Who Will Govern Syrian Kurdistan?

By Giorgio Cafiero



Last month, as the Free Syrian Army took over areas of the Syrian-Turkish border, a power vacuum emerged in northeastern Syria. It was not the Free Syrian Army that filled the vacuum, but instead the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), the most heavily armed Kurdish faction in Syria. In early August, the Wall Street Journal reported that “Kurdish political parties and paramilitary groups have almost completely usurped the Syrian state apparatus,” taking over municipal buildings and vital infrastructure, providing security, and controlling the distribution of resources.

Although the prospects for an independent state in Syrian Kurdistan remain dim, unprecedented Kurdish autonomy will likely result from the conflict. The implications extend beyond Syria’s borders as various governments and non-state actors have strong, and often conflicting, interests in the political fate of Syria’s Kurds and the territorial integrity of the Syrian state.

Turkey, Iraq, and Iran are alarmed by the prospects for greater Kurdish autonomy in Syria, primarily due to unresolved tensions with their own Kurdish communities. On the other hand, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, the state of Israel, and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey welcome a semi-autonomous Kurdish state in Syria.

The Shadow of Saddam

Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi parliament, succinctly summarized the Syrian Kurds’ predicament of the last 18 months. “The Kurds in Syria have their own problems … They are against the Assad regime. They have been for years. They have no rights. But they are not sure about which people will come after.”

Syria’s Kurds remain divided over the “Syrian Revolution.” Supporting the regime risks a confrontation with vengeful rebels in a post-Assad era. But joining the ranks of the armed opposition risks brutal repression at the hands of the regime if Assad retains power—the fate of Iraqi Kurds who fought against Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war is recalled by all in historic Kurdistan. Rather than choosing sides, many Syrian Kurds have fled to Iraqi Kurdistan with the intention of returning to their homeland when the conditions are safer.

Since the 1960s, Syria’s Kurds have been marginalized and subjected to a discriminatory legal code. In 1962, a census was conducted that deprived approximately 120,000 Syrian Kurds of their citizenship. After Hafez al-Assad became president, Bedouin tribes were brought into the Kurdish region to resettle as part of a state-sponsored campaign of Arabization. Within the last decade, the state security forces opened fire on peaceful Kurdish demonstrators protesting Arab-Kurdish inequality in Syria. Syria’s Kurds, according to Amnesty International, have “continued to face identity-based discrimination, including restrictions on use of their language and culture,” and thousands have been “denied equitable access to social and economic rights.”

But although Bashar al-Assad is not well loved among Syria’s Kurds, the opposition has failed to garner the Kurds’ unified support. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which holds a plurality of seats within the Syrian National Council (SNC), is not popular among Kurdish nationalists, who are overwhelmingly secular. By opposing Kurdish autonomy and insisting that Syria’s official title remain the “Syrian Arab Republic,” the secular Arab nationalists within the SNC have also earned little trust from the Kurds.

Most importantly, however, is Turkey’s relationship with the Istanbul-based SNC. Put simply, many Kurds of Syria view the SNC as a Turkish puppet.

Assad’s forces have made no effort to reassert control in the northeast. According to Patrick Seale, a leading British expert on the Middle East, three potential reasons explain the regime’s inaction. First, the Syrian military was bogged down in Damascus and Aleppo and could not control the Kurdish areas. Second, in retaliation for Turkey’s support for Syria’s armed opposition, Assad wanted to antagonize Turkey by granting his own country’s Kurds autonomy. Third, Assad wanted to win the hearts and minds of the Kurds to prevent them from joining the opposition. Most likely, each of these factors contributed to Assad’s subsequent decision to grant citizenship to 200,000 stateless Kurds and permit the PYD to rule Syrian Kurdistan.

Some have accused the PYD of being allied with the Assad regime. Although the PYD claims to oppose Assad’s rule, it favors a dialogue with the regime and supports demilitarizing the opposition. The faction has opposed all foreign intervention in Syria and has met with Russian, Iranian, and Chinese diplomats, whose governments have provided weapons to the Syrian regime throughout the conflict.

The Struggle for Syrian Kurdistan

The idea of a semi-autonomous Kurdish state in northern Syria alarms Turkey for two main reasons. First, Ankara fears that the PKK will gain a safe haven in Syrian Kurdistan from which it can launch attacks against Turkey. Additionally, the Turkish government is concerned that greater Kurdish autonomy in Syria would press Turkey’s own 14 million Kurds to demand greater autonomy in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority areas. According to Turkish nationalists, the implications of this sensitive issue threaten to undermine the Turkish Republic’s territorial integrity, leading to the formation of an independent Kurdish state within southeastern Turkey.

“Turkey is capable of exercising its right to pursue [the PKK] inside Syria, if necessary,” threatened Prime Minister Recep Erdogan. Seale reports speculation in the Turkish media that Ankara is considering a military campaign in northern Syria to create a “buffer zone” whereby the Turkish military could defeat the Kurdish militants and establish a safe zone for the FSA to continue waging war against Assad’s regime.

Unlike Turkey, Iraq’s government supports the Assad regime. Iraq was one of three Arab League members not to vote in favor of suspending Syria from the organization. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki fears that a Sunni takeover of Syria, especially if led by radical Islamists, could reignite Iraq’s militant Sunni movements (including al-Qaeda affiliates) and rekindle their determination to destroy the Shia order that has emerged in the post-Saddam era, especially following the withdrawal of U.S. troops last year.

However, Baghdad shares Ankara’s interest in preventing the Syrian Kurds from gaining a semi-autonomous state along the border with Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan. As tensions heat up between Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdistan — mainly related to disputes over ownership of Kirkuk’s oil, Washington’s sale of F-16s to Baghdad, and border standoffs — many analysts fear a looming military confrontation between central Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government. Iraq’s position vis-à-vis Iraqi Kurdistan would weaken if Barzani’s government, the KRG, had a new ally in Syrian Kurdistan. On July 23, Barzani confirmed that his government has been training Syrian Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq.

However, the triangular relationship among the KRG, central Iraq, and Turkey will limit Barzani’s capacity to support Syria’s Kurds in their quest for an autonomous region. While Ankara and Baghdad’s ties worsen, primarily related to opposing stakes in Syria and the deepening political and economic relations between Turkey and Barzani’s government, a Sunni alliance between Turkey and Iraq’s Kurds may be increasingly valuable to Barzani as he assesses the threat from Baghdad. Trade between Turkey and the KRG reached $4.5 billion during the first half of 2012.

Therefore, antagonizing Turkey could entail grave economic costs for Barzani. On August 1, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu met with Barzani in Erbil to discuss the situation in Syrian Kurdistan. Both leaders concurred that “any attempt to exploit the power vacuum by any violent group or organization will be considered as a common threat, which should be jointly addressed.” Moreover, if the PKK gains power in Syrian Kurdistan, Barzani will face a difficult dilemma, as support for a pro-PKK semi-autonomous government in Syrian Kurdistan will unquestionably jeopardize his relationship with Turkey. While opposing greater Kurdish autonomy in Syria, Maliki would likely love to see Barzani placed in such a tight spot.

Israel must be ecstatic over the thought of a divided Syria, especially if an area rich in oil resources falls out of Damascus’ control. Moreover, Israel would be delighted to see Iran’s Kurdish minority take inspiration from their Syrian counterparts and demand increased autonomy, or perhaps independence, from the Islamic Republic. In fact, like the PYD, the most militant Kurdish group in Iranian Kurdistan, the Party of Free Life Kurdistan (PJAK), is a PKK-affiliate group.

Unquestionably, the PKK has much to gain from increased Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria. The PYD, formed by Salih Muslim Muhammad in 2003, has maintained close ties with the PKK. Many analysts even label the PYD as a political front for the PKK. If Turkey’s military invades Syrian Kurdistan to target Kurdish militants, the PKK has warned that it will turn “all of Kurdistan into a war zone.” Nonetheless, the PKK is not supported by all in northeastern Syria. Along certain parts of the Turkish border, Kurds only constitute 30-40 percent of the population, and relations with Arab tribes have often been tense in recent history.

Challenges on Both Sides of the Border

Despite the Syrian Kurds’ success in exploiting the Syrian civil war to gain autonomy, many delicate variables will determine their future. Will the Arab tribes in northeastern Syria peacefully accept de facto Kurdish control? Would either Assad or the Free Syrian Army accept an autonomous Kurdish region if or when the civil war ends? If Turkey invades Syrian Kurdistan, will Barzani’s government side with its fellow Kurds or be lured by economic pressure into remaining neutral?

Even as Turkey’s ruling Islamist party learns that the Middle East is a challenging region in which to pursue a “zero problems with neighbors” foreign policy, it may one day regret its role in undermining the Assad regime. Although Assad’s ouster and the rise of a pro-Turkis h Sunni regime in Damascus could expand Turkey’s influence in a new Middle East, what price will they pay for this greater regional power?

As the Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003 paved the way for a semi-autonomous Kurdish state on Turkey’s border with Iraq, the “Arab Spring” in Syria will likely create another one along the border with Syria. Although Turkey’s government has determined that ousting Assad would advance its interests, it may have to accept a PKK safe haven along the Syrian border as blowback from its role in further militarizing the conflict in Syria.

-This commentary was first published in Foreign Policy In Focus on 31/08/2012

Democracy Is Discipline and Self-Restraint

By Odeh Aburdene



The Arab uprisings over the last twenty months have shown that power flows from the bottom up, and people eventually will defy unjust tyranny and oppression. The Arab uprisings are a testament to the power of the powerless. Nelson Mandela, while in prison, on Robben Island, picked out a favorite passage from Shakespeare regarding Julius Caesar’s meditation on bravery and the inevitability of death. The Arab youth who led these uprisings were echoing Julius Caesar’s motto:

“Cowards die many times before their death,/ the valiant never taste of death but once,/ of all the wonders that I yet have heard,/ it seems to me most strange that men should fear,/ seeing that death, a necessary end./ will come when it will come.”

The events in the Arab world since December, 2010 in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and other places, have shown that the Arab people no longer fear or respect their leaders. They are demanding freedom, fairness, and an honest government.

Unless the people who rose against tyranny pursue and agree on the following common principles, values and standards, a just and fair society will not emerge. These standards, values and principles are:

1) security of thought and speech and freedom for the people to express their ideas and thoughts;
2) freedom for painters, photographers, and other artists to create as they wish;
3) freedom for scientists and engineers to research and invent;
4) freedom to worship, which recognizes and affirms the variety of creeds and sects;
5) freedom from oppression;
6) freedom from arbitrary arrest;
7) freedom from secret police and their brutality;
8) freedom to express their opinions and criticisms of their own government; and
9) last but not least, freedom and equality of opportunity for women. These principles have to be adopted gradually, through institution-building and cannot be imposed or enacted instantaneously. First, they start with a good educational system that teaches reason, science, and tolerance.

Unless the new order in the Arab world meets on these common standards and principles, the Arab world will not have peace, stability, prosperity, and progress. As A.J.P. Taylor the most famous British historian of the twentieth century declared, “Without intellectual freedom, without tolerance, without love, no society can advance.” It is the duty of Arab writers and intellectuals to preach tolerance and not teach hate, as we constantly see in the Arab media. At a time when everybody is lying in the Arab world, journalists, teachers, government officials, business people, the Arab world needs a media (print and television), that would hold truth as its highest value and knowledge as its first responsibility.

The new Arab order, which clamors for popular government and liberty, must realize that popular government is not about what you want, or about your demands of others, but about not demanding of others to do what you do not want done to yourself. Popular government, freedom and liberty, mean “refusing to lay upon the backs of others the burdens we do not wish laid on our own.” Liberty and freedom is not about the liberty to do what you please without restraint to people in your society whom you deem unequal, because of their creed, sect, and ethnic background. True democracy “takes up the sword” against any faction or a group that wants to exploit another without any restraint at all. In sum, democracy is a discipline and self-restraint. It is about majority rule that will not infringe on the rights of those who lost political power and their followers. Democracy is about rule of law and that no one is above the law. Rule of law means people are governed by laws that are enacted by their elected representatives (Parliaments) and when their elected representatives exceed their authority under the Constitution or if the laws are misused, there is a strong independent judiciary that will repeal the Constitutional violation. Finally, rule of law is also about enforcement. 

Finally, democracy also requires a transparent capitalism. The Arab world has crony capitalism that has produced a greedy kleptocracy and lords of corruption, which benefits the few who are close to the people who have a monopoly on political and economic power. Democracy means economic and political competition that is based on fairness. In short, democracy is not just about free election, but also about treating all groups in society, regardless of their religious or ethnic backgrounds, as coequals. Democracy is a system that permits each citizen to feel “fully included and equally respected”. This is the essence of a democratic, just, and fair state.  As Brzezinski correctly pointed out, "Democracy is also a culture of compromise."

-This essay appeared in the Arab monthly Ad-Diplomasi in its September issue ,which is published in London. Editor: Raymond Atallah
-Dr. Odeh Aburdene is President of OAI Advisors and is a member of the Atlantic Council Board of Directors

The Time For Action

The Obama administration has backed itself into a corner in Syria, a crisis with few good options. But the endgame is clear, at least, and the time to get involved has come.

BY JAMES TRAUB


U.S. President Barack Obama

From the time that the peaceful protests in Syria turned into an armed uprising, it has been reasonable to argue that any imaginable outside intervention would do as much harm as good. I have made that argument myself. But the situation on the ground has changed, and so the calculus of outsiders must change as well. U.S. President Barack Obama's administration should accept that the only desirable outcome in Syria is a victory by the rebels and should work much more actively than it has both to hasten the day of that victory and to avoid the terrible settling of accounts that might well accompany such an outcome.

It is true that Syrian forces have committed terrible atrocities in recent weeks, both in the house-to-house killings in the Damascus suburb of Daraya and in aerial bombardments of civilians waiting in bread lines in the northern city of Aleppo, which have been documented in an appalling video recently posted by Human Rights Watch. But the moral case for intervention became incontrovertible many thousands of deaths ago. What has changed is the practical case.

Many people who supported the intervention in Libya, including officials in the White House, have opposed comparable action in Syria out of concern that escalating hostilities could turn an insurgency into a full-blown civil war, inflaming sectarian hatred and threatening neighbors with massive refugee flows and ethnic and religious tension. But almost all those things have come to pass simply as a result of the demons Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has unleashed.

The war has already escalated to previously unimaginable levels. The Syrian regime is now engaging in the strategy of counterinsurgency-by-atrocity used so effectively by Sudan against the people of its south and Darfur -- intentionally killing large numbers of civilians in order to shatter the opposition's will. Assad has sown the seeds of sectarian hatred by unleashing largely Alawite forces against Sunni civilians, in turn making Syria into a new crusade for Sunni extremists, many of them crossing the border from Iraq. And he has exported the conflict beyond Syria's borders, with Sunnis and Alawites facing off in the streets of Tripoli, Lebanon's second-largest city. The greatest danger to Syria and the region now comes from allowing Syria's civil war to continue unabated.

If the calculus of potential harm has changed, so too has the calculus of potential good. A no-fly zone would have done nothing to stop the thugs and soldiers who carried out the massacres in Daraya. The regime, however, doesn't have enough troops to repress the rebellion everywhere at once. Assad has been deploying helicopters and jets in Aleppo, Idlib, and elsewhere in the north not only to terrorize civilians but to prevent the rebels from establishing control over a large swath of territory, as the Libyan opposition did in Benghazi. The rebels have begun to shoot down a few of the government's helicopters and jets, but Assad is still counting on aerial terror to subdue the region. A no-fly zone might not stop the killing, but it could give the rebels the foothold they desperately need.

And unlike in Libya, where it was clear from the outset that NATO planes would have to take on Muammar al-Qaddafi's tanks and armored personnel carriers, a no-fly zone extending perhaps 75 miles south of the Syria-Turkey border could turn the tide in Syria.

A no-fly zone now makes sense. Perhaps if the Libya intervention had never happened, Western and regional powers might be prepared to take on such a task. But Libya exhausted NATO's resources and outraged Russia, China, and other countries that said they had voted only for a more modest no-fly zone. Russia and China will see to it that the U.N. Security Council never approves a resolution authorizing such an attack. And there is little evidence that any of the likely participants in a new effort -- the United States, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia -- have any appetite for ambitious military action in Syria, especially absent U.N. approval.

Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has asked the United Nations to establish a safe haven, but the Turks know perfectly well that Russia and China would veto such a resolution. The Turks, who are deeply worried about the destabilizing effect of the massive influx of Syrian refugees, now thought to number over 250,000, could establish a safe haven on their own, but apparently have no intention of doing so. While in Turkey in mid-August, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the United States and Turkey were setting up a working group to study a no-fly zone and other options. But one U.S. intelligence official with whom I spoke said that no serious military planning for a no-fly zone was currently under way.

Administration officials say that they cannot act without Turkey, but complain that Turkish political and diplomatic leaders barely speak to the Turkish military, which has shown no interest in military action. That may be true, but U.S. officials seem all too happy to use Turkey the way Turkey uses the U.N.: to avoid blame for failing to take action. With the U.S. president trying to get reelected by a public that is paying as little attention as it can to the world beyond America's borders, the White House does not want to be dragged into a foreign campaign that could turn ugly. Indeed, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland immediately rejected Davutoglu's safe-haven plea, saying that the United States wants to help the refugees get to Turkey, not protect them inside Syria.

One administration official said to me that because the rebels are now winning, outside intervention has become unnecessary. But that, too, sounds like a mighty convenient excuse for inaction. Assad may eventually lose his battle with the rebels, but many more thousands of Syrians are likely to die before he does, and an already poisonous atmosphere will become yet more lethal. Because it is now beyond obvious that Assad will leave only if he fears death or imminent defeat, the end must come with a rebel victory. And if the United States wants the rebels to win, then it should be doing everything it can to help them win -- and win in a way that prevents a post-Assad Syria from degenerating into Iraq. Nor do you have to be John McCain to believe that the United States needs to range itself on the right side of history.

Is there an alternative? The obvious one is to give the rebels the military equipment they have been begging for. Until now, the Obama administration has provided only nonlethal equipment, mostly communications gear. But according to the New York Times, U.S. officials have granted an export license to a Syrian émigré group seeking to funnel weapons to the rebels. Why then should Washington not do directly what it is now prepared to do indirectly? One former U.S. government official with extensive experience in Syria suggests an alternative: "Just earmark $50 [million] or $100 million in covert assistance, and have agency guys walking around with bags of money."

Of course, that conjures up memories of Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the CIA supplied anti-Soviet jihadists with Stinger missiles that ultimately fell into the hands of al Qaeda. That's not an encouraging precedent. But CIA officials are reported to be on the ground in Syria and in Turkey helping to direct assistance to rebel commanders whom the United States believes it can work with. That assistance has been grossly inadequate, in part because Saudi Arabia and Qatar have not been supplying arms as promised. The rebels have been forced again and again to break off battles they might otherwise win for lack of ammunition and firepower. With anti-aircraft capability, the rebels could create a safe haven on their own. With anti-tank missiles, they night quickly turn the tide in other disputed areas.

The United States has a profound interest not only in bringing the slaughter in Syria to an end, but in having a meaningful presence on the ground when that happens -- as it did in Libya thanks to the NATO air campaign. It will not be easy, under any circumstances, to prevent Syria from collapsing into religious and ethnic enclaves, or into a war of all against all. But if Washington remains on the sidelines, as it has until now, it will have little influence with those who will ultimately prevail, and thus little ability to help shape the post-Assad landscape.

Obama might decide to postpone the decision until after the election, but that would be an act of consummate cynicism. He should act now, before it's too late.

-This commentary was published first in Foreign Policy on 31/08/2012
-James Traub is a fellow of the Center on International Cooperation

Hostility To Syrian Refugees Rising Along Turkey’s Border

Alarm is rising in Turkish border towns like Antakya among residents and politicians who fear the onslaught of refugees—now estimated at 80,000—will overwhelm them and bring sectarian unrest across the border.

By Mike Giglio


A Syrian family sits on a pavement after they were not allowed entry to Turkey near the Syrian-Turkish border line on August 27, 2012 (Aris Messinis, AFP / Getty Imaged)

Malik Balia thinks he has as good an idea as anyone about the number of Syrians in Antakya these days. Since they began to appear last year, he has sold them mobile phones from his busy Turkcell shop in the center of town. They come as refugees to this city near the Turkish border with Syria, but many are revolutionaries too, looking to continue their work for the uprising at home. Revolutionaries need to stay connected, and they come to Balia for SIM cards and USB Internet sticks.

“From 9 in the morning until 12 at night, the Syrians come in and out,” Balia says. He guesses that he’s served 3,000 to date—and that thousands more now live in Antakya and the surrounding border province of Hatay. “There are a lot of Syrians here,” he says.

Like most Antakya residents, Balia is Alawite, hailing from the same religious sect as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. As in Syria, Turkey’s Alawites—an off-shoot of Shiite Islam—are a minority in a predominately Sunni country, and many express solidarity with Assad. But Balia says he’s one of the good guys, harboring nothing in the way of sectarian concerns.

Sitting in his shop’s basement, where hundreds of chargers and USB cords dangle from hooks on the walls and scores of cell phones await repair, Balia flips through stacks of Turkcell receipts, many bearing the sort of nicknames—Abu Rami, Abu Ramen, Abu Ibrahim—that Syrian activists and rebels use to keep their identities obscured. (Abu translates to “the father of.”) Balia then pages through a six-inch stack of the passport scans he takes to issue his SIM cards. Almost all the passports are Syrian. “I could make millions selling all this information to Alawites in Syria,” Balia says. “But I wouldn’t do it, even if they threatened to cut my head off.”

But not all of Balia’s clients trust that their information is safe. “He gives it all to the Syrian regime,” one of his regular Syrian customers says.

Antakya has become a nerve center for the uprising against Assad. The city buzzes with activists, rebel fighters, and refugees who forgo camps along the border to pile into houses and apartments around town. Syrians of all creeds have joined the uprising, but the bulk are Sunni, while Alawites make up a bastion of Assad support. As the conflict grinds on, the political dialogue in Turkey has become fixated on the idea that sectarian tensions might spread across the border into Hatay—and which has resulted in what Ceren Kenar, a Turkish columnist and journalist, calls “a panic among Turkish public opinion.”

Politicians from the Turkish opposition have demonized the refugees—one recently claimed Turkey is training terrorists in the camps—and raised the alarm about coming sectarian unrest. The Turkish press, meanwhile, has been filled with accounts from Hatay residents who say they no longer want the Syrians in town. Syrians have been accused of everything from jumping cabs and restaurant bills to making unwanted advances on Turkish women and sowing Islamic extremism. Rumors of big anti-Syrian protests, meanwhile, have become a constant in Antakya of late.

“The media, the opposition parties—everybody is only speaking about Syria. We don’t have any other agenda,”  Kenar says. “Politics has become very polarized around these lines. And the refugee crisis is the new hot-button issue. The language some people are using now is that Hatay is occupied by a foreign army.”

As the Turkish worries mount, meanwhile, Syrians are becoming increasingly wary of their hosts. “We’re very concerned about an extension of the sectarian problem,” says Miral Biroreda, a veteran activist who has been living in Antakya for four months. “This is fertile ground.”

Turkey has been one of the Assad regime’s most vehement critics. As the number of refugees pouring across its borders has surged amid spiraling violence inside Syria—there are now more than 80,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey, according to the foreign ministry—the government in Ankara has pushed to make the refugee issue an international one. Turkey temporarily closed its borders to Syrian refugees this week, saying it was scrambling to put together new camps, while its foreign minister called on the United Nations to establish a buffer zone to safely house the refugees on Syrian soil. (In a rare interview this week, Assad dismissed such a notion, and insisted his army is winning the civil war.)

Refugees are increasingly becoming a domestic issue for Turkey too—one that seems to have put the government in a difficult spot. “It’s a long-standing criticism from the opposition that the Syria policy is creating more problems in Turkey than anything else, and I think it’s resonating,” says David Pollock, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The government has gotten itself into a corner, in that it’s on one side of the conflict, and it’s not winning. And there’s no end in sight. The refugees are still knocking on the door. The fighting is still going on.”

Some well-known Syrian activists in Antakya say they were summoned to a meeting with local government officials to address the refugee issue Monday night. According to the activists, the officials suggested that all Syrians should leave Antakya and Hatay—either for the refugee camps, or to head deeper into Turkey, away from the border. The officials, they say, painted this as a move for the Syrians’ own good—in the camps they could receive more Turkish support. But the Syrians reacted with defiance. “We understood the message,” says Amin Ahmed Abid, a schoolteacher and activist from the Syrian city of Latakia. “They want to move all Syrian people away from Hatay.”

This account of the meeting was put forward by three Syrians who say they attended—Abid, along with Nasr Adin Ahmah and Abu Mohamed Jablawi—as well as a representative of an international NGO. Abid and the others were convinced the meeting was prompted by Turkey’s struggle to respond to the recent outburst of concerns over refugees in Hatay.

“Syrian people have been here for more than a year, and they never thought about this before,” Abid says. “They don’t have enough space in the camps to accept more people from Syria, and now they want to bring everyone here inside? It doesn’t make any sense.”

It’s unclear whether the Turkish government is considering a push to relocate the refugees or how such a measure would be enforced. “We have no exact information on this topic,”  a foreign ministry spokesman said, directing questions about the supposed meeting to the local government in Hatay. At the press office inside the government building, meanwhile, a spokesman for the governor said there was nothing he could say. “You heard what you heard,” he said of the meeting. He then referred questions to Hatay’s director of emergency relief, who referred them back to the foreign ministry.

Many locals, like Balia, insist that any tension is being stirred from the outside, not from the Antakya community that has long welcomed the Syrians as guests. On Tuesday, the governor of Hatay and mayor of Antakya gave a joint news conference that put the same message across. But Ahmah, the local activist, was busy worrying that an already a difficult situation for the Syrians in town was getting worse. Ahmah keeps a house in Antakya for the young activists who tend to turn up without a place to stay—there usually are about 10 living there at a time—that he says he funds largely by “begging my friends for their money,” and contributing his own. Rocks recently crashed through the windows on two consecutive nights. No one saw the culprits, but Ahmah is sure who they were. “Supporters of the regime,” he said.

-This report was published first in The Daily Beast on 30/08/2012
- Mike Giglio is a reporter at Newsweek

Whose Side Is Yemen On?

Ali Abdullah Saleh's government colluded with al Qaeda and duped the West. Has anything changed since his ouster?

BY SAM KIMBALL in Sanaa, Yemen



In the crowded Shumaila market in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, on May 28, 2005, Faysal Abdulaziz al-Arifi took a few trembling steps past buzzing stalls and garbage quickly accumulating on the street's edge.

Nasr al-Faqih, a police officer in the market, noticed Arifi's nervous looks and approached him. Faqih tried to get close to him, but Arifi pulled away. When the policeman asked him why, Arifi whispered, "I can't tell you on the street. The cell is watching me."

Under interrogation, Arifi confessed that he had been on his way to the central United Nations office in Sanaa, where he had been ordered to detonate an explosives belt hidden under his clothes -- a belt his mother had fastened to his body. But the teenager admitted that he was not ready to die and went looking for somewhere to turn himself in.

This story was related by Abdu al-Faqih, Nasr's brother and an officer in Yemen's Defense Ministry. According to Abdu, however, there was an even more disturbing twist to the young man's suicide mission: The cell he claimed was watching him was an al Qaeda unit operating in the capital whose membership included officers from the elite Republican Guard, Central Security forces, and the army's 1st Armored Division.

The response from authorities when Faqih reported his capture of a suicide bomber targeting the United Nations was negligible, according to Abdu, who has followed his brother's case closely. Officers in the security apparatuses refused to take Faqih's report seriously and ignored claims of al Qaeda infiltration into the ranks of Yemen's armed forces.

Months later, the attacks began. First, a gang attacked Faqih with a dagger as he left a Sanaa restaurant. Then men fired at him on his way home from duty. Finally, returning to Sanaa from his home village on a snaking mountain highway, Faqih's taxi was pushed off the road by a pursuing Hilux pickup truck. Faqih's vehicle overturned, and he lost his right eye and suffered a crushed jaw in the crash.

Yemen's Interior Ministry refused to pay for treatment of Faqih's injuries. Sanaa's prosecution court never published the findings of its investigations of the attempts on Faqih's life, and when his family pressed them for information, they were met with a firm response: His case had been closed.

Abdu is convinced of the complicity of the Yemeni security apparatuses in the attempts on his brother's life. "I accuse members of al Qaeda and their operatives inside the security organizations of being behind the assassination attempts," he seethed, looking over a pile of his brother's records in a living room in Sanaa's Old City. He pointed to the traffic report of his brother's accident, which states that Faqih sustained only basic injuries despite his now permanent disabilities, which Abdu believes is a sign that authorities wanted to keep the accident as low profile as possible by minimizing the damage.

Abdu also emphasized that though the previous and current attorney generals, as well as Gen. Fadhal al-Qawsi, commander of the Central Security forces, issued orders to carry out a full investigation of the attempts on Faqih's life, his case remained untouched.

Faqih, feeling himself under threat and believing the justice system was unable to protect him, fled to Cairo and has refused to speak on his case. Abdu says his brother "is afraid his family in Yemen will be knocked off" if he makes noise about his case, or government collusion with terrorists.

Foreign Policy contacted Yemeni Interior Minister Abdul Qadir Qahtan for comment on Faqih's case and accusations of government cooperation with al Qaeda. He refused to respond to the allegations.

Faqih is just one of the many Yemenis who have come to suspect that their government is not fighting, but helping cultivate, jihadi activity in their country. According to sources in Yemen's Interior Ministry and Defense Ministry, as well as independent Yemeni analysts and journalists with intimate knowledge of al Qaeda in Yemen, the Yemeni government is fully aware of a number of al Qaeda cells -- and their existence is tolerated and their crimes covered up.

It's a richly ironic development. Former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who stepped down in February after a year of mass protests, was lauded by U.S. officials as a valuable partner in the war on terror. In a WikiLeaked 2009 State Department cable, Saleh "insisted that Yemen's national territory is available for unilateral CT [counterterrorism] operations by the U.S." According to another cable, Saleh told Gen. David Petraeus, then the head of U.S. Central Command, that when it came to U.S. missile strikes on Yemeni soil, "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours." For Saleh's cooperation, Washington showered him with political and financial support.

Abdulghani al-Iryani, a Yemeni political analyst, has asserted that Saleh manipulated the terrorist threat in Yemen to extract support from the United States. "At all levels of Yemen's political elite you have collusion and cooperation with militants and terrorists," he told Foreign Policy.

The collusion reaches beyond Saleh's presidential circle, Iryani pointed out. Iryani claimed that Yemen's Political Security Organization (PSO), the government's most powerful internal security apparatus, is deeply connected to al Qaeda -- aware of its movements but never taking action unless forced to do so by public events. "Safe houses for al Qaeda leaders in Sanaa were provided by the PSO," he said. "When the attack on the British ambassador to Yemen occurred [in April 2010], the PSO went out to neighborhoods in Sanaa around the British and American embassies and arrested several dozen al Qaeda activists that same day. The PSO knew where they were."

Others working in Yemen's security organizations have come forward to describe their experiences with government collusion with al Qaeda up close.

Sitting cross-legged in a locked room in his tiny cement house on a mountaintop overlooking Sanaa, an officer in Yemen's Interior Ministry, speaking to Foreign Policy on condition of anonymity, described how he apprehended a young man in the capital's Hayy Siasi neighborhood in 2008 for his involvement in a gunfight. The officer said they found pictures on the youth's mobile phone of him training with other militants in what looked like Hadramout, a governorate in the distant east of the country. During questioning, the officer said, it came out that the young man was a member of al Qaeda.

"He [the young man under arrest] let slip that he'd been imprisoned by the Political Security before, but had been released, telling us that he was in touch with the chief of Political Security [Ghalib al-Qamish]," the officer said. With growing unease, he went on. "I told him that if he was really in touch with Qamish, why didn't he call him? He did, and Qamish got extremely angry, asking him, 'Why are you talking about me in front of them?!' and hung up. But, a half-hour later, orders came from the ministry to release him."

The release of terrorism suspects has a long history in Yemen. The 2006 prison break of 23 militants from Sanaa's Political Security prison was one of the most notorious escapes in Yemen's history, setting a number of dangerous al Qaeda operatives free again, including several who had participated in the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in the port of Aden.

According to some observers, it had to be an inside job. The prison is an imposing fortress in the heart of Sanaa, with plainclothes soldiers patrolling its perimeter. Inmates' spare cells -- only plastic silverware is allowed in -- are inspected several times a day. Prisoners are only allowed a half-hour a day outdoors, according to Muhammed Ghazwan, a Yemeni journalist with the local Shari newspaper, who was imprisoned there.

Muhsin Khosroof, a retired colonel and frequent commentator on Yemeni affairs, said that prisoners who escaped dug a tunnel to a mosque near the prison: "We don't know how they got the tools to dig a 300-meter tunnel, and we don't know where the soil they dug out went." Without the acquiescence of prison officials, he said, "this operation would seem impossible."

Khosroof thinks prison breaks aren't the only thing demonstrating collusion on the part of Yemeni officials with terrorists. The full-scale occupation of areas of southern Yemen by a local arm of al Qaeda calling itself Ansar al-Sharia during last year's uprising against Saleh, he thinks, would not have been possible without help from elements in the armed forces. According to Khosroof, the militants' success was simply too rapid to explain otherwise.

"No more than 400 al Qaeda fighters were able to occupy an entire governorate, which had several military detachments and special anti-terrorism teams trained by the Americans," he said. "All of these soldiers did nothing to confront 400 fighters, who occupied all of Abyan governorate and half of Shabwa governorate [both in Yemen's south]."

Ansar al-Sharia briefly took control of Ridaa, a city in Bayda governorate, for a few days in January, terrifying onlookers with the prospect that the group would move on the capital only 80 miles distant. Khosroof believes that Ridaa's capture was a maneuver orchestrated to make Yemenis cry out to the ailing Saleh regime for protection. "No battle occurred. Is this not evidence?" He asked. "No confrontation. The Republican Guard, the armed forces are supposed to stop them [Ansar al-Sharia]. No one confronted them, and they entered in peace."

President Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi, Saleh's successor and former vice president, has embarked on a high-profile campaign to wrest control of southern Yemen from al Qaeda. But suspicions run high that Yemen's current government is still covering for the terrorist organization. Ghazwan, who specializes in al Qaeda and military affairs, argued that militants escaped Hadi's offensive largely unscathed primarily with the help of top military leaders. "During the latest war, al Qaeda was able to reproduce itself through relationships with top military leaders," he said.

When the Yemeni military took the southern cities of Zinjibar and Jaar in its lightning campaign in June, Ansar al-Sharia beat a hasty retreat to the port city of Shaqra. When the army moved on Shaqra, the organization was able to regroup with all its heavy weaponry in the remote stronghold area of Mehfid, where it remains today -- and which will likely be the staging ground for even larger battles, Ghazwan noted.

Ghazwan said that a special unit cobbled together from local tribesman and military personnel had been formed with the purpose of defending an area called the Khubr Triangle, which lies between Shaqra and Mehfid. The unit was supposed to intercept Ansar al-Sharia on the al Qaeda offshoot's way to Mehfid. Yet, the unit's leader told Ghazwan that when the battle came, Military Operations ordered him not to intercept al Qaeda.

"Orders came at the time of the battle saying, 'This brigade should not move to Khubr.' And they stayed where they were for two days. And Ansar al-Sharia was able to move all of its heavy equipment to Mehfid," Ghazwan said.

"When you call mid-ranking military officials and speak to them on this issue," Ghazwan pointed out, "they tell you, 'We don't know who's behind this. Orders came from Military Operations not to move.' This indicates that al Qaeda has its hands in the highest ranks of military leadership who make the decisions."

Asked whether this oversight could have been because the officer who gave the orders had made a tactical error or was unaware of Ansar al-Sharia's movements, Ghazwan scoffed: "If that were true, then that too would be a huge problem, because commanders are supposed to be military experts, not ignorant of the enemy's movements." Solemnly, he added, "They [military leaders] gave life to al Qaeda once more. It had been on the verge of death."

As for why elements inside the Yemeni government would cooperate with or encourage al Qaeda's activities, the benefit is clear. The United States backed Saleh's regime with millions of dollars of assistance for his counterterrorism operations -- and it now backs the Hadi government in the hope that it can eradicate the terrorist threat and stabilize Yemen. But elements in the government have an incentive to keep the pot boiling: The greater al Qaeda's profile in Yemen, the more U.S. dollars flow to Yemeni government coffers. And with the country's history of rampant corruption, it should shock no one if much of that foreign assistance finds its way into politicians' pockets.

To the Interior Ministry officer, this couldn't be clearer. "The authorities get support from outside powers, like the U.S. They catch them [al Qaeda operatives] and then let them go to do other operations in order to extort support from other countries," he said matter-of-factly.

Ghazwan had a more nuanced view. "The issue is that those who collude with al Qaeda are not low- or mid-level officers. Those officers don't cooperate with al Qaeda," he said. "It's the highest-level leaders, who don't actually believe in the preachings of Ansar al-Sharia, but who manipulate them to remain in the government or bring a particular party to power."

-This commentary was published first in Foreign Policy on 29/08/2012
-Sam Kimball is a freelance reporter based in Sanaa, Yemen

Iran Said To Send Troops To Bolster Syria

Commanders and Hundreds of Elite Soldiers Deployed to Damascus, Members Say, as Deepening Conflict Worries Key Ally.

By FARNAZ FASSIHI in Beirut


Syrian Speaker Mohammed Jihad al-Laham, left, and Alaeddin Boroujerdi of the Iran parliament's national security committee Saturday in Damascus.

Iran is sending commanders from its elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and hundreds of foot soldiers to Syria, according to current and former members of the corps.

The personnel moves come on top of what these people say are Tehran's stepped-up efforts to aid the military of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with cash and arms. That would indicate that regional capitals are being drawn deeper into Syria's conflict—and undergird a growing perception among Mr. Assad's opponents that the regime's military is increasingly strained.

A commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, appeared to offer Iran's first open acknowledgment of its military involvement in Syria.
"Today we are involved in fighting every aspect of a war, a military one in Syria and a cultural one as well," Gen. Salar Abnoush, commander of IRGC's Saheb al-Amr unit, told volunteer trainees in a speech Monday. The comments, reported by the Daneshjoo news agency, which is run by regime-aligned students, couldn't be independently verified. Top Iranian officials had previously said the country isn't involved in the conflict.

Iran has long trained members of the Syrian security apparatus in cybersecurity and spying on dissidents, U.S. officials and Syrian opposition members have said. The decision to send Iranian personnel comes after rebel attacks this summer in Syria's biggest cities, Damascus and Aleppo, in particular an explosion in July that killed four members of Mr. Assad's inner circle, according to the people familiar with the IRGC.

Syria's regime is increasingly relying on a core of loyalists to conduct operations, say Syrian opposition members and rebel fighters. In recent weeks, Mr. Assad's army has been hobbled by defections, losing territory in Kurdish areas as well as near Turkey's border, these people say. On Monday, a Syrian military helicopter crashed in a ball of fire in Damascus, according to the Associated Press, citing activists and video footage.
Syria's uprising has placed Iran in a foreign-policy predicament. As the Arab Spring unfolded in countries including Libya, Egypt and Bahrain, the Islamic Republic cast its own revolution as an inspiration for the uprisings.

But Tehran didn't support the protesters in Syria—its closest ally in the region, the conduit between it and the Lebanese Shiite militant and political group Hezbollah, and a gateway for Iranian influence in the Arab world. Iran's most influential voices, including its supreme leader and the political and military power structures, have steadfastly supported Syria's president and, like Mr. Assad, have blamed the country's violence on foreign meddling and terrorists.

But in continuing to support Mr. Assad, Tehran's popular support in the region appears to have waned. Some elements of the government appear to be hedging bets: In the past few months, Iran's Foreign Ministry has reached out to some Syrian opposition members, offering to mediate between the two sides.

Those efforts appear to be overshadowed now by Iran's support for the Syrian military in its fight against the rebel insurgency, according to analysts and the former and current guard members.

"One of Iran's wings will be broken if Assad falls. They are now using all their contacts from Iraq to Lebanon to keep him power," Mohsen Sazegara, a founding IRGC member who now opposes the Iranian regime and lives in exile in the U.S., said by telephone.

On Thursday, Iran's defense minister publicly signaled a shift. If Syria fails to put down the uprising, Iran would send military help based on a mutual defense agreement between the two countries, two Iranian newspapers quoted Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi as saying. Syria hadn't asked for assistance yet, he added.

"Syria is managing this situation very well on its own," he said. "But if the government can't resolve the crisis on its own, then based on their request we will fulfill our mutual defense-security pact."

Syria's crisis tops the agenda at the summit of Non-Aligned Movement nations this week in Tehran. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Thursday that Iran would announce a surprise peace plan for Syria during the five-day conference, which started Sunday.

In Tehran, Syrian National Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar met Monday with several Iranian officials and expressed Syria's gratitude. "The people of Syria will never forget the support of Iran during these difficult times," Mr. Haidar said, according to Iranian media.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final word in all state matters, has appointed Qasim Solaimani, the commander of the elite Quds Forces, to spearhead military cooperation with Mr. Assad and his forces, according to an IRGC member in Tehran with knowledge about deployments to Syria.

The Quds Forces are the IRGC's operatives outside Iran, responsible for training proxy militants and exporting the revolution's ideology. The U.S. blames the Quds Forces for terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Solaimani has convinced Mr. Khamenei that Iran's borders extend beyond geographic frontiers, and fighting for Syria is an integral part of keeping the Shiite Crescent intact," said the IRGC member in Tehran. The so-called Crescent, which came together after Saddam Hussein's fall, includes Shiites from Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.

Iran is now sending hundreds of rank-and-file members of the IRGC and the basij—a plainclothes volunteer militia answering to the guards—to Damascus, said two people in the IRGC familiar with the movements.

Many of the Iranian troops hail from IRGC units outside Tehran, these people say, particularly from Iran's Azerbaijan and Kurdistan regions where they have experience dealing with ethnic separatist movements. They are replacing low-ranking Syrian soldiers who have defected to the Syrian opposition, these people said, and mainly assume non-fighting roles such as guarding weapons caches and helping to run military bases.

Iran is also deploying IRGC commanders to guide Syrian forces in battle strategy and Quds commanders to help with military intelligence, Mr. Sazegara and the current IRGC members said.
On the other side of Syria's conflict, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have funded and armed opposition rebels, while Turkey has allowed them to keep an unofficial base near Syria's border. Foreign Arab fighters, many of them extremist Jihadist, have also flocked to Syria to fight alongside rebels.

Iran has also started moving military aid and cash to Syria through Iranian companies in Iraq, such as a construction company owned by a former IRGC member now living in Iraq and a tour company servicing pilgrims to holy Shiite sites, said Mr. Sazegara and a person in Iran familiar with the construction company.

The IRGC and Syrian forces are working together to free 48 Iranian hostages kidnapped by a unit of the opposition Free Syrian Army this month, according to two IRGC officials in Tehran as well as comments from an Iranian parliamentarian in Damascus this week.

Iran at first denied the kidnapped Iranians had any link with the IRGC. But Mr. Salehi later said some of the hostages were retired members of the IRGC, calling them Iran's "most dear and beloved." Iranian opposition media, meanwhile, have named four of the men, calling them current IRGC commanders from various Iranian provinces.

Iran's ambassador to Syria said recently that the hostages' whereabouts have been determined and that Iran is negotiation with Syria on how to rescue them, Iranian media reported. The envoy also said Iran and Syria had formed a joint committee, with intelligence, policy and military experts, for the rescue mission. Iranian media said Monday that this committee sends Mr. Assad regular updates of their findings.

-This report was published in The Wall Street Journal on 28/08/2012

Are Syria’s Rebels Getting Too Extreme?

Syria’s 18 month-long conflict is deepening sectarian divisions, breeding more and more openly Islamist Sunni rebels talking about the rebellion ushering in Sharia law—and raising the prospect of an ungovernable post-war nation.

By Jamie Dettmer


Syrian rebels pray at a military base north of Aleppo July 24, 2012. (EPA / Landov)

While the international media focuses on whether al Qaeda has latched onto the escalating Syrian conflict, opposition activists and human-rights observers are less alarmed than the Pentagon about the trickle of foreign fighters arriving in the war-torn country than about the home-grown hardening of sectarian attitudes among Syrians and the adoption by rebels of more muscular Islamist views.

They worry that the prolonged strife and blood-letting is disfiguring the rebellion, turning what started out as a more secular effort to oust President Bashar al-Assad and his minority Alawite-led government into a sectarian confrontation between Sunnis and religious minorities that could render Syria so fractured it is ungovernable as a single state.

“The conflict has become more sectarian and more Islamic,” says Ole Solvang of Human Rights Watch. “It was a lot more secular a year ago.” He says he’s noticed in the last 12 months more fighters sporting beards and more wearing headbands proclaiming, “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His Messenger.” Fighters are becoming radicalized and talking openly of the rebellion ushering in an Islamist state based on Sharia law. When asked whether they are fighting for democracy or Islam many are now emphasizing the latter.

Above all, hatred for Assad’s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam that some Sunnis reject as not being Islamic at all, is growing, adding to a toxic mix of Islamism and sectarianism that’s already leaching poison beyond Syria’s borders into neighboring Lebanon. On August 15, gunmen from a Lebanese Shia clan abducted more than 20 Syrian Sunnis in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon in response to the kidnapping of a clansman by rebels in the Syrian capital of Damascus. And earlier this week, a dozen were killed and scores more injured when fighting erupted in the Lebanese city of Tripoli involving the Alawites and Sunni Muslims.

Radwan Abu-Alsha, a commander with the Tawheed brigade in Aleppo, is not unusual in rejecting brusquely the idea that there can ever be reconciliation between Sunni rebels and Alawites, whom he says butchered his wife and children last March in Homs. “Alawites were my friends and neighbors, but no one should ask me to live side-by-side with them again,” he told The Daily Beast. Along with several Tawheed colleagues who nodded vigorously in agreement, he stressed the responsibility of the Alawites in the pro-Assad Shabiha militia for many of the worst excesses in Homs this winter and spring and elsewhere in the country.

Many Sunnis have worked closely with the regime since Hafez al-Assad established it 40 years ago. Sunnis who have benefited from it in terms of power and wealth continue to fight to preserve it. But the 18 month-long conflict is exacerbating Syria’s sectarian divisions, testing the loyalty of senior Sunni members to breaking point and prompting an increasing number to defect.

Last week, the most senior defector since the uprising against the government began, Riad Hijab, the country’s former prime minister, urged Syrian troops and officials to join the rebellion, labeling Assad the “enemy of God.” Some Syrians interpreted this as a coded message suggesting that, as an Alawite, Assad is not a true Muslim.

On August 19, Assad appeared to respond to the charge by making a rare public appearance to pray at the Hamad mosque in Damascus at the start of Eid al-Fitr, a three-day holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. It was the first time he’d been seen in public since July’s bombing in Damascus in which top security and defense aides were killed.

Like his father, Bashar has sought to obscure the regime’s Alawite roots, but he appears to be hedging his bets now, praying at a Sunni mosque one day but using the Alawite-dominated Shabiha to raise the sectarian temperature by carrying out atrocities such as the massacre in May in Houla in which 108 Sunnis died. Syria observers believe this is part of a last-ditch effort by the regime to divert the conflict into a sectarian war and to make it less about Assad. And it appears to be working.
“In order to survive, Assad and his Alawite generals will struggle to turn Syria into Lebanon—a fractured nation, where no one community can rule,” argues Syria expert Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma on his blog, Syria Comment. He terms this Assad’s Lebanon option.

The Assad regime is stoking the fear among the country’s minorities, from Assad’s Alawite sect—15 percent of Syria’s 22.5 million population—to Christians and Druze, that a rebel victory will trigger Sunni triumphalism and unleash a religious cleansing.

And some increasingly Islamist rebel forces are falling into Assad’s trap, forcing out Christians from their homes in Homs and other towns, including 9,000 Christians from the western Syrian city of Qusayr, following an ultimatum by a local rebel commander. Christian refugees from the Syrian town of Kusair claim that radical Islamists who had joined the fight against the Assad regime have murdered many of their relatives.

Gregorios III Laham, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Damascus, says it isn’t foreign jihadists who are doing this. Talking to Sky News, he said they were local Muslims “moving into peaceful Christian areas.”  He said he fears Christians could be forced out of the country after the civil war, as happened in neighboring Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, where 600,000 fled, many going to Syria.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, two senior Sunni mosque leaders in the rebel-held town of Al Bab insisted post-Assad Syria should be run according to Sharia law, but that minorities should not be afraid. “Islamic law accepts other religions. The majority of Syrians are Sunni Muslims and so they want Sharia law,” says Abdulbaset Kuredy. “We only fight people who carry weapons and those who don’t, have nothing to fear.”

He says, though, that Alawites are not Muslims, as they don’t apply “our teachings.” Is he afraid that the civil war will become more sectarian? “Hundreds of years ago we lived next door to each other and in peace. Assad is exploiting sectarian divisions,” he says.

Opposition activist “Tony” al-Taieb, who works with the Free Syrian Army-linked military council in Aleppo, says it is not surprising that religion is playing a more prominent role and that sectarian feelings are growing. “People are suffering and experiencing terrible things and it is natural for attitudes to harden as this goes on,” he says. He blames Western nations partly for the increasing sectarianism, arguing that the rebels feel neglected by the U.S. and European nations, which should be doing more actively to help rebels finish Assad. “There are more risks for the West from hanging back than intervening,” he adds.

Among the troubling risks is that as sectarianism increases more foreign fighters and jihadists will be attracted to Syria, further distorting what started as a reform movement into a holy war. Observers on the ground—from journalists to human rights groups—have seen only small groups of foreign fighters, some possibly linked to al Qaeda. But as the conflict becomes prolonged, the numbers are likely to grow.

-This commentary was published in The Daily Beast on 24/08/2012
- Jamie Dettmer is an independent foreign correspondent. He has been a staff journalist for The Times of London, Sunday Telegraph, Scotland on Sunday, and Irish Sunday Tribune and was recently the comment editor of The Hill