Russias Rise in Mideast Creates Enemies
Victory comes at a cost.
Since entering the Syrian war last year, Russia successfully ended America’s status as the Middle East’s sole superpower, an achievement capped by the fall of Aleppo. That rise has turned Moscow into the region’s indispensable power broker. In Europe, too, the migrant wave unleashed by the Syrian war strengthened Moscow’s sway, fueling populist parties friendly to President Vladimir Putin.
The assassination of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey on Monday, however, highlighted the flip side of this dizzying rise. As America’s influence has shrunk, Russia has taken the place the U.S. long occupied in the minds of many people in the Middle East: an alien imperialist power seen as waging war on Muslims and Islam.
There haven’t been any recent anti-American protests in the region. But amid the agony of Aleppo, tens of thousands of protesters converged this month outside Russian missions from Istanbul to Beirut to Kuwait City—where the chanting, led by local lawmakers, was clear: “Russia is the enemy of Islam.” The Turkish policeman who gunned down Ambassador Andrey Karlov on Monday shouted that he was avenging the suffering of Aleppo, which had been subjected to a year of Russian bombing before the Syrian regime and its Shiite allies conquered the rebel-held parts of the city in recent weeks. The diplomat’s assassination, while condemned by governments, was greeted with open joy on Arabic social media, and in Palestinian refugee camps.
“Russia is certainly being perceived as the new bully in the neighborhood,” said Hassan Hassan, a fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington. “The way people react to its involvement in the decimation of one of the most revered Sunni cities in the Middle East, Aleppo, is reminiscent of how the U.S. was viewed after its occupation of Iraq. You only need to follow how the killer of the Russian ambassador was glorified throughout the region to get an idea of how Russia is despised by the populace today.”
Though Russia has become the immediate focus of this outrage, the fall of Aleppo is also intensifying support in the region for jihadist groups that plot terrorist attacks in the West such as Islamic State and al Qaeda.
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That, for one, poses a problem for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s drive to forge an understanding with Mr. Putin and Iran over the future of Syria. Ankara until recently was one of the most determined foes of the Assad regime but has softened this stance in exchange for Russia’s acquiescence to a Turkish military operation against Islamic State and Kurdish militias in northern Syria. Foreign ministers of the three nations discussed Syria at Tuesday’s talks in Moscow.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/russias-rise-in-mideast-stirs-up-enemies-1482279972
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