The White House has repeatedly stated that Russia undermined U.S. efforts to achieve a political settlement in Syria, supporting the Government of President Bashar al-Assad. The American administration further claims that Moscow continues to hinder opportunities to engage the moderate Syrian opposition in the discussion of political change, in which, according to Washington, needs Damascus.
Recently, the American leadership has expressed readiness to invite Russia in a coalition against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization, noting that Russia is not ready to join her. “They focus on other thing – the support of the Assad regime, and this does not allow them to create their own coalition, at least close in size to the one that US created”, the White House exclaimed.
It is obvious that the cause of disputes between Moscow and Washington in the settlement of the war in Syria lies not only in fundamentally different approaches to solving the Syrian crisis, but also mainly in the real goals of Russia and the United States in the Middle East. The main difference of the two respective coalitions is the goal of their creation. The US formed a coalition under the banner of the fight against the IS. However, their activity was limited only to this slogan. The Russian leadership announced the same purpose, adding that it intends to stop the spread of terrorism. Another difference lies in the actual measures taken to achieve positive results. In this respect the Americans are totally confused.
Washington and its allies, which are gathered under American banner, clearly demonstrate their unwillingness to destroy the IS. The main reason of their inaction is that it is their own creature. They created, instructed and trained opposition fighters in the Middle East. As a result, these very same structures became the allies of the Islamic State or directly passed under the control of this terrorist group. However, they still remain “clients” of Washington, although they went out of its control.
Syrian opposition forces are also close allies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. These countries have already invested lots of money in the training of Syrian and Iraqi terrorist groups, the supply of weapons to them and the conduct of combat operations.
In addition, these structures are related ideologically. The lack of democracy in Saudi Arabia looks like a deep rooted problem, whose solution, may optimistically, be reached in the next century. Currently, there are is no hope that Riyadh will proceed on the democratic path. All attempts to force the Saudis to do so constantly end in failure and rebuke. The Saudis persistently shout out: “Do not meddle in our affairs”. They do not make concessions and do not heed the admonitions of human rights defenders. All of them in fact, are ideological allies: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Islamic State share the same ideology based on the Salafi interpretation of Islam.
Russia sees the IS as an enemy, a threat to Muslims and all of Islam, because the Islamic State uses religion as a front cover to promote their political and economic goals. The terrorists train their followers, intoxicating them with ideas of their understanding of the concept of Jihad, which is explicitly contrary to the tenets of the Holy book of Moslems – the Koran. The main goal of Moscow is to prevent the propagation of this distorted ideological infection among Russian compatriots of the Muslim creed, whose number in the country is estimated to be around twenty million.
On the contrary, the US created terrorist groups. Washington sought to bring the Middle East into a state of managed chaos so as to control the entire region. It is easier to negotiate with small terrorist groups and their marginal unimportant leaders than with a strong country, defending its national interests.