by Wayne White
The reverberations of the desperate war inside Syria have increasingly radiated outward. In addition to the massive Syrian refugee exodus, Lebanon and Iraq in particular have been impacted adversely by heightened instability and violence. Yet actions associated with both have only increased their vulnerability. By contrast, the Turks [...]]]>
by Wayne White
The reverberations of the desperate war inside Syria have increasingly radiated outward. In addition to the massive Syrian refugee exodus, Lebanon and Iraq in particular have been impacted adversely by heightened instability and violence. Yet actions associated with both have only increased their vulnerability. By contrast, the Turks and Iraq’s northern Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) have boldly ramped up their mutual cooperation, in part to form a common front to counter an unwelcome rival Kurdish alliance taking shape inside Syria.
Despite rising violence in Lebanon, so far Iraq has been the most heavily affected overall of Syria’s neighbors. In addition to the almost daily backdrop of horrific bombings and attacks by gunmen on Shi’a and government-related targets (like those of Dec. 16 killing 65), there has been a surge in execution-style killings and beheadings, with bodies dumped in various locales (characteristic of the dark days of the 2006-2008 sectarian violence). Recently, Iranian workers on a gas pipeline in north central Iraq were also the objects of a massacre. Al-Qaeda associated elements have been the prime culprits, but Shi’a militias have become more active as well.
With more than 8,000 Iraqis already dead this year from extremist violence, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari warned earlier this month of more danger from a jihadist “Islamic emirate” that could take hold in much of Syria. Yet, the Baghdad government’s own marginalization and persecution of Iraq’s Sunni Arab community under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has been the leading cause for the powerful revival of Sunni Arab extremism in Iraq and its close linkage to the parallel phenomenon in Syria.
Meanwhile, hardline Grand Ayatollah Kazim al-Haeri (who has inspired Shi’a militias in Iraq for years) issued a fatwa on Dec. 15 pronouncing “fighting in Syria legitimate” and declaring those who die there “martyrs.” This fatwa probably will send many more Iraqi Shi’a into Syria to join over a thousand already believed to be fighting for the regime. But it also could intensify seething sectarian tensions within Iraq.
Other notable developments affecting Iraq, however, involve its northern Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). KRG President Masoud Barzani made his first visit to Turkey in any capacity since 1992 in mid-November. The obvious aim was to support Turkish President Erdogan’s peace efforts focused on the extremist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as well as to help Ergodan secure more Kurdish favor in Turkey’s March 2014 municipal elections.
Such high-profile assistance from Iraq’s Kurds would seem odd but for two other pressing matters. First, both Turkey and the KRG were alarmed by the declaration before Barzani’s visit by Kurdish militias in northeastern Syria of an interim administration for an autonomous Kurdish region there. Although repressed in the pre-civil war era, these militias are believed to have made their move with the approval of the Syrian government, and to have received aid from Assad’s allies, Iran and the Maliki government (relationships both Erdogan and Barzani oppose). Moreover, the Iraqi Kurds and the Turks fear the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), with links to the radical PKK, is behind the recent unity move.
For Damascus, any such agreement probably represents a cynical wartime concession of iffy standing simply to harness the bulk of Syria’s 2 million Kurds against anti-regime Sunni Arab rebels. Support from the regime probably also made possible the only UN airlift of winter relief supplies for any area outside government control into this predominantly Kurdish region. The only other airlifts to rebel areas associated with the Syrian regime have involved bombs.
Syrian Kurdish militias have been battling various rebels for over a year. On Dec. 13, cadres of the al-Qaeda linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) reportedly seized 120 Syrian Kurdish hostages near the Turkish border north of Aleppo, the latest of a number of such kidnappings. There has also been heavy skirmishing between the ISIL and extremist al-Nusra Front rebels and Syrian Kurdish militias along the edges of the Kurdish-controlled zone.
The second key driver in Barzani’s and Erdogan’s warming ties is oil. For years, Maliki’s government has been at odds with Barzani’s KRG over the KRG’s efforts to award its own contracts for large-scale oil and gas exports. KRG patience may have run out. In late November, Turkey and the KRG apparently came close to finalizing a comprehensive oil and gas deal — the latest move in Ankara’s cooperation with the KRG that has angered Baghdad.
Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz assured Iraqi officials on Dec. 1 that “any exports must be with the approval of the Iraqi government.” But with Iraq still balking over fears of greater KRG autonomy, the Turks and the KRG are keeping the pressure up; on Dec. 13, test flows of limited amounts of KRG crude were sent through a new pipeline already completed to carry Iraqi Kurdish exports Turkey sorely needs to diversify its energy dependence and secure oil and gas at a likely discount.
Lebanon has been paying ever more dearly for the ongoing sectarian violence just across its lengthy Syrian border and Hezbollah’s military intervention in Syria. Indeed, given Lebanon’s own complex sectarian mosaic, overspill was inevitable, with an ongoing litany of clashes, killings, threats, and squaring off otherwise among Sunni, Alawite and Shi’a communities radiating out from the border.
Tensions and sectarian violence, however, also have been rising in core areas of Lebanon. In the northern city of Tripoli, with a majority Sunni Arab community, a Lebanese soldier died and 7 others were wounded in a Dec. 5 clash with extremists sympathetic to the Syrian rebels. More than 100 have died in Tripoli so far this year in gun battles and a bombing pitting Sunni militants against the army, the police, Tripoli’s minority Alawite community, or Lebanese Shi’a elements. As a result, Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, recently turned security there over to the army for 6 months.
Probably most damaging for Lebanon has been Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria, sending thousands of seasoned fighters to reinforce those of the Assad regime. Hundreds of its combatants have been killed in action, and heavily Shi’a-populated areas of Beirut in particular (home to many Hezbollah fighters) have not simply remained a quiet “home front” away from Hezbollah’s war across the border.
Bombings like the one against the Iranian Embassy in Beirut and nearby buildings on Nov. 19, which killed two dozen, have hammered Shi’a neighborhoods. On Dec. 4, a Hezbollah commander back from the Syrian front, Hassan al-Liqqis, was gunned down in front of his residence. Hezbollah blamed the Israelis, but it is more likely he was another victim of rising home-grown violence. Today, Hezbollah claims it thwarted an attempted car bombing believed to have been aimed at one of its bases in the largely Hezbollah-controlled Bekaa Valley 20 miles east of Beirut.
Many assumed through the 1st year of the Syrian conflict that refugees would comprise the main burden faced by Syria’s neighbors, but the savagery and destruction wrought by the Syrian regime especially magnified even that challenge far beyond early worse-case scenarios. The virtual explosion of the rebel al-Qaeda factor, Hezbollah’s robust intervention, and the anti-rebel stance taken — or forced upon — most of Syria’s Kurds was not foreseen. All this further complicates ongoing efforts to find some path out of the Hellish Syrian maelstrom, be they Western efforts to oust Assad & Co. or the recently revived international efforts to bring the parties together for talks in Geneva. All things considered, the prospects for an effective way forward out of this crisis remain grim.
]]>by Wayne White
With the Assad regime already on the rebound, violence has spiked between rebel Islamic militants and more moderate opposition combatants within Syria. Although tensions between such groups have existed for some time, changes in the Islamist lineup in Syria and perhaps impending Western arms shipments exclusively to [...]]]>
by Wayne White
With the Assad regime already on the rebound, violence has spiked between rebel Islamic militants and more moderate opposition combatants within Syria. Although tensions between such groups have existed for some time, changes in the Islamist lineup in Syria and perhaps impending Western arms shipments exclusively to moderate rebel groups have intensified rivalries. Hezbollah’s entry into the conflict, notable regime gains against the rebels overall, and now the possibility of a rebel-on-rebel conflict within a conflict could reduce considerably the likelihood that the rebels — any rebels — would succeed in taking down Assad and Co. in the near-term.
In just three months the character of the struggle in Syria has taken a dramatic turn in favor of the regime. Rebel forces, reportedly short of munitions of late, have been driven from some key positions near Damascus, along the Lebanese-Syrian frontier, and in central Syria in and around Homs. Since Islamic extremist rebels have been in the forefront of the fighting, shortages of munitions might well have resulted from initial European-US efforts to re-focus collective arms resupply more tightly to embrace only more moderate rebels. Meanwhile, the recent intervention of thousands of fanatical Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon replenished and reinvigorated the regime’s own depleted infantry capabilities.
Rising violence between militant Islamist rebels and cadres of the more moderate “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) appears to have broken out following the assassination of FSA Supreme Military Council member Kamal Hamami by jihadists in Syria’s northern port city of Latakia on July 12 (where Hamami had previously organized one of the first successful FSA combat units). There are different accounts of how Hamami died, but it happened within territory controlled by the relatively new al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which has been pushing aside the previously powerful jihadist al-Nusra Front. Hamami may have gone there for a meeting, and was killed by the ISIL. Furthermore, the ISIL is not at all apologetic — quite the contrary.
Clashes had increased even before the killing of Hamami across rebel-held territory in northern Syria. The ISIL appears more fanatical than even al-Nusra. It has produced footage of its executions of captured leaders of rival rebel groups allegedly guilty of corruption. And there have been other recent examples of internecine violence. In early July, near the Syrian-Turkish border, heavy fighting broke out between a local moderate group and a rival Islamist cell that resulted in dozens of casualties and the beheading of the Islamist leaders involved.
ISIL, with the approval of al-Qaeda’s leadership, has, unlike al-Nusra (and as its name suggests), expanded its Islamist vision to include practically all the lands of the traditional “Fertile Crescent.” It also appears better organized than al-Nusra and has successfully expanded its influence across quite a lot of rebel-held northern Syria. This ambitious power play inevitably pitted the ISIL against many elements of the FSA, such as the Tawhid Brigade, affiliated with the FSA since last November and fighting in areas in and around the large northern Syrian city of Aleppo. An FSA commander claims that apparently prior to the Hamami killing, ISIL personnel had warned FSA-affiliated groups that the ISIL planned a complete take-over of rebel-held areas of Syria’s sprawling coastal province of Latakia.
Even worse, one ISIL source reportedly has claimed that the entire FSA is now regarded as heretical and an enemy of this burgeoning new extremist grouping. FSA sources indicate they will retaliate harshly.
I warned last month that US and Western plans to provide arms to “vetted” moderate rebel groups would have to be implemented quickly to forestall regime efforts to gain increased military advantage before they arrive. I also noted how regime gains over the past two months already have made moving arms among vetted groups inside Syria more difficult. Yet, no substantial arms shipments seem to have arrived a month later, and politicians in both Washington and London have been attempting to block them.
Meanwhile, the adverse impact inside Syria of the presumption such arms will be delivered has worsened. Regime forces have made new gains, further disrupting rebel lines of communication. And expanding violence between rebels tagged for arms deliveries and their extremist rivals means that in the opposition’s patchwork of control, groups like the ISIL probably would block (or seize) any arms deliveries attempting to cross territories they control. Moreover, some stronger extremist groups probably would be in a position to seize hefty quantities of such arms from vetted groups. Finally, talk of arms deliveries also may have inflamed moderate-extremist tensions since Islamic militants resent the one-sided nature of the impending aid and, in part, may be seeking to weaken moderate groups to reduce their ability to gain advantage from more and better arms.
Another rebel weakness overall is declining popular support. Over the past 18 months, local populations under rebel control in the north (from which we receive the most reliable reporting) have become more alienated by moderate rebel domination, which often has been dysfunctional and corrupt. Increasingly, Islamist rule became a preference, as it was accompanied by far less corruption, civil courts, and even some social services. With the rise of ISIL, however, much of that appeal has dissipated as well, with its more rigorous imposition of strict Sharia rule sullied by executions of inhabitants for alleged collaboration with the Assad regime or moral offenses.
Clearly, the collective opposition cause in Syria is in crisis. The most formidable rebel forces remain Islamic extremist, but they and their rivals are wasting combat power in self-destructive in-fighting. Moreover, the Jihadists’ rising militancy, broader ambitions and aggressiveness against rival rebel groups have not only potentially eroded their own ability to obtain foreign arms, but hurt efforts to secure arms for other rebels as well.
All this is splendid news for the Assad regime (and its allies) because earlier this year the government probably hoped only to keep hanging on. Now, however, it has been able to set its sights higher on the possibility of regaining control over still more lost territory. Yet, Syria continues to bleed with about 100,000 dead, vast numbers made homeless, much of the country already in ruins and real doubts as to whether central authority of any sort can be re-established over all of Syria in the foreseeable future.
]]>by Wayne White
The Obama Administration finally has decided to provide lethal military support to the Syrian rebels. Yet, if Washington’s main focus is providing arms, a detailed review of just that one option suggests it probably would not be enough to prevent some additional regime successes. Moreover, giving arms only [...]]]>
by Wayne White
The Obama Administration finally has decided to provide lethal military support to the Syrian rebels. Yet, if Washington’s main focus is providing arms, a detailed review of just that one option suggests it probably would not be enough to prevent some additional regime successes. Moreover, giving arms only to so-called “vetted” (or moderate) rebel groups could aggravate tensions between disparate opposition camps, perhaps leading to rebel infighting. Some believe a US goal in supplying arms now (aside from bolstering the rebels) would be to re-balance the situation as a prelude to negotiations. Yet, getting the many combatants-—especially the rebels–to stand down is unlikely, so the outcome of limited arms shipments could be familiar: more prolonged bloodletting and destruction.
Ideally, any robust US arms resupply to “vetted” rebels should have begun 18 months ago, when the rebels had established themselves as a viable counter to the regime, and the number of Islamic extremists in their midst was far more limited. A decision to do so now would risk being too selective militarily to have much overall impact. Also, some portion of whatever arms are supplied could trickle into extremist hands. And the option of having the US better coordinate the flow of arms to the opposition, if the amount of arms provided were not increased substantially, might not accomplish all that much in altering the situation to rebel advantage.
To elaborate on the country-wide military balance, even if supplies of arms successfully could be confined to relatively moderate rebels (although that distinction is a bit blurry inside Syria), they have not been the most successful opposition combatants against regime forces. The rebel military vanguard has been radical Islamist in character–even al-Qaeda affiliated–for some time now, a deeply disturbing trend in and of itself.
Then there is the thorny question of exactly what arms to provide. The rebels want large quantities of shoulder fired anti-tank rockets (like RPG-7’s) and surface-to-air missiles (like SA-7’s), as well as a far steadier supply of various types of ammunition. “Vetted” rebels probably should have been receiving large quantities of RPG-7’s and a reliable flow of ammunition long ago. But supplying SA-7’s or their equivalents is a different story, since any secured by terrorists could be used with great effect against commercial airliners–even US military transports in various regional venues.
Perhaps SA-7’s could be given in small numbers to “vetted” fighters to test how much of a difference these weapons actually would make and whether some of them would end up with extremist rebels. Monitoring such leakage effectively, however, would pose an extremely difficult challenge for US and other allied intelligence agencies. And, of course, there is the problem of possible straying from any such restricted policy by some regional suppliers (such as Qatar, which many suspect has been supplying rebel extremists).
Still, which rebels to supply aside, even an upgraded and more reliable flow of munitions to them might not enable the opposition to halt or reverse the momentum regime forces have seized, at least over the near-term. Thousands of Hezbollah combatants already are in the field with plentiful supplies and training. The regime rebound also appears to have been driven in part by an intensified fear within its popular base of the consequences of a Sunni extremist victory (probably with good reason).
Only a more complex and demanding no-fly zone in rebel-dominated northern Syria, in the south where the regime has made gains, both, or across the country entirely could remove the rebel need for SA-7’s, but such a course carries with it the very real potential for escalation. With a massive advantage over the rebels in armored vehicles and heavy artillery, even in the face of a no-fly zone suppressing Syrian aerial activity, the rebels would remain at the mercy of the regime’s other heavy weapons on the ground, thus tempting those establishing any sort of no-fly zone to attack regime ground targets as well.
Still worse, the lack of effective military coordination among many rebel groups has been a major tactical disadvantage more weapons-—and training–would not correct. This allows regime and Hezbollah forces to concentrate in selected locales (possibly Aleppo next) to maximize their advantage. Meanwhile, less coordinated rebel elements would likely remain unable to do likewise on a comparable scale (especially if the many hard-fighting extremist rebel cadres were left under-armed). Another growing problem for the rebels is popular support: excesses on the part of extremist elements have alienated significant numbers of Syrians previously supportive of the opposition in some key areas under rebel control.
An additional potential risk of selective arms shipments could be clashes between rival rebel groups. Extremist elements might attack more moderate rebel units receiving better arms, driven by need, resentment, or both. Some al-Qaeda in Iraq militants flowing into Syria already are veterans of combat against Arab forces allied to the US. Rebel infighting has occurred in past rebellions, such as the savage fighting that broke out between the less fanatical Islamic FIS and the militant GIA during their battle against the Algerian regime in the 1990’s.
A conflict within a conflict possibly pitting the extremist al-Nusra Front & the like against more moderate rebels exclusively receiving arms from the US and its allies would worsen an already complex and ugly maelstrom. Instead of strengthening the rebels, any infighting resulting from an inequitable distribution of arms would weaken both rebel factions–something the government eagerly would exploit to its advantage (as happened in Algeria).
It is no wonder it took the Obama Administration since late last summer to formulate a policy on lethal American support for Syria’s rebels, with limited regime chemical weapons use only partly driving yesterday’s decision. But even by mid-2012, supplying enough weapons to make a difference without providing them to extremists already had become an iffy proposition militarily. And with the opposition disunited, with some component groups bitterly opposing talks and rebels now regaining hope for victory over the regime with US help, useful diplomatic engagement also seems less promising than when Secretary John Kerry went to Moscow early last month.
]]>by Wayne White
The Biblical quotation, “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” could not be more relevant to what Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s near unremitting hostility toward Iraq’s powerful Sunni Arab minority has generated: a rising drumfire of mostly Sunni Arab bombings aimed at Maliki’s Shi’a base as [...]]]>
by Wayne White
The Biblical quotation, “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” could not be more relevant to what Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s near unremitting hostility toward Iraq’s powerful Sunni Arab minority has generated: a rising drumfire of mostly Sunni Arab bombings aimed at Maliki’s Shi’a base as well as his regime. Yet, in the face of the awful toll such bloodshed has taken in past years, Iraq’s Shi’a policymakers have remained unmoved. So, for the most part, Maliki and Co. may well continue this dangerously divisive policy, making further unrest in Iraq likely. Yet, responding with some grand offer of sectarian reconciliation might find few takers at this point.
When the US agreed to allow Sunni Arab tribesmen and former insurgents to join with American forces against al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) back in late 2006 (the so-called “Sunni Arab Awakening”), Maliki opposed the arrangement bitterly. Indeed, through late 2007, Maliki not only spurned this major initiative, he even at times attempted to attack Sunni Arab combatants working with US forces employing elements of the Iraqi Army especially trusted by him.
Initially, Sunni Arabs involved in the “Awakening” did not want to work with the Iraqi government either, only the Americans (regarding Maliki and his Shi’a allies as hostile, pro-Iranian and untrustworthy). Eventually, however, the vast bulk of the Awakening cadres agreed to serve in the Iraqi security forces in an attempt to bury the hatchet with Baghdad. Most of Iraq’s equally war-weary Sunni Arab tribal leaders came to feel likewise. This represented a strategic opportunity to initiate a process of meaningful Sunni Arab re-integration, though gradual and on terms set by Washington and the Maliki government.
The US duly extracted assurances from Maliki by 2008 (albeit with difficulty) allowing a large number of Sunni Arab fighters to obtain mostly low-level, often localized positions in the security forces. Yet, as US forces left the scene, Maliki not only backed away from the full thrust of these commitments, but began to target Awakening leaders and even some of the rank and file for extrajudicial arrest and assassination.
Thousands of former insurgent cadres remained on the government payroll for years — some even today — but lots of others left or were hounded out of their jobs (caught between the very real threat of arrest — or worse — from government authorities and bloody revenge attacks from AQI). Meanwhile, many Sunni Arab parliamentary candidates became victims of the Shi’a-controlled and highly politicized “de-Ba’thification” commission (which excluded them from running for or ever holding government office).
Quite a few of the small number of Sunni Arab officials to secure senior government rank were then accused of abetting terrorism. Ultimately, the most prominent of them all, Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, was accused in December 2011 of running an anti-Shi’a hit squad. Hashimi fled first to Iraqi Kurdistan (even Iraq’s Kurds refused to turn him over to Maliki) and then to Ankara. In this way, from 2008 through 2013 (and counting), Maliki and his Shi’a allies not only threw away an opportunity to reduce violence dramatically. They also gave AQI a new lease on life as an unknown number of disaffected Sunni Arabs apparently turned a blind eye to AQI’s activities or even gave it sanctuary once again.
For months now, Sunni Arabs also have taken to the streets, holding demonstrations throughout areas where they predominate to protest their mistreatment at the hands of the Iraqi government. Feeding seething sectarian resentment was a heavy-handed attack by government security forces late last month on a Sunni Arab protest camp in a public square near the disputed northern city of Kirkuk in which 26 died.
Making matters still worse has been the mainly Sunni Arab uprising just across the border in Syria against the minority Alawite-led Assad regime. Perhaps the only Arab government not siding with the rebels is Iraq’s (aligned instead with the Syrian regime’s only regional ally: Iran). Even more provocative has been the stream of Syrian-bound Iranian resupply flights passing over Iraq with Maliki’s permission. In response to US protests against these over-flights, Maliki has had a few flights land for inspection (doubtless a clever ruse I observed before while serving in the Intelligence Community: the country conducting military over-flights secretly informs the government needing to inspect a few for the sake of appearances which flights contain no military contraband and thus would pass inspection).
Since the Syrian rebel al-Nusra front declared its affiliation with both al-Qaeda and AQI, Maliki promised to crack down on al-Nusra’s roots in Iraq’s Sunni Arab northwest. With Sunni Arab Iraqis now so profoundly suspicious of the government in Baghdad, others sympathizing with al-Nusra, AQI or both, and still others assisting them, any major operations inside Iraq aimed at al-Nusra almost certainly would either encounter resistance or waves of even heavier AQI retaliatory bombings against government and Shi’a targets.
In fact, with fellow Sunni Arabs defiant in neighboring Syria (and many tribes and families sharing close cross-border ties), more trouble for Maliki from within Iraq’s Sunni Arab community was inevitable for a leader who has supplied them with a host of grievances since 2008. Now Maliki finds himself in a serious bind: even if the Assad regime succeeds in rebounding substantially, its control over the vast expanse of eastern Syria would remain iffy (providing Iraq’s more restive Sunni Arabs a ready sanctuary and a possible source of munitions and recruits — many of them now combat veterans of the Syrian civil war).
If, however, Maliki tries to mend his ways and promises better treatment, a fair share of the government rebuilding cash, and a lot more political representation, the offer’s credibility could be nil. Such a gesture now could look more like a temporary sop tossed out under pressure than a genuine commitment to end the longstanding policies feeding the animosity between Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and Maliki’s increasingly autocratic, pro-Iranian, Shi’a-led government.
]]>That Iran is deeply concerned with the civil war in Syria and is currently providing important assistance to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is not in question. What remains to be determined, however, is the form that its intervention — which has grown significantly over the past decade — is taking, its extent, [...]]]>
That Iran is deeply concerned with the civil war in Syria and is currently providing important assistance to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is not in question. What remains to be determined, however, is the form that its intervention — which has grown significantly over the past decade — is taking, its extent, impact, and, ultimately, its prospects for shaping developments in the Levant.
In its 43-page report released this month, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and its close collaborator, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), try to come up with some answers to these questions, arguing, predictably, that Tehran’s ability to project its power in the region – based on its strategic alliance with Syria, as well as those with its Iraqi and Lebanese proteges – would be sharply diminished in the event of Assad’s defeat. And while the authors of “Iranian Strategy in Syria” agree that Tehran is already pursuing a “hedging strategy” designed to maintain its Alawite and Shi’a allies in control of key parts of the country for as long as possible if indeed Assad should fall, they conclude that “over the long term, Iranian influence in the Levant is likely to continue waning as ground is lost.”
Iran is certainly well aware that the loss of Syria will significantly degrade its ability to project power in the Levant and will plan for such a contingency. In order to compensate for this loss and continue to present an effective deterrent, Iran may look to expand its activities in other countries and regions.
While a priori a reasonable conclusion, close scrutiny of the premises and evidence on which the study is based suggests a number of problems with its analysis.
First, while densely footnoted, the report depends far too heavily on uncertain data, unconfirmed facts, and interpretations of events that conveniently fit certain narratives that are based more on speculation than on reliable information. Though reliable information is indeed very difficult to come by under current circumstances, the authors could have strengthened their analysis by conducting more thorough research of local and regional media that have provided much serious and credible material on the subject. As it is, the authors’ over-reliance on U.S. Treasury reports and briefings, combined with the fact that the relatively few local sources cited in the study suffer either from well-known political bias or serious inaccuracies, stands out, as does the dearth of references to credible Iranian and Arab – particularly Lebanese, Iraqi, and Syrian – sources. Indeed, the relatively narrow range from which the study’s main sources are drawn, as well as the uncertainty of the “facts” on which it relies, effectively undercuts the rather sweeping conclusions it reaches and prevents the authors from considering alternative scenarios beyond those they assert with great confidence.
In some cases, the authors make assertions that cry out for rectification. For example, the report states that the Lebanese Hezbollah, at Tehran’s behest, is directly assisting the Syrian regime in different areas of the country. A battalion of al-Muqawama al-Islamiya fi Lubnan, the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon (Hezbollah’s mother military organization) did indeed lend a hand in defending the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in February 2012 when the IRGC’s base at Zabadani came under attack by rebel forces. But this incident should be seen as a local, precise, and reactive intervention by Hezbollah that was limited to the purpose of protecting a strategic Iranian camp in distress and had nothing to do with supporting the Syrian regular army or the regime, as argued by the report.
Similarly, the report’s description of the situation at Maqam al-Sayyida Zeinab, the Shi’a holy shrine, in Damascus – specifically, that it is under the protection of an Iranian-led mixed battalion of Syrian Alawi fighters, Hezbollah members, and militants of Iraq’s ‘Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq – conflicts with numerous local reports. The presence of the Abou al-Fadl al-Abbas brigade proves that Tehran is fighting with the regime in the Syrian capital, according to the report which cites the brigade’s Facebook page as its source for this “fact.” But it appears that the authors never examined the brigade’s FB page on their own, relying on the claims of a secondary source. Had they themselves studied the page, they would know that the purported Hezbollah members of the brigade in fact belong to AMAL, another Lebanese Shiite party which the United States has long considered a more moderate representative of the Lebanese Shi’a community with which Washington can do and has done business over the years.
Moreover, a review of the page’s content strongly suggests that the constitution of the brigade was more probably the result of personal initiatives by concerned Shiites around the region than it was a centrally organised recruitment effort by Iran. Indeed, the FB page offers no evidence of an Iranian hand at all. It does not appear to have occurred to the report’s authors that Arab Shiites would spontaneously volunteer to defend a holy shrine without any prompting from Tehran. Yet such a scenario is quite possible in light of the repeated threats by jihadist Sunni groups in the Syrian opposition to demolish it.
The report’s treatment of Hezbollah’s presence in northeastern Syria similarly fails to tell the whole story, accepting, as it appears to do, without providing critical context the opposition narrative that it amounts to a “military intervention [by Hezbollah] …in full coordination with the Assad regime.”
As noted by the report itself, the border in the region of al-Qusayr, the focus of the most recent fighting, has never been officially demarcated. As a result, about three dozen villages inhabited by some 30,000 mainly Shia Lebanese are located in Syrian territory. As early as last fall, both the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al Nusra began issuing threats — amply covered in Arab media — against these predominantly Shia villages for their alleged support of Hezbollah, which, in the increasingly sectarian language that has come to dominate the civil war, they referred to Hizb al-Shaytan, or the Party of the Devil. Skirmishes subsequently broke out within Lebanon between the Lebanese Army and Syrian rebel forces, including the FSA whose redoubts in Lebanese territory were also shelled occasionally by Syrian forces from the Syrian side of the border.
When the inhabitants of al-Qusayr – that is, Lebanese Shia living in Syria – came under repeated attack by groups of Sunni rebels, however, neither the Syrian nor the Lebanese armies came to their defense. As a result, they organized their own self-defense forces, called al-Lijan al-shaabiyya, or Popular Committees. Thus, the first Hezbollah fighters who died there did not belong to battalions sent by the central Hezbollah organization in Beirut to defend Assad’s regime as alleged in the report. They were members of local militias that had mobilized to defend their communities that had come under attack by the FSA and Sunni jihadist groups for being Shia and hence, presumably, pro-Assad.
In the wake of an intensification of attacks by the jihadist groups (including the now-infamous al-Farouq Brigade one of whose commanders was more recently video-taped cutting out the heart and lung of a dead regime soldier), the situation in the area has changed rather dramatically over the last few weeks, as Hezbollah in Lebanon decided to dispatch volunteers to fight alongside their Lebanese Shiite brothers in al-Qusayr. The Syrian army also joined the fight this month to help create a common secure area for both Shia and the regime’s Syrian supporters in the northwest. In any event, however, the creation of the Shiite self-defense forces in the area had nothing to do with the defense of Assad or, for that matter, the protection of Iranian strategic interests.
Of course, it is true, as the report claims, that controlling al-Qusayr and Homs now serves the strategic interests of both Iran and Hezbollah in securing a key arms-supply route from Iran through Syrian territory and thus helping maintain Tehran’s influence in the Levant, even if that was not original impetus for the fighting there.
But controlling that area is not the only way that Iran can achieve its stategic aims in the region, a key point that the report’s authors — who express great confidence that “the Syrian conflict has already constrained Iran’s influence in the Levant, and the fall of the Assad regime would further reduce Tehran’s ability to project power” — appear to miss entirely. Indeed, there are a variety of scenarios that would permit Iran to adjust to any new distribution of power in Syria in ways that could perpetuate its influence.
For example, the authors implicitly dismiss any possibility that Tehran could reach an understanding with future leaders of Syria. Likewise, they assume that any territory freed from the regime’s control will become subject to the authority of a strong, centralized state – one presumably capable of controlling air and land routes between Iran and Lebanon — rather than what appears increasingly likely at this point: that Bilad al-Sham will become a “(Dis-)United States of Syria” on the model of Iraq or Afghanistan for the foreseeable future. Indeed, will the future local “Islamic caliphates” or “free Syrian micro-Republics” have the means to prevent Iranian aircraft from using their skies? And, even more significantly, will it be in their interest to do so?
An implosion of Syria, its division into multiple power centers, and the probable competition for external support between them offer Iran – like other major regional players, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and perhaps even Israel – opportunities to recruit new local clients. And while Iran is generously hated by Syrian opposition groups for “having Syrian blood on its hands” and, as importantly, for being Shiite, it can still build useful relationships with at least some of the future masters of Syria, as it has done in Iraq in defiance of strong and persistent pressure from the U.S. Paradoxical understandings they may be, but that would not be the first time strategic pragmatism would triumph over ideology. History is full of such examples, even among radical jihadis.
Aurelie Daher is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton
University. She has earned a PhD in political science from
Sciences-Po, Paris, and has held a postdoctoral position at the
University of Oxford. Her research focuses on Hezbollah, Lebanese and Syrian politics, and Middle-Eastern Shiism.
by Wayne White
With a long history of misguided, damaging American intervention and meddling in the Middle East, the reported CIA effort to target the al-Nusra Front in Syria by helping Iraqi anti-terrorism units to attack its roots in Iraq seems to be the former and possibly destined to be the [...]]]>
by Wayne White
With a long history of misguided, damaging American intervention and meddling in the Middle East, the reported CIA effort to target the al-Nusra Front in Syria by helping Iraqi anti-terrorism units to attack its roots in Iraq seems to be the former and possibly destined to be the latter.
The Sunni Arab politics of Iraq, already complicated by the 2003 American invasion, have been further harmed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s unremitting hostility toward Iraq’s Sunni Arab community. He and his Shi’a cronies bitterly opposed the American deal with Sunni Arab insurgents back in late 2006 through 2008, and attempted to undermine the arrangement while US-Sunni Arab Awakening efforts to take down much of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) were in progress.
In the years since, Maliki has been rather consistent in his exclusion of the bulk of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs from the Baghdad political mainstream. He has driven away many of those who have sought or secured office using the machinery of so-called “de-Ba’thification” and has even purged, assassinated or arrested large numbers of former Awakening cadres as well as various other key Sunni Arabs, often on trumped up charges of terrorism (or no formal charges at all — frequently employing his own extrajudicial security forces or Iraq’s mainly Shi’a Anti-Terrorism Service, which answers directly to him).
In this context, it is hardly surprising that a robust measure of Sunni Arab extremism flourishes in Iraq (apparently more now than back in 2008 when most Sunni Arabs were, by contrast, relatively more war-weary and eager for some sort of enduring engagement with the government in Baghdad). Resentment over Maliki’s disinterest in anything that would re-integrate Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority into much of the country’s core activities has done a lot to sustain a drumfire of AQI bombings inside Iraq and, since late 2011, sent gaggles of Islamic fighters from Iraq’s Sunni Arab northwest into the raging battle for Syria.
Al-Nusra probably is to a large extent an arm of AQI, as the US alleges, but also could be the recipient of many Iraqi fighters simply enraged over the plight of Sunni Arabs in their own country more generally. Additionally, there are quite a few historic tribal and family connections that extend far beyond the Syrian-Iraqi border, making events in Syria that much more palpably personal for quite a few Sunni Arabs inside Iraq.
So al-Nusra most likely is more than an organization; a phenomenon welling up from the profound resentment among many Sunni Arabs toward hostile political orders in both countries. If so, that’s not something that can be surgically extracted. Unfortunately, there always is the possibility that somewhere down the road a frustrated Washington (after Baghdad inevitably fails to address al-Nusra, just as it has been unable to deal a crippling blow to AQI) might think drones offer such a capability. If, however, they ever were employed over Sunni Arab areas of Iraq, the anger currently aimed primarily at the Maliki government and the Assad regime would become far more focused on the US.
Al-Nusra clearly is an unwelcome and dangerous player on the opposition side amidst the fighting in Syria. Yet, the sheer length, brutality, mass destruction, horrific casualties and more than a million refugees generated by the violence so far, predictably have rendered more extreme certain elements of the opposition. The seeming rise in regime-like rebel atrocities most likely is linked to some extent to the duration of the carnage.
The US already has become unpopular in broad Syrian opposition and popular circles for not providing desperately needed military assistance. At first, this frustration centered upon frantic requests for a US/NATO no fly zone over Syria. Since hope for that evaporated, attention shifted to arms and ammunition needed by rebels to take on regime-armored vehicles and air power. Some oppositionists in Syria may understand why the US remains wary of providing surface to air missiles that could very well fall into the hands of international terrorist groups, but anti-tank rockets are less of a concern in that respect. Yet, Washington decided not to send any arms whatsoever to opposition fighters — even vetted ones — late last summer and once again recently.
The US designation of al-Nusra as a terrorist group does not appear to have reduced that group’s high military profile as the tip of the opposition’s combat spear against the forces of the Assad regime. And involving the US in a campaign against al-Nusra’s support base in Iraq now could easily be perceived more broadly as being anti-Sunni Arab. After all, many of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs might ask pointedly why the US has chosen not to take a stronger stand against Maliki’s ongoing persecution of and human rights violations against Iraq’s Sunni Arab community — concerns that extend far beyond AQI and its supporters.
Iraq essentially remains in a state of sectarian conflict with Maliki playing the leading role as provocateur. The opposition effort to take down the Assad regime in Syria also has become, in large measure, a sectarian conflict.
By doing little to cross Maliki about his mistreatment of Sunni Arabs, going after al-Nusra in Iraq and providing meager support to the Syrian opposition, Washington potentially is setting itself up to be viewed — at least by Sunni Arab participants in these struggles — as anti-Sunni Arab across much of the greater Arab al-Jazira region as well as the northern Levant. The US faces enough grievances in the region as it is. Why add more to the list?
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