Russian
military presence in Syria poses challenge to US-led intervention
Advisers
deployed with surface-to-air systems bolster President Assad's
defences and complicate outcome of any future strikes
23
December, 2012
Russian
military advisers are manning some of Syria's more sophisticated air
defences – something that would complicate any future US-led
intervention, the Guardian has learned.
The
advisers have been deployed with new surface-to-air systems and
upgrades of old systems, which Moscow has supplied to the Assad
regime since the Syrian revolution broke out 21 months ago.
The
depth and complexity of Syria's anti-aircraft defences mean that any
direct western campaign, in support of a no-fly zone or in the form
of punitive air strikes against the leadership, would be costly,
protracted and risky. The possibility of Russian military casualties
in such a campaign could have unpredictable geopolitical
consequences.
Meanwhile,
near-daily atrocities have kept western governments under pressure to
act. A Syrian government air strike on a town near the central city
of Hama on Sunday killed dozens of civilians queueing for bread,
according to human rights activists.
Amateur
footage from Halfaya showed mangled human remains strewn along a
street where people had been blown off scooters and out of cars. One
video showed a boy with his feet blown off. Piles of corpses could be
seen beneath rubble outside a two-storey building the cameraman
described as a bakery. It was unclear how many bodies were in the
smoking ruins.
Human
Rights Watch has previously accused the regime of targeting bakeries.
The group warned the Assad regime that such targeted bombing of
civilians represented war crimes. However, in the face of a Russian
veto at the UN security council, the international criminal court has
not had a mandate to investigate the atrocities committed by either
side. The UN has put the death toll at more than 40,000 as the war
continues to escalate.
Turkish
officials, who accurately predicted the Syrian regime would use Scud
missiles after several warplanes were shot down by rebels, also
believe President Bashar al-Assad has twice come close to using
chemical weapons including sarin, the nerve gas. First, after the
bombing of the regime's Damascus security headquarters in July, which
killed the president's brother in law, Assef Shawkat, and then last
month, after opposition forces made significant gains.
The
Turks and western officials say there are signs Assad sees chemical
weapons as another step in the escalation of force, rather than a
Rubicon-crossing gamble that could end his regime. The US, UK, France
and Turkey have warned Syria that its use of such weapons would
trigger military retribution. But any such a response would be
fraught with difficulties.
Air
strikes against chemical weapon depots would potentially disperse
lethal gases over a vast area, triggering a humanitarian disaster. US
and allied special forces have been trained to seize the air bases
where the warheads are kept, but it is unclear what the next step
would be. It would be physically impossible to fly the hundreds of
warheads out of the country, while it would take thousands of troops
to guard the arsenal for what could be many months. In the interim,
those western troops could easily become the target of Islamist
groups fighting the government in Damascus.
Any
air strikes against regime targets, in response to chemical weapon
use, or any attempt to create a no-fly zone to stop further bombing
of refugee camps, would require the suppression of Syria's formidable
defences. Those have been bolstered significantly since Israeli
strikes on an alleged nuclear reactor site at al-Kibar in 2007
exposed holes, and again since the outbreak of the Syrian uprising in
March 2011.
The
upgrades were supplied by Moscow, which sees them as a bulwark
against western-imposed regime change and protection of a
longstanding investment in Syria. The country includes Russia's
biggest electronic eavesdropping post outside its territory, in
Latakia, and its toehold on the Mediterranean, a small naval base at
Tartus.
Russian
security and defence officials, who are notoriously loth to publicly
comment on their operations abroad, have repeatedly denied providing
explicit support for the Assad regime.
Over
the weekend, the head of Russia's ground forces air defence, Major
General Alexander Leonov, told the Ekho Moskvy radio station:
"Syria's air-defence system is a no-nonsense force. As a result,
no one has ever used serious air combat power against it."
That
"no-nonsense" force, the air defence command, comprises two
divisions and an estimated 50,000 troops – twice the size of
Muammar Gaddafi's force – with thousands of anti-aircraft guns and
more than 130 anti-aircraft missile batteries.
According
to Jeremy Binnie, the editor of Jane's Terrorism and Security
Monitor, recent Russian deliveries include Buk-M2 and Pantsyr-S1
(known to Nato as SA-22) mobile missile launch and radar systems.
Reports of the shipment of the modern long-range S-300 have not been
confirmed, and the Syrian armed forces did not show off any S-300
missiles in a military display this year. It is possible they have
been delivered but are not yet operational.
Guy
Ben-Ari, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic
and International Studies, said: "They don't just sell the
equipment. They also help man the crews and train the crews.
Sometimes there is just no domestic capacity to run these systems,
and that is the case in Syria where Syrian crews are not capable of
using the equipment to its full capacity."
Sources
familiar with the Moscow-Damascus defence relationship confirmed the
presence of Russian air-defence crews inside Syria. Their deployment
would be a consideration when western contingency plans for Syria
were being considered, they said.
Such
a dense, layered and overlapping air-defence system would require a
huge air campaign, heavily reliant on thousands of precision-guided
missiles. The UK, France and other American allies in Europe used up
their stocks of such weapons in Libya and although details are
classified there have been reports that they have not yet returned to
pre-Libya levels.
"We
know they pretty much ran out of them at the end of Libya. Given the
budgetary constraints the Europeans are operating with, and in an era
where every euro spent on defence is very heavily scrutinised, it is
a hard sell to restock on this stuff," Ben-Ari said. "And
it would not be enough to be at Libya levels. You would need far more
for Syria."
A
Syrian air campaign would also require stealth aircraft and a great
amount of signals intelligence, satellite imagery and aerial
reconnaissance, all of which are US specialities. For all those
reasons, Washington would not be able to "lead from behind"
as it did in Libya.
The
Obama administration has so far been extremely wary of getting
enmeshed in another Middle East war, particularly with the knowledge
that the long-running Iranian nuclear crisis could trigger a conflict
in the Gulf at any time. With the resignation of CIA director David
Petraeus last month, the administration arguably lost its most
powerful advocate of Syrian intervention.
John
Kerry, the nominee for secretary of state, has advocated greater
support for the rebels, but stopped short of calling for direct US or
Nato involvement. With no new secretary of defence yet nominated, it
could take several months for the new team to recalibrate its
approach.
The
robust Syrian defences, combined with Damascus's hand-in-glove
relationship with Moscow, and the fragmented nature of the
opposition, help explain why a US-led intervention – predicted as
imminent for more than a year by advocates and opponents alike –
has so far failed to materialise, and why there is little appetite
for such a move in Washington and most other western capitals,
barring a major, verifiable use of chemical weapons by the Assad
regime.
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