Al-Qaeda ‘eating’ rival rebel groups
Moderate rebels face being wiped out as a lack of unity allows the jihadist group to take control.
"Idlib is now basically being abandoned to the jihadis. This might be the end of the opposition."
SYRIA/TURKEY: The biggest surviving rebel stronghold in northern Syria is falling under the control of al Qaeda-linked extremists, amid a surge of rebel infighting that threatens to vanquish what is left of the moderate rebellion.
The ascent of the extremists in the northwestern province of Idlib coincides with a suspension of aid to moderate rebel groups by their international allies.
The commanders of five of the groups say they were told earlier this month by representatives of the United States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey that they would receive no further arms or ammunition until they united to form a coherent front against the jihadists, a goal that has eluded the fractious rebels throughout the six years of fighting.
The freeze on supplies is unrelated to the change of power in Washington, DC, where the Trump administration is engaged in a review of US policy on Syria, US officials say. It also does not signal a complete rupture of support for the rebels, who are continuing to receive salaries, say diplomats and rebel commanders.
Rather, the goal is to ensure that supplies do not fall into the extremists’ hands, by putting pressure on the rebels to form a more efficient force, the rebel commanders say they have been told.
Instead, it is the extremists who have closed ranks and turned against the US-backed rebels, putting the al Qaeda-linked groups with whom the moderates once uneasily coexisted effectively in charge of key areas in Idlib, the most important stronghold from which the rebels could have hoped to sustain a challenge to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Moderate rebels still hold territory in southern Syria, pockets around Damascus and parts of northeastern Aleppo, where they are fighting alongside Turkish troops against Islamic State.
But the loss of Idlib to the extremists has the potential to prolong - or at least divert - the trajectory of the war at a time when the United Nations is reconvening peace talks in Geneva aimed at securing a political settlement.
The Syrian government and its ally Russia will now be able to justify intensifying air strikes against the rebel-held area, perhaps in alliance with the US, which is already carrying out its own strikes against al Qaeda targets in Idlib, analysts say.
‘‘Idlib is now basically being abandoned to the jihadis. This might be the end of the opposition as understood by the opposition’s backers abroad,’’ said Aron Lund, a fellow with the Century Foundation. ‘‘They won’t have any reason to support it.’’
The al Qaeda-backed offensive appears to have been triggered by a Russian push last month to make peace with the same moderate rebel groups that the US had in the past sought, unsuccessfully, to protect from Russian air strikes.
Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fatah al-Sham - which is still widely referred to by its previous name, Jabhat al-Nusra - has since led a series of raids, abductions and killings against moderate rebels, activists and Western-backed administrative councils across Idlib.
The most radical rebel groups have joined a new coalition created by Jabhat al-Nusra called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. More moderate ones have sought protection by allying themselves with the largest non-al Qaeda group, Ahrar al-Sham, which subscribes to a school of Salafist jihadism that is considered too extreme for the US and its Western allies to countenance.
‘‘Al Qaeda is eating us,’’ said Zakaria Malahifji, an official with the US-backed Fastaqim rebel group, explaining why his group chose to join with the Ahrar alSham alliance.
‘‘It’s a military alliance only, for protection from al Qaeda. Politically, we don’t share their views.’’
About a dozen US-backed groups are still holding out against the pressure to join forces with the extremists, but they acknowledge that their cause is increasingly hopeless.
Radicals ‘‘are controlling every aspect of life, the mosques and the schools’’, said Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed Saoud, a former Syrian army officer who defected and now commands a rebel unit in the USbacked Free Idlib Army, one of the groups that has stood aloof from the jihadists.
‘‘They are radicalising 14-yearold boys. Al Qaeda ideology is spreading everywhere, and we have been abandoned.’’
Under the three-year-old programme initiated by the US, rebel groups that have been vetted by the CIA receive support in the form of salaries, light arms and ammunition, and limited quantities of anti-tank missiles. The supplies are overseen by a military operations centre known as the Musterek Operasyon Merkezi, or MOM, comprising representatives of the US-backed Friends of Syria alliance.
But even if the supplies are restored, it is unclear whether the rebels will now be in any position to challenge al Qaeda.
One rebel group burned its stores of ammunition rather than let them be captured by Jabhat alNusra. Some supplies have already been captured. A video posted on YouTube this week by the new Nusra-led alliance showed its fighters destroying a government gun position using one of the USmade TOW anti-tank missiles that were supplied to the moderate rebels, and presumably seized by al Qaeda allies.
Al Qaeda-linked groups do not yet control the main border crossings into Syria from Turkey, but they control the access routes and towns and villages around them, enabling them to commandeer any supplies that come across, said Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute.
The al Qaeda alliance now ‘‘has almost total control over what goes through the border’’, Lister said. ‘‘There has to be more rebel unity before the international community can take the risk.’’
The rebels now face an existential choice - to join the radical groups and risk being annihilated from the air by Russian and US warplanes, or to unite to confront al Qaeda and its allies and risk defeat on the ground by the betterarmed and highly motivated Islamist militants.
Turkey, the rebels’ closest ally, is offering a third alternative: to leave the Idlib area entirely and head east to join the Turkishbacked operation, known as Euphrates Shield, which is under way against Isis, a rival of al Qaeda.
As Turkey tries to convince the US that it can muster a force strong enough to provide an alternative to the Syrian Kurds to participate in the battle for the Isis capital of Raqqa, it has been heavily recruiting support among the moderate rebels of Idlib.
But the Idlib rebels did not want to surrender their territory to the jihadists to go and fight on a different front, said Captain Mohanned Junaid of Jaish al-Nasr, another US-backed group that last week lost an estimated 69 members in a massacre of moderate rebels by one of the al Qaeda affiliates.
‘‘The whole of Idlib will be painted black, and that will give justification to the regime and Russian jets to bombard it,’’ he said.
Yet even with the moderate rebels facing likely annihilation, feuds among them persist, precluding the alliance their international sponsors are seeking.
Saoud, the rebel commander, is gloomy about the prospects for the rebels’ survival.
‘‘If we don’t get any more support, we will just keep fighting each other and killing each other until we all are dead,’’ he said. ‘‘The regime will be watching us. This is what they want.’’
- Washington Post