Jihadists In The Syrian Civil War: On The Road To Damascus? - Analysis
By <
http://www.eurasiareview.com/author/rsis/> RSIS -- (March 16, 2013)
The two-year-old civil war in Syria has taken a devastating toll on lives
and its cities. The largely secular nationalist rebels have been joined by
Islamist militants from Iraq and homegrown jihadists. How will the entry of
the Islamists impact on the fighting and on a post-war Syria?
By Ahmed S. Hashim
THE SYRIAN civil war of the past two years has earned the dubious
distinction of being one of the bloodiest and most destructive conflicts in
contemporary Middle Eastern history. The country's infrastructure is in
shambles and vast swathes of major cities have sustained enormous damage.
The death toll, estimated at 60,000, could well reach 100,000 by the end of
2013.
The Syrian government continues to use its formidable military to bombard
rebel-held cities with artillery, helicopter gunships and fixed-wing
aircraft as well as surface-to-surface missiles. The rebels are fighting
back as ferociously as the regime.
From secular armed rebellion to jihad
When the Arab Spring came to Syria in March 2011, it had nothing to do with
Islamists - moderate or militant; rather it was a call for reform of the
system including more political freedoms, economic justice and jobs. These
were secular demands and the protesters were mindful of referring to their
demands as those of the entire Syrian people. The regime responded brutally.
Bashar al-Assad either could not understand what was happening or was
influenced by the call for a harsh response issued by regime hardliners and
the Alawite-controlled military and security services.
The problem with Assad's hard-line was that it led the protesters to up the
ante. The demonstrators moved towards armed rebellion. Poorly armed and
ill-trained rebels - including military deserters - coalesced around the
Free Syria Army (FSA) and began fighting a guerrilla war against the Syrian
military, one of the most heavily-armed and best-trained forces in the
Middle East.
The government labeled the protesters and armed rebels as militant Islamists
bent on bringing sectarian violence in Syria and undermining its national
cohesion. However, most of the fighters are members of nationalist
anti-regime groups or fighting battalions, often loosely gathered under the
umbrella FSA. Many are pious Muslims as well; and indeed, some have claimed
to be members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood which had ran afoul of
'strongman' Hafez al-Assad in the 1980s. Regime propaganda became
self-fulfilling prophecy at the beginning of 2012 when militant Islamists
began to play a significant role in the armed resistance.
How Syria became a magnet
It was not difficult for the jihadists to infiltrate into Syria. Firstly,
the infrastructure for them was already there as they had used Syria to
infiltrate into Iraq and play a role in the anti-American insurgency in that
country between 2004 and 2009. The intensification of the violence in Syria
into a civil war provided them with a heaven-sent opportunity to infiltrate
into Syria and help a floundering insurgency campaign. Some of these
jihadists were Iraqis who felt that they needed to return the favour and
help their Syrian brethren who had facilitated their 'jihad' in Iraq; while
others were Syrians and Jordanians.
The jihadists from Iraq formed the nucleus of the Jabhat al-Nusrah combat
group in Syria. Its full name is The Front for Aid to the People of the
Levant from the Mujahidin of the Levant in the Battlefields of the Jihad. It
is the primary jihadist group in the Syrian civil war and most likely
benefiting from Al-Qaeda's blessings and possibly material support from
Iraq. It is an effective fighting force as proven by its battlefield
performance in Idlib, Deir al-Zor and Aleppo. Its modus operandi has all the
hallmarks of an Al-Qaeda franchise or associated group: suicide bombings,
car bombings, use of improvised explosive devices, and assassinations of
military and security officials.
There are several other groups, two of the most important being the Brigades
of the Freedom of the Levant and Falcons of the Levant Division, both formed
in 2011. The first has a large following but denies any links with
transnational jihadist forces. The two groups have worked together to take
the huge Taftanaz Syrian Air Force base in mid-January 2013. The Falcons
group is a large organisation with between 600 and 1000 fighters divided
into several battalions. Its leader Ahmed Abu Issa claims that his movement
is a conservative Islamist one and not a militant jihadist one. However he
wants to see an Islamic state set up in Syria.
A second factor for the inflow of militants is that Syria is a perfect place
to wage jihad. There was a significant element of the population - primarily
the urban lower middle class - that had suffered severely from the
socioeconomic crisis that has afflicted Syria for over a decade; young men
from this class have provided much of the manpower of the jihadist groups in
the ongoing war.
Regional impact of jihadist foothold in Syria
Moreover, unlike peripheral Yemen or the remote and forbidding Sahel, Syria
is in the heart of the Middle East. It is surrounded by five neighbours,
four of which - Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq - allow relatively easy
access, especially Iraq. It has a regime tailor-made for excoriation by the
militant Islamists: secular, libertine, and run by a sect - the 'Alawites,
who are not seen as Muslim by the militants. Damascus is aligned with
Tehran, the capital of the Twelvers Shi'ism, whom the jihadists regard as
supposedly 'polytheistic'. A jihadist foothold in Syria can affect the
situation in volatile Jordan which many observers believe will be the first
Arab monarchy to succumb to revolution. Last but not least, Syria borders
the biggest enemy of all: Israel.
The denouement of the Syrian civil war is still way off. Bashar al-Assad
seems to have rallied somewhat: the military has not collapsed and the
rebels still have not gotten their act together. In fact, there has been
some serious in-fighting among the rebels. While Syria may collapse, it is
not likely that the jihadists would then seize power. They are not powerful
enough to seize power effectively there; too many local power groups as well
as regional and international forces are arrayed against them.
But just as their presence in the Syrian civil war has had a significant
impact, their role in a post-Assad Syria weakened by sectarian strife should
not be underestimated. They will be a significant perpetuator of violence
within that unfortunate country and possibly among Syria's neighbours. In
short, they will wreck the road to Damascus and Syria with it.
Ahmed S Hashim is an Associate Professor with the International Centre for
Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) a constituent unit of the
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological
University.
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Received on Sat Mar 16 2013 - 16:55:48 EDT
