Al-qaida divisions may aid Assad as he eyes Syria’s Idlib
BEIRUT: As President Bashar Assad seeks to reassert his authority in Idlib, the only remaining province in Syria where his forces have almost no presence, he may be aided there by deep fractures within al-qaida, the militant group that dominates the region.
A recent wave of detentions and a spate of violence within al-qaida have also raised fears of an all-out war between insurgents in the heavily populated province near Turkey as Assad’s forces make their push.
Assad lost control of Idlib nearly three years ago and he has vowed to recapture it, but that is expected to be a bloody and costly fight. The militant haven is heavily fortified and home to thousands of fighters who transferred there from other parts of the country. It is also where tens of thousands of civilians settled after fleeing fighting in Aleppo, Homs, the suburbs of Damascus and elsewhere.
Tensions inside Idlib have been on the rise for months, reflecting a power struggle between hard-line foreign fighters loyal to al-qaida’s leader, Ayman al-zawahri, and its more moderate Syrian members.
The tensions worsened in late November after a wave of detentions by an al-qaidalinked group against more extremist, mostly non-syrian members. Among those detained were two of al-qaida’s most esteemed leaders and founding members of the extremist group’s branch in Syria, who were set free days later after pressure by factions within the group who threatened to withdraw from the battlefield in protest.
The Nov. 27 raids by the al-qaida-linked Hay’at Tahrir al Sham — Arabic for Levant Liberation Committee, also known as HTS — took many by surprise and angered alZawahri, who accused his top man in Syria of betrayal.
The detentions, ordered by HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-golani, were the clearest indication yet of the sharp divisions within the international terror network. They also come as al-golani appears to be edging closer to Turkey, which is trying, along with Iran and Russia, to bring an end to the country’s civil war, now in its seventh year.
HTS was until recently on the ascendant in Syria, crushing potential opponents in Idlib as its rival, the Islamic State group, faced significant setbacks, losing most of the territory it once held in the country.
Those who were detained included Jordanian citizens Sami Oraidi, al-qaida’s former top religious figure in Syria, and the highly secretive former military commander in southern Syria, Ayad Toubasi, also known as Abu Julaybib alurduni, brother-in-law of the late al-qaida in Iraq leader, Abu Musab al-zarqawi.
After their detentions, other al-qaida officials, including a prominent cleric, went to ask al-golani why their comrades were detained. But the men ended up being taken into custody themselves.
Days after al-shami’s warning, intense clashes broke out between HTS and the Jund al-malahem faction that split from it in October and is close to the detained al-qaida officials, leaving at least seven people dead. WASHINGTON: The Trump administration signaled that it could broaden the use of nuclear weapons as part of a new security strategy, unveiled by the president on Monday.
The wider role for nuclear weapons against “nonnuclear strategic attacks” was one of several ways in which Trump’s approach differed from his predecessor. The threat of climate change went unmentioned. The word “climate” was only used four times in the National Security Strategy (NSS), and three of those mentions referred to the business environment. Americans were instead urged to “embrace energy dominance”.
Announcing the NSS, Donald Trump depicted his election victory and his presidency as an unprecedented turning point in US history.
“America is coming back, and America is coming back strong,” the president said. “We are rebuilding our nation, our confidence, and our standing in the world...[w]e will stand up for ourselves, and we will stand up for our country like we have never stood up before.”
On the same day of the NSS launch however, the US found itself isolated on the UN security council, where the other 14 members, including Washington’s closest allies, voted to rescind Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The US envoy, Nikki Haley, called the vote an “insult” that “won’t be forgotten”.
Piling on the insults, the French foreign minister, Yves Le Drian, said on a visit to Washington that US isolation on several global issues “forces President Trump to have a position of retreat on most topics rather than making proposals”.
Under the slogan of “peace through strength”, Trump emphasised the military buildup he had ordered, involving what the president described (wrongly) as a record in defence spending, $700bn for 2018. WASHINGTON: The US has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called on President Donald Trump to withdraw recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, exercising its veto power for the first time in six years.
Trump on December 6 announced that he would recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the US embassy there from Tel Aviv, triggering protests and strong condemnation from across the world.
Even America’s closest allies on the 15-member Council, the most powerful body in the UN system, voted for the resolution.
The one-page resolution, drafted by Egypt, reiterated the longstanding position of the Security Council, in several resolutions dating back 50 years, rejecting Israel’s sovereignty claim over Jerusalem.
They warned that Trump’s announcement about Jerusalem, which upended decades of American policy, threatened to subvert the effort to solve one of the world’s most intractable conflicts.
This was the first veto exercised by the Trump administration and the first one by the US in six years.
“The fact that this veto is being done in defence of American sovereignty and in defence of America’s role in the Middle East peace process is not a source of embarrassment for us; it should be an embarrassment to the remainder of the Security Council,” US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has said in defence of exercising veto.
“What we witnessed here on Tuesday in the Security Council is an insult. It is one more example of the UN doing more harm than good in addressing the Israeli-palestinian conflict,” she said on the draft resolution that would have called upon all states to refrain from establishing diplomatic missions in Jerusalem.
“The US will not be told by any country where we can put our embassy...on Tuesday, for the simple act of deciding where to put our embassy, the United States was forced to defend its sovereignty. The record will reflect that we did so proudly,” the Indian-origin US ambassador to the UN said.
The resolution calling on Trump to withdraw recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was supported by close allies of the US Britain, France and Japan. “We disagree with the US decision unilaterally to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel before a final status agreement and to move the US embassy to Jerusalem,” said British Ambassador to the UN Matthew Rycroft.
“As recent events in the region have shown, these decisions are unhelpful to the prospects for peace in the region, an aim that all of us in this Council remain committed to. The British Embassy to Israel is based in Tel Aviv and we have no plans to move it,” Rycroft said.
Rycroft said that the status of Jerusalem should be determined through a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and should ultimately be the shared capital of the Israeli and Palestinian states.