Putin’s real target in Syria is wounding US prestige

What the Arabic language media is saying about Russia in Syria, featuring Al Hayat and Al Ittihad.

Russian military support crew attach a satellite guided bomb to jet fighter in Syria. Alexander Kots / AP

Russia’s intervention in Syria has been seen by the Arab media as a blow to the United States as it put focus on America’s indecisiveness about the conflict.

Ghassan Charbel , the editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat, said this was not a duel between Vladimir Putin and Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi. Nor was it solely a battle to secure Russia’s position in Syria, to retain a military presence on the Mediterranean coast or about oil and gas.

“It is much greater and far more dangerous,” he wrote.

“Would it be an exaggeration to say that the Russian military intervention in Syria, with its regional and international implications, is of greater danger than the 9/11 attacks?”

He said Russia firing rockets from its battleships in the Caspian Sea “is no less a peril than Al Baghdadi’s entry to Mosul”. The missiles have caused as much damage to the image of the US in the region as Bin Laden’s attack on the Twin Towers achieved.

“Both attacks targeted the dignity of the US above all else, though the Russian attack claimed other motivations,” he wrote. However, he also said it remains too early to rush into comparisons between George W Bush’s decision to go to war as a response to the September 11 attacks and Putin’s decision to go to war to defend the interests and image of his country and consolidate its position.

“It is most likely that Putin does not wish to repeat Brezhnev’s mistake in Afghanistan and Bush’s mistake in Iraq. But experience says that the battlefield may surprise the most seasoned of generals and what they plan on maps in operation rooms,” he noted.

“Putin considered the Syrian conflict a great opportunity to batter the dignity of the US. He will not allow what he considers as the ‘Libyan trick’ to happen again.”

He described president Obama as being “hesitant and confused before his allies, and appeared as an ally to his own enemies”. By contrast, Putin analysed the international and regional situation and took action.

“The matter goes beyond simply putting an end to Al Baghdadi and his state, beyond determining the fate of president Bashar Al Assad, and greater than the transformation of the Iranian crescent into a Russian-Iranian crescent.

“It is a tremendous tip to the balance built on the ruins of the Soviet empire. It is revenge on the US, which pilfered the title of being the only superpower without a shot being fired in the process,” he wrote.

“The Middle East is living its darkest days, with fearful states and troubled maps, weary majorities and panicked minorities. Its biggest countries are exposed to unprecedented exposure about their security, their role and their stability, fighting without their borders and beyond.

“Amidst lakes of blood, the Tsar struck a blow. A quick semi-reasonable solution in Syria is necessary, or else Al Baghdadi may find himself drowning in ‘Syria-stan’.”

In Al Ittihad, the Abu Dhabi-based sister newspaper of The National, editor-in-chief Mohammed Al Hammadi said that considering the current conflicts in the Arab world – and particularly in Syria and Libya – the situation in each country is going from bad to worse. A solution to their problems is growing increasingly distant.

“The Arabs abandoned Syria and Libya to the flames of a so-called Arab Spring, not realising the plot played out in the region,” he wrote.

“When we woke up, it was too late and the so-called international community and regional powers had sunk their fangs into the Syrian and Libyan flesh.”

Translated by Carla Mirza