| New York Times | - |
CAIRO - In Syria's
largest city, Aleppo, rebels aligned with Al Qaeda control the power
plant, run the bakeries and head a court that applies Islamic law.
Islamist Rebels Create Dilemma on Syria Policy
Edlib News Network Enn, via Associated Press
An image provided by citizen journalists shows Nusra Front rebels at an air base in Idlib.
By BEN HUBBARD
Published: April 27, 2013
Multimedia
Khalil Hamra/Associated Press
A bakery outside Aleppo, where the Qaeda-aligned
Nusra Front is running the power plant and even distributing flour.
Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by
lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even
the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose
formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked
with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian
government.
Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.
This is the landscape President Obama confronts as he considers how to respond to growing evidence that Syrian officials have used chemical weapons,
crossing a “red line” he had set. More than two years of violence have
radicalized the armed opposition fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad,
leaving few groups that both share the political vision of the United
States and have the military might to push it forward.
Among the most extreme groups is the notorious Al Nusra Front, the
Qaeda-aligned force declared a terrorist organization by the United
States, but other groups share aspects of its Islamist ideology in
varying degrees.
“Some of the more extremist opposition is very scary from an American
perspective, and that presents us with all sorts of problems,” said Ari
Ratner, a fellow at the Truman National Security Project and former
Middle East adviser in the Obama State Department. “We have no illusions
about the prospect of engaging with the Assad regime — it must still go
— but we are also very reticent to support the more hard-line rebels.”
Syrian officials recognize that the United States is worried that it has
few natural allies in the armed opposition and have tried to exploit
that with a public campaign to convince, or frighten, Washington into
staying out of the fight. At every turn they promote the notion that the
alternative to Mr. Assad is an extremist Islamic state.
The Islamist character of the opposition reflects the main constituency
of the rebellion, which has been led since its start by Syria’s Sunni
Muslim majority, mostly in conservative, marginalized areas. The descent
into brutal civil war has hardened sectarian differences, and the
failure of more mainstream rebel groups to secure regular arms supplies
has allowed Islamists to fill the void and win supporters.
The religious agenda of the combatants sets them apart from many
civilian activists, protesters and aid workers who had hoped the
uprising would create a civil, democratic Syria.
When the armed rebellion began, defectors from the government’s
staunchly secular army formed the vanguard. The rebel movement has since
grown to include fighters with a wide range of views, including
Qaeda-aligned jihadis seeking to establish an Islamic emirate, political
Islamists inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood and others who want an
Islamic-influenced legal code like that found in many Arab states.
“My sense is that there are no seculars,” said Elizabeth O’Bagy, of the
Institute for the Study of War, who has made numerous trips to Syria in
recent months to interview rebel commanders.
Of most concern to the United States is the Nusra Front, whose leader
recently confirmed that the group cooperated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and
pledged fealty to Al Qaeda’s top leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin
Laden’s longtime deputy. Nusra has claimed responsibility for a number
of suicide bombings and is the group of choice for the foreign jihadis
pouring into Syria.
Another prominent group, Ahrar al-Sham, shares much of Nusra’s extremist ideology but is made up mostly of Syrians.
The two groups are most active in the north and east and are widely
respected by other rebels for their fighting abilities and their ample
arsenal, much of it given by sympathetic donors in the gulf. And both
helped lead campaigns to seize military bases, dams on the Euphrates
River and the provincial capital of Raqqa Province in March, the only
regional capital entirely held by rebel forces.
Nusra’s hand is felt most strongly in Aleppo, where the group has set up
camp in a former children’s hospital and has worked with other rebel
groups to establish a Shariah
Commission in the eye hospital next door to govern the city’s
rebel-held neighborhoods. The commission runs a police force and an
Islamic court that hands down sentences that have included lashings,
though not amputations or executions as some Shariah courts in other
countries have done.
Nusra fighters also control the power plant and distribute flour to keep the city’s bakeries running.
While many residents initially feared them, some have come to respect
them for providing basic services and working to fill the city’s
security vacuum. Secular activists, however, have chafed at their
presence. At times, Nusra fighters have clashed with other rebels who
reject their ideology.
In the oil-rich provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasaka,
Nusra fighters have seized government oil fields, putting some under
the control of tribal militias and running others themselves.
“They are the strongest military force in the area,” said the commander
of a rebel brigade in Hasaka reached via Skype. “We can’t deny it.”
But most of Nusra’s fighters joined the group for the weapons, not the
ideology, he said, and some left after discovering the Qaeda connection.
“Most of the youth who joined them did so to topple the regime, not
because they wanted to join Al Qaeda,” he said, speaking on the
condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
As extremists rose in the rebel ranks, the United States sought to limit
their influence, first by designating Nusra a terrorist organization,
and later by pushing for the formation of the Supreme Military Council,
which is linked to the exile opposition group, the Syrian National
Coalition.
Although led by an army defector, Gen. Salim Idris,
the council has taken in the leaders of many overtly Islamist
battalions. One called the Syrian Liberation Front has been integrated
nearly wholesale into the council; many of its members coordinate
closely with the Syrian Islamic Front, a group that includes the
extremist Ahrar al-Sham, according to a recent report by Ms. O’Bagy, of
the Institute for the Study of War.
A spokesman for the council, Louay Mekdad, said that its members
reflected Syrian society and that it had no ties to Nusra or other
radical groups. “The character of the Syrian people is Islamic, but it
is stupid to think that Syria will turn into Afghanistan,” he said.
“That’s just an excuse for those who don’t want to help Syria.”
The Obama administration has said it needs more conclusive information before it acts
on the Syrian government’s reported use of chemical weapons. It remains
unclear whether such action would translate to increased support for
the rebels.
In the past, United States officials saw the Islamist groups’ abundant
resources as the main draw for recruits, said Steven Heydemann, a senior
adviser at the United States Institute of Peace, which works with the
State Department.
“The strategy is based on the current assessment that popular appeal of
these groups is transactional, not ideological, and that opportunities
exist to peel people away by providing alternative support and
resources,” he said.
Mr. Heydemann acknowledged, however, that the current momentum toward radicalism could be hard to reverse.
The challenge, he said, is to end the conflict before “the opportunity
to create a system of governance not based on militant Islamic law is
lost.”
Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for
Strategic Studies, framed the rebels’ dilemma another way: “How do you
denounce the Nusra Front as extremists when they are playing such an
important military role and when they look disciplined, resourceful and
committed?”
From the start, the Syrian government has sought to portray the rebels
as terrorists carrying out an international plot to weaken the country,
and the rise of extremist groups has strengthened its case and increased
support among Syrians who fear that a rebel victory could mean the end
of the secular Syrian state.
Many rebels and opposition activists complain about the Western focus on
Islamist groups, some even dismissing the opposition’s ideological
differences.
“We all want an Islamic state and we want Shariah to be applied,” said
Maawiya Hassan Agha, a rebel activist reached by Skype in the northern
village of Sarmeen. He said a country’s laws should flow from its
people’s beliefs and compared Syrians calling for Islamic law with the
French banning Muslim women from wearing face veils.
“In France, people don’t like face veils so they passed laws against
them,” he said. “It’s the same thing here. It’s our right to push for
the laws we want.”
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