This is why you're often better off with the devil you know than with the devil you don't know. The devil we know is Bashar al-Assad, with whom we've retained a tense quiet for nearly 40 years. The devil we don't know is the Free Syrian Army, a large component of which is the al-Nusra Front. On Wednesday, the al-Nusra Front confirmed what we've all believed all along:
It confirmed its loyalty to al-Qaeda.
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.
"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.
This has JPost correspondent Yaakov Lappin asking whether
Syria is turning into our Afghanistan next door.
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.
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.
Read the whole thing.
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.
ReplyDeleteA 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.