What if he Said YES !!! – Episode 7 (Syria & Russia – Part 1)

After the war in Georgia in 2008, Russia is once again emerged as super power & entered of new era & regain its position globally under the rule of Putin & Medvedev, thanks to them, Russia returned to its strength & its position economically, militarily & politically.

returning to the historical relations between Russia or the former Soviet Union & Syria, the relationship that stretches since Syria’s independence from French colonial rule in 1946, the year which the Syrian Republic sent its first ambassador to the Soviet Union which was ambassador Abdul Muttalib Al-Amin, the younger son of the Shiite cleric Mr. Mohsen Al-Amin.

Mr. ambassador Abdul Muttalib Al-Amin was an author, poet, diplomat, politician & critic, the first Syrian ambassador Moscow & he was the first Arab ambassador to the Soviet Union, during the reign of Joseph Stalin.(What a coincidence … the first ambassador to Syria in the Soviet Union & the first Arab ambassador to the Soviet Union was a Shiite !!!).

With the beginning of the tide of pan-Arab in the era of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt & the impact that he made in all the Arab world, till the unity between Egypt & Syria in 1958 & some of the Arab Countries such as Syria & Egypt, since the late forties & early fifties of the last century, relay on to the Soviet Union & Eastern bloc in general for economic, political & military support in the face of the colonial western world. Therefore, the relations was strong & so deeply rooted with Soviet Union for decades.

A former chiefs of staff of the Russian military says that «Russian President Boris Yeltsin, has damaged Russia a lot & let Russia to lose all its allies in the Arab region because of the poor management with lack of artifice in the custody of Russia with difficulties of the economy, which Russia was suffering from it».

«By losing Iraq with the lack of confidence in Egypt, which changed its course in the era of President Anwar Sadat to become at the American orbit & with the relationship with countries such as Libya & Algeria getting weaker, for many reasons, but the most important for Russia is to keep presence at the heart of the middle east & not lose this major area & leave it to the United States, the geopolitical element which is/was & always will be crucial for the national security of Russia, just like how it was back then during the Soviet Union».

«The geographical close from the Russian territory, a decisive & important issue that is required to maintaining security & influence of the Russian Federation & since Russia now is the heir to the Soviet Union, a country that was for decades have strong ties in the Middle East in various respects & supplements».

«Yeltsin lost our Yemeni ally, too because of the weakness of the ability to support the southern government & later the united Yemen, when the Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh requested & asked for Russia to support his country economically & provide Yemen with weapons & many needed equipment, but President Yeltsin refused to offer support to Yemen without money in return which prompted Yemen to go to the West, particularly to the United States & to improve the relationship with the Arab Gulf States».

«Only Syria remained with us thanks to Assad not Yeltsin, when President Assad asked Russia to supply Syria with some modern weapons & necessary spare parts for the maintenance of many Russian weapons in the Syrian army, at the early & mid-nineties».

«Yeltsin requested from Assad to pay Syria‘s debts, since the Soviet Union era, however President Assad with his known artfulness, managed to maintain cordial & diplomatic ways in dealing with Russia & asked Yeltsin to give him some time until the Syrian government study the situation & see what they can be done in this regard».

«After short period of time, the Syrian reply came very strange, when President Assad told Yeltsin, that Syria used to receive the Soviet support of weapons, hardware & equipment from in the past through areas where factories or stores & most of these sites today located in the republics of the Soviet Union, which had seceded & declared its independence from Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, so after the collapse of the Soviet Union several countries of the former Soviet Union demanded Syria the debts owed from that era, such as Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Latvia, Kazakhstan & Belarus, president Assad continue saying, that, when we study the tables for these debts, it showed us a considerable overlap between these amounts & the sides that we must pay these debts to, with that being said, for whom we should pay them? to the former soviet Union countries or to Russia»?

To be continued…