Foreign extremists in last stand in Idlib

Hardened fighters from Uzbekistan, Chechnya, China’s Uighur minority have nowhere to go

Hailing from far and wide, they flocked to Syria to wage “holy war”. Now foreign extremists face a fight to the last to hold onto Idlib, their final bastion.

Syrian regime troops, backed by Russia and Iran, have massed around the northwestern province ahead of an expected onslaught against the largest rebel-held zone left in the country.

Since 2015, Idlib has been home to a complex array of anti-regime forces: secular rebels, Islamists, Syrian extremists with ties to Al Qaida — and their foreign counterparts.

The non-Syrians include fighters from Uzbekistan, Chechnya and China’s ethnic Uighur minority who cut their teeth in other wars but then swarmed to Syria to take up the cause.

The threatened assault by President Bashar Al Assad’s regime could deprive the few thousand left of their last stronghold in their adopted homeland. “These are people who cannot be integrated into Syria really, under any circumstances, who have nowhere to go and who may just be ready to die in any case,” says Sam Heller, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. “So they’re a real stumbling block to any solution,” Heller tells AFP.

In a bid to avert an assault, the top three power brokers in Syria’s war — Russia, Iran, and Turkey — agreed on Friday to work together on “stabilising” Idlib. A major obstacle to a substantive agreement, observers say, is the fate of extremists in the province, including foreign hardliners. Chased out of their own homelands and targeted in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, experienced foreign extremists embraced Syria’s war as their own starting around 2013, two years into the conflict. Many joined Daesh but others stuck by Al Qaida and its former Syrian affiliate — which now leads the powerful Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) alliance dominating Idlib.

Potent force

One of the largest is the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), whose members belong to the ethnic Uighur Muslim minority facing a stifling crackdown in China’s Xinjiang region.

They gained fighting experience in Afghanistan before heading to Syria and helping to oust regime troops from Idlib in 2015.

“From there, they raided weapons stocks and ever since have been among the most potent factions in the north, so they’re not a joke,” says Heller.

Perhaps the most infamous foreign combatants are Chechens, veterans of brutal wars with Russia and linked to HTS. The two most prominent Chechen groups in Syria are Junud Al Sham and Anjad Al Kavkaz, but they have kept mum in recent months to avoid picking sides in Idlib’s rebel infighting.