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Assad said: “The Russian presence in different parts of the world, including the Eastern Mediterranean and the Syrian port of Tartus, is very necessary, in order to create a sort of balance, which the world has lost after the dissolution of the Soviet Union more than 20 years ago.

Syrian president welcomed the Russian presence in his country and the region. “For us, the stronger this presence is in our region, the better it is for stability [in the region], because Russia is assuming an important role in world stability,”

Syrian nod is only a repetition of a former call made under the rule of late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, who saw that the presence of a Russian military representation in Syria in the Mediterranean region contributes to the promotion of the idea of “the balance of terror” against Israel and the United States

The talk was, however, halted, until the last two years, when an actual need to promote Russian presence in the Mediterranean emerged in light of the reignition of the Cold War.

deployment of missile systems on the Mediterranean coast, as a sort of “symbolic deterrence.” The rumors were repeated as the NATO missile defense project was announced, which was supposed to be deployed in different countries, including Turkey and other countries bordering Russia

e US invasion of Iraq, as the US desire to change the face of the Middle East seemed free of any rational considerations. Assad made several visits to Moscow, and although this has not been publicly mentioned, Syrian diplomats and officials stressed to As-Safir that Syria expressed its desire to expand the Russian presence in the Eastern Mediterranean, particularly through Tartus, so that it turns into a military presence with limited standards

, Russia and Syria signed the biggest deal of its kind to explore oil in the Syrian waters, which covers a 2,190 square-kilometer surface area, and to achieve economic ambitions, namely extracting 2.5 billion barrels of oil and 8.5 trillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves, the oil and gas magazine said back then

is understandable, without neglecting the importance of other political and military issue

“any decision to modernize the infrastructure of the Russian Material-Technical Support Point in Tartus can only be made after a political decision is taken in this regard, in coordination with the Syrian side.” He explained that any modernization should “take into account the political and military situation in the Mediterranean region,” and therefore “it will include the promotion of all sorts of protection in the facility, including surface-to-air missiles and anti-riots weapons, and will be in coordination with the Syrian side.”

Russia also leases a naval facility at the Syrian port of Tartu

Moscow also signed a $550 million deal with Syria for combat training jets

value of Russian arms sales to Syria at $162 million per year in both 2009 and 2010

Russia's key policy goal is blocking American efforts to shape the regio

Russia doesn't believe revolutions, wars and regime change bring stability and democracy

It believes humanitarian concerns are often used an excuse for pursuing America's own political and economic interests.

Putin's existential fear for his own survival and the survival of the repressive system that he and al-Assad represent

not only driven by the need to preserve its naval presence in the Mediterranean, secure its energy contracts, or counter the West on 'regime change

al-Assad cannot lose because it means that one day he, Putin, might as well

The West handles the Islamic world the way a monkey handles a grenade," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin tweeted

Russia is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. It has the power to veto Security Council resolutions against the Syrian regime and has done so repeatedly over the past two years

religion and strategy.

Islamic Republic has provided technical help such as intelligence, communications and advice on crowd control and weapons as protests in Syria morphed into resistance

The last thing Iran wants now is a Sunni-dominated Syria -- especially as the rebels' main supporters are Iran's Persian Gulf rivals: Qatar and Saudi Arabi

proxy through which Iran can threaten Israel with an arsenal of short-range missiles

Iran counted on Syria as its only Arab ally during its eight-year war with Iraq. Iraq was Sunni-dominate

war between the front of hegemony and the front of resistance

Syrian government is a victim of international plots

Iran says the main objective of this plot is to make the region safer for Israe

Many believe Iran is Washington's greatest threat in the region, especially with its nuclear potential

the Americans will sustain damage like when they interfered in Iraq and Afghanistan

Syria's third-largest importer in 2010, according to data from the European Commission

maintain its financial tie

indicates that China sees Syria as an important trading hub

China has said foreign countries shouldn't meddle in Syria's internal affairs

Rather than siding with either Assad or the opposition and standing aside to 'wait and see,' Beijing is actively betting on both

China said it is firmly opposed to the use of chemical weapons and supports the U.N.'s chemical weapons inspectors.

It also said it wants a political solution for Syri

China is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. And like Russia, China has repeatedly blocked sanctions attempts against the Syrian regime

Libya looked like the latest fragile blossoming of the Arab spring

Army commanders, mostly of Arab Bedouin origin, refused orders to shoot the protesters

the revolutionaries cobbled together a National Transitional Council (NTC) claiming to represent all of Libya

Volunteers from students to bank managers took up arms, joining popular militias and only sometimes obeying the orders of defecting army commanders trying to take control

In August Western bombing of government bases surrounding Tripoli cleared an avenue for the revolutionaries to take the capital.

Recognised abroad, popular at home and enjoying the benefits of healthy oil revenues—97% of the government’s income—the NTC was well placed to lay the foundations for a new Libya

he judges, academics and lawyers who filled its ranks worried about their own legitimacy and feared confrontation with the militias which, in toppling Qaddafi, had taken his arsenals for their own.

militia leaders were already ensconced in the capital’s prime properties

The NTC presided over Libya’s first democratic elections in July 2012, and the smooth subsequent handover of power to the General National Congress (GNC) revived popular support for the revolution.

Islamist parties won only 19 of 80 seats assigned to parties in the new legislature, and the process left the militias on the outside

The Homeland party, founded by Abdel Hakim Belhad

tried to advertise its moderation by putting an unveiled woman at the head of its party list in Benghazi

The incumbent prime minister, Abdurrahim al-Keib, a university professor who had spent decades in exile, fretted and dithered

He bowed to militia demands for their leaders to be appointed to senior ministries, and failed to revive public-works programmes

which might have given militiamen jobs

Many received handouts without being required to hand in weapons or disband, an incentive which served to swell their ranks

the number of revolutionaries registered with the Warriors Affairs Commission set up by the NTC was about 60,000; a year later there were over 200,000. Of some 500 registered militias, almost half came from one city, Misrata.

In May 2013 the militias forced parliament to pass a law barring from office anyone who had held a senior position in Qaddafi’s regime after laying siege to government ministries.

In the spring of 2014, Khalifa Haftar, a retired general who had earlier returned from two decades of exile in America, forcibly tried to dissolve the GNC and re-establish himself as the armed forces’ commander-in-chief in an operation he called Dignity

The elections which followed were a far cry from the happy experience of 2012. In some parts of the country it was too dangerous to go out and vote

Such retrenchment has been particularly noticeable among women. In 2011 they created a flurry of new civil associations; now many are back indoors.

Turnout in the June 2014 elections was 18%, down from 60% in 2012, and the Islamists fared even worse than before

Dismissing the results, an alliance of Islamist, Misratan and Berber militias called Libya Dawn launched a six-week assault on Tripoli. The newly elected parliament decamped to Tobruk, some 1,300km east

Grasping for a figleaf of legitimacy, Libya Dawn reconstituted the pre-election GNC and appointed a new government

So today Libya is split between two parliaments—both boycotted by their own oppositions and inquorate—two governments, and two central-bank governors.

The army—which has two chiefs of staff—is largely split along ethnic lines, with Arab soldiers in Arab tribes rallying around Dignity and the far fewer Misratan and Berber ones around Libya Dawn.

Libya Dawn controls the bulk of the territory and probably has more fighters at its disposal.

General Haftar’s Dignity, which has based its government in Beida, has air power and, probably, better weaponry

the Dignity movement proclaims itself America’s natural ally in the war on terror and the scourge of jihadist Islam

Libya Dawn’s commanders present themselves as standard-bearers of the revolution against Qaddafi now continuing the struggle against his former officers

Ministers in the east vow to liberate Tripoli from its “occupation” by Islamists, all of whom they denounce as terrorists

threatens to take the war to Egypt if Mr Sisi continues to arm the east. Sleeping cells could strike, he warns, drawn from the 2m tribesmen of Libyan origin in Egypt.

Yusuf Dawar

The struggle over the Gulf of Sirte area, which holds Libya’s main oil terminals and most of its oil reserves, threatens to devastate the country’s primary asset

And in the Sahara, where the largest oilfields are, both sides have enlisted ethnic minorities as proxies

ibya Dawn has drafted in the brown-skinned Tuareg, southern cousins of the Berbers; Dignity has recruited the black-skinned Toubou. As a result a fresh brawl is brewing in the Saharan oasis of Ubari, which sits at the gates of the al-Sharara oilfield, largest of them all.

Oil production has fallen and become much more volatile

oil is worth half as much as it was a year ago

The Central Bank is now spending at three times the rate that it is taking in oil money

The bank is committed to neutrality, but is based in Tripoli

Tripoli may have a little more access to cash, but is in bad shape in other ways

Fuel supplies and electricity are petering out

Crime is rising; carjacking street gangs post their ransom demands on Twitter

In Fashloum

residents briefly erected barricades to keep out a brigade of Islamists, the Nuwassi

“No to Islamists and the al-Qaeda gang” reads the roadside graffiti

Libya’s ungoverned spaces are growing,

Each month 10,000 migrants set sail for Europe

On January 3rd, IS claimed to have extended its reach to Libya’s Sahara too, killing a dozen soldiers at a checkpoint

The conflict is as likely to spread as to burn itself out.

the Western powers

have since been conspicuous by their absence. Chastened by failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, they have watched from the sidelines

Obama washed his hands of Libya after Islamists killed his ambassador

Italy, the former colonial power, is the last country to have a functioning embassy in Tripoli.

Even under Qaddafi the country did not feel so cut off

Dignity is supported not just by Mr Sisi but also by the United Arab Emirates, which has sent its own fighter jets into the fray as well as providing arms

The UAE’s Gulf rival, Qatar, and Turkey have backed the Islamists and Misratans in the west

If oil revenues were to be put into an escrow account, overseas assets frozen and the arms embargo honoured he thinks it might be possible to deprive fighters of the finance that keeps them fighting and force them to the table

Until 1963 Libya was governed as three federal provinces—Cyrenaica in the east, Fezzan in the south and Tripolitania in the west

The old divisions still matter

the marginalised Cyrenaicans harked back to the time when their king split his time between the courts of Tobruk and Beida and when Arabs from the Bedouin tribes of the Green Mountains ran his army

Tensions between those tribes and Islamist militias ran high from the start.

July 2011 jihadists keen to settle scores with officers who had crushed their revolt in the late 1990s killed the NTC’s commander-in-chief, Abdel Fattah Younis, who came from a powerful Arab tribe in the Green Mountains. In June 2013 the Transitional Council of Barqa (the Arab name for Cyrenaica), a body primarily comprised of Arab tribes, declared the east a separate federal region, and soon after allied tribal militias around the Gulf of Sirte took control of the oilfields.

In the west, indigenous Berbers, who make up about a tenth of the population, formed a council of their own and called on larger Berber communities in the Maghreb and Europe for support

Port cities started to claim self-government and set up their own border controls.

Derna—a small port in the east famed for having sent more jihadists per person to fight in Iraq than anywhere else in the world

opposed NATO intervention and insisted that the NTC was a pagan (wadani) not national (watani) council

Some in Derna have now declared their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.

In December the head of America’s Africa command told reporters that IS was training some 200 fighters in the town.

is a radical departure from current EU policy, which forces asylum seekers to apply for asylum in their first country of entry, under legislation known as the Dublin law.

We need to convince them that it is better to go legally, that there is an alternative to months of suffering

More than 3 million people are estimated to have fled the country in the past four years, and although the vast majority have remained in neighbouring countries – Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan – thousands have tried to make the perilous journey to Europe.

Most of those who survive the Mediterranean crossing – and more than 3,000 died last year – end up in Italy and Greece

42,000 Syrians ended up in Italy in 2014 alone

apply for asylum in their country of arrival. But only a tiny minority do. In practice, many migrants simply slip through the net and move, vulnerably, around Europe.

Syrians who chose to move irregularly across Europe could be reduced if people were allowed to legally travel onwards to join family or move to countries where they have language skills or work opportunities

Syrian conflict has exacerbated a refugee crisis in north Africa and the Middle East

The proposed relocation, which would start as a one-year pilot programme, would focus only on Syrians who have been recognised as refugees in Italy and Greece and would depend on an initial voluntary commitment from member states

previous attempts to reform the Dublin law have been met with fierce resistance during internal EU discussions

UK and other northern European countries have fought in both domestic and European courts to defend the right to return asylum seekers to their first country of entry

arguing that protection and accommodation conditions in Italy and Greece are inadequate

stressed the importance of states upholding the Dublin regulation

the commission is discussing with the member states on how to ensure a more balanced distribution of resettled refugees among all member states. We wil

Cochetel acknowledged that only a significant interest in building a new system would create a change in behaviour among desperate migrants

Last month Turkey become the largest country of asylum in the world

massive irregular secondary movements feeding trafficking, leading to human suffering and exploitation