In his announcement, Putin didn’t detail the conditions for the troop withdrawal, its scope or date, so one can assume that the plan isn’t to totally abandon Syria but to partly reduce the Russian presence. The critical areas, like supervising the security zones and the country’s eastern border, will continue as usual. A week from Thursday the forum on the security zones is scheduled to convene in Astana, the Kazakh capital, to discuss inspection arrangements and how to divide responsibility between Russia, Iran and Turkey. [...]
Putin’s commitment to strike the terror groups if they raise their heads makes it clear that he doesn't plan to leave the military arena or change his strategy that shifted the balance of power in Syrian President Bashar Assad’s favor. But a withdrawal – even a partial one – may make it legitimate for him to insist that all foreign forces leave Syria.
This would mean mainly the American and Turkish forces, which don't enjoy the legitimacy of the Russian and Iranian forces that were “invited” by Assad, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov put it two weeks ago. This is reinforced by the wording chosen by Putin – that Russian forces defeated most of the Islamic State forces. Therefore the United States, which justified its military involvement in Syria as a war against the Islamic State, now has no reason to be in Syria. [...]
But this isn’t the only possible scenario. Russia and Iran aren’t conducting a zero-sum game in Syria and aren’t competing for Assad’s heart, which is totally dependent on both of them. In any diplomatic agreement on Syria’s future, the status of the Syrian dictator is assured, at least in the short term; the question is how the economic and diplomatic booty will be divided between Russia and Iran. Neither can force the other out of the arena, and both have an interest in stabilizing the country and preventing the establishment of cantons.
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