Syrians eye future without Russia, but Moscow still hopes to stay

For years Russia and Syria have been close partners – Moscow has gained access to the Mediterranean Sea and maritime space while Damascus has received military support in its war against insurgents.

Now, after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, many Syrians want to see Russian troops leave, but their interim government says they are open to continued cooperation.

“Russia’s crimes here were unspeakable,” said Ahmed Taha, a rebel commander in Douma, six kilometers northeast of the capital Damascus.

The city used to be a prosperous area in the “bread basket” district of Damascus. And Ahmed Taha was once a civilian, working as a businessman when he took up arms against the Assad regime following a brutal crackdown on protests in 2011.

All of the settlements in Douma are now in ruins after the Syrian civil war that has lasted for almost 14 years.

Moscow entered the conflict in 2015 to support the government as it failed. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later said that, at the time of his intervention, Damascus was weeks away from defeating the rebels.

The Syrian operation showed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s desire to be serious after international condemnation of his annexation of Crimea.

Moscow said it had tested 320 different weapons in Syria.

It also secured 49-year leases on two military bases on the Mediterranean coast – the Tartus naval base and the Hmeimim air base. This allowed the Kremlin to expand its influence in Africa, serving as Russia’s proxy in Libya, the Central African Republic, Mali, and Burkina Faso.

Despite the support of Russia and Iran, Assad could not prevent his regime from collapsing. But Moscow gave him and his family protection.

Now, many Syrian civilians and militants see Russia as an ally of the Assad regime that helped destroy their country.

Abu Hisham said: “The Russians came to this country and helped the brutal, oppressive and revolutionary people,” said Abu Hisham as he celebrated the fall of the regime in Damascus.

The Kremlin has denied this, saying it only targets jihadist groups such as IS or al-Qaeda.

But the United Nations and human rights organizations have criticized the government and Russia for military violence.

In 2016, at a time when eastern Aleppo was heavily populated, the Syrian and Russian forces carried out a series of airstrikes, “killing hundreds of people and destroying hospitals, schools and markets,” according to a UN report.

In Aleppo, Douma and elsewhere, government forces surrounded rebel-held areas, cut off food and medicine, and continued to bombard the areas until the armed opposition groups surrendered.

Russia has also negotiated a ceasefire and taken steps to hand over towns and cities that are infested with militants, such as Douma in 2018.

Ahmed Taha was among the rebels who accepted surrender to get out of the city safely after a five-year siege by the Syrian army.

He returned to Douma in December as part of an insurgency led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Taha said: “We have returned home despite the presence of Russia, despite the government’s authority and all those who supported it.

He does not doubt that the Russians should leave: “For us, Russia is an enemy.”

It’s a sentiment that many of us speak to.

Even the leaders of the Christian groups in Syria, whom Russia has sworn to protect, are said to have received little help from Moscow.

In Bab Touma, an old Christian district in Damascus, the Head of the Syriac Orthodox Church said: “We have never had the knowledge of Russia or any other foreigner to protect us.

“The Russians were here to benefit their agenda,” Ignatius Aphrem II told the BBC.

Some Syrian Christians did not like the nations very much.

“When he got to the beginning, he said: ‘We came here to help you,'” said a man named Assad. “But instead of helping us, they destroyed Syria a lot.”

Sharaa, who is now the head of the Syrian state, said in a In an interview with the BBC last month he said did not rule out allowing the Russians to remain, and described the relationship between the two countries as a “way”.

Moscow stuck to its word, with foreign minister Lavrov admitting that Russia “was very similar to our Syrian partners”.

But loosening ties after Assad will not be easy.

Rebuilding the Syrian army will require a new start or continued reliance on Russian resources, which could mean a different relationship between the two countries, said Turki al-Hassan, a security analyst and retired Syrian army chief.

Syria’s military alliance with Moscow began under the Assad regime, Hassan says. Almost all of the weapons it has were made by the Soviet Union or Russia, he explains.

“From the beginning, the Syrian army has been armed with weapons from the Eastern Bloc.”

Between 1956 and 1991 Syria received about 5,000 tanks, 1,200 fighter jets, 70 ships and a large amount of other equipment from Moscow that amounted to $26bn (£21bn), according to Russian estimates.

Much of this was in support of the Syrian-Israeli war, which has defined the country’s foreign policy since its independence from France in 1946.

More than half of the money was unpaid when the Soviet Union collapsed, but in 2005 President Putin wrote off 73% of the debt.

Meanwhile, Russian officials have taken a hands-off but cautious approach to the interim rulers who toppled Russia’s former ally.

Vassily Nebenzia, the UN ambassador in Moscow, said the latest developments marked a new chapter in the history of what he called “Syrian relatives”. He also said that Russia will provide humanitarian assistance and help with reconstruction so that Syrian refugees can return home.