Lakhdar Brahimi: “It’s very complicated”

International troubleshooter Lakhdar Brahimi today held talks in Damascus, the last leg of a Middle East tour to lobby for a Syria peace conference, dubbed Geneva-2.

I am personally of the opinion he will keep huffing and puffing well into 2014 without getting up the steep Geneva-2 hill.

According to the Geneva Communiqué of June 2012, the principal objective of the proposed peace conference is to set up by mutual consent a transitional governing body with “full executive powers.”

I will come back to the prospects of Geneva-2 in a subsequent blog.

But here are highlights of what Brahimi told the Paris-based weekly newsmagazine Jeune Afrique in a 3,000-word interview published on the day of his arrival in Damascus yesterday.

The interview is fittingly titled “Mission Impossible”:

Jeune Afrique: Didn’t the agreement between the Russians and Americans [to remove Syria’s chemical weapons] put Bashar al-Assad back on the saddle?

Lakhdar Brahimi: He was an outcast; he became a partner… Bashar was never put off his stride -- so there is no reason to think that.

JA: Do you think he seriously considers running for re-election in mid-2014?

LB: Many of those around him take his running for another term as an accomplished fact.

He deems it as his absolute right, but that he would come to a decision in due time. He is adamant about completing his current term.

What I proclaim aloud and to all Syrians is this: History teaches us that after a crisis like this, there is no turning back.

President Assad could therefore significantly contribute to the transition from the previous Syria -- which is that of his father and his own -- to what I call the New Syrian Republic.

JA: What about the Syrian opposition?

LB: They are to consider who could represent them [at the peace table]. This is one reason why it takes time. Some of them even feel they should stay away from Geneva.

It's very complicated!

In this type of situation, there are many camps. Armed and unarmed opposition, opposition based outside and inside [Syria], Islamists, seculars, etc... We must realize Geneva-2, unlike the conference held in 2012, is not an end in itself but the beginning.

We hope the opposition will manage to agree on a credible and representative delegation. We must not delude ourselves: the whole world won’t be represented. However, the carry-over of this process will include as many people as possible.

JA: If the powerful Islamist rebels choose to boycott Geneva, it will be a real problem...

LB: Probably, but mind you there are two sorts of Islamists: those interested in the quest for peace, and those in the orbit al-Qaeda – such as Jabhat al-Nusra, for example. The latter wish to bring down the regime; they are not fighting to build a New Syrian Republic, but to set up an Islamic state. So they don’t give a hoot about Geneva.

JA: Is Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a reliable partner?

LB: Absolutely – we know each other well.

He was ambassador to the UN and is an outstanding professional. He is also extremely knowledgeable about the Middle East.

Where Syria is concerned, there is much talk about Moscow's influence and the Russians’ political relations with the regime.

The Russians have had a significant, longstanding and uninterrupted presence in Syria.

Everyone bears in mind the Russian officers who are out there, but there are chiefly a lot of engineers. Remember, there are nearly 20,000 Russian women in Syria married to Syrians.

The Russians know Syria very well. When [Tunisia’s  Zine al-Abidine]  Ben Ali, [Egypt’s Hosni] Mubarak and [Libya’s Muammar] Gaddafi fell, few thought Bashar would survive more than three months.

Only the Russians kept saying: "Careful -- this is not the case, we are familiar with the country, and we know how it works. Syria is more complicated. "

Some thought this was pretentious, that it was an unconditional expression of support for Bashar.

JA: Do you think Syria’s national fabric can still be patched up?

LB: Yes, I think so. What threatens Syria is not the country’s partition. I would be surprised if the Alawites really want to create some sort of a bunker in their small mountains. They know very well it won’t be viable.

The real danger threatening Syria is a kind of "Somalization," one which will be more sustainable and profound than what we’ve seen in Somalia so far.

JA: Does the idea of ​​a Shiite crescent fighting Sunnis across the Arab and Islamic worlds seem pertinent?

LB: Effectively, we do have a problem, which is far from being new. I remember discussing it with [the highest ranking Shiite religious leader in Iraq] Grand Ayatollah [Ali] Sistani, when I was in Baghdad in 2004. I explained to him we might have on our hands a Shiite-Sunni problem stretching from Indonesia all the way to Morocco.

He answered me saying Iraq was not Pakistan, where internecine strife was rife. He was wrong... We're not yet at the stage of a general confrontation, although [Shiite-Sunni] tensions are numerous in Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan or Bahrain. But we must be vigilant because we’re not too far off.

JA: What role is Iran playing in the Syrian conflict today -- that of a facilitator or an obstacle?

LB: You know, from my point of view, everyone represents an obstacle... Seriously, I met the new president, Hassan Rouhani, and his minister of foreign affairs in New York.

Iran's position is clear: there is no military solution to this conflict; an entente must be reached between the government -- towards which the Iranians are very close -- and the opposition that will result in free elections supervised by the United Nations.

I’m under the impression they [Iranians] think Bashar would win the ballot hands down.

JA: From [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad to Rouhani, have you noticed a change in Tehran’s discourse and positions?

LB: On other issues, such as relations with the United States, certainly. But on the Syria crisis, no, absolutely not.

JA: What about Israel in all this?

LB: I feel that whatever the case, Israel is in a win-win situation. If Bashar goes, Syria will take a long time to stabilize. If Bashar stays, he will be broken-down. And if the internecine strife continues, it will be good for Israel... Moreover, chemical weapons were the only strategic weapons the Israelis feared. In short, Israel is in a win-win situation and I'm not sure the Arabs are aware of this...

Obama flees Syria, but what with Saudi Arabia?

File picture of U.S. President Barack Obama and Saudi King Abdullah

By Saudi media star Jamal Khashoggi, writing for al-Hayat

There are many reasons for the Saudi-U.S. crackup.

The breach is mostly over Syria, where U.S. doublespeak has repeatedly been used to hide negativity. Incessant American statements denouncing the Assad regime are totally irreconcilable with happenings on the ground.

What infuriated the Saudis, who want a quick end to the Syria crisis, is what they believe to be America’s laid-back and indifferent attitude liable to prolong the crisis regardless of its consequences and its spillovers into regional countries.

The most conspicuous inconsistency in the American position is in the matter of arming the opposition.

America covertly bumps heads with its Saudi ally over the latter’s desire to raise the quality of arms supplied to the Syrian opposition, and even prevents its Saudi ally from delivering quality weapons by invoking bilateral arms sales agreements banning such transfers to a third party. At the same time, the U.S. does nothing about the shipments of Russian arms to the Syrian regime via Iran and Iraq.

The only time Washington intervened was to back Israel’s objection to Russia delivering game changing S-300 air defense systems to Syria.

The U.S. did not even try to thwart the participation in the Syria war of tens of thousands of Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militiamen although Washington has ample details about the role Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard and its Commander General Qasim Suleimani are playing in the war.

Unquestionably, the Americans’ answers – such as they cannot shut out Hezbollah or Iran’s Revolutionary Guard from Syria – are far from having convinced Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh is fully familiar with every aspect of America’s influence in Iraq, which has become the primary conduit for Iranian arm shipments and volunteers to Syria.

Israel did not hesitate to hit Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guard targets inside Syria when she felt they threatened her national security.

It did so without Syria or any of its allies reacting. If Israel can do this, so can America -- especially that Jordan paved the way for Washington, having offered the Obama Administration the chance to use Jordanian bases to deploy its armed drones against Syrian regime targets.

The U.S. Administration declined the Jordanian offer, which was repeated on several occasions in coordination with the Saudis, according to an informed source.

Paradoxically, the U.S. fully concurs with Saudi Arabia that the biggest threat to the security of the Arabian Peninsula comes from al-Qaeda, which is already active in Yemen. Both Washington and Riyadh are working hand-in-hand to fight it.

But at the same time, Washington is indifferent to the threat posed by al-Qaeda in Syria, which mushroomed with the arrival there of the original version of the terrorist group – namely, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which Saudi Arabia perceives as a serious menace to her security. And so do Jordan and Turkey.

By sinking roots in Syria, ISIL, which is also known by its Arabic acronym DAESH, would have set up a network of human ballistic missiles there capable of reaching all regional countries.

It would be in a position to send suicides to all regional cities.

The group has already moved against the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government by sending suicide car-bombers to Erbil in retaliation to KRG President Masoud Barzani’s avowed readiness to help Syria’s Kurds against terrorists in Syria’s north.

The Erbil bombings shocked regional capitals particularly that the enclave was calm for years and has a strong security network.

Experts claim that intercepting a surface-to-surface missile with a network of Patriots is easier than intercepting a lone, cross-border suicide who gets his explosives delivered to him via another route. Once the suicide receives his explosives the chance of foiling his terrorist bombing becomes negligible.

By nesting in northern Syria and welcoming foreign fighters, DAESH will become a magnet for young Saudis outraged by the abuses in Syria.

Such young Saudis have been swayed by calls for Jihad still ringing across the Kingdom, but mostly underground.

Estimates putting the number of Saudi “mujahideen” in Syria at 4,000 are probably inflated, as happened earlier in Afghanistan and Bosnia. But even if the figure were one-fourth of the estimate, the number is substantial enough to reinvigorate al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia after the Kingdom breathed a sigh of relief when its security forces succeeded in stamping out its activities.

Riyadh still has reason for concern. Young Saudis in Syria deliberately conceal their true numbers and shun the media.

They do not emulate al-Qaeda, which is always keen to boost its recruitment campaigns by uploading propaganda videos about the heroism of its members on YouTube.

One expert in Syria who works for the United Nations puts it this way: “You see video clips of Chechens or Libyans much more than of Saudis. But they are by far the more numerous. I believe the Saudis constitute the third largest group of fighters in Syria after the Jordanians and Palestinians. Their shunning the media is worrying.”

This is probably because they know fighting in Syria violates their government’s instructions. They also realize Saudi security is aware as to who left the country to fight in Syria and will surely apprehend the lot on their return.

Al-Qaeda in turn knows this very well and exploits the fact to build a recruitment reservoir for future underground action in the post-Syria stage. Al-Qaeda-watchers know there is always a post-Syria, post-Afghanistan and post-Iraq.

All these Saudi concerns won’t dissipate except with a settlement of the Syria crisis that ends the war that is currently serving as fertile ground for al-Qaeda and Iran to spread their respective influences, each in its own way and in keeping with its own purposes.

 And although neither al-Qaeda nor Iran is a friend of Saudi Arabia, recent leaks in the American press reveal the Obama Administration is not only unconcerned, but wants the Syria crisis to persist.

This is bound to deepen the Saudi American rift.

The hurtful surprise came in a recent New York Times quoting White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough as questioning how much it was in America’s interest to tamp down the violence in Syria.

He argued the status quo in Syria could keep Iran pinned down for years.

In later discussions, McDonough suggested a fight in Syria between Hezbollah and al-Qaeda would work to America’s advantage.

His words evoke memories of “imperialist” statements made in the 1950s when the interests of arms dealers and oil companies determined American foreign policy with total disregard of peoples’ rights and interests.

We are not angels ourselves, but we cannot possibly be as wicked.

The price of such a policy will be paid by the Syrian people and by the whole region. The war between al-Qaeda and Hezbollah will drag in the region’s countries and armies.

U.S. President Obama considers U.S. health care reform more important than what he dubbed Syria’s inferno.

However, for us Saudis, Syria could be our heaven or our inferno.

So let us do something, albeit alone.

No matter what the cost turns out to be today, it would surely be less than what we would have to pay in three of four years.

Iran-Iraq pushing for Syria's balkanization

Barzani and Maliki (top) and a Balkanized Syria map

The specter of Syria’s balkanization has yet to pass from sight.

Tehran has now given the thumbs up for a “provisional civil administration” in Syria’s Kurdish areas and agreed to help clear out Qaeda-linked extremists there.

Fresh from talks in Tehran, Salih Muslim, head of the Syrian Kurds’ Democratic Union Party (PYD), an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), says Iran gave the go-ahead for a “transitional civil administration” planned by the “Western Kurdistan Council.”

Western Kurdistan refers to the Kurdish areas in northern and northeastern Syria bordering Turkey.

Muslim also tells pan-Arab al-Hayat today agreement was reached with the Iranian side “to fight our common enemy,” chiefly Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Muslim said he met with high-ranking foreign ministry and Revolutionary Guards officials during his August 7-8 stay in Tehran at the invitation of the foreign ministry.

“Iran is an important country. It is the only one in the region to have the ear of the [Syrian] regime,” he said.

Barzani

On August 10, Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, posted a statement on the KRG’s official website saying:

For a while now, the print media and a number of political and media centers have been saying terrorists in Western Kurdistan have mobilized against Kurdish citizens and that Qaeda-linked terrorists are attacking innocent civilians and massacring Kurdish women and children.

To verify such news, I am calling for a special inquiry commission to travel to Western Kurdistan and investigate. If it finds that innocent Kurdish citizens, women and children are under threat of death and terrorism, the Iraqi Kurdistan Region will make use of all its capabilities to defend innocent Kurdish women, children and citizens in Western Kurdistan.

Barzani's statement referred to Kurdish areas in Syria as “Western Kurdistan.”

Spread over large, adjoining tracts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran, the Kurdish people are often described as the largest ethnic group without their own state.

The northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan, which has its own government and armed forces, is pursuing increasingly independent energy and foreign policies, infuriating Baghdad.

Iraqi Kurds have sent fuel, food and medical aid to their ethnic kin over the border in Syria, extending Barzani’s influence, but Saturday’s statement appeared to be the first time that he had suggested intervention.

In Syria, where they make up nearly 10 percent of the population, Kurds have been widely discriminated against under Bashar al-Assad and his late father before him, who stripped more than 100,000 of their citizenship.

For Syrian Kurds, the insurrection against Assad presents an opportunity to win the kind of rights enjoyed by their neighbors in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Maliki

Quoting from Kuwait’s al-Seyassah newspaper, Baghdad’s Shafaq News reported August 9,  “Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki notified KRG President Masoud Barzani that the Assad regime is not against Peshmerga forces entering northern Syria to defend Syrian Kurds against attacks by al-Qaeda.

“A highly-placed Kurdish source in Baghdad said Iranian leaders, together with the Iraqi premier, are putting pressure on Barzani to stop supporting the Syrian revolution and back Assad’s regime… especially that al-Qaeda poses a threat to both Irbil and Baghdad.”

All this highlights the potential for Peshmerga, Syrian Kurd, Iranian and Iraqi forces banding together to help Assad win his presumed war on Takfiris, Jihadists and al-Qaeda -- at least in Western Kurdistan.

Israel

Separately, Lazar Berman wonders in his think piece for The Times of Israel this week: “Is a free Kurdistan, and a new Israeli ally, upon us?”

In his opinion, Syria’s Kurds are bent on carving out an autonomous enclave in northeastern Syria.

The PYD “has been taking advantage of the power vacuum caused by the two-year-old conflict to push out rival opposition fighters and move closer to autonomy…

“According to Kurdistan expert Ofra Bengio of Tel Aviv University, independence is not on the Syrian Kurds’ agenda any time in the near future. ‘The PYD is not talking about independence now and will be reluctant to use such terminology in order not to antagonize any of the governments or the international community. Autonomy is the safer goal now,’ she said.”

Berman says “Israel has long developed alliances with non-Arab countries on the periphery of the Middle East. Today, that policy rests on partnerships with Cyprus, Greece, Bulgaria, and Caucasian and central Asian countries. Kurdistan fits perfectly into that framework…

“With few friends in the region, the Kurds will likely look to Israel to help them gain security and closer relations with the United States. As Arab governments in the Middle East totter and fall, and Islamists look to exploit the chaos, the alliance is one that both countries may find beneficial to pursue.”

Kissinger

This reminds me of the presentation former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made at the Ford School in New York City last June, when he said a Balkanized Syria is the best outcome to emerge of its current Assad-controlled unity.

“There are three possible outcomes. An Assad victory, a Sunni victory, or an outcome in which the various nationalities agree to co-exist together but in more or less autonomous regions, so that they can’t oppress each other. That’s the outcome I would prefer to see. But that’s not the popular view,” he said.

Are Assad’s allies heeding Kissinger’s counsel and pushing Barzani and Syria’s Kurds to go down that route?

Turkey takes the side of Syria's Kurds

Yesterday's Erdogan-Barzani meeting and the title of Michael Weiss' piece

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has now played his “Kurdish card” -- not to win Syria back, but mire Turkey and hopefully walk away with an Alawite state.

This explains why he mobilized his Qaeda-linked surrogates to take control of Kurdish areas in the north of Syria on the border with Turkey.

In the face of the Syrian uprising, Assad forces originally pulled out of those areas in July and August 2012, hoping the vacuum would be filled by Turkey’s nemesis at the time, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The March 2013 peace deal between Turkey and the PKK spoiled Assad’s plan.

His fallback in recent weeks on his Qaeda-linked proxies – Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) – is to keep the plan alive.

In context, I can’t think of a better eye-opener than yesterday’s commentary by Michael Weiss fittingly titled “Assad’s no enemy of al-Qaeda.” You can read it here.

Overnight, news broke of jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda -- read Assad -- having taken hostage around 200 Kurdish civilians after violent clashes with Kurdish fighters in two villages of northeastern Syria.

“Fighters of Jabhat al-Nusra and the ISIL have seized control of Tall Aren village in Aleppo province and are laying siege to another village nearby, Tall Hassel,” said the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Clashes between jihadists and Kurdish fighters have raged for some two weeks, after jihadists were expelled from the key town of Ras al-Ayn on the Turkish border.

The fighting claimed a prominent casualty on Tuesday, as a car bomb planted by Jihadists killed Kurdish leader Isa Huso, a leading member of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), a pro-PKK organization of Syrian Kurds and the most powerful faction of the ethnic group in the region (see yesterday’s post).

Politically, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met yesterday with Nachervan Barzani, prime minister of Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government and nephew of KRG President Massoud Barzani.

The two-hour meeting at the Prime Ministry in Ankara was closed to the press.

The talks are believed to have focused on bilateral relations, the PYD’s agenda in Syria and the upcoming three-day Kurdish National Conference.

The latter opens in Erbil on August 19 with 500 Kurdish delegates attending, mostly from Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran.

Before Barzani's visit, PYD co-chair Salih Muslim, a graduate of Istanbul Technical University in the late 1970s, was able -- on Turkey’s invitation -- to fly from Erbil to Istanbul after 35 years.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu told reporters after meeting with Muslim he acknowledged Syrian Kurds’ need to establish a “civilian administration” in their areas, just as other opposition groups have. He warned such provisional measures were possible provided the administration does not gain “permanent status.”

The understanding is that such a provisional local administration would include other ethnic groups such as Christians, Turkmen and non-Kurds who live in the Kurdish-majority areas of northeastern Syria.

Turkish columnist Sedat Ergin, writing for Hurriyet daily, says Turkey’s dilemma of late was to choose one of two options that would serves it interests best: Control of Syria’s Kurdish areas by the PYD or by the Qaeda-linked groups?

“We understand from Muslim’s interview with Ali Çelebi for Özgür Gündem daily,” writes Ergin, “that the Justice and Development (AKP) government has gone for the first option.

“…This being the case, instead of approaching the Syrian Kurds with animosity, building a permanent friendship with them starting today appears to be a wiser, more realistic policy. The path to this passes along a road that approaches them with respect, knows them and talks to them as counterparts.

“From this aspect, Muslim’s visit has been a positive step in the sense that a dialogue has been launched between Turkey and Syrian Kurds; also, it complements the peace process launched with the aim of solving the Kurdish issue domestically.”

Separately, Turkey has also stepped up economic relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq.

The KRG is now pushing ahead with plans to build an oil pipeline between Turkey and northern Iraq despite objections from Baghdad and the United States.

The Syrian Kurdish leader’s whodunit killer

Clockwise from top: The late Isa Huso, his car and flower draped casket

Yesterday’s assassination of Isa Huso, a prominent Syrian Kurdish politician, in Syria’s northeastern town of Qamishli falls into a category police call whodunits-murders.

They are called such because they are notoriously tough to solve, there is more than one potential suspect, with each having a distinct motive.

In Isa Huso’s case, the two prime suspects are:

(1) The Syrian regime, which imprisoned him under President Bashar al-Assad after the 2004-2005 Qamishli uprising by Syrian Kurds and during the rule of Assad's late father Hafez for campaigning for human rights

(2) Al-Qaeda-linked militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra, who are trying to rest control of Syria’s oil-rich Kurdish areas near the border with Turkey.

In a way, the two potential suspects are connected.

The al-Qaeda-linked organizations were a creation of the Damascus government, designed to discredit those who oppose Assad and to hide the regime's own brutal tactics.

This reminds me of the notorious “قناص” -- Arabic for “sniper” -- in the years of Lebanon’s civil war.

Between 1975 and 1990, the Syrian army often planted a sniper on a Beirut rooftop to shoot at one side in the conflict, then the other, to keep them fighting.

Isa Huso, 60, was a member of the Higher Kurdish Council, aimed at bringing together Syrian Kurdish groups, and an opponent of Assad.

Syria's main Kurdish militia later issued a call to arms to all Kurds to fight jihadists operating in the north.

It follows weeks of intense fighting between jihadist groups and Kurds, who make up a little over 10% of the population and are largely concentrated in northeastern Syria, towards the Turkish border.

Huso was leaving his home in the border town of Qamishli when a bomb planted inside his car detonated.

He was a member of the foreign relations committee in the Higher Kurdish Council, an umbrella group for regional Kurdish factions.

"Huso sought to promote Kurdish rights within a united Syria free from the grip of the Assad regime," his former neighbor, Massoud Akko, told Reuters news agency.

“No-one knows who killed him but the fingers point to the militant Islamists. They are the only ones who are targeting Kurds as Kurds,” he added.

Responding to Huso's killing, Kurdish fighters known as the Popular Protection Units (YPG) issued a call to arms.

“(The YPG) called on all those fit to carry weapons to join their ranks, to protect areas under their control from attacks by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) fighters, al-Nusra Front and other battalions,” said a London-based Syria watchdog, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The YPG, which claims to have no political affiliations, was set up to counter offensives in majority Kurdish areas.

In recent months it has been battling to drive out rebels from the north, including the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra.

Areas near the Turkish border have seen some of the most intense fighting, with clashes reported between the strongest local Kurdish group, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), and al-Nusra in the town of Ras al-Ain.

The PYD has said it aims to set up a local council to run Kurdish regions until Syria's war ends.

PYD leader Salih Muslim reassured Turkey last week that his group’s call for a local administration in Syria’s Kurdish regions does not mean it is looking to divide Syria.


Muslim, who flew to Ankara from Erbil, told the media he was in Turkey to allay Ankara’s concerns over Kurdish separatism, and to explain why Syria’s Kurdish regions needed a local administration.


"Kurds will need to have a status in the new order in Syria,” Muslim told Anatolian news agency. “But what's in question now is a provisional arrangement until we arrive at that phase. ”


Muslim told Turkish officials a local administration would include other ethnic groups such as Christians, Turkmen and non-Kurds who live in the Kurdish-majority areas of northeastern Syria.


Muslim’s visit appears to have eased suspicions between Syrian Kurds and Turkey.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters yesterday he acknowledged Syrian Kurds’ need to establish a “civilian administration” in their areas, just as other opposition groups have. He warned such provisional measures were possible provided the administration does not gain “permanent status.”

“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.