in Syria. This refusal led the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to give the implicit green light to militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) last month to mount its stunningly successful attacks on Aleppo, and more recently into the city of Homs.
With Assad’s 24-year grip on power faltering, the Syrian leader will have no option but to make concessions to Turkey on the Kurdish issue. Ankara is convinced that the Syrian YPG, fighting under the flag of the Syrian Defence Forces and backed by the US, is the same as the Turkish Kurdish group, the PKK.
But there is no guarantee that Turkey can control the Islamist HTS, or simply order the group to end an offensive that has proved far more effective than even the HTS expected.
Lavrov repeatedly pointed out that HTS is listed as a terrorist group by both the UN and the US. He questioned whether the group had moderated from its al-Qaida roots as its leadership claimed, saying “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”.
Without naming the US, he said the opposition groups were being used for geopolitical purposes, and that the offensive “was geared to undermine everything we have been doing”.
He added: “If the opposition is responsible and if they care about their country, they would not allow this altercation to continue.” If a political vacuum was created, he said he feared that Syrians might suffer a repeat of the chaos seen in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011.
Admitting that he could not forecast the outcome of the fighting, Lavrov said: “Russia helps with the Syrian army with its air force to counter the attacks of terrorists.”
Russia has one of its largest military bases outside the former Soviet Union in Hmeimim, and a prized naval port in Tartus, two assets it will be desperate to retain.
US administration officials, also wary of the speed with which Islamist groups were seizing land, had initially said they still expected Assad to remain part of the process.
However, the past fortnight has repeatedly shown military events on the ground have left diplomats confounded and struggling to keep abreast.
With opposition forces still making progress, and Assad trying to hold the line in the city of Homs, Syrian civil society present at the Doha Forum also demanded to be included in whatever form of transition foreign actors endorse. They argued that not just Assad, but his entire intelligence apparatus, must be dismantled and replaced with a transitional government representing all groups in Syria, leading to national elections, the demand that Assad has repeatedly blocked.
Turkey, Russia and Iran took hold of the Syrian peace talks in 2017 through the Astana Process, but the outcome of their 21 meetings has been a political deadlock and divided country in which different factions held sway in different areas, until two weeks ago.
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Expectations of the Doha tripartite meeting had been low partly because Turkey has made it clear it is happy to see the mix of rebel, Islamist and pro-Turkish groups march on to the Syrian capital, Damascus, while Iran and Russia regards the HTS as terrorists.
In a flurry of diplomatic meetings before the Doha summit, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, was unable to convince Turkey that it is helping to create a dangerous power vacuum that will be filled by terrorists.
Iran also sees the hand of Israel and the US in the HTS advance, claiming Israel is using the conflict to shut down Iran’s ammunition supply routes through Syria into Lebanon.
In talks on Friday, Araghchi also failed to convince Iraqi leaders to intervene militarily to save Assad, leaving Iran and Russia largely alone in deciding how much to invest in saving Assad.
Araghchi insisted: “There should be no distinction between terrorist groups. We do not have good terrorists or bad terrorists.”
It remains unclear whether Erdoğan has any real influence over the HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, and whether the recent HTS rebranding was genuine. Speaking in Doha, Charles Lister from the Middle East Institute said HTS rebranding away from international jihadism predates the current crisis by as much as eight years, but the organisation remained “politically dictatorial using arbitrary arrest of critics, torture and imprisonment.”
Lister said the writing was on the wall for Assad. “It’s a question of time and how that end comes.” He added: “if Homs were to fall, Damascus would be cut off from the coast where Assad’s Alawite heartland lies.”
Russia was trying to hold the line in Homs, but he said “neither Russia, Iran or Hezbollah have had a significant ground presence, and the Syrian military, a conscript army, has fragmented and corroded from the inside”. Amos Hochstein, the US envoy to Lebanon said it seemed as if the weakening of Hezbolllah, the Iranian-backed militia in Lebanon but also active in Syria, was critical to the defeats of Assad and Iran.
Turkey will ignore Iranian accusations of a betrayal, but is under pressure to explain its future vision for Syria, and whether it also regards HTS as a viable Syrian national leadership. Its proxy army, the Syrian Defence Forces, could not aspire to rule the whole of Syria. Ankara craves political stability inside Syria since the 3 million Syrian refugees in Turkey will not return to their former homes unless Assad is crushed. Erdoğan is facing domestic criticism for failing to secure the refugees’ return, and running a one man foreign policy.
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