“Greater Syria: From Dagestan to Xinjiang”

Al-Qaeda offshoots are set to declare an Islamist state in Syria’s north on Eid al-Fitr (August 8), according to Saudi Arabia’s leading daily Asharq Alawsat quoting a Free Syrian Army (FSA) top dog.

The paper quotes him saying the al-Qaeda-linked groups hope by then to have wrested control from the FSA of the two border crossings into Turkey: Bab al-Hawa and Harem.

Bab al-Hawa links Turkish and Syrian highways between the cities of Iskenderun and Aleppo. The closest town to Bab al-Hawa on the Turkish side of the border is Reyhanli in Hatay province, and the nearest town on the Syrian side is al-Dana.

Harem is right by the Turkish frontier in Syria’s northern Idlib Province.

The FSA official speaking to Asharq Alawsat linked plans to declare an Islamic state in Syria’s north to recent killings by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant of two senior FSA officers – namely, Fadi al-Qish, a local FSA commander in the village of al-Dana and Kamal Hamami (aka Abu Baseer al-Ladkani), member of the FSA Supreme Military Council.

Asharq Alawsat’s FSA source said the FSA was deploying units and checkpoints in areas targeted by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to prevent them falling into its fighters’ hands.

Tariq Alhomayed, Asharq Alawsat’s former editor-in-chief, writes in his daily column for the newspaper:

Irrespective of the accuracy of reports about armed clashes between al-Qaeda and the FSA, and the attempt to assassinate the latter’s overall commander Gen. Salim Idriss, this is what is in the cards, whether now or later on.

The confrontation between al-Qaeda and the Syrians is inevitable because al-Qaeda is the fleeting anomaly while Syrian moderation is the established rule.

The danger in the Syrian scene today is that the FSA is now facing Bashar al-Assad’s regime, fighters from Iran, (Lebanese) Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militias, and al-Qaeda...

The irony is that the FSA is still being deprived of qualitative arms and left to face this array of forces singlehanded.

Gen. Idriss has accused David Cameron of betrayal after the British Prime Minister abandoned plans to arm the Syrian opposition.

He said the decision would "leave us alone to be killed" by Assad, and pave the way for al-Qaeda to dominate rebel ranks.

Gen. Idriss hit out in an interview with The Daily Telegraph after Downing Street confirmed Cameron had ruled out arming the opposition on advise from the British military. The government had previously hinted that it was strongly considering it, successfully lobbying two months ago for an end to the European Union arms embargo.

But military chiefs at Britain's National Security Council are understood to have warned Downing Street the conflict was now too advanced for basic weapons supplies to make much difference.

They said that could only be achieved by a much-larger scale intervention, involving jet strikes on regime air defenses and bases, which Britain has already ruled out.

Instead, Britain will draw up plans to train moderate rebel units and continue supplying "non-lethal" items like body armor and communications equipment.

Idriss greeted the British change of heart with fury. The FSA has spent much of the last two years trying to persuade the West to give it military backing.

"The West promises and promises. This is a joke now," Idriss said, the anger clear in his voice. "I have not had the opportunity to ask David Cameron personally if he will leave us alone to be killed. On behalf of all the Syrians, thank you very much."

"What are our friends in the West waiting for?" asked Idriss. "For Iran and Hezbollah to kill all the Syrian people?"

He also warned the West’s refusal to arm the more moderate elements of the insurgency would hand Syria's revolution to extremist groups, who already have better access to weapons.

"Soon there will be no FSA to arm," he said. "The Islamic groups will take control of everything, and this is not in the interests of Britain."

The British refusal will be seen as a particular blow to rebel morale given that recent signals suggested the government was planning the very opposite tack.

Only last month, William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, insisted Britain "shouldn't rule any option out," claiming that concerns about arms earmarked for secular rebel groups falling into jihadist hands were exaggerated.

“Greater Syria: From Dagestan to Xinjiang” is the title of a related and enlightening think piece by veteran Lebanese political analyst Jihad el-Zein for today’s edition of the Beirut daily an-Nahar.

The gist of Zein’s opinion:

The Syria crisis is into a third “jihadist” phase, having already gone through “civil” then “militarized” chapters.

The “jihadist” phase currently underway elicits greater commitment by Russia and China because it touches on their home front concerns.

Earlier this month, for instance, Chinese state media blamed Syrians for unrest in Xinjiang, which is home to the minority Muslim Uighur population.

China has traditionally blamed violence in Xinjiang on Islamic separatists who want to establish an independent state of “East Turkestan.”

This time Beijing laid the blame squarely on terrorists in Syria, of which the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front is the most notorious, but the charge of a Syria connection still comports with a common government narrative of portraying Xinjiang’s violence as coming from other countries, such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, rather than homegrown agitation.

While about 90 per cent of China is ethnic Han, more than 40 per cent of Xinjiang’s 22 million people are Uighurs.

The Global Times, a tabloid owned by the Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily, said some members of the East Turkestan faction had moved from Turkey into Syria.

The rise of Salafist militancy in Syrian rebel groups is a tremendous concern for Russia too.

Moscow fears the numbers and efficacy of forces such as al-Nusra Front will one day turn their attention to oppressed Muslim regions in Russia such as Dagestan and Chechnya.

Dagestan, the region where the brothers who bombed this year's Boston Marathon once lived, borders on the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Chechnya and Georgia.

President Vladimir Putin has dismissed the leader of Dagestan, where an Islamist insurgency is raging. The region has taken over from neighboring Chechnya as Russia's most volatile province.

Salafist fighters, including some from al-Qaeda, fought in Chechnya in the 1990s; they may do so again. Syria and Chechnya are only five hundred miles apart.

If you looked at a map of Russia, you would see Dagestan’s seaports on the Caspian Sea can easily ferry arms and everything else to neighboring Iran and from there across the “Shiite Crescent” to Syria via Iraq.

The struggle for Syria is thus strategic, not tactical, for Russia and less so China. Both have a bigger stake now in the “jihadist” chapter of the Syria crisis as it impacts their respective home fronts.

That’s why the “Greater Syria” – i.e. an international and regional struggle with the following coordinates:

-- Longitude from Dagestan to Xinjiang via Peshawar, covering the Jihadist stretch

-- Latitude from South Lebanon’s Naqoura to Tehran, taking in the Shiite spread.

Putin-Assad twosome comes out on top

G8 Superstar Vladimir Putin

The Vladimir Putin-Bashar al-Assad alliance emphatically won yesterday’s G8 summit finals in Northern Ireland, according to Abdelbari Atwan.

The publisher/editor-in-chief of the London-based pan-Arab newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi writes in Arabic this morning:

Proof the Russian president came out on top at the G8 meeting is corroborated by three peculiarities in the summit’s final statement on Syria, namely:

1. Absence of any explicit and unambiguous call on his partner Assad to stand down as the sine qua non of a political solution to the Syria crisis.
2. Strong endorsement of Geneva-2, where the Syrian regime will be represented by Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem. This translates into recognition of the regime’s legitimacy.
3. A commitment by the G8 leaders to fight and destroy Islamic extremist groups affiliated to al-Qaeda or other Muslim Jihadist organizations.

Thus, after a 26-month uprising and over 100,000 chiefly innocent Syrian fatalities, G8 leaders agree with Assad that he is fighting armed gangs.

This conclusion must have shocked and shaken the armed Syrian opposition, its supporters and its sponsors, especially the Gulf Arab states.

Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, one of the most ardent Western advocates of arming the Syrian opposition, said, “Yes, there are elements of the Syrian opposition that are deeply unsavory, that are very dangerous, very extremist, and I want nothing to do with them.

“I'd like them driven out of Syria; they're linked to al-Qaeda. But there are elements of the Syrian opposition who want to see a free, democratic, pluralistic Syria that respects the rights of minorities, including Christians, and we should be working with them...

“We have to learn the lessons of Iraq by ensuring the key institutions of the state are maintained through the transition and there is no vacuum.”

Cameron used two very indicative expressions – drive out Islamic extremists and avoid a political vacuum.

The question that begs an answer is this: Who would drive out the extremists and how? The Free Syrian Army under the command of Chief of Staff Gen. Salim Idriss, who was picked by the U.S, and the West as sole conduit of arms aid to opposition forces? Given the arms and funds, the man is presumably prepared to do the job. Gulf countries can chip in and provide both.

Cameron’s suggestion of ridding Syria of extremists is easier said than done, if not impossible in the foreseeable future. The Jihadists groups already have a pervasive presence in Syrian opposition ranks.

Assad told the German premier daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview published on the eve of the G8 summit: “My current term ends in 2014. When the country is in a crisis, the president is expected to shoulder the burden of responsibility and resolve the situation, not abandon his duties and leave.

“I often use the analogy of a captain navigating a ship hit by a storm; just imagine the captain jumping ship and escaping in a lifeboat!

“If I decide to leave now, I would be committing treason. If on the other hand, the public decided I should step down, that would be another issue. And this can only be determined through elections or a referendum.”

A Russian president like Putin, who keeps saying he won’t allow a no-fly zone over Syria and he will continue arms shipment to Damascus, backs Assad.

An American president with trembling knees, who was stung by two defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan and half or quarter of a victory in Libya, backs the Syrian opposition.

Isn’t Assad justified to relax and stretch his legs?

For the nth time, their Western and Arab “friends” have duped the Syrian people.

The Geneva-2 watchword is “ceasefire”

From top: Assad, Milosevic and the Chateau de Rambouillet 

By Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia’s analyst, author and kingpin of the impending Al Arab TV news channel, writing in Arabic today for the Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily al-Hayat

You can assume the endeavor to end the Syrian people’s tragedy is wholehearted once you hear them talking at Geneva-2 of a binding ceasefire under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

The watchword is “ceasefire.” After that, they can talk ad nauseam of the need for a shared transitional government with full powers or for national elections next year in which everyone can stand.

The Syrian opposition would overburden itself, disharmonize internally and bicker with allies if it carped too much about the immortality of Assad running for a third term, or about the irrationality of a transitional government that includes people with blood on their hands.

At Geneva-2 – if it convenes at all in mid-month – the spotlight won’t be on the government and opposition delegations.

The spotlight will be on the U.S. secretary of state and Russian foreign minister. They will be doing the hard bargaining.

More exactly, the public eye will be on an American-Saudi-driven international stab at goading the Russians to the UN Security Council.

The Russians have been resisting this for two years while the Syrian people were being butchered. They, and the Iranians in tow, kept repeating: a political solution is the only way forward in Syria. They also kept extolling the merits of the June 2012 Geneva Agreement, which provides for the immediate cessation of armed violence in all its forms and the establishment of a transitional government.

Everyone is now transfixed by the word “negotiations,” when and where they would take place and how a transitional government comprising regime and opposition representatives would be set up.

But the cardinal provision in the Geneva Agreement –i.e. “the immediate cessation of armed violence in all its forms” – is being overpassed.

The regime does not want a ceasefire. The Damascus government and its allies know they can only survive by armed violence.

The regime dithered when it was whispered that a binding ceasefire is in the cards, which is why the Russians had to literally tug Damascus to the negotiating table.

To underscore the importance of a ceasefire for the political solution, we need to trace the Syria crisis back to its roots.

The crisis is not between eastern Syria and western Syria, or between two sects. The opposition, for instance, is not after winning a bigger share in parliament for Aleppo.

At the same time, Damascus is not after specific ministerial portfolios for people to draw parallels between Geneva-2 – if it ever convenes – to the meeting of rival Lebanese leaders in Taef in 1989.

The Syrian revolution is fundamentally the revolution of a national and multi-sectarian population striving for freedom in all governorates.

The population is not making sectarian or provincial demands. Like the Egyptians who flooded Tahrir Square before Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, the overwhelming majority of Syrians forgot all their differences to clamor for regime change, freedom and dignity.

A Syria ceasefire does not mean a pause for talks and the demarcation of frontlines between the sides. What you now have is a Syrian majority wanting to get rid of an oppressive regime and build a new Syria on the same landmass and within unaltered borders.

At Geneva-2, the Syrian regime will try to avoid this.

Not to be overthrown, it would propose a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution that keeps it in power.

It would want to exclude the so-called Takfiri forces it lured into the conflict in the first place.

It could perhaps request the eviction of foreign volunteers from Syrian soil or claim legitimacy to commit this individual or that to justice.

In a show of humility, or in order to waste time, it might even propose a national reconciliation assembly.

What is certain though is the regime will do everything in its power to wriggle out of committing to a binding cessation of armed violence in all its forms.

Something similar happened in early 1999 at Rambouillet, a commune in north-central France, which hosted talks (between then-Yugoslavia and a delegation representing the ethnic-Albanian majority population of Kosovo) on the Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-Government in Kosovo.

The Americans, Russians and Europeans participated in the talks at Rambouillet, much as they would at Geneva-2. They all knew then what the workable solution was, but they needed to go through the “peace process.”

They were familiar with the brutality and intransigence of Serbian and Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic. They knew him from the earlier 1992-1995 Bosnian War. They were aware the only way to convince him is by force.

He was a prototype of today’s Bashar al-Assad, who represents a sect instead of a population and fights for sectarian instead of national interests.

Like Milosevic, the only way to convince him is by force. Only when cruise missiles and airstrikes reach his bedroom, instead of the Syrian people’s heads, would Assad yield and negotiate.

The Russians invariably clone themselves. They were the ones who obstructed a workable and quick fix solution in Kosovo. They are doing the same in Syria now.

The Americans and Europeans had no choice back in 1999 but to get the Russians to Rambouillet and sanction an interim agreement, which did not last long but opened the door for NATO to do what it should have done from the beginning: air bombardment.

That’s the thing to do after Geneva-2 if the Friends of Syria want to end in earnest the Syrians’ suffering.

Assad cannot put up with a strict and binding ceasefire. Given the carnage and bloodshed to date, peaceful protests against his rule will erupt in every Syrian city and town the moment he commits to one. And he wouldn’t swallow today the mass protests he could not tolerate two years back.

The regime will breach the ceasefire without any doubt, just like Milosevic.

Geneva-2 having bound all sides to the ceasefire under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, everyone would then have to go back to the Security Council.

I expect the opposition’s National Coalition and the head of the Free Syrian Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Salim Idriss, to commit to such an agreement.

Commanders of the FSA and rebel brigades, including Jabhat al-Nusra, would be put on notice that they too would be bombed if they breached the ceasefire agreement.

I doubt Geneva-2 will be held at all -- short of a genuine about-face by Moscow, not Iran or Syria.

But just in case Geneva-2 is held, make sure to eyeball the watchword “ceasefire.”