Syria is Becoming a Black Hole of Cold War Entanglements

• Syria is Becoming a Black Hole of Cold War Entanglements
  by Alan Philps, https://www.thenational.ae/
  The chaos on the ground is providing opportunities for the Russians and Americans to come to blows, writes Alan Philps.
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  It was only two months ago that Vladimir Putin declared victory in Syria and announced – not for the first time – that he would start withdrawing Russian forces. It was understood that Mr Putin, facing an election campaign next month, was keen to move the Syrian war to a new stage, that of diplomacy where Russian diplomats and generals would oversee a difficult peace process.
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  The war has indeed reached a new stage – but it is one of escalating violence and grotesque chaos as the cast of outside powers and foreign mercenaries clash in a blood-soaked scramble for power and influence. How has this come about, and when might the longed-for endgame come to pass?
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  The salient feature is that Russia and the US are more deeply engaged in Syria than ever. Despite their premature claim of victory, the Russians are there to stay as the leading outside power. It had been thought that the Americans might withdraw from Syria now that the Salafi-jihadists of ISIL have been defeated there and in Iraq. But Washington has made clear that the 2,000 military personnel will remain for the foreseeable future to counter Iran.
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  Despite their enduring commitment, the two former superpowers are determined on one thing: not to get sucked into a full-scale war, such as was the case in Afghanistan with the Russians and Iraq for the Americans. For Mr Putin the stakes are clear: Russian history shows that losing a war topples regimes – the Tsars in the First World War and the Communists in Afghanistan.
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  The two big powers share another common issue: their allies are unruly, with disruptive goals inside Syria. Some of the loudest rhetoric heard in recent days is from the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – a treaty ally of the United States in Nato – who has sent troops into northern Syria and is threatening to crush the US-backed Kurdish militia on his southern border. For Turkey, the Kurdish proto-state to the south looks like an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, which has battled the Turkish state for decades.
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