Valar Dohaeris
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A handout photo from Syria’s SANA news agency shows a Chechen delegation visiting Aleppo, Syria on January 20. PHOTO:SANA/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
MOSCOW—Russia has reinforced its military presence on the ground in Aleppo with a police unit drawn largely from the Muslim-majority region of Chechnya, part of a bid to win hearts and minds in Syria.
Recent video footage by a Russian-language news agency shows the Chechen-led formation patrolling the city’s battered landscape in armored trucks and personnel carriers.
The deployment and the video promoting it highlight Moscow’s outreach to civilians in Syria, where the opposition is dominated by the Sunni majority and the government is led by members of the Alawite branch of Shiite Islam, to which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad belongs.
A member of Russian military police feeds children in eastern Aleppo after rebels were driven out of the territory in December. PHOTO:ABDULLAYEV TIMUR/TASS/ZUMA PRESS
“I am a Sunni Muslim, a Chechen,” Maj. Ruslan Numakhadjiev, the unit’s commander, says in the video produced by the Abkhazian Network News Agency, which is registered in a Russia-backed separatist enclave within the republic of Georgia. The commander said the troops were part of a deliberate effort to reach out to the local population in an area that was once the center of Sunni resistance to the Damascus regime.
“My deputy personnel chief is a Shiite. I also have under my command a Buddhist from Buryatia and Orthodox Christians,” he says, stressing Russia’s ethnic and religious diversity.
The Russian military intervened on the side of Mr. Assad in the fall of 2015, but has largely limited its involvement in Syria to aerial bombardment. Russia has deployed ground troops in some limited numbers, including special forces, but rarely publicizes their presence.
Russian officials, by contrast, openly speak about the deployment of the military-police unit to Aleppo, which fell to Syrian government forces in December. Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu said in late December the troops were sent to the city to “preserve order.”
Chechnya, part of Russia’s north Caucasus region, has been the focus of two gruesome separatist wars since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a still-simmering conflict between insurgent groups and government forces.
The Russian government has carried out an often heavy-handed pacification campaign in the region, bringing in former rebels now loyal to the Kremlin to help fight insurgents.
Despite Russia’s success in quashing local insurgents, pro-government forces have been accused of human-rights violations. Russian officials question the basis of such allegations.
Ramzan Kadyrov, the pro-Kremlin leader of Chechnya, said in a recent post on Instagram that he would fund the reconstruction of a historic mosque in Aleppo. The police unit, he said, was “defending the civilian population from terrorists.”
The Russian military-police battalion in Syria appears to be engaged in a civil-affairs mission, manning checkpoints and providing security as some reconstruction efforts begin, based on evidence from the video. Lt. Col. Alexander Aksyonov, deputy head of the Russian military’s Aleppo reconciliation center, said in the video the situation in around the city “remains tense,” but added that local residents were “treating us very cordially.”
Sappers with the Russian unit are shown in the video clearing unexploded ordnance. The Russian military police are also engaged in some rudimentary humanitarian assistance, with the video showing the troops delivering food to local residents.
Aleppo 24, an opposition monitoring group with activists on the ground throughout Aleppo province, confirmed the presence of several hundred Russian military police in the city of Aleppo.
The opposition group said the Chechen-led unit interacted with local residents in a generally professional way.
“People like them because their behavior is better than the shabiha,” the group said, referring to the pro-regime militiamen Mr. Assad’s government had empowered since the beginning of the uprising.
The Chechen unit offers several advantages to the Syrian government and its Russian military backers. In addition to bringing their own combat experience, Sunni Muslim Chechens give the Russians a boost in reaching out to Syria’s Sunni community, counterbalancing the role of the Iran-backed Shiite militias and pro-government Syrian gunmen.
“The Russian government understands very well the condition of the Syrian army and their capacity to really govern in this area,” said Katya Sokirianskaia, Russia project director for Brussels-based International Crisis Group. “They need to maintain what they have already gained.”
Sending in the Chechens is also less likely to cause controversy in Russia, where memories still linger about the disastrous Soviet intervention in Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989. Ms. Sokirianskaia said deployment of these military professionals wasn’t likely to cause the same kind of backlash that sending Russian conscripts to Syria might provoke.
“No one will complain about Kadyrovtsy being sent to Syria,” she said, referring to the forces that report to Mr. Kadyrov.
—Raja Abdulrahim in Beirut contributed to this article.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-deploys-chechens-to-win-hearts-in-aleppo-1485945005
