Summary: Al Qaeda's ally the al-Nusra Front was caught with sarin gas in Turkey, allegedly planning an attack on a Turkish city known for its Alawite community. With al Qaeda in Iraq simultaneously striking Shia targets there, are these jihadi groups now trying to export Syria (and Iraq)'s Sunni-Shia violence across the region?
A 2kg cylinder of sarin gas was found yesterday by Turkish authorities after they searched the homes of militants belonging to the Syrian al-Nusra Front. This jihadi organisation is either a close ally or a full-blown branch of Al Qaeda (depending on who you talk to), as well as being the most aggressive and successful rebel fighting group in the Syrian civil war.
That al-Nusra possesses sarin gas is not in itself surprising. The rebels have already captured significant amounts of chemical weapons formerly belonging to Syria's al-Assad regime, and are believed to have used sarin in an attack that killed twenty-six people, including government forces, in March this year. As the leaders of the opposition's armed struggle, it was only a matter of time before al-Nusra was able to get its hands on some of these captured stockpiles. Al-Assad has even claimed that militants linked to al Qaeda (most likely al-Nusra) were behind the sarin attack in March -though al-Assad's regime attributes almost all rebel actions to al Qaeda lately.
However, the fact that al-Nusra was caught with Sarin in a foreign country (even one next door) is more significant. According to the authorities, the gas intended for use in an attack in the Turkish city of Adana. If so, this would be the first clear attack by Syrian rebels on a foreign target. A car bombing in the Turkish city of Reyhanlı earlier in May is believed to have been carried out by the al-Assad regime or its proxies. No immediate explanation has been offered for why al-Nusra would want to strike a Turkish city with Sarin Gas -Turkey's government and population are broadly pro-rebel, if not pro-jihadi (though this distinction could have been enough to motivate al-Nusra to strike). One extremely worrying explanation is that the target was to be Adana's significant population of Alawites, the Shia offshoot which forms the core of the al-Assad regime and its supporters. The Alawite community is well-established and was in place long before the current civil war, making it a visible and accessible target if al-Nusra desired to strike against Alawites abroad.
If al-Nusra really is trying to extend its sectarian campaign against Alawites abroad, this would be a significant escalation of the conflict. Turkey has over seven hundred thousand Alawites, and Lebanon has over a hundred thousand. The fact that al Qaeda in Iraq is also currently trying to foment sectarian blood-letting there by striking at Shia targets makes it hard not to see al-Nusra's actions here as part of a wider Sunni jihadi plan to spread their "war on Shi'ism" across the Middle East.
As previously related in Sharaabtoon, to truly put it to devastating use significant quantities of sarin gas, as well as an advanced delivery system, are required. More primitive attempts to use it tactically are likely to fail, as Iraqi insurgents found out in May 2004. However, it can be used very effectively in smaller strikes on concentrated civilians targets, as was seen in the Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1994. If the al-Nusra/al Qaeda alliance is planning to use chemical weapons against Shia civilians across the region, the inhabitants of Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran may have even more to fear from these jihadis gaining such armaments than even Israel's people do.
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| Alawite Distribution in the Levant |
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