It is getting harder to make sense of Syria’s agony. In fact, unless a distressing photograph of a suffering child – most recently Omran Daqneesh in Aleppo – goes viral and reminds us all for a moment of the human cost, it is probably harder to get anyone to pay any attention at all. The situation is increasingly complicated, politically and morally. There is a shifting array of militias both supporting the regime and on the opposition sides, all with their own internal tensions. None of the external actors seems to be fighting with quite the same purpose as the others. No one is articulating a vision of what a post-conflict Syria should look like: perhaps because there isn’t one, except for the harsh, reductionist version offered by Islamists. The one thing that’s sure is that this conflict isn’t about the Sykes-Picot Agreement, whose hundredth anniversary fell in May, triggering a flood of sanctimonious commentary. The borders we see in the modern Middle East were the product not of a 1916 Anglo-French stitch-up, but of the Paris Peace Conference, the Treaties of Sèvres and Lausanne, the League of Nations mandates, subsequent interstate agreements in the 1920s and sometimes – as in the case of Saudi Arabia and much of the Persian Gulf, or Yemen – even later. Nor is it about Israel, whose own dilemmas seem ever less exceptional as we look at other communal conflicts across the region.
Russia in particular has made cynical opportunism into high policy. As a party to the conflict, it has managed in the past year to kill roughly 2,500 civilians, including over 200 children and 28 medical staff (more than Islamic State). But it is also apparently Washington’s preferred partner for peace. Russia has historically had predatory designs on Iran but the latter now lets it use one of its airbases, a dubiously constitutional act that Russia gleefully proclaims to the world, to the apparent disquiet of some in Iran. It is aligned with Bashar al-Assad but also with some Kurds. It co-ordinates tactically with Israel but fights alongside Hezbollah. Russia was previously hostile to Turkey, which opposes Assad but is now trying to halt the advance along the Syrian-Turkish border of the same Kurds whom his air force is bombing. Turkey is making eyes at Iran. And the Chinese have just offered extra training to Assad’s army.
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