Saudi Channel of Communication with Syria via Mamlouk
Muhammad Ballout
When Walid al-Muallem, Bouthaina Shaaban, and Faisal Mekdad arrived to the meeting with Vladimir Putin on the 29th of June, it did not occur to anyone that the media will be prevented from entering the meeting room. During the opening minutes, journalists listened to the most exciting part of the meeting between the Russian President, and the Syrian Foreign Minister, his deputy, and the adviser of the Syrian president.
Without any reservations, Putin presented to reporters a new idea regarding the formation of a new coalition against terrorism, bringing together Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Jordan. The Syrians expressed their surprise afterwards at the unfamiliar manner in which [Putin] presented this ‘revolutionary' idea, which will turn the situation in the Levant upside down if it were to be achieved some day.
Muallem, an experienced, veteran diplomat whose mind cannot easily be read, nor can he easily be surprise, will nevertheless move out of his instinctive, reserved demeanor, and follow his initial intuition, by saying in a press conference, that an alliance with Saudi Arabia, and those that finance terrorism, is something "that requires a miracle".
The open meeting between politicians and journalists provided Putin a chance to direct a message to a Saudi visitor he met ten days earlier in St. Petersburg on June 19. There is no other explanation for the live diplomatic presentation of Putin's idea which he had had earlier proposed to deputy Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, other than: pressuring all sides to make tough decisions, sending public messages to all parties, and surprising his new Saudi partner, to encourage him to bet on Russia when it comes to Syria and Yemen.
Despite the surprise, and the ‘request for a miracle', the Russians requested an answer from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regarding the proposal, and they got it in the hours that followed the meeting. It was a positive response.
According to well-informed Arab sources, the Russian President asked the two sides, Syria and Saudi Arabia, to dispatch envoys officially commissioned by Assad and King Salman bin Abdul Aziz, to raise the level of the negotiations to the highest possible level. Over the past few weeks, and under Russian auspices, the process of opening up security channels to explore the possibility of achieving what Putin had proposed began.
Major General Ali Mamlouk, the head of the bureau of national security, was tasked with initiating these meetings, the first of which was held in Moscow. For his part, King Salman most likely tasked a senior Arab security official to represent him in these meetings, that is, one of the intelligence men of the Kingdom who worked in the past with Major General Mamlouk during the detente phase between Saudi Arabia and Syria during the previous decade.
According to a well-informed source, a leading Syrian security official has been - since weeks ago - undertaking continuous trips aimed at coordinating with Moscow, and identifying possible confidence-building measures. One of the indicators of the progress of the work of the open [security] channel is a kind of de-escalation of rhetoric between Syrian media and Saudi-owned satellite channels. Over the past weeks, the Turks began to show interest in the Russian proposal, and dispatched [officials] to Moscow tasked with finding out further details of the ongoing process.
According to the assessment of a well-informed Syrian source, the outcome of the first set of meetings indicates the presence of a Saudi readiness to open a new page with Syria and Yemen via Moscow.
According to a reliable Western source, Damascus received a Turkish army general on the 3rd of July, for the first time since the outbreak of the war in Syria, and within the scope of communication that is beginning to evolve, with the aim of exploring possibilities for cooperation against ‘Daesh', and moving forward towards Putin's proposal.
The meeting came during the crisis that broke out after a Kurdish victory in Tal Abyad, and the mobilization of Turkish military units on the border with Syria, and the [Turkish] threat of entering the Jarablus-Man Blaj region, which is controlled by ‘Daesh'. This is if the Kurds do not try to advance towards this vital corridor in order to connect the area of Afrin - which is under their control - with Ain al-Arab [Kobani], shaping the early glimpses of a Kurdish entity.
It has become apparent that the ‘alliance of blood', which the Russians are betting on, is now moving forward faster than alliances in politics, and is pushing towards a unification of the fronts against ‘Daesh'. The Russian proposal has gained greater credibility in recent days with the occurrence of the suicide bombing in the Turkish city of Suruc, in addition to talk about ‘Daesh' sleeper cells in the form of three thousand Turks. Needless to say that the return of thousands of Saudis from Syria to their homeland, and the recruitment of thousands within Saudi Arabia to carry out upcoming operations, all signal the inevitably close movement of the terrorist threat into Saudi Arabia itself.
It has become clear now that the Russian proposal in its early stages seems to be an attempt to restore the Sunni axis in the region, while excluding from the proposal the Iranian side, , especially since Iran, along with the United States, Iraq, Syria, and the Syrian army and Kurds in Syria, form one of the undeclared pillars of the coalition, aimed at combating terrorism and ‘Daesh'.
Furthermore, no alliance can effectively act against ‘Daesh', without the participation of Iran and Syria. In addition, it can be understood as an attempt to reassure the Saudis in the first phase, while the conditions for including the Iranians into that process become clearer. Similarly, any upgrade of Syria's participation in any alliance that includes these states, especially Saudi Arabia, will not be without prior coordination between Damascus and Tehran, which can be considered one of the Syrian-Iranian [political] messages to Riyadh, with Russian guarantees.
The Russian proposal intersects with an international diplomatic effort led by UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura to launch the Geneva process before the end of the current year. The Russians are trying to exploit the Geneva process to convert the statement, which was issued on June 30, 2012, into a launch pad to launch a coalition against terrorism. De Mistura is seeking to submit his new report to the UN Security Council next week, after he included the results of his consultations within it, and at a time that coincides with the Iranian-American nuclear agreement. De Mistura is also betting on the beginning of a phase that will witness settlements and breakthroughs, particularly in Syria and Yemen.
The UN envoy also has in mind the inclusion of Tehran in the international working group for Syria, which drafted the Geneva statement. This comes after all US, French, and British objections to [Iranian] participation disappeared, the first fruit of the Vienna agreement. De Mistura had postponed the submission of his report to the Security Council, from June, to the end of July, waiting for the results of the American-Iranian agreement to pour into the Syrian basket of solutions.
To achieve this goal, the new plan of Mistura includes a new international working group, which includes the five members of the UN Security Council, the United Nations, and Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia. The drafting of the statement is to follow, and thereafter be approved by the Security Council. The statement will include an expansion of the items in the body of the statement that call for combating terrorism. These items will be updated, and will be treated as a priority.
The ‘Geneva 2' conference ended in great failure, after entering a rabbit-hole debate over what takes priority: the fight against terrorism, or a transitional government. Based on an American-Russian reading of the Geneva statement, for the first time it will be possible, in any future negotiations over Syria, to deem fighting against terrorism as the priority [of the negotiations] - this is while formerly it use to break down the negotiating process. This reading will also help shape advanced understandings, such as the one related to the remaining of Assad in power. This would be a manifestation of the understanding that deems the fight against terrorism as a priority above everything else.
Source: As-Safir Newspaper, Translated and Edited by website team
