Opposition sponsors un-bottled al Qaeda genie in Syria

“Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar”, repeated the jihadi commander each time he shot members of Syria’s pro-government Alawi sect in the back of the head, even as they lay face down on the ground, with hands behind their backs.

This is a scene from a video recently uploaded on Youtube, shot somewhere in rebel controlled areas mainly in the north. Most of the killed appear still in their teens.

The jihadis come from the jabhat al-Nusra, or al-Nusra front, the most potent group among insurgents fighting to unseat the government of President Bashar al-Assad, the Middle East’s last Ba’athist dynastic dictatorship. Yet despite impressive gains, its ties to al Qaeda and its Salafi-Wahabi leanings have caused concern among the insurgency’s western backers, leading the US to blacklist the organization in Dec ’12.

But the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which leads the fight against Assad, has remained largely supportive of the militant outfit, as have regional financers like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

Saudi influence

Al-Nusra’s main ideological, and financial, backing comes from Saudi Arabia, whose petrodollars have long bankrolled extreme-right militant uprisings from the time of the anti-Soviet Afghan campaign, and whose indoctrinated militias later mutated into al Qaeda, Taliban, etc.

Both Riyadh and Doha represent the position of the GCC, a group of Wahabi monarchies fiercely opposed to the Iran-dominated Shia crescent that emerged after the Iraqi occupation in ’03, comprising Iran, Syria and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah – the traditional anti-Israel resistance.

The insurgency has assumed a distinctly sectarian outlook following the government’s iron-fist response to an initially peaceful uprising more than 22 months ago. According to UN estimates, the death toll so far has exceeded 60,000 people, mostly civilians, and the conflict has entered what seems a prolonged stalemate, with opposition forces unable to take government strongholds of Damascus and Aleppo, and the army retreating from large parts in the north.

The Saudis have been careful not to let al-Nusra appear as intolerant of non-Muslims as their counterparts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Pakistan, for fear of losing public support in Sunni-dominated areas and upsetting important patrons like the Turkish government.

“People are scared of them, but they are surprisingly tolerant of Christians,” says one refugee, refusing to be named, the fear of the Mukhabbarat secret police dogging him all the way to Dubai. “But they never spare anyone from the Alawis. If they find an Alawi, they invariably torture and kill”.

Alawis are an offshoot of the minority Shia sect, and have been ruling Syria since Bashar’s father Hafez al-Assad became president in 1970.

Proxy wars

Like the Lebanese civil war (1975-90), Syria has become the regional chessboard for bloody proxy wars.

“It is no longer about the Syrian people,” said Hani, another refugee who would only tell his first name. “It is now principally a to-and-fro between two foreign ministers, in Moscow and Washington, with the GCC and Turkey scoring points of their own”.

But with the Assad regime refusing to budge despite the combined force of the US, EU, Israel, Turkey and the GCC lobby against it, and the opposition unable to make meaningful advances that might unseat the government, talk of negotiations has finally begun doing the rounds.

Both the government and elements in the opposition have made calculated offers of talks, even though preconditions on both sides rule out any real possibility for the time being.

There is also growing concern in Washington about the war’s likelihood of spilling over into countries where it has strategic and military interests.

In case of a prolonged struggle, which is the most likely scenario, “the US could sustain unimaginable losses given its many assets in the region, from energy sources to military bases,” according to a report in Lebanese Al-Akhbar newspaper, a widely followed news source across the Levant.

The Turks, too, have lost their initial enthusiasm, and Prime Minister Erdogan’s sharp rhetoric has subsided given the large cost of hosting the FSA, more than a hundred thousand refugees, and the Kurdish problem resurfacing at an inopportune time.

Yet even if a successful turn towards negotiations can be engineered, it will be near impossible to get al-Nusra to disengage. Theirs is never a people’s struggle, and they vehemently oppose democratic values. They fight to resurrect their own obscure version of the caliphate, and will continue the fight for Damascus regardless of whether Bashar or the opposition holds power.

The US/GCC/EU compact has un-bottled the al Qaeda genie in Syria, which shows they have learnt little from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the insurgency in Pakistan’s tribal area.