ECHOES OF SYRIA

Drawing on her experience negotiating with Kremlin officials, Bassma Kodmani explains what the west needs to know about the Russian president’s geopolitical strategy

by PATRICK MARNHAM

Bombing cities, killing civilians and crushing aspirations for democracy—what Vladimir Putin is doing to Ukraine now, he first did to Syria. Bassma Kodmani is a leading member of the Syrian democratic opposition. Her father, a senior diplomat, was exiled in 1968 due to his opposition to Hafez al-Assad, father of the present ruler Bashar al-Assad. Born in Damascus in 1958, she is currently a senior fellow at the Institut Montaigne in Paris.

Patrick Marnham: The Arab Spring reached Syria in January 2011. Were you involved from the start? Bassma Kodmani: I joined the democratic opposition in the very early days of the uprising, and became the foreign affairs representative and spokesperson of the Syrian National Council. I have been in and out of the formal political bodies of the opposition over the last 10 years, but I have always been active, initiating back channel discussions with friendly and pro-regime governments.

Have you negotiated with the Russians? As a member of the negotiating team in the Geneva peace talks and now a member of the Constitutional Committee, we have regular meetings with Russian officials. These meetings are important to us and to the UN Special Envoy because we rely entirely on Russia to put pressure on the Syrian regime. I have learned to decipher their implicit messages and understand their duplicity.

How did Putin first become so deeply involved in Syria? In the beginning, Putin was only marginally interested in saving the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. The main trigger to give Assad his full support was the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya in 2011. Putin also realised that Syria was potentially a great strategic asset.

Did he ever seem concerned with reaching a peace settlement in Syria? The Russians don’t hide their contempt for Assad and his incompetence, but they