Enter the Russians
WES BRYANT
WITH REMARKS FROM DANA PITTARD
In my fifteen years involved in America’s war on terror, by then across three major countries in the Middle East, I had really never seen such a unique and complex battlefield as Syria. I didn’t think things could get much more convoluted, but I was soon proven wrong.
In September the Russian military came in with all its might, and the situation in Syria devolved into pure madness. While it was already challenging enough running militia forces and controlling strikes against ISIS throughout Syria in the midst of its civil war, the encroachment of Syria-aligned Russia into the fold presented even more problems.
Russian president Vladimir Putin had publicly stated their involvement in Syria was solely to help the Assad regime battle ISIS, and that they had no objectives to intervene in the civil war. However, we knew that was a lie.1
Putin had made it well known that he believed toppling Assad’s regime would create more instability than it was worth. Plus, in Syria, Russia had the use of key naval ports to the Mediterranean Sea as well as forward air bases. Geographically, Syria was key for the regional defense capabilities of the Russian homeland, so Putin had valid interest in assisting Assad against the rebels and keeping Syria stable.
Still, we figured there was no way Russia would become robustly involved on any military level in Syria while the U.S. was already saturating Syrian skies with combat airpower and running militia forces against ISIS.
We couldn’t have been more wrong.
By mid-September the Russians were there in full force, having primarily arrived through the airfield at Latakia in western Syria and the naval port of Tartus off the Mediterranean Sea. By the end of September, Putin had authorized airstrikes and emplaced Russian ground forces to assist Assad’s military.2
We thought for sure the U.S. mission in Syria would be shut down overnight. With such conflicting interests between two historically adversarial superpowers, we couldn’t imagine our political leaders would want to risk armed conflict with Russia over Syria. But the reaction from higher was nothing short of “Oh, shit…what do we do now?”
From the start of Russia’s involvement in Syria, our military and civilian leadership back home had almost no contact with Russian authorities. There were no discussions between the U.S. and Russia to establish any semblance of an agreement or to de-conflict military interests—not on any level that filtered down to us, anyway. We had absolutely no understanding of exactly what our continued role was going to be in Syria.
Would Russia become our ally in the fight against ISIS, but our foe in a not-so-secret proxy war?
Were we going to work with the Russians, ignore them, or oppose them?
In lieu of those answers, senior military command directed us to avoid conflicting with Russian ground objectives and any of their air assets to the same degree we were already avoiding Syrian regime forces. That proved impossible, though. We soon saw Russian fighter jets shadowing our drones and strike aircraft, and bombing near our own objective areas. A lot of us had the overarching feeling that we were on the brink of another world war.
What the hell are we doing here?
In lieu of any political coordination between our governments, the Combined Joint Forces Air Component Command ordered that all U.S. aircraft operating over Syrian skies maintain a particular standoff distance from Russian air presence. And our pilots and aircrews were given strict directives to not inadvertently posture their aircraft in any manner that could be misconstrued by Russian pilots as aggressive.
Meanwhile, at our special operations task force we were directed if we observed any of Assad’s anti-rebel forces making their way from Aleppo toward our objective areas in Mar’a that we were to stand down any strikes in the vicinity. That contrasted with our previous guidance—that if we witnessed regime forces aggressing our NSF we were cleared to engage to defend our Syrian partner forces.
From then on we were to assume that all Syrian regime forces would have Russians attached either as advisors or augmenting their fighting forces. None of our strikes were deemed worth inadvertently killing Russian troops. No one wanted to have to admit they started World War III.
The situation in Syria only escalated. Russian fighter and bomber jets began hammering Syrian ground targets in droves. It was astonishing to see the number of Russian combat jets and drones flooding the skies daily through our air traffic monitor. But, as surreal as it was to witness firsthand the Russian air campaign in Syria, I soon became angered and disgusted. It didn’t take long for us to realize what the Russians were actually doing. In contrast to Putin’s stated intent of “only targeting ISIS,” Russia’s first targets were actually against “rebel” forces actively opposing the Assad Regime—many of which were our own opposition forces.3
On top of that, Russia demonstrated incredible recklessness and brutality against the Syrian populace with their airstrikes. We knew Russia did not possess the advanced targeting systems or experience comparable to the U.S. to carry out the kind of precision strikes we routinely accomplish. Even so, their air campaign reeked of cruelty, targeting incompetence, and an utter disregard for humanity.
Russia seemed to have no consideration for civilian casualties in their bloodthirsty hunt for any forces opposed to Assad’s regime. Accordingly, they often targeted densely saturated civilian areas—justifying their strikes by insisting the areas were solely occupied by ISIS forces. They seemed to make no effort to limit civilian casualties even when it was clearly possible. Their bombing was indiscriminate. It was no coincidence that news reports of inhumane bombing and shelling of civilians and anti-Assad militias in Syrian cities exponentially increased right after the Russians arrived.4
The Russian bombing campaign in Syria was far more robust than ours at the time, mostly because of the indiscriminate nature. Sadly, many back home in the U.S. came under a skewed perception of the Russian efforts in Syria because of that. (Likely also due in large part to the highly effective propaganda machine of Russian intelligence, which we’d later discover was in full-force.)
Instead of condemning the brutality of Russia and the conflicts that their actions presented to U.S. efforts in the region, a sentiment circulated that Putin was doing to ISIS what President Obama hadn’t yet been able to do. All over certain news outlets and social media, President Obama was portrayed as frail and weak while Putin was “strong and manly” in the fight against ISIS in Syria. It was sickening for me to see such egregious views being propagated en masse back home.
Regardless of one’s political leaning, I felt that the elevation of Putin for his military actions in Syria couldn’t have been more amiss. To me, it seemed toward the dark abyss of treason to raise-up the leader of one of America’s most dangerous and long-standing adversaries. Unfortunately, the man who would soon become our next president—Donald J. Trump—was one of the loudest voices in that regard.5
Russia had never been our friend. And as I watched the response to the Russian campaign back home, I wanted so badly to reach back to the outlets propagating the nonsense and the people who subscribed to it, shake them by the collar, and yell some sense into them: “Vladimir Putin is NOT your friend!”
Remarks from Dana Pittard
It was obvious that the Russians entered Syria to help the Assad regime and not to fight ISIS. Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria may have had a negative impact on ISIS, but the biggest problem was that President Vladimir Putin’s attacks also targeted rebel troops opposed to embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including some U.S. surrogates. This was further complicated by the recklessness of their bombing campaign that led to such sharp increases in civilian casualties in Syria.
1 Landon Shroder, “Why the Hell Did Russia Intervene in Syria?” VICE News, September 28, 2015, accessed April 24, 2018, https://news.vice.com/article/why-the-hell-did-russia-intervene-in-syria.
2 Andrew Osborn and Phil Stewart, “Russia begins Syria air strikes in its biggest Mideast intervention in decades,” Reuters, September 30, 2015, accessed April 24, 2018, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-russia/russia-begins-syria-air-strikes-in-its-biggest-mideast-intervention-in-decades-idUSKCN0RU0MG20151001.
3 Jack Stubbs, “Four-fifths of Russia’s Syria strikes don’t target Islamic State: Reuters analysis,” Reuters, October 21, 2015, accessed April 24, 2018, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-russia-strikes/four-fifths-of-russias-syria-strikes-dont-target-islamic-state-reuters-analysis-idUSKCN0SF24L20151021.
4 Jared Malsin, “Russian Airstrikes in Syria Seem to Be Hurting Civilians More Than ISIS,” Time, November 30, 2015, accessed April 24, 2018, http://time.com/4129222/russia-airstrikes-syria-civilian-casualties-isis/.
5 Philip Bump, “Why Donald Trump is praising Validimir Putin,” The Washington Post, October 1, 2015, accessed September 14, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/10/01/why-donald-trump-is-praising-vladimir-putin/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b24a1b45edcd.