Ashoke Chandra Sen: Islamic State, Syria and the future

Multiple terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13 left 130 dead, 350 injured. Earlier, on October 31, a Russian passenger plane with 224 on board was blown up by a terrorist bomb over Egypt. The world reeled in shock and yearned for concerted international action to fight Islamic State, or Isis - the latest, deadliest and most powerful avatar of ever-evolving terrorism in West Asia which now had the trappings of a terrorist state.

Out of the anarchy and power vacuum created by the civil war that has been raging in Syria for four and a half years Isis - initially an offshoot of Al-Qaeda in Iraq - was born and quickly grew to become the vanguard of the opposition forces against the dictatorial minority (Shia Alawi, though secular) regime of Bashar al-Assad. After acquiring control of a vast swathe of territory in Iraq (aided again by the power vacuum left by George Bush's war) and Syria, Isis, with assured revenue from seized oil wells, declared in June 2014 a Sharia-based new Caliphate of Iraq and Syria under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

This was designed to strike a chord in the hearts of devout Muslims who lamented the abolition of the last Ottoman Turkish Caliphate after the First World War and bring back nostalgic memories of the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphs of Damascus and Baghdad. The peremptory dismissal of Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood Islamist president in neighbouring Egypt through a military coup - apparently endorsed by the West and backed by Saudi Arabia - construed as the futility of the democratic path, further provided grist to the mill of Isis for winning over disenchanted radicalised Muslim youth.

Perceiving the Isis threat to be serious, the US, shedding its earlier ambivalence, led a coalition in September 2014 in a campaign of airstrikes, with the avowed aim to "degrade and ultimately destroy IS". With the exception of France in recent months, most other members of the coalition, including regional powers - Saudi Arabia, the leading Sunni power locked in a battle for regional hegemony with Shiite Iran, and Turkey fixated on anti-Kurdism, both fiercely anti-Assad, remained lukewarm. With "no boots on the ground" the advance of Isis could not be halted. Mr Assad, left holding on to a rump of a state hardly 20 per cent of the territory of Syria, sent an appeal for help to Russia, his old friend and supplier of military hardware and training.

Russia, a major stakeholder in Syria with her only naval base in the Mediterranean in Tartus, responded to the appeal, pounding anti-Assad targets in Syria from September 2015. Isis apparently felt the heat. The downing of the Russian passenger plane and the Paris attacks could be seen as direct acts of retaliation. In the wake of the Paris terror attacks, when President Hollande of France approached world leaders for help, it seemed that a united international coalition against Isis was finally in the offing. However, the rash downing of a Russian Sukhoi-24 on November 24 near the Syrian border by Turkey for alleged violation of its air space somewhat queered the pitch. It exposed Ankara's undiscerning affinities for so-called moderate anti-Assad rebel fighters arguably soft even to Isis. Quick defence of Nato ally Turkey by the US and insistence on the removal of Mr Assad as a precondition, unacceptable to Russia, also did not help.

With continuing disunity and rivalry among the global and regional powers (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, backed by the US, France, UK against Assad, his ally and regional Shia power Iran, Russia, followed by China, in support of Assad), Syria was left to burn, her people left to bleed. The state faced an existential crisis with prospects of dismemberment and extinction; the people faced the greatest human tragedy since World War II with 250,000 dead, 11 million or 50 per cent of the total population homeless, 7.6 million internally displaced, four million refugees rotting in camps in the severe winter in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and some desperately crossing over to Europe.

The New Year promised Syria a glimmer of hope. The UN Security Council on December 22 passed a new consensus resolution (No 2254) on Syria for action against terrorism and a political solution, with both US and Russia on board. The Geneva talks opened in January only to be bogged down by mutual distrust and acrimony. Meanwhile relentless Russian bombing of anti-Assad targets continued; reinvigorated Syrian state forces, backed by Russian air support, advanced in Aleppo and elsewhere. The Northern Kurds of Syria, notably the YPG militia, are surging towards a new autonomous state extending to the Turkish borders, posing a threat to Turkey and adding to Turkey-Russia tensions. Isis and terrorism, though badly mauled, are not finished.

However, the so called moderate opposition - the US-Turkey-Saudi-backed umbrella organisation "National coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces" which never managed to acquire a presence, credibility or relevance in Syria - is fast disappearing. In Munich in mid-February, an internationally-backed ceasefire for humanitarian aid was approved with a quest for a political solution. There is a new bellicosity in Mr Assad however, as there is in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. As of now, it is possible to talk only about an imperfect peace with Mr Assad in the saddle, at least in the near future. The alternative would be renewed fighting, suffering and chaos. Syria should not end up as yet another festering unfinished business in West Asia, as Palestine has.

The writer, a former secretary to the Government of India, has been an advisor to the governments of Oman and UAE, and has authored a book on West Asia - Pratibasi Prabase -in Bengali. The views expressed here are personal