By Zaki Shaikh
LONDON
Syria has become dependent on the supply of arms from Russia, experts have said.
"Without the Russian arm supplies, President Bashar Assad would have been toppled long ago or would have been the target of an airstrike. It is only the availability of heavy weaponry and artillery from Russia that has allowed Syria to put up its fight against the opposition," Yevgeny Satanovsky, the president of Moscow’s Middle East Institute, told the Russian National News service last Wednesday.
"The recent successes achieved by the Syrian army were, to an extent, due to Russian support," Givorg Mirzayan wrote in Ekspert online on Thursday.
"Russia maintains a military naval base at the port of Tartus, and it is apparent that Russia is forming an alternative alliance to confront the Islamic State to prevent it from posing any considerable threat to Central Asia which Russia considers its own backyard," Mirzayan said, using an alternate name for the militant group Daesh.
"We should not forget that Syria is also held by Iran, the Shia brigades of Hezbollah from Lebanon, the Mehdi Army from Iraq and the Hazara fighters from Afghanistan who initially came as irregular fighters but were then formalised and trained under regular military formations," Satanovsky said.
"In the foreseeable future, none of the conflicting sides can obtain a decisive edge over the other as both are dependent on external assistance. As a result, the fighters opposing the Assad regime will not be able to topple it," " Satanovsky pointed.
But Russia denies any illicit role in the conflict. "Russia has been supplying arms to Syria in accordance with contracts agreed under international law, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday.
"We never made a secret of our defense and arms cooperation with Syria," Zakharova told the press. "We have been supplying arms and weapons to that country for a long time."
A Russian defense specialist is currently in Syria teaching the assembling and proper use of the new arms supplied, Zakharova said.
Russia is supplying small arms, grenade launchers, BTR-82A armored personnel carriers and Ural military trucks, according to details published Wednesday in the Russian daily Kommersant. An unnamed official from Russia’s Arms Export Organization told the newspaper that the arms orders have almost all been delivered. The official added that "some of the supplies were funded by the $400 million which Syria paid in advance to purchase Russia’s S-300 PMU Air-Defense system, as Moscow cancelled delivery of this system following consultations with Israeli authorities."
Reuters on Thursday cited a U.S. Army official claiming that Moscow has sent two landing ships and additional vessels with heavy equipment to Syria to build an air strip near the port city of Latakia, which is controlled by government forces. Russia insists that it is sending planes with "humanitarian aid" to Syria -- Moscow secured permission to fly this aircraft over Iran after Bulgaria denied the use of its airspace for such flights, reported Kommersant on Wednesday, citing Maxim Suslov, the Russian press attache in Iran.
Israeli journalist Amos Harel noted in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Sept. 8 that, in the past few months, the Israeli air force has targeted supplies of arms sent to Lebanon via Syria. If Russia deploys its fighter planes in Syria and also builds a military base there, that will considerably restrain the liberty enjoyed so far by the Israeli air force, especially if the deployment of aircraft is also followed by the supply of long-range air-defense missiles, Harel wrote.
Russia has a long history of supplying arms to Syria.
As early as 1957, the Soviet Union offered assistance worth $57 million for supply of weapons and military hardware to Syria. In October 1980, the Soviet Union agreed to extend military support to Syria if it were attacked. Between 1973 and 1983, the USSR deployed a contingent of its regular army to boost Syrian defenses (under Hafiz al-Assad, Syria's president from1970 to 2000).
"During the 1970’s when Soviet military advisers were in Egypt and Syria, the Israeli military intelligence established a special unit to follow their activities. With the current expansion of Russia’s presence in Syria, there is a need to keep a close watch again," Harel pointed out in Haaretz.
