By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on March 29, 2016
Originally published at Left Foot Forward. See also pieces in The International Business Times and The New Arab today on the same subject.
The ancient city of Palmyra and the inhabited adjoining town of Tadmor was conquered by the armed forces of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and a consortium of foreign Shi’a jihadists, some of them designated terrorist organizations, and all of them led by the Quds Force, the external operations wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), itself a listed terrorist entity.
While the takeover of Palmyra by the Islamic State (IS) in May 2015 was considered by almost everybody a negative development, the pro-Assad coalition’s capture of the city under the cover of 900 indiscriminate Russian airstrikes has been called “a good thing” by no less an authority than the United States Department of Defence. It was little surprise among that Robert Fisk echoed this sentiment; it was more surprising that Boris Johnson did.
The basic case for regarding Palmyra’s fall to the pro-Assad coalition as a positive development is that, to quote Johnson, “no matter how repulsive the Assad regime may be … their opponents in [IS] are far, far worse,” and this defeat for IS moves Syria closer to peace.
There is nothing in this formulation that stands up to scrutiny. Continue reading