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https://www.ft.com/content/ee81cf10-2f47-11e7-9555-23ef563ecf9a
Even before Russia and Iran rescued President Assad with their decisive victory in Aleppo last December, Syrian rebels and their families were being corralled in northern Idlib province, scene of last month’s sarin nerve gas attack by the regime. Many surviving rebels have been forced to ally with al-Qaeda. Turkey needs Russia’s blessing to pursue its campaign against Syria’s Kurds, so it has largely abandoned its sponsorship of the rebels, while the Assad regime looks set to crush their remnants in Idlib.
In Iraq, the Iran-backed Shia militia coalition has deployed a big force west of Mosul, notionally to support the Iraqi army and US special forces, but in a power play that is a propaganda gift to the Sunni supremacists of Isis and al-Qaeda. Things are not much better elsewhere.
The strongmen of Egypt and Turkey, presidents Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, are busily eliminating their political middle ground and filling the jails. Saudi Arabia, another western ally, allows only the ideology of Wahhabi Islam and never had a middle ground. Israel, for its part, has swung to the far right and continues to colonise the ground on which a viable Palestinian state might be built.
Despite all this, the seductive old model of strongmen as guarantors of stability in the Middle East is making a comeback.
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