Why was "paper" Islamic military coalition formed?

Not long ago, Saudi Arabia formed an Islamic military coalition of 34 countries for “resistance to terrorism, which is a threat to the interests of the Islamic nation,” and “considering the right of nations to self-defense.” The united operation headquarters will be situated in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Moscow regards the idea of the coalition skeptically. “I think that Saudi Arabia is not concerned about the issue of coordination in the fight against ISIS. It has a completely different purpose. If you put at the forefront the problem of the anti-ISIS cooperation, then indeed, three coalitions have no meaning. And we only need one. Vladimir Putin spoke about this at the UN General Assembly, he proposed the creation of a single anti-terrorist coalition in the likeness of the anti-Hitler one,” Alexey Pushkov, Сhairman of the State Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs, said.

According to him, the major players in Syria, which are involved in the Syrian crisis in one way or another, have different goals: “Saudi Arabia has been helping for a long time, including primarily financing the armed opposition to Assad. Saudi Arabia has a military organization on the territory of Syria that acted against the Assad regime, and against Russia. In particular, one of these organizations, which is funded by Saudi Arabia, repeatedly shelled the Russian embassy in Damascus. And then they tried to convince us that they were the representatives of the moderate opposition. Naturally, we express doubts that the moderate opposition was shelling the Russian Embassy. Nevertheless, this organization, which is engaged in this, has close ties with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has a lot of these groups.”

Pushkov is sure that the objective of Saudi Arabia is not the fight against ISIS: “By funding the armed opposition in Syria, Saudi Arabia was in fact at the outset of ISIS. The task of Saudi Arabia is, firstly, not to allow Assad to remain in power, and secondly, to influence as much as possible the composition of the future government in Syria, so there would be protegés of Saudi Arabia. And thirdly, to consolidate around itself the Muslim states of the region, which have both the political and moral right to participate in this matter, to act on their behalf.”

Pushkov calls the Islamic military coalition a “paper coalition”: “Neither Pakistan nor Lebanon even knew that they had been included in this opposition, and found out when the lists were published, so they began to call Riyadh trying to find out how they got there if they had not given their consent to it. It merely proves that the coalition was created largely declaratively and arbitrarily. Even those countries that gave the green light to participate in this coalition have no physical ability to operate in Syria. They do not have money, they do not have armed forces, the possibility of moving troops. And they entered there for a clear reason: Saudi Arabia is one of the main donors in the Arab and Muslim world; it could finance specific projects, specific programs that actively use its financial instruments. And many countries, rather than quarrel with Saudi Arabia and deny its request, decided to join the coalition at least formally, they entered into it in the hope that Saudi Arabia would view their financial and infrastructural needs carefully.”

Pushkov has not heard that there are any active players in this coalition apart from Saudi Arabia and Qatar: “I have not heard that anyone besides these countries raises the question of whether to send their troops to the territory of Syria. I have not heard of any very active applications – there are 34 Muslim states, from the leaders of these countries – on how to act in this coalition. The Saudis gathered representatives of those states and announced that from now on such a coalition would exist. I believe that this coalition is being created to increase the weight of Saudi Arabia in resolving the Syrian crisis.”