According to reports from Arab newspapers (Al Arabiya since Thursday 27 October), the spokesman of the Saudi Arabian Coalition in Yemen, General Assiri, has officially expressed the availability of Riad to participate in the offensive on Raqqa, the Syrian stronghold of the Islamic State. The senior official said that the contribution could take the form of airstrikes conducted directly from Saudi soil or alternatively with the fighter-bombers located at the beginning of 2016 in the Turkish Incirlik base.
Assiri himself, known to the press for reports on the military intervention in Yemen, stresses that the possible participation should be agreed with the allies of the anti-ISIS Coalition (basically with Washington).
The statement comes to terms with the perplexities and embarrassments of the international community regarding the serious side effects that the Saudi intervention is having on the Yemeni civilian population.
It is the second time since the beginning of the year that Riyad declares itself ready for an intervention in Syria. Compared to February, when the Saudis expressly referred to a land intervention by raising chain reactions not only in the Middle East, there are some important differences:
- this time the availability would be limited to the use of the air force;
- the picture of the war in Syria has profoundly changed.
In particular on this last point there is to reflect on the different position taken by some of the main subjects involved. First of all Turkey, openly deployed against Damascus until last summer, to whose possible encroachment in Syrian territory it had strongly opposed Russia first of all. The rapprochement of Ankara in Moscow has indirectly allowed the effective entry of Turkish soldiers into Syria with the operation Shield of the Euphrates, making any joint operations with Riad at the same time empty of content.
The same position of Saudi Arabia has become complicated over the months, both with regard to the disastrous operation underway in Yemen, and with regard to the murky relations that the Kingdom continues to entertain with some of the Islamist factions active in Syria. Of all the countries in the Middle East, today Arabia is probably the one that enjoys less credibility in the eyes of international public opinion.
The statement of General Assiri, should be interpreted with certainty as a sign of weakness: on the one hand the attempt to hastily accredit among those who at least officially fight international terrorism (in this case the Islamic State); on the other, the need to divert attention from the humanitarian catastrophe that has been underway for months in Yemen, where Riyadh is increasingly mired.
Raqqa, released from the news for months, is back at the center of media attention by virtue of military developments in Mosul and Aleppo. With the fall of the Iraqi stronghold and the convergence from the north of Syria of anti-Caliphate militias (including mainly Kurds, but also pro-Kurdish Islamist groups) it is likely that by the end of 2016 the Islamic State will remain closed in a large pocket circumscribed to eastern Syria . At this point the offensive on Raqqa will become a final race to victory over terrorism. The declarations of Riad, with all evidence, take this into account.
It will be up to the West and the international community to make them fall out or make them concrete.
(photo: KSA)
