Israel's Afghanistan?
Syria's rebel al-Nusra Front, one of the most effective forces fighting President Bashar al-Assad, pledged allegiance to al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri in an audio recording posted on the Internet on Wednesday.
Abu Mohammad al-Golani also appeared to distance his group from a recently announced merger with al Qaeda's Iraq branch.
The group's allegiance to Zawahri would trouble Western nations which support the revolt against Assad and will dismay Syrian moderates who want a civil state but fear the rise of extreme Islamist militancy.
"The sons of Nusra Front renew their pledge (of allegiance) to the Sheikh of Jihad Ayman al-Zawahri and declare obedience," Golani said in the recording.
Golani's statement came a day after the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, said his group and the Nusra Front would operate under a united leadership called the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant.
Golani said that his group was not consulted before that announcement and he had first heard about it through the media.
Golani said that while the Nusra Front had received assistance from the Islamic State of Iraq, his group would continue operating under its own banner, with loyalty to Zawahri.
This has JPost correspondent Yaakov Lappin asking whether Syria is turning into our Afghanistan next door."The banner of the Front will remain the same, nothing will change about it even though we are proud of the banner of the (Islamic) State and of those who carry it," he said.
Syria’s deteriorating situation – with its daily violence and crumbling of state sovereignty – allows for the ideal breeding ground for radical forces, just as similar circumstances did in the late 1980s in Afghanistan, where al- Qaida was formed.Read the whole thing.
Today, the ideology espoused by the founders of al-Qaida is alive and well in Syria, and its influence is felt around the region.
...
The concern is that al- Qaida’s worldview will spread to Israeli Arab volunteers, who can then try to return to Israel and carry out attacks.
The phenomenon is by no means limited to one country.
Labels: Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, Bashar al-Assad, Free Syrian Army, Syrian uprising
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:55 AM
1 Comments:
I disagree. Assad may have kept the border with Israel quiet, but that's only because he was following the Iranian strategy (as originally perfected by the Soviet Union): build up an enormous non-conventional arsenal to deter direct conflict, while standing up numerous proxies to wage all-out indirect warfare.
A rebel force in Syria--even if Al Qaeda-affiliated--that spends the next ten years battling a rump Alawi stronghold in northwestern Syria and a weakened Hezbollah in Lebanon on behalf of Lebanese Sunnis would be greatly preferable to the previous status quo, with the Syria-Iran axis steadily building up its non-conventional arsenal, and arming Hezbollah and Hamas to the teeth. Remember: Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Khomeini's Iran were both huge potential threats to Israel, but during the 1980s, while they were busy battling each other to the death...not so much.
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