Today, the President of Yemen said that al Qaeda is growing in power inside his country.
Yesterday, suspected militants linked to al Qaeda killed an intelligence officer in southern Yemen.
The day before, three Yemeni air force pilots based in southern Yemen were murdered.
Sadly, the facts seem to be on the President's side.
Read more:
http://news.yahoo.com/yemens-leader-warns-al-qaida-expansion-182348969.html;_ylt=ArzpAHZPTBXMToNR361K2MtvaA8F;_ylu=X3oDMTNmcjJiZmhsBG1pdAMEcGtnAzhhMjc0NzUzLWQ4YWQtM2Y3Yy05N2UxLWUyYTYxYTNmM2EyYQRwb3MDNQRzZWMDbG5fTWlkRWFzdF9nYWwEdmVyAzJjYWE4MTIwLWI4ZDYtMTFlMi05ZmZmLWIxNGEzYTg5MTIyOA--;_ylg=X3oDMTBhYWM1a2sxBGxhbmcDZW4tVVM-;_ylv=3
There aren't enough bars jihadis would go to. Nowhere you could go, sit with a drink, and eavesdrop on the messy, convoluted and contradictory mess that is violent jihadism around the world. So instead we have the imaginary Sharaaabtoon, a place where various self-proclaimed mujahadeen will be brought forth to be seen and overheard, just as if they were the clientele of a bar. Remember: no shahada, no service. Twitter: @Sharaabtoon
Thursday, 9 May 2013
Tuesday, 7 May 2013
Featured News: Two Malian soldiers killed in Gao suicide attack
France hasn't even finished withdrawing its troops from Mali yet, but the jihadis they were sent to fight are already stepping up their attacks.
Read more:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22416987
Read more:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22416987
Featured News: Jihadis crowd source for ways to beat drones
Its official: US drone strikes are the greatest fear of jihadis along the Afghan-Pakistani border. In a new online magazine launched by some of these militants, they appeal to the Ummah to "unite and come up with an answer" to their drone problem.
Read more:
http://news.yahoo.com/jihadi-magazine-appeals-help-against-drones-172729788.html
Read more:
http://news.yahoo.com/jihadi-magazine-appeals-help-against-drones-172729788.html
Syria’s coming Jihadi Ascendancy? Part Two: Algerian Lessons
Summary:
in newly-independent Algeria, a split between the political leaders of the government
in exile and the armed brigades on the front lines led to a conflict between
them –one which the military leaders easily one. Syria’s opposition appears to
be following this model of a weak, vacillating political leadership outside the
country coming to clash with a much stronger “opposition” military force inside
Syria: the jihadis. If al-Assad is toppled from within, we may see a jihadi-led
military alliance taking power in Syria at the expense of the political
leadership.
The Setting
A once-powerful regime, with heavy support from overseas, despite its advanced weaponry, supremacy in the air and considerable power to win conventional battles, nevertheless found its control rapidly deteriorating to cover only a series of coastal enclaves. Its enemy called itself “mojahedin” and employed terrorist and guerrilla-style warfare. The regime decided to give up on the goal of keeping control of the country, and negotiated with the rebellion’s political leaders in exile. The members of the exile government, who spent years building the international alliances and legitimacy they believed their new regime would need, returned to their “liberated” country, only to find it themselves facing a new opponent. Most of the leaders of the fighting groups had no intention of allowing the returning politicos to assume power won by their blood and struggle. The two sides came to open conflict with each other, and the military leaders swiftly crushed the politicians, handing power to those with the best military connections, not necessarily to those with the widest public support.
A once-powerful regime, with heavy support from overseas, despite its advanced weaponry, supremacy in the air and considerable power to win conventional battles, nevertheless found its control rapidly deteriorating to cover only a series of coastal enclaves. Its enemy called itself “mojahedin” and employed terrorist and guerrilla-style warfare. The regime decided to give up on the goal of keeping control of the country, and negotiated with the rebellion’s political leaders in exile. The members of the exile government, who spent years building the international alliances and legitimacy they believed their new regime would need, returned to their “liberated” country, only to find it themselves facing a new opponent. Most of the leaders of the fighting groups had no intention of allowing the returning politicos to assume power won by their blood and struggle. The two sides came to open conflict with each other, and the military leaders swiftly crushed the politicians, handing power to those with the best military connections, not necessarily to those with the widest public support.
The country was newly-independent Algeria –but it could just
as easily be Syria, if the al-Assad regime falls to its armed internal enemies.
In the previous instalment of Sharaabtoon, the coming split between the
out-of-country Syrian National Council (SNC) and the armed opposition within
Syria (especially the jihadis like the al-Nusra Front, but also the more hard-line
Islamist elements of the Free Syrian Army –FSA) was explained. The military
prowess, extensive funding and ‘uniting’ sectarian message of the jihadis will
continue to draw fighters to them, and the SNC and more moderate FSA elements
will have to shun and exclude the jihadis to keep receiving assistance from
their Western allies.
If al-Assad falls, and these two sides fight for control of
the new Syria, the result will likely be the same as was seen in Algeria. The
fighting brigades, led by jihadis and their allies, will come to dominate the new Syrian political landscape.
How Algeria was Won
What doomed the Algerian Provisional Government (consisting largely of the political leaders who had waited out the war against the French in exile) was essentially its lack of sufficient firepower inside the country when the struggle with the military-led faction broke out. Only a minority of the National Liberation Front (FLN) fighters backed the Provisional Government, causing them to have little control outside of parts of the capitol city region, and one other area. Much of this lack of support can be attributed to the fact that the commanders of the military faction had far closer connections with the fighting brigades, and much deeper relationships with them after years of leading them against French forces. This was compounded by the “cult of the gun” that had emerged amongst the internal FLN fighters and supporters. France’s focus on defeating the Algerian rebellion with military means had its mirror in convincing the supporters of that revolt that only a military solution could end French rule. Hence the armed struggle was elevated above all other endeavours, and politicians were seen as weak and ineffectual.
Those same French military operations did the greatest damage
to the kind of fighting brigades amongst which the future leaders of the
Provisional Government had the most support, the ordinary maquis (guerrilla
brands), especially in Algiers. Least affected had been the ‘Army of the
Frontiers’ fighters, who enjoyed heavy backing from the Moroccan and Tunisian
governments and who could move back and forth across the borders at will,
giving them both greater arms and protection. This Army of the Frontiers was
dominated by those FLN military leaders who refused to submit to the rule of
politicians, and who would subsequently undertake the “March on Algiers” and
oust the Provisional Government and its scattered supporters.
Syria’s Fighting Men
The current scenario in Syria has its differences, but the broad similarities are compelling, and the factors which favour a jihadi rise are even stronger than those which aided the rise of the military leaders in Algeria. Like French counterinsurgency operations, al-Assad’s forces have compelled Syria’s opposition politicians to largely reside abroad. The rising size and power of the jihadis, detailed in the previous instalment, is akin to the lopsided advantage the Army of the Frontiers enjoyed in Algeria, as is the jihadis’ comparatively generous foreign support. The more moderate FSA brigades have the “non-lethal” support of the West; the jihadis have arms and funds from the deep pockets of the pro-Islamist Gulf Arabs. The failure of the West to provide effectual assistance to the rebels has led many fighters who previously pinned their hope on NATO (as in Libya) to give this up, and lose any desire to make themselves acceptable to the West by shunning the jihadis. More and more Syrian rebels are asking “What has the West done for us? Now, we have only God." Al-Assad’s forces have so far been able to inflict greater defeats on the non-jihadi fighters than the jihadis (hence the admiration the other rebels feel for the jihadis’ “special forces” prowess), again weakening the forces most likely to ally themselves with the SNC in a post-al-Assad contest.
Syria’s Fighting Men
The current scenario in Syria has its differences, but the broad similarities are compelling, and the factors which favour a jihadi rise are even stronger than those which aided the rise of the military leaders in Algeria. Like French counterinsurgency operations, al-Assad’s forces have compelled Syria’s opposition politicians to largely reside abroad. The rising size and power of the jihadis, detailed in the previous instalment, is akin to the lopsided advantage the Army of the Frontiers enjoyed in Algeria, as is the jihadis’ comparatively generous foreign support. The more moderate FSA brigades have the “non-lethal” support of the West; the jihadis have arms and funds from the deep pockets of the pro-Islamist Gulf Arabs. The failure of the West to provide effectual assistance to the rebels has led many fighters who previously pinned their hope on NATO (as in Libya) to give this up, and lose any desire to make themselves acceptable to the West by shunning the jihadis. More and more Syrian rebels are asking “What has the West done for us? Now, we have only God." Al-Assad’s forces have so far been able to inflict greater defeats on the non-jihadi fighters than the jihadis (hence the admiration the other rebels feel for the jihadis’ “special forces” prowess), again weakening the forces most likely to ally themselves with the SNC in a post-al-Assad contest.
Al-Assad’s air power continues to be formidable, and allows his regime to frustrate many conventional rebel offensives, giving an edge to those rebels skilled at non-conventional attacks on the regime, such as co-ordinated suicide bombings. Al Nusra and other jihadis’ alliances with al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) give them unique access to the necessary skills. The jihadis also enjoy an implicit ally in the government of Jordan. The Hashemite Kingdom has witnessed horrific violence resulting from large militarized refugee populations residing within its borders before, and so is keen to see the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees already within its borders return home as soon as possible. More likely than not, that means a military solution by those rebels who are currently strongest, giving the Jordanian government an incentive to let arms and supplies move across its borders to the rebels. Much of the same is true of the Turkish government. All this is to say nothing of the public services the jihadis run, which builds their support amongst the Syrian population daily. At present the jihadis and their allies in Syria remain a minority of rebel fighters, albeit a sizeable one, but all these factors will cause them to quickly grow the longer the conflict continues. Not only will a “cult of the gun” emerge, but as the most effective wielders of the gun, a “cult of jihad” is likely to take hold of much of Syria’s internal opposition.
Syria’s Forlorn Political Hopes
The successes of the jihadis on the battlefield are only mirrored by the vacillation and squabbling in the halls of politics. The SNC has been seen as consumed by infighting and ineffectual on the ground almost since it was formed in October 2011. Many of its members are long-standing exiles and opponents of the al-Assad regime, seen by many within Syria as disconnected from recent events and the on-going struggle.
These weaknesses caused another body, the National Coalition
for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, to be set up in November 2012
as an alternative. Despite the recognition and diplomatic support the National
Coalition has subsequently enjoyed from other nations (especially Western
democracies), it has received little more than lip-service support from the
armed brigades within Syria, and what little influence it enjoys largely stems
from the fact that the SNC controls twenty-two of its seventy council seats.
The National Coalition as a whole has firmly shunned Syria’s jihadis,
comparatively to the limited links the SNC maintains with them. This is a poor
omen for its ability to influence events on the ground. Significantly, it was
the jihadis who initiated the recent rebel offensives in Aleppo, Damascus and
Raqqa province, which were not sanctioned by the local leaders linked to the National
Coalition. The al-Tawhid Brigade (كتائب التوحيد), a
prominent and powerful Islamist unit of the FSA, refused to join the National
Coalition when the latter was founded, even though this brigade actively
supports the SNC.
The first leader of the National Coalition, Moaz al-Khatib (a
Sunni cleric, seen as a unifying figure in Syria) resigned in March this year,
complaining of too much Western interference and rule-setting. He was replaced
by the President of the SNC, George Sabra. Just before al-Khatib’s resignation,
an interim government with a SNC-linked Islamist Prime Minister, Ghassan
Hitto. Hitto, however, is a joint Syrian and American citizen, having lived in
the USA since 1980 –longer than many of the rebel fighters have even been
alive. President
Sabra has insisted that the SNC will not be “subsumed under anybody.” The
National Coalition is further hampered by its failure to provide meaningful
services to civilians inside Syria. Essentially, the National Coalition has
significant weaknesses of its own, and only enjoys influence on the ground
through the SNC politicians who increasingly dominate it. At best, it is becoming
a weak appendage of the SNC it was meant to replace.
The political opposition is further divided by the refusal of
the National Co-ordination Committee (NCC) to work with either the National
Coalition or the SNC. Formed in November 2011, the NCC is made up largely of
left-leaning, Kurdish and independent non-Islamist political parties and
activists. It calls for dialogue with the al-Assad regime rather than its
military ouster, and vociferously opposes Western intervention or diplomatic
pressure. Although its influence is limited, the fact that even the political
exiles cannot be united against al-Assad is a severe sign of weakness.
But perhaps the greatest indictment of all against these
political leaders is that even the Western democracies that were initially so
keen to embrace these councils are now beginning to side-line them. In late
February this year, the US government announced that it was stepping up with
another $60 million in aid to the Syrian rebels –but this aid is to be provided
directly to the FSA’s military groups inside Syrian. The SNC will continue to
be involved and consulted on the distribution, but the sense that the internal
actors are those most significant to the outcome of the struggle is undeniable.
What can be done?
All of these factors indicate that, if al-Assad falls or retreats with his forces to an Alawite-majority rump state on the coast, the contest for who will control newly “liberated” areas of Syria will be won by the jihadis, not the SNC or National Coalition, just as the Army of the Frontiers won control in Algeria.
It is possible that foreign intervention could change this internal equation, but it would depend highly on the form that intervention takes. The simple enforcement of a “no fly zone” against regime air power, or the creation of safe “humanitarian corridors” to ensure safe movement of refugees (and implicitly also of rebel forces), would do little to truly change the outcome. These actions would only amplify the on-going military trends without shifting the balance between the different armed wings of the opposition. The provision of “lethal” aid (meaning weapons) by the West to their preferred armed groups could help them win greater success and prominence on the battlefield, but potentially these weapons could simply end up flowing to those who already have the most power to control territory and distribution: the jihadis. Direct Western intervention with troops could certainly win the war and allow the West to choose the new regime, at least in the immediate sense, but this course of action is fraught with its own series of complications, especially the fact that most of the aforementioned political groups oppose Western troops entering Syria. Most importantly, however, no amount of arms or funds, or even direct intervention, can rectify the weak and fractured nature of the exiled political leadership itself –and a political alternative is needed to exclude the jihadis from power.
The flailing and non-co-operation of Syria’s self-proclaimed political leaders empowers the armed brigades inside Syria, and especially so the jihadis, who draw their arms from their rich Gulf Arab backers, not from the flailing councils, who are now not even the sole conduit for what little Western non-lethal aid is available. If the war continues its current course, and al-Assad falls to his internal military opponents, the most powerful of these armed brigades will dominate the new Syria –and that means a very large slice for the violent jihadis. That means significant power and resources for the jihadis to put to use everywhere else they wish to spread conflict.
What can be done?
All of these factors indicate that, if al-Assad falls or retreats with his forces to an Alawite-majority rump state on the coast, the contest for who will control newly “liberated” areas of Syria will be won by the jihadis, not the SNC or National Coalition, just as the Army of the Frontiers won control in Algeria.
It is possible that foreign intervention could change this internal equation, but it would depend highly on the form that intervention takes. The simple enforcement of a “no fly zone” against regime air power, or the creation of safe “humanitarian corridors” to ensure safe movement of refugees (and implicitly also of rebel forces), would do little to truly change the outcome. These actions would only amplify the on-going military trends without shifting the balance between the different armed wings of the opposition. The provision of “lethal” aid (meaning weapons) by the West to their preferred armed groups could help them win greater success and prominence on the battlefield, but potentially these weapons could simply end up flowing to those who already have the most power to control territory and distribution: the jihadis. Direct Western intervention with troops could certainly win the war and allow the West to choose the new regime, at least in the immediate sense, but this course of action is fraught with its own series of complications, especially the fact that most of the aforementioned political groups oppose Western troops entering Syria. Most importantly, however, no amount of arms or funds, or even direct intervention, can rectify the weak and fractured nature of the exiled political leadership itself –and a political alternative is needed to exclude the jihadis from power.
The flailing and non-co-operation of Syria’s self-proclaimed political leaders empowers the armed brigades inside Syria, and especially so the jihadis, who draw their arms from their rich Gulf Arab backers, not from the flailing councils, who are now not even the sole conduit for what little Western non-lethal aid is available. If the war continues its current course, and al-Assad falls to his internal military opponents, the most powerful of these armed brigades will dominate the new Syria –and that means a very large slice for the violent jihadis. That means significant power and resources for the jihadis to put to use everywhere else they wish to spread conflict.
In Part
3: Syria’s jihadis and the wider world.
Monday, 6 May 2013
Featured News: UN official claims Syrian rebels used chemical weapons
If Syrian rebels are capturing government chemical weapon stockpiles and then using them on the battlefield, then its not a question of "if" they will fall into jihadi hands, but "when."
Significant quantities of a chemical weapon like sarin gas and an advanced delivery system are needed to put it to truly devastating use. More primitive attempts at use are likely to be no more destructive than conventional weapons. This was seen in May 2004 when Iraqi insurgents detonated a sarin gas shell near a US convoy, only to see the chemicals fail to mix properly, resulting in no American fatalities.
However, even smaller quantities can be put to deadly use against confided civilian targets, as was demonstrated in the Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1994. Such chemical weapons in the hands of jihadis are therefore a very real danger to Shia civilians in government-controlled Syria, and the people of Israel.
Read More:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22424188
Significant quantities of a chemical weapon like sarin gas and an advanced delivery system are needed to put it to truly devastating use. More primitive attempts at use are likely to be no more destructive than conventional weapons. This was seen in May 2004 when Iraqi insurgents detonated a sarin gas shell near a US convoy, only to see the chemicals fail to mix properly, resulting in no American fatalities.
However, even smaller quantities can be put to deadly use against confided civilian targets, as was demonstrated in the Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1994. Such chemical weapons in the hands of jihadis are therefore a very real danger to Shia civilians in government-controlled Syria, and the people of Israel.
Read More:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22424188
Sunday, 5 May 2013
Featured News: Car bomb hits Qatari delegation in Mogadishu -7 killed
Sponsoring jihadis in a foreign conflict may or may not help the sponsor government's chosen side win the war, but historically there has always been one certainty: blowback. Jihadis have never failed to eventually turn on their sponsors, if they get the chance.
Qatar isn't funding jihadis in Somalia (to anyone's knowledge) -but they are likely funding militants linked to al Qaeda either directly or indirectly in Syria.
The fact that al Qaeda-linked militants bombed a military convoy carrying a Qatari delegation in Mogadishu this morning should give the Qataris pause about their strategy in Syria.
Qatar isn't funding jihadis in Somalia (to anyone's knowledge) -but they are likely funding militants linked to al Qaeda either directly or indirectly in Syria.
The fact that al Qaeda-linked militants bombed a military convoy carrying a Qatari delegation in Mogadishu this morning should give the Qataris pause about their strategy in Syria.
Syria’s coming Jihadi Ascendancy? Part One: The Government, the Opposition, and the Jihadis
Summary:
jihadis linked to al-Qaeda already
account for at least a quarter of all Syrian rebel fighters, and they are on a
collision course with the non-jihadi opposition,
especially its political leaders in exile.
So far, the only groups that are winning in Syria’s civil war are the violent jihadis.
Jihadi fighters in Syria have punched above their weight in military terms since the early days of the civil war -however, they may come to play an even more significant role in determining the political outcome of the conflict. Their ever-growing power on the internal military front of the war against the al-Assad regime is setting the Syrian opposition up for a struggle between its internal military wing(s), and its external political wing, the Syrian National Council (SNC). Most worryingly, this struggle could follow the path of the similar internal-external clash in newly-independent Algeria, which ended with the ascendancy of those who fought in the trenches, not the politicians who built international alliances in exile.
The Choice
Until early April this year, the Syrian opposition's political leaders abroad faced a choice: should they attempt to integrate the jihadi fighting brigades inside Syria into their political structure and give them a role in a post al-Assad government, or should they do their best to exclude and isolate them? What made this choice difficult was that the most prominent jihadi group was also the most aggressive and successful arm of the rebel forces: the al-Nusra Front (جبهة النصرة لأهل الشام). A salafi group, many of al-Nusra’s members previously fought against under the banner of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) against US forces. The al-Nusra Front formed in Syria between late 2011 and early 2012, when it was joined by several leading militants from Palestinian and Lebanese-Palestinian jihadi groups. It now likely accounts for up to a quarter of all opposition fighters inside Syria, and its popularity continues to grow as it both wins victories and provides services to the civilian population.
The al-Nusra Front has
carried out a string of highly successful bombings (including suicide bombings)
against Syrian government and security forces targets, and has been at the
forefront of the “Battle of Aleppo” alongside the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and
other Islamist and jihadi forces
attempting to capture the city. Other rebels in Aleppo have described
al-Nusra’s fighters as “like special forces”. Its arms and training are widely
considered to be the best amongst the opposition. While the exact origin of its
funding is unclear, it appears to be flush with weapons and money. Generous
Gulf Arab (especially Qatari) aid to Islamist (especially salafi) opposition
fighters is seen as the likely source. This further compounds al-Nusra’s
ability to recruit, as its sponsors furnish it with weapons, whereas rebels
backed by the West receive only “non-lethal” supplies.
Conversely, however, the al-Nusra Front was viewed with deep suspicion by the SNC’s Western allies, due to its history of atrocities (including bombing attacks against civilian targets, the mass execution of captured government soldiers, and the murder of a pro-government Syrian journalist) and its suspected links to international jihadi terrorist organisations. The political exterior faced the choice of marginalizing its own importance in the interior by severing its links with the actual rising power in the warzone, or of trying to build relations with them at the cost of their alliances with Western democracies.
Al-Nusra's Bad Company
This choice was removed earlier this month, when the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq (دولة العراق الإسلامية) -an umbrella organisation of violent jihadi groups largely created out of the former al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) –announced that it was merging with the al-Nusra Front to form a new organisation: the "Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham." Although Abu Golani, the leader of al-Nusra, announced the next day that their relationship constituted an alliance, not a merger, the crucial aspect was established: Syria’s pre-eminent fighting group was being supported with funds and recruits by al Qaeda.
For the SNC, or the FSA, to link itself in any formal way with what was now essentially a branch of al Qaeda would be to destroy its international legitimacy and bring ostracism on itself from Washington to Ankara. For its part, a merger or alliance with al Qaeda shows that the al-Nusra Front is entirely unconcerned with building the kind of international alliances that the SNC desires. These two wings of the Syrian opposition have thus chosen two irreconcilable paths. Indeed, in future we will become less likely to speak of the "Syrian opposition" as a singular entity, and more and more come to speak of a divide between jihadi and non-jihadi opposition groups in Syria, if not a greater plurality of competing groups altogether.
Conversely, however, the al-Nusra Front was viewed with deep suspicion by the SNC’s Western allies, due to its history of atrocities (including bombing attacks against civilian targets, the mass execution of captured government soldiers, and the murder of a pro-government Syrian journalist) and its suspected links to international jihadi terrorist organisations. The political exterior faced the choice of marginalizing its own importance in the interior by severing its links with the actual rising power in the warzone, or of trying to build relations with them at the cost of their alliances with Western democracies.
Al-Nusra's Bad Company
This choice was removed earlier this month, when the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq (دولة العراق الإسلامية) -an umbrella organisation of violent jihadi groups largely created out of the former al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) –announced that it was merging with the al-Nusra Front to form a new organisation: the "Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham." Although Abu Golani, the leader of al-Nusra, announced the next day that their relationship constituted an alliance, not a merger, the crucial aspect was established: Syria’s pre-eminent fighting group was being supported with funds and recruits by al Qaeda.
For the SNC, or the FSA, to link itself in any formal way with what was now essentially a branch of al Qaeda would be to destroy its international legitimacy and bring ostracism on itself from Washington to Ankara. For its part, a merger or alliance with al Qaeda shows that the al-Nusra Front is entirely unconcerned with building the kind of international alliances that the SNC desires. These two wings of the Syrian opposition have thus chosen two irreconcilable paths. Indeed, in future we will become less likely to speak of the "Syrian opposition" as a singular entity, and more and more come to speak of a divide between jihadi and non-jihadi opposition groups in Syria, if not a greater plurality of competing groups altogether.
The Ties that Bind
A vicious anti-Shia outlook is a uniting factor for these and many smaller jihadi groups. In an al-Nusra video posted online, a crowd of bearded men stand behind a little boy who, while slitting the air with a knife, sings “Just wait Alawites. We will come to slaughter you." The Alawites are a Shia offshoot which counts around ten per cent of the population (including President Bashar al-Assad himself) among its members, and from which al-Assad draws many prominent officials in his regime and most members of the of pro-government shabiha (الشبيحة) militias (another fifteen per cent of Syria’s population are Christians, other Shias and Druze, and the rest are Sunnis).
In Ahrar al-Sham’s first broadcast, they described the al-Assad regime as part of a “Safavi” (Iranian) plot to spread Shia Islam and establish a Shia state extending from Iran to Lebanon and Palestine. In December of 2012 there appear to have been instances of Shia mosques being burned by rebel forces. In May this year Islamist fighters associated with the FSA posted pictures online of their “exhumation” and secret reburial of a companion of the Prophet Mohammed entombed in the town of Adra, because this “Shiite shrine” had “become a centre of polytheism”. The accusation of “polytheism” against Shias is a staple of (Sunni) jihadis. Jihadi terrorism against Shia targets in Syria predates the current civil war; in September 2008, a Damascus car bombing killed seventeen near a prominent Shia shrine. Another explosion in the same neighbourhood in December 2009 may also have been a bombing. This kind of sectarianism gives the more hard-line Islamists and jihadis a unifying cause, and puts these groups (even those within the FSA) at odds with non-sectarian and secular members of the opposition.
However jihadi sectarian violence has not just been directed against Shias; following a pattern seen in many other conflicts involving salafi jihadis, other Sunni Muslims of the “wrong” school or persuasion, and other religious minorities, have been targeted. Most notably, the leading (though not uncritical) pro-regime Sunni cleric and over forty other worshippers were killed in March when a prominent Sunni mosque in Damascus was targeted by a suicide bomber during a sermon. In February, following animosity between the United Courts Council (which is linked to the SNC) and sharia courts backed by al-Nusra, fighters belonging to the latter stormed a United Courts Council courthouse in Aleppo, where they assaulted and kidnapped scholars and judges.
Attacks against Christians by anti-government protesters began in mid-2011, and in Homs especially even Islamist fighters associated with the FSA have been implicated in the ethnic cleansing of Christians. Chechen fighters suspected of being linked with the al-Nusra Front (and likely also the Brigade of Emigrants in Greater Syria) are believed to have kidnapped two Syrian bishops in late April. Kidnapping, either for ransom or execution, is a well-established jihadi tactic. Shared sympathy for all these kinds of sectarian actions, as well as established co-operation on the battlefield, will make it difficult for the SNC or FSA to distance themselves from al-Nusra without alienating other jihadi groups and even more ‘moderate’ Islamist fighters within their own ranks. Such alienation would only foster an ever-closer jihadi alliance.
International Terrorism
Pressure from Western democracies to sever links with, and possibly even combat, such jihadi groups is likely to grow with time. This will be due to both horror at such attacks on civilians, and the possibility of Syrian jihadis (or foreigners trained by them) being linked to future terrorist attacks against Western targets. An indicative event occurred on April 29th this year, when two ground-to-air missiles were launched at a Russian passenger jet carrying around 160 travellers over Syria (en route from Egypt to Russia), which only survived destruction due to emergency manoeuvres. Although the identity of the attackers remains unconfirmed, barring a spectacularly risky "false flag" attack by the al-Assad regime (which would risk alienating its most powerful ally), it would seem that those responsible were certainly Syrian opposition fighters, and specifically jihadis judging by the fact that the target was both foreign and unquestionably civilian.
If similar attacks continue, and succeed, when it comes to Syria the designation of "terrorist" may well become synonymous with "rebel" in the minds of Europeans and Americans. Whether the bombings occur in Damascus, London, or over the skies of the Middle East, the SNC and FSA may find Western democracies demanding that jihadis be excluded from their areas of control in order for equipment and funds to continue flowing.
From now on, when speaking of the Syrian civil war, it will increasingly make sense to refer to three mutually opposed sides: the al-Assad regime, the Western-backed opposition, and the jihadis.
In
Part Two: the lessons France’s war in Algeria holds for the future of Syria’s jihadis.
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