IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/swpcom/162016.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Syria after the Russian intervention: Moscow tips the military balance in favor of the regime, pursues parallel diplomacy

Author

Listed:
  • Oweis, Khaled Yacoub

Abstract

Russian airstrikes turned the tide of the conflict in favor of the regime of Bashar al Assad. Moscow announced a reduction in its military presence in Syria in March 2016 but has maintained its infrastructure in the country while continuing to build up Assad's forces. The cessation of hostilities achieved through a deal between the United States and Russia has lessened the number of attacks against civilians and curbed fighting, but rebel areas remain under siege. At the same time, Russia has been keen to display its interest in an international, cooperative solution. Regard-less of whether Moscow's intentions are sincere or mere lip service, the peace talks underway in Geneva, could provide Germany and the European Union with means to bolster the ceasefire. They should push for a solution that curbs the security sector and other tools of repression, which are dominated by Assad's Alawite minority, rather than for a mere change of personnel at the leadership level. Without such substantial change, the dynamics prompting the influx of refugees is unlikely to change substantially. (SWP Comments)

Suggested Citation

  • Oweis, Khaled Yacoub, 2016. "Syria after the Russian intervention: Moscow tips the military balance in favor of the regime, pursues parallel diplomacy," SWP Comments 16/2016, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:swpcom:162016
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/256391/1/2016C16.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:swpcom:162016. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.swp-berlin.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.