The Syrian opposition movement has come to an inflection point from which it will be irreversibly changed—with significant consequences for the stability of the Middle East and the ongoing US-led campaign against the (IS). The recent fall of the rebel-ruled districts of the northern city of Aleppo to the government is leading to perhaps the starkest example of the new normal in Syria: trilateral talks between Russia, Turkey and Iran to end the civil war, cutting out the United States and the Syrian opposition’s High Negotiations Committee.

While the civil war may not immediately end, and the forces loyal to and allied with Assad still not numerous enough to recapture all areas of Syria that are opposition-controlled, 2017 will witness the steady transformation of the opposition. The has the ability to shape this transformation and achieve stated goals.

The new administration in Washington has expressed a strong inclination to situate Syria as an important arena in an American global counterterrorism strategy, and the cadre of US vetted and supplied armed opposition groups in southwestern Syria would be a good foundation for this indigenous, Syrian counterterrorism force. This coalition, known as the Southern Front, is backed by a cooperative of most of America’s best partners in the Middle East, and will be an investment that will increase over the course of 2017.

The Southern Front in Syria

What makes the Southern Front particularly valuable as America’s partner in Syria is that it checks all the boxes for what the Trump administration is likely to want from the armed opposition: it is well positioned to combat Iran’s malign activities directly targeting Israel; it is providing a shield for Jordan’s vulnerable northern border against Sunni radical Islamists; and it can be prepared to be a spear aimed at the heart of IS in eastern and central Syria. The Southern Front also controls a large area of strategic terrain a mere 70 kilometers from Damascus, making this coalition a vehicle for applying coercive pressure on the Assad government if necessary.

The Southern Front is the largest organization of US-vetted Syrian rebel groups, and over the course of 2016 this coalition quietly became the focus of an effort by Washington’s closest regional partners—Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Israel—to control and stabilize considerable, strategic areas of southwestern Syria. And in addition to helping the new administration achieve policy goals such as taking the fight to IS, pushing back against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and protecting allies’ security, the Southern Front is prepared to be the indigenous security forces that protect a safe zone to house Syrians displaced by the war, particularly the large population of refugees that is destabilizing Jordan.

The Trump administration has expressed a strong desire to work by, with and through regional partners in the Middle East, and a great benefit of the Southern Front is that the cost of supporting it will not be borne by the US alone. Both Jordan, the original patron of the Southern Front that worked closely with the US to create the coalition in 2014, and Israel, which has steadily increased its support for the local population in Southern Front-controlled areas, are committed to stabilizing southwestern Syria under a moderate local governance that is neither the strongly Iranian-influenced government of President Assad nor Sunni radical Islamists such as IS, al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Investing in this building effort will further US strategy for Syria, because both Iran and IS view southwestern Syria as a logical site for the expansion of their activities. The IRGC is seeking to utilize the Golan border areas of Syria to establish another front against Israel, and the Islamic State is seeking to subvert the armed opposition in southwestern Syria to stage attacks against Jordan.

The Southern Front’s spirited pushback against IRGC-mobilized forces in the Golan Heights, combined with Iran’s expanded investment in the southern Syria theater, has prompted Israel to choose a more proactive role in Syria. This role will only increase, both overtly in Israel’s expanded use of direct action against the Lebanese Hezbollah and the IRGC in the Golan, and semi-covertly as the Israelis increase their support for communities in southwestern Syria that are protected by the US-vetted and Jordanian-approved Southern Front.

The Southern Front coalition is important for the future of Syria because it can serve as the model for an acceptable and nationalist security force that can be a partner for stability in the country as the Trump administration looks to work with global and regional partners to end the civil war. In June 2016, the US designated an Islamic State affiliate in southwestern Syria as a terrorist organization, opening a clear legal pathway to provide lethal assistance to Southern Front affiliates willing to prioritize the fight against IS.

Russia, acting on an agreement with Israel and Jordan, has also largely curtailed Assad government attacks on Southern Front-controlled areas, creating the de facto safe zone in southwestern Syria that can be used to organize an indigenous counterterrorism force out of the Southern Front. This force can provide security for a safe zone for displaced Syrians, and can be a staging point for the larger counter-IS campaign.

In addition to its presence in Daraa, the Islamic State is edging closer to the south after its recapture of Palmyra on December 11, 2016. The group’s increased activities in that region highlight the integral role of the Southern Front in the fight against IS in central and eastern Syria.

The Trump Administration

By increasing its investment in the Southern Front, the Trump administration can secure some of the most important real estate in Syria, linking southwestern and eastern Syria in an arc of US influence, and utilize this territory to increase American leverage on the outcome of the counter-IS campaign and the conclusion of the Syrian Civil War.

Through the Southern Front, US President Donald Trump can win the long game against Iran and Islamic extremism in the Middle East.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Hope is fleeting in Syria. The civil war has people, displaced more than (which is more than half of Syria’s pre-war population), caused of dollars of destruction to the country’s infrastructure, and has been a beacon for jihadist fighters—Sunni and Shia—from across the Middle East and around the world. While the recently convened Vienna Conference to end the Syrian conflict concluded on a hopeful note—the nations gathered in the Austrian capital agreed to over the coming weeks—the reality on the ground indicates that stopping the fighting, and putting Syria back together again, may only be possible over the course of decades.

Further, out of the Syrian conflict has emerged the would-be caliphate of the Islamic State, which controls large areas of eastern Syria and western Iraq; the ongoing development of an al-Qaeda influenced in northwestern Syria’s Idlib governorate; and a Kurdish-dominated, in northeastern Syria that in its governing structures to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Throughout Syria, where the armed opposition has seized territory from the Assad government, its rule is fragmented. Pro-opposition allies, particularly the Arab Gulf countries led by Saudi Arabia, have since 2011 disagreed over the to take to leverage their financial and military influence to build a unified and coordinated opposition force.

Moreover, the Saudi and Emirati-led is further distracting these countries from Syria, and in many ways Yemen has become—for them—a more important venue of competition with Iran.

The Jaysh al-Fateh (Army of Conquest) coalition, which is heavily influenced by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, has lost the initiative in its campaign in northwestern Syria to strike at the demographic core of the Alawi community in Latakia. Jaysh al-Fateh was supposed to for how Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia could coordinate an effective—albeit strongly influenced by more extremist Sunni groups—rebel army that could threaten the Assad regime enough to bring it to the negotiating table. Instead, it contributed to Russia’s in Syria.

Russia’s military intervention—supplemented by an escalation in the deployment of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) , which is led by Hezbollah, Iraqi Shia militias and Iranian Afghan refugee-recruited forces—is solidifying President Bashar al-Assad’s statelet in western Syria.

The Assad Statelet

Further, the solidification of presents pro-opposition actors with a dilemma: In the near future, they are not likely to remove the statelet, and the Syrian president does not appear to have any intention to stop ruling his territory. While the loyalist forces are unlikely to restore Assad’s rule throughout all of Syria in the foreseeable future, the Syrian government’s rule over its western statelet is the most important bargaining chip that any of the players in the Vienna talks could hope to have.

For its part, the United States seems to be in the process of a of its options to influence the outcome of the Syrian Civil War. Since August 2011, America’s top priority has been a negotiated conclusion to the conflict, with the removal of President Assad from power, and a post-conflict Syria that is inclusive (i.e. pluralistic and respects ethnic and sectarian minority rights and gives them full political participation) and which is building toward democracy.

Both the US and Russia appear to agree that a will need to be inclusive and democratic. However, the sad irony of the Syrian War is that the most “inclusive” governance structures remain in Assad’s statelet (and the Kurdish-led canton in northeastern Syria), as rebel rule throughout the country has not been distinguished by its acceptance of pluralism.

The continuation of an Assad-led statelet is unacceptable to the , including groups within it from across the ideological spectrum, and by regional backers of Syria’s rebel groups. The fact of the matter is that “post-Assad Syria” exists throughout the country. In , the eastern suburbs of , areas of and in the Islamic State’s caliphate, the post-Assad Syria resembles a developing sharia state, which is the end goal of such as Abu Bakr al-Naji and Abu Musab al-Suri.

On the ground in Syria, however, the US does not have the influence, particularly in the north, to leverage into the development of a cohesive armed opposition force that can militarily pressure the Assad government.

John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov / Flickr

Moving forward, if Washington hopes to achieve this influence, it will need to take a region-by-region approach to the Syrian conflict, and work more aggressively to bolster moderate rebel forces on the ground that can provide the US leverage, particularly against the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian patrons.

The emergence of the Islamic State has added a counterterrorism component to this policy. As the reality on the ground stands, the anti-Islamic State and counterterrorism component of US strategy appears to be the most accomplishable. Working toward this goal will require expanding support for an emerging, multiethnic Syrian rebel coalition of moderate Arab militias and the Kurdish-led administration in northeastern Syria.

Expanding support for the coalition promises to provide the US with greater leverage in eastern Syria against the Islamic State, while setting the conditions to displace the group from its rule in northern and eastern Syria.

The announcement on October 30 that the US will send upward of to eastern Syria, likely to the country’s northeastern al-Hasakah governorate, to local Sunni Arab militias, fits within this strategy. If the United States continues to build out its influence on the ground in eastern Syria, constructing a multiethnic, civil-military coalition in the process, and demonstrates ongoing success in its counterterrorism campaign against the Islamic State, it will build a reality on the ground in the conflict that can, over time, be translated into leverage in the Vienna process.

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The (IS) has suffered a�� at the Syrian-Turkish border city of Kobani. This much-heralded event was important for a reason that has potential ramifications for the civil war and the future stability of : Arab-majority armed, moderate opposition groups and Kurdish militias under the People’s Protection Units (YPG) willingly entered a joint operations room to coordinate the city’s . By standing and fighting against IS, the joint Kurdish-Arab effort in Kobani demonstrated that a multi-ethnic armed opposition coalition could function and succeed in the test of battle.

Building pan-ethnic cooperation as part of a pluralistic political program should be a core element of the US-led train-and-equip program for Syrian rebels. But so far, the most effective anti-IS force, the YPG, has not been included, and its forces are euphemistically to as “anti-ISIL forces” by the coalition. There is a reason for this: The YPG is��linked to the most powerful Syrian Kurdish political faction, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is closely with the��Kurdistan Workers’ Party��(PKK).

Encouragingly, several Arab brigades associated with the mainstream moderate opposition coalition under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) participated in this joint operation with their Kurdish��. Working together, their “Euphrates Volcano” against the IS-held cities of�������Ի�����is threatening the Islamic State’s grip on vital Syrian-Turkish border areas in its capital province of Raqqa. Until the coalition has established actionable lines of influence into IS-held territory, it is likely that the most immediate and effective method of limiting the spread of IS and confronting it head-on is by�� on the margins of its territory��in eastern and northern Syria, which is exactly what the Euphrates Volcano campaign is doing.

Speaking to this development, the PYD’s leader, Salih Muslim, stated to one of these authors in a March 11 interview at the Sulaimani Forum in the Kurdish region of Iraq that:��“If they [the US] accept it, we will do it. Our people have more experience than those they will train [FSA forces]. But there should be coordination even for the training. If the US supports this, it could be a model for a future Syria.”

Turkey, a key US ally in the anti-IS campaign, will also be critical to any expansion of a joint Kurdish-Arab armed opposition campaign against the Islamic State. The brutal history of conflict between the Turkish government and the PKK, and Washington’s��designation of the group as a terrorist organization, might seem to place a severe limit on the extent of future cooperation between US-trained-and-equipped Syrian Arab rebels and the YPG. Turkey’s early and sustained influence over the Syrian armed opposition movement, including the hosting of some Arab rebel leaders who are����with Kurdish militias, could also potentially limit the further development of a Kurdish-Arab joint operations room against IS.

There are signs, however, that a pragmatic Turkish approach to Syria’s Kurds may be emerging. There has been continuous — although at times contentious — engagement between Turkish officials and the PYD, including ��Salih Muslim. The ongoing��PKK-Turkish peace ��and political pressure from Turkey’s��Kurdish-majority political ��also adds impetus for Ankara��to tolerate the existence of the YPG and incorporate it in the anti-IS campaign. Turkey’s ability to work with the YPG was shown in the recent auxiliary role that Kurdish militias played in assisting Turkish troops to�� the body of Suleiman��Shah and relocate it to Kurdish-held areas of Syria.

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Further, in October 2014, the Turks��proposed a no-fly ��and safe-haven in northern Syria, but so far this plan has not been implemented. Building on the cooperation between the YPG and the FSA, Turkey could use this to create a safe buffer zone between Turkey and Syria. Initially, Turkey strongly opposed Iraqi Kurdistan’s autonomy, but now Iraqi Kurds are treated as potential����by Ankara. Repairing relations between Sunni Arabs and Kurds in Syria will require a Turkish role.

Inside Syria, there is still a great deal of animosity between Arab and Kurdish communities, particularly in the strategic Syrian-Iraqi border province of al-Hasakah, where the YPG and its auxiliaries are waging a campaign against the Islamic State’s�� of supply and communication��between Iraq and Syria. Arab tribes from Raqqa were settled in this predominantly Kurdish region in the 1970s by the Syrian government as part of its��“Arab belt” ��to weaken the demographic weight of the Kurds.

The YPG, under the influence of the PKK, is accused of trying to��ethnically ��Arabs and the��oil-rich��areas that it dominates��out of , heightening ethnic tensions between it and the Arab-majority opposition movement. IS has��preyed on the ��of local Arab communities toward the Kurds to recruit Arab rank-and-file fighters in al-Hasakah. However, members of local Arab tribes, such as the powerful, trans-national Shammar confederation, actively����with the YPG and have participated in the Syrian Kurds’ attempt to build a nascent��. Ethnic relations between Kurds and Arabs, complex and fraught as they may sometimes be, are not irreparable.

Still, a potential post-Assad/post-IS Syria will need to recognize and honor the desire of Syrian Kurds to have their ethno-linguistic cultural rights protected, promoted and enshrined in��, or risk endemic ethnic conflict. It will also need to manage the process of incorporating Syrian Kurdish communities, many of them already practicing a��de facto��form of�� from the rest of the country, back into the national political fold.

To that end, developing Kurdish-Arab joint military campaigns against IS in Syria can have a far-reaching impact. Continued Kurdish-Arab joint operations could end IS control over large areas of the Syrian-Turkish border and would cut the flow of fighters into Syria, denying IS strategic depth as the US-led coalition works to defeat the group��in Iraq. Active encouragement and support from the coalition for this organic process can contribute to the process of rebuilding trust between communities. Improving Kurdish-Arab relations will be a core component of establishing an effective and stable security environment in Syria.

*[This article was originally published by .]

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In March, the and several of its Middle Eastern allies will begin training Syrian fighters through a revamped train-and-equip program, which will form the core first class of ’s non-jihadist armed opposition. At this stage, the program will seek to identify, train and support 5,000 Syrian rebel fighters a year for three years, and it will likely involve the cooperation of , and , and could also include .

Optimally, the end game of this reportedly more robust train-and-equip program will be a Syria that emerges from its civil war with a pluralistic government, the Assad regime removed and the more ideologically radical elements of the Syrian rebel movement defeated and marginalized.

The need for a competent rebel force on the ground is heightened by the reality that a large segment of the Syrian population that supports the uprising will continue to need protection and security, but will want it provided by an alternative to��the Assad regime. This force will need to be strong enough to secure the local areas in which it is located and to impede the advances of the (IS), which is currently the major policy objective driving the revamped program.

As proposed in a Foreign Policy ��by former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, a refashioned rebel army with a unified command and control structure that can enforce discipline within the ranks will be vital, as will its need to appeal to Syria’s minority communities.

Ford refers to the current train-and-equip program as “too little, too late,” and he makes a compelling argument for the administration’s need to either “undertake a major effort or walk away.”

But while a target of 15,000 fighters trained over three years may sound insufficient to fundamentally shift the conflict, the effort can have great impact if it serves as a standard-bearing “train-the-trainer” model that builds up over time, from community to community.

Which Rebel Groups?

From the outset, however, the train-and-equip program will have to answer questions about how its objective for the state will be an improvement over the current Syrian republic, which encompasses diverse sectarian and ethnic backgrounds, despite the authoritarian power of the Assad family, the corrupt Baath syndicate deep state and its brutal security system.

Nevertheless, the current Syrian republic, its advocates point out, has a longer and more practiced history of relative pluralism than that of the Syrian opposition, which has largely been splintered by factionalism and its armed groups that are heavily influenced by militant Islamist ideology. These are valid points, and the US and its allies will need to address them in order to build up the capacity of the opposition to participate in a transition from the Assad regime.

Thus, Washington’s strategic objective for guiding the train-and-equip program should be to build into the training of a firm ideological component that seeks a pluralistic and democratic order in Syria, promoting the equal rights of all of Syrians.

This will be a challenge, as the US-led effort must reconcile the previous influence of its participating partners, particularly Qatar and Turkey, who have much-criticized records of influencing the armed opposition toward a more militantly Islamist ideological position. It will also need to respect and incorporate, but also moderate, the conviction of many Syrian rebel fighters that they are on a religious mission to fight a corrupt regime. Achieving the right balance in this ideological model, and making it stick for the entirety of the rest of the conflict to follow, would be an accomplishment with potentially exponential effects on the course of the war and its aftermath.

In theory, empowered Syrian rebel groups could stand their ground against both IS and the Assad regime, strengthening local governance and coordinating humanitarian assistance distribution. If performed in a careful, phased manner, the train-and-equip program could focus on the local level to empower rebel communities through humanitarian assistance that is funneled through the vetted rebel groups. The focus should be on building the capacity of the vetted armed opposition to deliver social goods to their communities that are in dire need. This is a means to unify military and humanitarian assistance to the rebels, in order to maximize the soft power of the United States on the Syrian opposition.

If the train-and-equip program begins to show success in accomplishing this objective, it will present an active threat to the Assad regime’s narrative that the Syrian rebel movement is a terrorist front, bent on targeting and destroying Syria’s pluralism. This would make it the target of the regime and its Iranian allies and their auxiliaries, such as and Shiite jihadist militias, likely producing another policy dilemma for the administration: whether or not to actively protect the empowered rebel movement it has been building.

This will be an important question that could bring the US closer to war with , as it would spell a legitimate threat to its important proxy. This type of rebel rule could potentially��establish a pluralistic precedent that could assuage the fears of Syria’s regime-loyalist communities, many of them ethnic and sectarian minorities such as Christians, Druze and Alawites, whose eventual buy-in and participation would be required to achieve a transition from the Assad regime.

However, at this initial stage of the revamped train-and-equip program is the complicating reality that throughout the country, moderate Syrian armed groups actively cooperate with the often more powerful rebel factions that seek to establish a fully-functioning sharia state in post-Assad Syria.

Syria’s armed opposition is largely, although not completely, composed of groups whose fighters are Sunni Arabs. These factions range from militant Salafist groups such as the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyya, to groups that have a vision of a state governed by Islamic law that more closely resembles that espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood, such as Liwa al-Tawhid, Jaysh al-Islam and Suqur al-Sham.

Many of the fighters in these groups originally joined rebel militias that did not promote a sharia state. However, over time, they came to adopt this ideology due to the devolution of the Syrian conflict into one characterized by sectarian anger as well as ideologically influenced by financial backers in Gulf Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait.

It is difficult to know for certain which of these groups can be integrated into an expanded train-and-equip program, or if the fighters of these groups are, on average, true ideologues seeking a post-Assad sharia state. Some joined the more militant Islamist factions merely for financial reasons, and they may be able to pass the requirement of supporting a pluralistic, inclusive Syria.

Nevertheless, Washington is presented with a significant policy dilemma. The pressure of the war has led to greater convergence, operational cooperation and resource sharing within Syria’s rebel ranks across the ideological spectrum. The task of vetting fighters and separating them according to ideological distinctions will likely be quite difficult.

The train-and-equip program will thus need to build a sustainable ideological model for the Syrian armed opposition movement. It should seek to work slowly and methodically, acknowledging that not all of the fighters for the revamped opposition army were always perfectly aligned with the vision for a democratic and pluralistic Syria.

Realizing this, however, does not preclude the US and its allies from acting now, with the soft power of financial assistance and the hard power of weapons and training, to forcefully insist on an ideological standard for the new rebel army. This effort is as much a struggle to build a pluralistic and democratic model for the Syrian opposition as it is to bring the fight to IS and transition from the Assad regime.

*[This article was originally published by .]

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The ��and ‘s��constitutional monarchies are the upheaval of the . and , two key allies in the region, are popularly billed as constitutional . The two kingdoms are generally regarded as “islands of stability” in an imploding region that offer consistent support for US in the world, particularly in the realm of regional security.

Although these two kingdoms are separated by over 2,500 miles on opposite ends of the greater Middle East, they are frequently billed as being the same type of regime following a similar strategy of coopting challenges to their ruling system. States like Morocco and Jordan are key because, until now, they have managed to retain a qualitative advantage in the institutional capacity of their respective states, crystallizing the regime’s rule while preserving a sense of legitimacy. It is this model of the state, where the ruling regime is buttressed by legitimacy created from strong state institutions, that will lead to long-term stability in the Middle East.

Morocco and Jordan are held in high regard as of monarchies that will “fade” into a republican, democratic government over time through a commitment to a phased transitional . These constitutional monarchies are believed to have the ability to slowly their societies into a more participatory form of governance, in an effort to instability and rebellion before it devolves into violence. This slow and methodical process of democratization is stated to be a safeguard for the security of these nations while undergirding the social contract between the monarch and the of the people.

Accordingly, these two countries should represent the type of regime that can prevent the bloodshed and radicalization that is associated with the popular revolutions and counterrevolutions that have occurred in the Middle East since December .

The popular legitimacy of the monarchies in Morocco and Jordan has traditionally been based upon a historical and cultural mechanism of deference to a ruler with a very specific type of credential. This is based upon the position of the monarch as a strong and rightly guided commander of their faithful subjects with from the through the��, in the case of Morocco, or from the prestige of holding direct descent from the bloodline and tribal lineage of al-Sharif — descendants of the venerated Quraysh tribe, which the prophet was a member of — in the case of Jordan.

�Ѵǰ��dz�����’s , according to this metric, is the ��(Leader of the Faithful) presiding over a strong state that has since the 17^th century and which enjoys significant international backing and security assistance. Moroccans are believed to view the current king as being more tolerant of open political discussion than his father, enjoying wider popular support while still exerting power over his country. Jordan’s claims descent from the Prophet Muhammad through the Hashemite clan, a subgroup of the Quraysh tribe, whose rule extended from Jordan to and prior to the founding of the modern Jordanian state.

King Abdullah / Flickr

A fundamental element of Jordanian nationalism asserts the symbolic potency of the history of the Hashemite monarchy’s important and esteemed tribal lineage as the sociopolitical of its kingdom. Despite the mounting internal economic and demographic and external political pressures that have been caused by the , the rapid growth of Amman as a regional center of — and as the country of for hundreds of thousands of people fleeing conflict in neighboring Iraq and Syria — Jordan has thus far remained stable, indicating the potential for a long-term and enduring monarchical regime presided over by the Hashemite dynasty. Although Jordan operates an efficient and active internal security service, the economic and demographic pressure of high youth unemployment, widespread economic inequality and the growing antipathy of the monarchy’s traditional Arab tribal constituency toward it place increasing stress on Jordanian sociopolitics.

Emphasizing the importance of stability in Morocco and Jordan, in 2014, the (GCC) voted to its membership to include these two constitutional monarchies. The promise of much needed financial aid from the GCC could be enough of an incentive for both Jordan and Morocco to seriously consider joining. Most important to the GCC countries is that Morocco and Jordan are considered to have excellent security services, with long track records of aggressively confronting domestic Islamist and challenges to their rule. Both countries are also enthusiastic participants in the ongoing US-led coalition air campaign against the (IS).

The Islamic State as a Legitimacy Challenge

The maturation of IS into a quasi-state, however, challenges the legitimacy of these two constitutional monarchical regimes. The leader of IS, the self-declared “Caliph Ibrahim” — aka — claims to have similar tribal lineage to the Prophet Muhammad and has self-styled as the Leader of the Faithful of the umma (global Muslim community). Baghdadi’s assertion is that his rule is an inevitably successful, divinely guided world mission that is authentic to the cultural and sociopolitical traditions of the Arab people. The cultural mechanisms of legitimacy that are cultivated by the Moroccan and Jordanian monarchies may not be a powerful enough argument against the appeal of the Islamic revolution led by IS’ caliph.

King Mohammed VI / Flickr

As a self-declared Hashemite with descent from the Prophet Muhammad, a religious scholar and a successful military commander, Baghdadi offers an alternative role model for frustrated, politically active Islamists and Salafists in Morocco and Jordan. Baghdadi’s “Islamic State” continues to expand by building state-like institutions in eastern Syria, despite battlefield losses in Iraq that have for the time being curbed its growth there. IS’ setbacks on the battlefield in Iraq are more accurately described as operational, not strategic.

The militant Salafist group is slowly, but surely, accepting the allegiance of like-minded organizations throughout the trans-Sahara region, including in the , the Shura Council for Islamic Youth in Derna and the “Fezzan Province” militia in . In time, IS’ ability to access the trans-Sahara network of smuggling and jihadist activity from Mauritania to the Sinai will give it another line of access to �Ѵǰ��dz�����’s population.

For these reasons, Jordan and Morocco will continue to be important front lines to contain IS. Jordan is at an important location at the crossroads of the and the , and it is positioned as Saudi Arabia’s northern flank against the expansion of IS. �Ѵǰ��dz�����’s relationship to Europe in terms of its close economic ties to the European Union and diaspora communities in and represents the southern flank of Europe. and Amman are active security partners in trans-national security agreements impacting their wider regions of the Middle East. A successful containment strategy will necessitate bulwarks, like Morocco and Jordan, in order to limit the penetration of IS into Europe or Saudi Arabia, respectively.

A strong indicator that the foundations of these monarchical systems are less secure than they had appeared is the flow of jihadists from Morocco and Jordan into Syria to fight under Baghdadi’s command. Morocco and Jordan are some of the exporters of foreign fighters to Syria, with the former contributing 1,500 jihadists and the latter more than 2,000. There are a number of reasons why rural and urban and join IS, particularly disenfranchised youth. These include scarcity in economic opportunity at home, severe political discontent with their monarchical regimes, the search for adventure and a pan-Islamic desire to fight against what they view as the murderous Syrian government. A common theme in the foreign fighter phenomenon spanning multiple continents, however, is the growing potency of militant Salafism.

In Morocco and Jordan, where tough counterterrorism initiatives have landed scores of Salafists in prison, momentum generated from the Arab Spring and the success of IS-led military offenses have infused a new breath of life in Islamist political aspirations. In , prison has become a staging point for enhanced radicalization, enabling Salafist leaders to build deep networks that have since become epicenters of jihadi recruitment. In Jordan, existing Salafist hubs like Ma’an and Zarqa — two of Jordan’s most economically vulnerable areas that consequentially lie along historic routes of transit and commerce — continue to advocate for the of the Jordanian monarchy. Jordan’s geographic proximity to IS’ frontlines and the challenge of accommodating Syrian refugees are additional sources of tension on the Hashemite Kingdom that can be used as recruiting tools for the militant group.

Jordan, for example, has already begun to experience domestic backlash, after an April 2014 amendment to its Anti-Terrorism Law quickly drew that it could be used to silence political opposition in the media. Regardless, continuing to send jihadists to prison will not eliminate the problem and will only continue the cycle of radicalization and jihad. Jordan’s large youth population is also a likely for IS propaganda efforts, undermining the monarchy’s legitimacy and using the promise of generous salaries as enticement to join the militant Salafist organization. Emigration of large quantities of foreign fighters to join IS and similar armed groups — like�� affiliate and Jund al-Aqsa in Syria — and the rejuvenation of large Salafist networks seem to suggest that bases of legitimacy are shifting from the old monarchical system to the new IS-branded Islamic caliphate.

The Potential for Destabilization

The most pressing challenge facing these regimes, however, is not the threat of jihadists returning home and setting up shop; rather, it is how these regimes will respond when they do. While Morocco and Jordan can increase security precautions and strengthen counterterrorism measures, doing so could inadvertently alienate seculars by undermining civil liberties and increase the call for domestic reforms. The increasing prevalence of security forces on the streets of cities such as Rabat, and Marrakech in Morocco, and Amman, Zarqa, and Ma’an in Jordan, also can send another pernicious message: the monarchical regime is starting to lose control, and the caliphate’s power is ascending.

The potential for the destabilization of the monarchical regimes in Morocco or Jordan, or both countries, as a result of the long-term efforts of IS and its sophisticated propaganda efforts, presents a strategic dilemma for the United States and its allies in the greater Middle East. Cultural mechanisms of legitimacy that are cultivated by the Moroccan and Jordanian monarchies may not be a powerful enough argument against the appeal of the Islamic revolution led by IS’ caliph. Sooner rather than later, Baghdadi’s arguments will threaten the ideological, cultural underpinning of regimes throughout the region, including those of Morocco and Jordan.

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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Following the armed opposition’s seizure of Mosul on June 10, and the subsequent capture of large areas of Ninewah, Salah al-Din and Ta’mim governorates, several Iraqi organizations have proclaimed their role in the fighting. Emerging as one of the most powerful opposition groups in the rebel offensive is the (GMCIR) and its affiliated tribal militias, organized as the Military Council of Iraqi Tribal Revolutionaries. GMCIR members state that the organization has existed since the summer of 2013, but announced its existence in January 2014, in order to respond militarily against Iraqi security forces for firing on demonstrators in governorate.

Background to the GMCIR

The GMCIR asserts that its leadership is composed predominately of a network of former Iraqi army officers of tribal and Sunni Arab origin, and that it maintains a hierarchical chain-of-command inside in order to oversee the day-to-day operations of the organization. It estimates that 75,000 fighters are affiliated with the organization, mostly concentrated in Anbar, Salah al-Din and Ninewah governorates, with GMCIR-affiliated armed groups also located in Ta’mim, Baghdad, Diyala, Karbala, Dhi Qar and Maysan governorates.����officers, including Iraqis exiled by sectarian conflict in their country, are also reported to be located throughout the , including , , , and the .

Ideologically, the GMCIR is staunchly anti-Maliki and anti-Iranian. It opposes the significant role played by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps- (IRGC) organized militias such as Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq and Kata’ib Hezbollah in the Iraqi security forces. The GMCIR’s first public����on January 15 outlined its political program. This declaration emphasized that it was an Iraqi nationalist, non-sectarian movement that was drawn from Iraq’s tribes, and seeks the removal of as prime minister. The GMCIR also seeks support from the people of southern Iraq — Arab tribesmen — to help remove Maliki from power. The group’s members assert that the second-in-command of the organization is a Shia from southern Iraq and that the GMCIR is actively seeking the assistance of Iraqi Shia tribes in Basra, Dhi Qar and Maysan, which they claim are as disenfranchised by Maliki’s government as they are.

The GMCIR asserts that its leadership is composed predominately of a network of former Iraqi army officers of tribal and Sunni Arab origin … It estimates that 75,000 fighters are affiliated with the organization.

According to its members and media produced by the organization, the rank-and-file of the GMCIR predominately consists of Arab and Sunni tribal fighters. These include a significant number of Sahwa (Awakening) council veterans, mobilized as part of the “Sons of Iraq,” and Iraqi military officers who served in the army prior to its May 2003 disbandment. GMCIR members state that most of the first cohort of fighters were local protesters, mainly from Anbar governorate, who actively demonstrated against the Maliki government. According to the group, these protesters decided to join the armed uprising following the December 2013 arrest of��, a popular Anbari MP and member of the Iraqiya bloc, and the ongoing security operations that resulted in protesters being fired upon.

The GMCIR’s Goals and Relationship With JRTN and ISIS

In keeping with the GMCIR’s official declarations, representatives of the organization state that its participation in the current conflict is intended to seize Baghdad, in order to remove “Tehran’s spoiled boy,” Prime Minister��. The GMCIR’s����claim the organization is strongly influenced by former Baathist officers affiliated with groups such as Jaysh Rajaal al-Tariqa al-Naqshabandia (JRTN), which is particularly powerful in Ninewah governorate and Mosul. The GMCIR state that JTRN members and former Baathist officers are represented in the organization, including in its political council; however, it asserts that these officers are not the most important figures within the group. Arabic media��organizations ��that social media sites affiliated with the JRTN claim it is operating in Ninewah and Salah al-Din governorates in close cooperation with the GMCIR and its affiliate, the Military Council of Iraqi Tribal Revolutionaries. In addition to the JRTN and tribal militias, it is reported that the����maintains close contact with the Iraqi Sunni sociopolitical movement, the Association of Muslim Scholars, which serves as a political ally of the organization.

The GMCIR’s relationship with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) is also a controversial subject. Its��members admit to an operational relationship with ISIS, particularly in Anbar, Ninewah and Salah al-Din governorates. It is reported that two former Iraqi generals associated with the GMCIR were appointed to serve as governing administrators of territory seized by the opposition in Anbar and Salah al-Din governorates, with approval for their appointments given by ISIS in consultation with local tribes. A GMCIR spokesman stated that ISIS in Iraq was a small organization and could not have seized Mosul without the support of the Iraqi armed opposition. The����further claimed that the GMCIR was stronger and better organized than ISIS, and fought under the laws of war established by the Geneva Convention.

The GMCIR’s strongly anti-Maliki and anti-Iranian political platform, which it has emphasized in a succession of declarations that its leadership has issued since January, makes the organization an unlikely participant in any peace negotiations that do not conclude with the removal of Maliki. In order to accomplish these political objectives, the GMCIR will need to network effectively with other anti-Maliki factions inside Iraq, including Iyad Allawi’s al-Iraqiya bloc, the Kurds, and Shia political figures and groups, such as Ahmad Chalabi and his allies in the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and Muqtada al-Sadr and his allied al-Ahrar bloc.

One likely difficulty the GMCIR will need to address is how to appeal to Iraqi Shia sociopolitical actors, when there is a popular perception that the organization is allied with ISIS and must be fought against amid the mobilization of volunteer Shia fighters. The GMCIR’s potential partners in forming a post-Maliki Iraqi government will likely need to give the organization guarantees that they will work to reduce the influence of the powerful IRGC-backed����within the Iraqi army and special forces.

The GMCIR will also need to resolve potential political and military conflicts that could arise and divide its own predominately Sunni constituency. In the face of potential challenges to the group’s influence over the Iraqi Sunni community, and its role in post-conflict negotiations over the future direction of Iraq, it is likely that GMCIR leaders will seek to maintain the allegiance of tribal militias organized under the Higher Military Council of Iraqi Tribal Revolutionaries. It will also need to demonstrate to Iraqis that it can be a partner for a negotiated and peaceful settlement to the conflict and that, if called upon, it can effectively confront ISIS forces.

The views expressed��in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect��51�Թ�’s��editorial policy.

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The ongoing political dispute in Libya between a secularist and liberal political alliance and Islamist groups is a significant contributing factor to violence afflicting the country. Militia groups that are allied with a retired Libyan general,��,��and his “Libyan National Army” have seized upon their disagreements with Islamist parties in order to conduct armed operations against their political enemies in Tripoli and Benghazi. ��cooperating with Gen. Haftar have attacked the Libyan parliament, the General National Congress (GNC), and are trying to force the GNC to dissolve itself and transfer its powers to a transitional assembly that would rewrite the country’s constitution.

Further complicating the conflict is Haftar’s����that he will not order his forces to stop their offensive until they “eradicate terrorism and extremist groups,” by which he means his political enemies. Haftar’s political and military opponents who support the GNC argue that he is attempting a “” against Libya’s legitimate government.

Long-running��militia ��in and around Tripoli in the aftermath of Muammar Qadhafi’s rule is another complicating factor that has allowed local militia rivalries to be inflamed by��political . These events continue to demonstrate the strong impact of��sub-state in Libya’s sociopolitical system, which could lead the country into another civil war.

Nicholas A. Heras speaks to Andrew Engel, an Africa analyst who received a grant with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy to research current events in Libya.��Engel visited the country after its official liberation and has published extensively on Libya since its uprising and successful revolution in 2011.

Nicholas A. Heras: To what extent is Libya’s ongoing conflict a war over control of oil reserves?

Andrew Engel:��The current crisis is not a direct result of the almost year-long conflict between federalists seeking greater autonomy, led by Ibrahim al-Jathran who has blockaded oil export terminals, and the central government. Instead, recent violence is the result of an escalating competition for legitimacy in post-revolution Libya. The conflict can be characterized as Islamist against non-Islamist forces. But it can also be characterized as revolutionary against “reactionary” forces that include former members of the regime and armed forces (defectors who fought the regime, those who remained on the fence, and those who supported the regime).

The first sign of this fissure among anti-Qadhafi forces was the war-time assassination of Gen. Abdul Fatah Younes in August 2011, who defected to the revolutionaries’ side and was likely killed by Islamist fighters. Post-war, Islamists and revolutionaries forced the passage in the General National Congress (GNC) of the Political Isolation Law in May 2013, which excluded from political life all who had connections with the former regime for a period of ten years. The escalating campaign of assassinations and attacks against retired and current members of security forces also helped create this backlash against Islamist and revolutionary forces.

Haftar is controversial. Many support his goals of eradicating extremism and Islamist militias, but stop short of supporting the man himself. As much as Haftar seeks to emulate��the new Egyptian president, he has not come close to the adulation Sisi earned after ousting��Mohammed��Morsi.

Again, this is about legitimacy. Operation Karama under Khalifa Haftar’s leadership claims the GNC is illegitimate for the extension of its own mandate in February 2014; its inability to rebuild the armed forces, while legitimizing and bankrolling Islamist militias; and unwillingness to combat extremists in Cyrenaica province. In contrast, those in opposition to Karama see only naked aggression against the country’s primary representative body and “true rebels,” who are the proper heirs of the revolution.

Heras: How much of the current fighting is a result of antipathy toward��Islamist militias, such as Ansar al-Sharia,��that have strong influence on��the country’s Cyrenaica region and the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Justice and Construction Party?

Engel:��Myriad forces came into alignment to bring Libya to the brink. In Cyrenaica, Operation Karama consists of former Gen. Haftar’s National Libyan Army — predominantly official armed forces units that resent the preferential treatment given to Islamist militias by the GNC — and Wanes Boukhmade’s Sa’iqa Special Forces in Cyrenaica, which deployed to Benghazi in summer 2013. Both are aligned against Islamist militias such as the February 17 Brigade and the more notorious Ansar al-Sharia Brigade, whose Benghazi and Derna forces the US has designated a foreign terrorist organization.

The Sa’iqa Special Forces are largely supported in Benghazi, but loathed by Islamists for their role in suppressing Islamist fighters in Cyrenaica during the 1990s. Jathran’s forces, generally antipathetic to Islamist militias, support Operation Karama. However, some view Jathran with skepticism and see in him opportunism more than true ideological commitment.��For example, Jathran, who had close relations with the former Islamist fighter in Afghanistan and deputy defense minister, Saddiq al-Gheithi, had opposed former Prime Minister Ali Zeidan’s government — remnants of which have sided with Operation Karama like the new prime minister, Abdullah al-Thinni.

In Tripolitania, the Zintani-associated al-Qaaqaa, al-Sawaiq and al-Madani Brigades, which operated under the Ministry of Defense, moved against the Islamist-dominated GNC, Islamist militias and Islamist-leaning forces operating under the Ministry of Interior and chief of staff of the Armed Forces. The Zintanis have long-sided with the National Forces Alliance and Zeidan; the brother of Othman Mligta, commander of the Qaaqaa Brigade, led the NFA’s steering committee. Like the Sa’iqa Special Forces in Cyrenaica, many enlisted with the Zintani brigades had previously served under the Qadhafi regime, most notoriously with the Khamis Brigade. It is important to note that while these brigades sided with Haftar’s cause, they, as well as Boukhmade and Jathran, are likely to oppose any moves by the general to impose himself as a political leader.

The dynamics vary greatly from Cyrenaica to Tripolitania, namely because the extremist Islamist element in the former is far more prevalent than in the latter, where political Islamists such as the Misratah-based Muslim Brotherhood have a greater presence. Moreover, there is still a semblance of a political game to be played in Tripoli, one that is absent in Benghazi. However, this is not to say that violence will necessarily continue to remain low-level in Tripoli.

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Heras: Is the conflict in Libya��also complicated by tribal, ethnic and personal rivalries and, if it is, which of these rivalries are contributing the most to tension in the country?

Engel:��These divisions do exist, although in more subtle ways than the Islamist/non-Islamist and revolutionary/reactionary cleavage. Haftar’s initiative was preceded by months of campaigning among the eastern tribes, while the Zintanis [from western Libya] have been slowly attempting since the end of the revolution to heal old alliances with tribes that remained committed to the Qadhafi regime.

Ethnic divisions are not as prominent, with the exception of the Amazigh in Tripolitania, who have sided with Misratah against the Zintanis. Libya’s ethnic minorities in the south have not played a significant role yet.

Heras: Which foreign actors, if any, have the most power to influence internal power dynamics of Libya?

Engel:��Libya’s state of polarization is problematic for foreign actors. In short, all actors that want a say are already accused of bias. Islamists, for example, would not trust neighboring Algeria and Egypt for any sort of impartial and fair influence in the conflict: Algeria, because of its military rule and brutal civil war against Islamists, and Egypt, because Haftar seems to be emulating what Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s had achieved against the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013.

Haftar is also accused of being an American agent, a claim his opponents believe is reinforced by Ambassador Deborah Jones’ refusal to condemn him for targeting extremist groups. The Qataris and their��Al Jazeera��satellite news station are also accused of supporting Islamists, while the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the Saudi-owned��Al Arabiya��satellite news station are accused of bias against Islamists.

Nonetheless, common ground between countries with an interest in combating extremism and forces aligned under Operation Karama could be used as a starting point for engagement. In contrast, countries with an interest in sustaining the political process, no matter how tarnished it has become, can also choose to engage with the Islamist/revolutionary faction that purports to defend the GNC and the democratic process.

Encouragingly, Libya’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of al-Thinni to lead as prime minister over the Misratah- and Islamist-supported Ahmed Maeteeq, a verdict all sides appear to have accepted without recourse to violence. While this represents a chance for Tripolitania to return to the politics track, violence will likely continue in Cyrenaica with more hard-line groups likes Ansar al-Sharia that reject democratic politics entirely.

Heras: Will Haftar emerge as a “Sisi-type” figure in Libya that can unite anti-Islamist factions? If he can, what would the implications of that development have for the future of the country and the greater North Africa and Sahel/Sahara regions?��

Engel:��Haftar is controversial. Many support his goals of eradicating extremism and Islamist militias, but stop short of supporting the man himself. As much as Haftar seeks to emulate the new Egyptian president, he has not come close to the adulation Sisi earned after ousting Mohammed Morsi.

Should the former general actually succeed in his goals — which is in itself a tall order — it remains to be seen if support for his campaign will transform into support for Haftar as a leader. Aside from his campaign against Islamists, Haftar has expounded very little on his political vision for the future of Libya.

The views expressed��in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect��51�Թ�’s��editorial policy.

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The Syrian Civil War is attracting a significant number of��Shi’a jihadist ��from the greater Middle East. With estimates ranging from 7,000-15,000, many of these fighters are traveling to Syria to protect the Sayyida Zainab ��in Damascus’ southern suburbs in cooperation with the Syrian military.

The impact of Shi’a jihadists fighting with the al-Assad government is believed to be dramatic, turning the tide of battle in Damascus and beginning to affect other strategic cities such as Homs and��. These fighters are largely motivated by sectarian sentiment to protect the wider Shi’a community against an enemy that is depicted to them as��blood-thirsty jihadists.

However, far from rank amateurs, many of these Shi’a jihadists, particularly from Iraq, are recruited in their home country by Iranian-backed militias such��. They are turned into professional sectarian soldiers through����with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Lebanese Hezbollah operatives. In the future, it is quite possible that Shi’a jihadists fighting in Syria could remain part of a growing network of IRGC-directed militants. Such a force could carry out strikes against Iran’s enemies in the Middle East.

Nicholas A. Heras speaks to Phillip Smyth, a researcher at the University of Maryland’s Laboratory for Computational Cultural Dynamics and the chief of the highly-regarded analytical website, , which tracks and analyzes Shi’a Islamist militancy in the Middle East.

Nicholas A. Heras: Who is the driving force behind the deployment of the “Hezbollah Cavalcade”? And is it accurate to refer to Lebanese Hezbollah as the most important faction within this cavalcade?

Phillip Smyth: “Hezbollah Cavalcade” covers a wide range of what could be termed “Shi’a Islamist militancy” in the Middle East. Not all Shi’a Islamist organizations adhere to Khomeini’s “Islamic Revolutionary” ideology of��Wilayat al-Faqih. But the ones that are most prominent and active get the most coverage and have Iran as a state-backer. Furthermore, Tehran does its best to gain as much leverage and influence as possible among a wide range of Shi’a Islamist organizations.

If we are referring to what drives Lebanese Hezbollah and the menagerie of Iraq’s Shi’a Islamist groups — such as Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, the Badr Organization, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, Kata’ib Hezbollah, Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada and others — it is Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. These are part of the vanguard for furthering the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s “Islamic Revolution.”

Lebanese Hezbollah has a very important role in all of this. This was exemplified in Iraq during the creation of so-called “special groups.” These groups, such as Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH) and Kata’ib Hezbollah, would later morph into recognizable political-militia groupings modeled on Lebanese Hezbollah.

It’s huge and ongoing. Just look at Iraq and Syria right now. The amount of groups that promote the “defend Sayyida Zaynab” narrative,��wilayat al-faqih and are formed in a Hezbollah model have multiplied. Within Syria, this is the leading structure for new pro-Assad groups.

Beyond that, Hezbollah dispatched fighters and other figures to assist in the creation of these organizations. Who can forget about Lebanese Hezbollah commander Ali Musa Daqduq, and his direct assistance in building up AAH and attacking US targets in Iraq? Lebanese Hezbollah is extremely important. They have been used by the IRGC as a spearhead for many operations in the Middle East. Currently, Syria is the prime example of this type of deployment. Hezbollah commanders have been attached to Syrian and Iraqi Shi’a-populated units.

However, I would argue that Iran is smart enough to understand they need to expand from just the Lebanese Hezbollah as a base from which to serve as an Arabic-speaking armed core that can rally, train and provide leadership for nascent groups. In Iraq, elements of the Badr Brigade were used to populate new Iraqi “special groups” and to influence those organizations in the manner that the IRGC employed Lebanese Hezbollah. This is still going on with the Badr Brigade, which is now the Badr Organization. They have supplied fighters and commanders to their newest groups. Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq and Kata’ib Hezbollah are also doing the same thing and replicating this process once more.

Heras: To what extent does the Syrian conflict, specifically the battle to protect the Sayyida Zainab shrine, represent an opportunity for the IRGC to create new “Hezbollahs” that it can network for future operations throughout the Middle East?

Smyth:��It’s huge and ongoing. Just look at Iraq and Syria right now. The amount of groups that promote the “defend Sayyida Zaynab” narrative,��wilayat al-faqih and are formed in a Hezbollah model have multiplied. Within Syria, this is the leading structure for new pro-Assad groups.

The groups within Iraq and Lebanon are already coordinating and are pretty open about it. Remember, they are fighting for an ideological end. Different names mean little — there is a ton of overlap. It is highly likely that the use of these groups to execute Iran’s goals more broadly in the region will be a future reality.

Heras: Considering the size of Iraq’s Shi’a population, the strength of Iranian influence upon Iraqi Shi’a politics, the strategic location of the country,��and the potential great��importance of��its energy resources to the global economy, is the developing military��power��of Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq in Syria and Iraq one of the most significant recent��victories for the IRGC?��

Smyth:��The developing strength of the AAH in Iraq is but one of their accomplishments. We should look at the whole sweep of Iranian-backed groups and their growing power — political and military — in Iraq. Sometimes analysts and observers focus on one group, instead of seeing the broader trend from other ideological replicas. In this case, it is the bigger picture that is truly striking.

Many of these groups, including the AAH, have fully infiltrated numerous pieces of Iraq’s security apparatus, and are calling the shots in armed operations against insurgent organizations in Anbar. Their integration does not mean they have “moderated.” They are still fervently Khomeinist in ideological orientation. They have only found a way to legitimize themselves and further their goals through a state apparatus.

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Heras: What are the likely roles for returning Shi’a fighters in their home societies? Are they set to become a growing social and political force in those regions and/or countries?

Smyth:��They are already a growing military and political force. That has been their goal since day one. I have done a lot of work tracking their movements back from Syria. There are a few major trends:

1) Their continued use as military forces within Iraq: In many cases, fighting in Iraq is cast as another front in the broader war on “takfiris, in defense of Shi’ism, and an extension of the fight to protect “Sayyida Zaynab” in Syria.

2) Returning fighters are used to further legitimize the Iranian-stoked Shi’a jihad in Syria.

3) Some of the fighters are introduced into political circles and/or elections within Iraq.

4) Their forces were and are being integrated — albeit, they have not given up their independence or arms — into combined non-state militia-style groups with, in some cases, government uniforms.

The narrative of “Islamic resistance” — the euphemism Iran’s proxy forces often use — is being��tolerated�����Ի���folded into official narratives. If anything, their “integration” into Iraqi government apparatuses is not one where they are subservient to the state. They have, and are currently, taking over certain branches of the state, and these branches are subservient to those organizations.

Heras: How likely is it that IRGC-organized militant groups will be used to strike targets in Saudi Arabia and the wider Arabian Peninsula, or used to hit Western interests in the Middle East?

Smyth:��Iran’s most immediate foe in the region (save for Israel) is Saudi Arabia, which has its own repressed Shi’a population. Saudi’s Shi’a live primarily in the Qatif region in its Eastern Province, which is right next to Bahrain, a Shi’a-majority state with pro-Saudi, Sunni rulers. Many militants in Bahrain see a linked cause with their brethren in Saudi Arabia. So that’s always another angle the IRGC and their proxies could use. There is always the potential for Iranian influence in those corridors. Using fighters who come from a jihad caste as a “defense of Shi’ism” and to assist budding groups claiming to defend themselves from Sunni oppression would appear to be quite seamless. Execution of these goals is another story.

While it is more likely that an IRGC-organized build-up of forces and operations focused on the Gulf will be a more long-term endeavor, it is always possible that smaller elements could be used to cause problems for Gulf regimes and Western interests when Tehran decides to utilize them. To quote the 1980s comedy,��Spies Like Us: “A weapon unused is a useless weapon.”

Yes, Iran has at times held back some of its proxies, but this is more of a question of when rather than if they will be used. Even Ayatollah Khomeini suggested that his Islamic Revolution would be a long-term mission and may have to move at a glacial pace. The Iranians are in this for the long-haul.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The proposed US-led military action against the Syrian military, in response to allegations that the Bashar al-Assad government authorized the use of against civilian targets in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus, is being reported as likely to occur within the next few days. Leading members of the Syrian opposition in Turkey have stated to international news media that the United States and several of its allies – with the United Kingdom, France, and Turkey being the most vocal opponents of the Syrian government – are expected to support the execution of military strikes against regime targets in Syria. The Arab League, which removed the Syrian government from its organization in 2012, the al-Assad regime for using chemical weapons, but  of military strikes. The Syrian opposition leadership states that it expects to see the collapse of the al-Assad government, or its willingness to engage in a .    

Missile Strikes

While at this point it is unclear exactly as to what type of military intervention would occur, it is reported that the most likely method would be launched from US Naval destroyers, currently located in the eastern Mediterranean. The most likely  would be Syrian military units in and around Damascus, including an air and missile base, and the headquarters of the elite 4^th Mechanized Division, which is believed to be personally led by al-Assad’s younger brother, Maher.

For its part, the Syrian government has warned that it will “” any nation that attacks it, leading to speculation that a wider conflict could be in the offing.

A crucial context for these developments is the reality that the civil war in Syria has devolved to the point that deeply knowledgeable are predicting a de facto partitioning of the country, combined with a long, twilight struggle that will have disastrous, bloody consequences for the Middle East.

Iran and Russia, long-standing supporters of the sovereignty of the al-Assad government, have both of this eventuality. Russia’s fellow United Nations Security Council member, , is expressing strong reservations over military action against Syria, and the potential for even further degradation of the stability in the Middle East. Even European nations, such as Italy, have expressed reservations over military strikes against the Syrian military without United Nations approval, which is highly unlikely as both Russia and China oppose such a course of action.

Geopolitics aside, limited air strikes against Syrian military installations are not being touted by nations likely to participate in military action, such as the and , as a “game-changer” that will lead to the downfall of the Syrian government. Limited air strikes against military targets in highly strategic, contested areas in the Homs, Lattakia, and Idlib governorates could “tip” the scale of the local conflict in those regions just enough toward the armed opposition, that it would take the Syrian military and its adjunct forces quite some time to recover. In Idlib, air strikes against regime targets could finally dislodge the Syrian military from the city of Idlib, one of its last bastions of control in the area from which it has been slowly recovering from earlier rebel gains. This could potentially lead to the creation of a border zone “,” where a provisional opposition government could be formed. 

The Benefactors of Military Strikes

In all likelihood, however, the armed Syrian opposition groups that would most benefit from targeted strikes against front-line Syrian units would, in fact, be the , such as Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) — organizations that are viewed as the greatest long-term threats to a potential post-Assad Syria and to the US-led governments that might intervene. Elite Syrian military units, perhaps the most helpful targets in an effort to reverse the battle for the opposition, are often deployed against the most hardened of the militant Salafist fighters. Thus, from a realist perspective that views the militant Salafist fighting groups as the most dangerous enemy to Western interests in a post-Assad Syria, it would be potentially irresponsible for the intervening nations to heavily target Syrian forces that offer an effective “check” to this mutual enemy of al-Assad and the West.

Reports indicate that paramilitary forces — such as the National Defense Army (NDA) and its adjunct, government-organized and armed local defense forces, the  — are also effective at fighting armed opposition groups. Drawn from local populations in conflict areas of the country, targeting these forces would be a logical step toward reducing the effectiveness of the Syrian military and hasten the end of the al-Assad government. However, targeting the NDA and the Popular Committees would be tantamount to attacking civilian populations, as both organizations tend to be located amongst a community that they defend; a morally questionable course of action.

Ultimately, US-led military strikes against Syrian military targets that are associated with the deployment of chemical weapons are unlikely to end the government of Bashar al-Assad, and are not intended to execute the death blow to his rule. US-led military strikes in Syria are also likely to be utilized by the Syrian government to strengthen its argument to the sections of the population, who are not supporting the opposition, that their country is under siege by a foreign conspiracy — thus further reinforcing the al-Assad government’s narrative of resistance against the designs of Syria’s bloodthirsty enemies. Short of a long-term campaign of military intervention from the US-led powers, or a change of heart amongst the Syrian communities that provide support to the al-Assad government and its enemies, Syria’s brutal civil war and human suffering will continue.   

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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India’s relationship with the Middle East — which Indian policymakers refer to by the perhaps more geographically correct, official United Nations term of "West Asia" — is driven by the cold, hard logic of realism. In the context of the civil society upheavals that are ongoing in many nations of the greater West Asian region, India’s foreign policy establishment is devoting no small amount of effort to understand their country's role in a politically unstable, but exceedingly important, area of the world for Indian interests.

Further, the debate and intensity of work undertaken to understand and define India’s role in West Asia is now the full-time focus of a range of Indian think-tanks and institutes that, like their counter-parts in Europe and North America, are vying to influence the perspective of their nation’s questioning policymakers. In the near future, it is quite conceivable that Gateway House, the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis, and the Jamia Millia Islamiya university’s Centre for West Asian Studies, will be regarded by international observers as just as important external-to-the-region sites of debate and analysis on West Asia and North Africa, as their peers in Washington DC, London, Paris, and Brussels.

The Arab Monarchies

Of particular importance to India in West Asia is its enduring energy needs — perhaps as high as 70%, including a significant amount from Iran — that originate from the region. The Indian navy’s ongoing strategic concerns involve access to the Persian Gulf and the western Indian Ocean. Indian naval forces are playing an instrumental role in the international effort to guarantee the safety of navigation from piracy off the coast of eastern Africa in the Gulf of Aden.

Also, India’s rivalry with Sunni-majority Pakistan — whose manpower has been organized through the Fauji Foundation that is linked to the powerful Pakistani military and deployed as enforcers to be used against restive, mainly Shi'ite populations by Gulf Arab Sunni monarchies, such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain — is an ongoing saga. Pakistan’s reported willingness to serve as a nuclear weapons supplier of last resort to Saudi Arabia in the event that Iran armed itself with nuclear missiles, is also a lingering question that complicates India’s geo-political arrangements in the region.

India’s relationship with the Arab countries of the Gulf is complex, however, and is not easily diminished by Pakistan’s genuine affinity for the Sunni monarchies that dominate the Arabian Gulf. The West Asian monarchies of the Arabian Gulf are an important site of labor for an estimated 6 million Indians. With the nation's growing population that is in dire need of employment, remittance money that is sent back from Indian nationals becomes exceedingly important. Indian laborers in West Asia, particularly in the Gulf Arab countries, are also sometimes mistreated, denied wages, or sexually abused — belying the darker aspects of international labor migration.

India’s burgeoning entrepreneurial class also views West Asia as a potential bull market, with the prospect of the country’s exceedingly competitive tech industries finding ready sales and investment in the Gulf Arab states.

The Pariah States: Iran and Syria

Also important, but less vital to India’s existential needs, is its relationship with international pariah states such as Iran and Syria; both of whom have turned to India as a market for their sanctioned energy exports, and as a potentially powerful advocate in the halls of international organizations as a leading member of the recently-maligned, but still important, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) nations. India, which continues to maintain diplomatic relations with the Bashar al-Assad government, could yet — even if it is unlikely in the current state of Syria's civil war — work with Russia and China to engage with anti-Assad states within the international community, and to broker a ceasefire that leads to a transitional government in Syria.

Beyond the potential role of India in the machinations of global diplomatic intrigue, the presence of 150 Indian soldiers participating in the longstanding United Nations peacekeeping deployment to the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria, presents a difficult choice to Indian policymakers over the need to weigh international commitments against the safety of its troops.  

India’s diplomatic relationship with Iran, the object of a considerable amount of consternation from the United States and the European Union, is a source of tension with the West. It is a means for India to negotiate a position as a necessary interlocutor between the West and the Islamic Republic. The partially Indian-financed construction of the Iranian port of Chabahar, which mirrors the Chinese financing of Gwadar port in Pakistan — although it may promise to extend Indian export markets into Central Asian countries such as Afghanistan — adds another point of contention between it and the United States.

The issues over New Delhi’s relationship with Tehran notwithstanding, India is also looking to aggressively purchase US weapons and engage with the United States’ navy in the Indian Ocean and West Asia — a potential long-term security relationship that will impact India’s engagement in the Arabian Gulf and complicate its position vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic.

An Enduring Presence

India’s relationship to West Asia is complex and will increase in the coming years. A significant amount of India’s economic development will be spurred by energy resources originating from West Asia. In protecting these interests in the region, India’s military presence, particularly its navy, will maintain a greater presence in the West Asian region. The exertion of Indian influence through naval force in the areas of West Asia that border the Indian Ocean is most likely to be engaged through international efforts, as was done in its participation in anti-piracy operations in East Africa and the Gulf of Aden.

Indian entrepreneurs will also continue to view West Asia as a potentially lucrative market for their investment, diversifying India’s economic interests in West Asia beyond securing energy resources, and as a site of unskilled labor migration for remittances. West Asia, especially the Arabian Gulf, can expect the enduring future presence of India. 

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Nicholas A. Heras: What particular characteristics of the Syrian conflict have made it an attractive theater of��jihad for militant Salafist fighters? How has the jihadi concept of fard kifaya (communal responsibility) been adopted by leading Salafist clerics to accommodate foreign Sunni youth seeking to fight in Syria?

Aaron Y. Zelin: There are a number of reasons why Syria has become an attractive location for jihad. Salafists do not view the Bashar al-Assad regime as Muslim since he follows Alawi Islam, which is considered heterodox even within mainstream Shia Islamic discourse. Therefore, a non-Muslim force is occupying Sunni Muslim territory, and is a legitimate target to attack and overthrow. Further, there are end-time prophecies related to Syria, and more specifically Bilad al-Sham (or greater Syria, which encompasses modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel/Palestine, and western Iraq), that state Jesus will descend from the white minaret at the Great Mosque in Damascus and fight the��dajjal (false messiah), and this will hasten the Day of Judgment from God. This, coupled with the hadith��(sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) about the black banners being raised in Khurasan (historically in parts of Iran, Central Asia, and most importantly for jihadis, Afghanistan), is also related to the end times, and jihadis view it as a reference to the jihad that started in Afghanistan in the 1980s. These signs are leading some militant Salafists to believe that they are hastening the Day of Judgment.

In less millenarian ways, many militant Salafists are attracted to Syria for more altruistic reasons. They see their fellow Sunni Muslim brethren being slaughtered by the al-Assad regime, and therefore, want to go to Syria and help their brethren since they believe the Arab states, as well as Western nations, are not helping the Sunnis of Syria. It is likely, however, that militant Salafists would still go fight in Syria even if they believed that foreign actors were helping the Syrian opposition. In addition, some jihadis also want to get back at the al-Assad regime for its crackdown against the jihadi movement, as jihadis were using Syria as a base of logistics for the jihad in Iraq over the last decade.

It is likely that the most important motivation for international jihad in Syria is that some see the jihad in “Bilad al-Sham”��as a jumping-off point for a full frontal jihad on Israel to retake the al-Aqsa Mosque, and al-Quds (Jerusalem), which is their ultimate goal.��Further, because militant Salafist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) have combined their battlefield prowess against the al-Assad regime and its allies with the provision of social services for opposition communities, they have been able to get closer to the local populace and win them over. This social appeal is a key lesson jihadis learned from their failed Iraq jihad project in the last decade.

By now, most of the key, influential Sunni clerics, including the Egyptian Youssef al-Qaradawi, have stated that jihad in Syria is wajib��(an obligation). Therefore, it is likely that even more foreign fighters will come to Syria, most likely after Ramadan concludes. Much of the recent push by mainstream Sunni clerics to declare jihad in Syria as permissible is related to the Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) entering the conflict on the side of the al-Assad regime, and being a key to the victory in the city of al-Qusayr. Therefore, this heightened sectarianism will further inflame both sides of the conflict.

Heras: Is it likely that Sunni religious figures that have been militantly supportive of the Syrian uprising, such as Sheikh al-Qaradawi, will turn their attention and energy toward Egypt and advocate for jihad against the Egyptian military and the country’s interim government? Could Egypt become an even more important theater for jihad than Syria?

Zelin: No, the situations are completely different. I do not see mainstream clerics calling for jihad in Egypt. It will only continue to be something fringe elements call for. At this point, we don’t even see jihadis in the Nile Valley calling for it, and the jihadis in the Sinai haven’t outright called for it either, though they have been involved in some violence against the Egyptian state. The Sinai jihadis, though, emphasize in their propaganda that their only target and enemy is Israel. Syria will continue to be the preeminent zone for jihad in the near to medium term at the very least.

Heras: Currently, there is significant analytical attention being given to the militant Salafist opposition groups in Syria. Some of these organizations, such as al-Qaeda affiliates Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, and the independent Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyya, are considered among the most popular and powerful anti-Assad factions. While presently reported to be not completely trustful of each other, is it possible that these organizations will work to improve their relations and coordinate more closely with each other in the future, and is it probable that they can jointly establish an Islamic State in Syria?

Zelin: These groups actually do not have many issues with one another. The media and opposition sources have made them out to be actual schisms, which is inaccurate and much of it is propaganda to try and discredit them. In fact, Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) and Ahrar al-Sham have been conducting joint military operations together since at least mid-to-late 2012. Further, although there were tensions between the leaders of JN and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), on the ground level there rarely are many issues amongst the foot soldiers of these groups. There is now a vigorous competition between JN and ISIS to see who can do better on the battlefield against the al-Assad regime, Hezbollah, and their other allies.

Further, there was recently a friendly tug-of-war game between members of JN and ISIS in Aleppo as part of a Ramadan celebration in front of people in the particular neighborhood they did the event. It is true, though, that there are likely some apprehensions by Ahrar al-Sham with regard to ISIS because the group’s legacy in Iraq. Moreover, when the ISIS officially announced its presence in Syria, Ahrar al-Sham and its umbrella organization, the Syrian Islamic Front (SIF), condemned the creation of an Islamic State at this juncture, as well as doing so without getting council from other rebels. That being said, at the end of the day, all three organizations want an Islamic State in one form or another, although they have differing interpretations on what that actually means — especially Ahrar al-Sham’s vision versus that of JN/ISIS.

As such, if the al-Assad regime does fall, and the militant Salafist elements within the rebellion are able to then defeat/dispatch the secular/nationalist elements of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), there will likely be contestation between these groups as well as other Islamist elements for what an Islamic State in the Syrian context means. It is too early to know if these differences of interpretation would lead to fighting between these groups, or if there would be some type of arrangement worked out amongst them. There are still variables that would first have to happen to even get to that point based on the current state of the conflict in Syria.

Heras: How important are foreign jihadists to militant Salafist fighting groups in Syria? What areas of the greater Middle East region, and from around the world, do the majority of foreign jihadists originate from? How well integrated are they into Syrian militant groups?

Zelin: Foreign nationals fighting on the side of the rebels make about 5-10% of the opposition fighting force. Some have prior experiences fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere; for others, this is their first jihad. At the beginning of the conflict, most foreign fighters joined the Free Syrian Army (FSA), but this was prior to any jihadi group announcing its presence. At that time, there were only a small number of foreign fighters that came to Syria. This really started to change once Jabhat al-Nusra announced its existence in January 2012. The following spring and summer of 2012, a greater number of foreigners joined the fighting in Syria.

Since 2012, there has been a steady stream of individuals seeking to wage jihad in Syria, with no signs of this movement slowing down. Most foreign fighters are with the two al-Qaeda affiliated groups Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Foreigners have also shown up with other Salafist forces like Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyya and Suqur al-Sham, as well as other smaller units, but unlike the al-Qaeda linked jihadi groups, the presence of foreign fighters in these groups is much smaller. Also, although there are foreigners with JN and ISIS, most of the fighters in those groups are still Syrian.

The majority of foreign fighters have come from the Arab world, specifically Saudi Arabia, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq, among others. There have also been a significant number of militant Salafist fighters coming from Europe, with most of them coming from Britain, France, and Belgium, among other countries. There have also been foreigners that have come from non-Arab Africa, the Caucasus, South Asia, and North America, but in smaller numbers. Foreign fighters in the armed Syrian opposition are completely integrated into the organizations they operate with, as the groups they are in do not distinguish between Syrians and foreigners since they hold the view that all Muslims are equal and the same. As such, they are completely accepted.

Heras: In the event that the Syrian revolution were to fail and the armed opposition defeated, what would be the likely response of militant Salafist organizations that waged jihad in Syria? Are these organizations committed to a no surrender, no retreat strategy in Syria?

Zelin: Salafi organizations would not stop fighting; they would not view the revolution as dead unless they were all killed. Their main prerogative is to defeat the al-Assad regime. Anything less would be considered a failure, and I don’t foresee them giving up, especially the groups aligned with al-Qaeda such as Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). As we have seen in other areas, even though al-Qaeda Central (AQC) was defeated in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the US invasion in 2001, they laid low and regrouped until AQC felt strong enough again in 2004-2005. It is possible AQC is currently in this phase again, after the degradation of its forces from the United States’ military drone strike offensives from 2008-2012.

Similarly, we have seen this with al-Qaeda in Iraq (aka ISIS). They had been temporarily defeated during the Sunni Awakening and the US military surge strategy from 2006-2009, but have since built back their capacities and are now stronger than ever, especially in light of their fighters’ recent jail breaks as well as being reinvigorated by the Syrian jihad. We also see this “biding one’s time” strategy in effect in Yemen for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) after the Yemeni military cleared southern Yemeni cities, as well as in northern Niger/southern Libya for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) after the French military intervention in northern Mali.

The key in all this for al-Qaeda has been to limit its losses and try and regenerate. It is likely that both JN and ISIS would do the same in Syria if necessary. Currently they are strong in Syria, so it is unforeseeable that they would need to worry about this, but it is definitely possible due to the ebb and flow of war, as well as the potential for individuals’ opinions to shift, as it relates to JN in Syria.

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Nicholas A. Heras: After the recent peace agreement that was signed between the Malian government and the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), what are the most difficult remaining impediments to stability and socioeconomic development in Mali?

Christos Kyrou: The peace agreement bought the parties some time to explore more permanent solutions to their differences after these elections. But this concerns only the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) and the High Council for the Azawad (HCA), both Tuareg separatist groups. The agreement does not include any of the militant Islamic groups such as the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MOJWA), Ansar al-Sharia of Mali, nor Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) — all of which remain a serious threat to security in the region. But even without those groups, the underlying causes for unrest in the north in Mali remain the same as before the war started, exacerbated now by the addition of a new intense wave of tribal and ethnic tension and half a million refugees and internally displaced people looking for their way back home.   

The original causes of the conflict, including poverty, corruption, and the last few years’ persistent drought in northern Mali, are the greatest long-term challenges that the country faces. Also, a lack of elementary infrastructure, job opportunities, water, and basic microeconomic components such as available credit, suggest that unless the international community responds swiftly and provides aid that will target these areas of concern, it will only be a matter of time when the next rebellion takes place. In the larger picture, the lack of a legitimate, internationally-recognized government in Bamako at this very moment has made such intervention impossible. The international community had pledged more than $3.4 billion for reconstruction in Mali, but it will take the equivalent of a Western Africa Marshall Plan to stabilize the region in the long term. 

Heras: Is it likely that international actors, such as the regional organizations, including the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and France and the European Union, will be required to maintain a long-term presence in Mali? 

Kyrou: Absolutely. For both the security and the socioeconomic dimensions of the situation in Mali, a long-term engagement by the international community is paramount. The country has been devastated by the two-year war. In some areas, sanitation and basic infrastructure have been razed to the ground. In the northeastern city of Gao, there have been outbreaks of cholera, and the situation in refugee camps in Niger, Algeria and Mauritania, with more than half a million refugees, is critical. Malian refugees have no place to return to at this point. Without a sustained and well-planned international intervention, the Malian state will collapse even further.

Considering the new post-war ethnic tension, and the degree to which it coincides with larger issues, including the pledge of certain Tuareg groups for an independent northern Azawad region, it will not be a simple task for the Malian military and security forces to handle alone outbreaks of tribal violence such as those which were experienced in the northeastern city of Kidal last week. But I am also optimistic in that national institutions and methods, such as the necessity of democracy, or the executive office of the president, are still recognized by all factions. Also, President Touré’s visit to Kidal to meet with the leaders of the MNLA and HCA in-person sent a strong message to those in Bamako, who are trying to exaggerate the need for a stronger hand against the Tuareg in the north. In fact, such a hardline policy would only make the situation in the country worse.   

Heras: Is it accurate to describe Mali as a “Pandora’s Box,” opening up greater instability in the greater West African region? 

Kyrou: I would see this more as a moment of reckoning for both Mali and the international community. Had the French intervention failed, then yes, most likely the result would have been disastrous. Even today, it takes a lot of tight-rope walking for the parties in the conflict to capitalize on that successful French intervention. If the negotiations with the MNLA and HCA failed, there would have been another war in the country. Even the current elections, if declared fraudulent, or unsuccessful, might bring the country back into chaos. Mali is not yet out of the woods, but the “Pandora’s Box” is not wide open yet either.  

It is true that certain processes of instability in the region were accelerated due to the events in Mali. For example, the alliance between AQIM, MOJWA, and the Nigerian Boko Haram became evident at the time when Ansar Dine and the other militant Islamist groups occupied northern Mali. But it would be an exaggeration to state that a continental African al-Qaeda has been established. While it is true that MOJWA has extended its operations beyond Mali, into Niger, there has been very little activity from the group since the French intervention in Mali.

I am concerned, however, that they are regrouping so as to attack during the elections, but I hope that security will prevail, and those attacks, should they occur, will prove ineffective. Jihadist groups, just as the Takfirists in Egypt, reject elections and democracy as an abomination that are against Islamic rule. If all goes well with these elections, and if the process of reconciliation and dialogue works to alleviate ethnic strife and heals the psychological wounds of the war, Mali and its allies might come out stronger from this experience rather than weaker.   

Heras: Are there any unique “lessons” that can be taken from the case of Mali’s rapid decline into instability, war, and ultimately the foreign intervention in the country? 

Kyrou: Yes, Mali makes an excellent case study for a complex conflict that – thus far – has been dealt with effectively. To begin with, it demonstrates how dangerous corruption and ineffective state institutions can be — not only for the effected country itself, but for its region and even globally. Even though, on paper, Mali has been a stable and functional democracy, under the radar, the country was disintegrating, and was drifting towards yet another Tuareg rebellion. The situation was not helped by the government in the southern region of the country blaming the north for absorbing resources, and by the north blaming the south for pushing it further into marginalization and neglect. This discourse is continuing even today, and Bamako has to combat corruption and enact some transparency over resource distribution if the country is to remain united. Mali was a textbook case of what is called “structural violence.” The current government of national unity has already started minor reform to combat corruption and to distribute foreign aid equally to the north and south. These are positive steps, however, it will take much more work to accomplish a deeper transformation.   

Mali has traditionally been an important route for smugglers of narcotics, illegal arms, and even human trafficking. Much of the drugs that are produced in Latin America, and Colombia in particular, reach Europe via Mali. The drug trade that utilizes Mali is split into three directions: one toward Spain; one toward Italy; and the third toward the Middle East and Russia. This is a result mainly of the hostile nature of the environment of the Sahel and Sahara region, especially in the north, which the French troops have appropriately nicknamed, “Mars.” Mali possesses a vast territory that is almost impossible to patrol and secure. Another lesson is that Mali and the international community might need to readjust their practices and technology in regard to surveillance and border control to disrupt and terminate those routes of illegal trade, which are also used as platforms for insurgencies and jihadist militants to organize, and, as in the case of Mali, to invade.   

Many lessons can be derived from the French intervention itself. The French determined their objective – to defeat the militant Islamists — very early in their intervention, and they did not divert from this objective at all. They handled the war between the Tuareg rebels and the government by physically separating the two, and by denying them the opportunity and space for engagement. Many in Bamako were outraged by this policy, but it not only worked in reducing operations for the French to a minimum, it gave pause to the Malian parties to explore other alternatives to conflict. In a way, it led to the agreement in Burkina Faso, which more-or-less resolved the conflict over Kidal for the Malian government bloodlessly. It was a triumph for the French in dealing with a complex insurgency situation — the alternative of which would most likely have resembled the Iraqi Civil War of 2004, or even worse, the Rwandan genocide.    

Another lesson from Mali is that, when determined, the international community, regionally and globally, can readily overturn a junta government and peacefully drive a country back to democracy. The strongest case for elections in Mali is the long tradition of democracy in Mali. Generally, Malian citizens reacted with dismay against the military coup that deposed the democratically elected government, and the manner in which General Sanogo and his officers treated the democratically elected president and, then later, the prime minister. Most folks in the West are used to the military playing a major role in governing African nations, but Mali, as in many other African countries, does not fit that stereotype. I wonder how many Americans would endure, and for how long, a military regime occupying the White House. This is why immediate elections in Mali are vital.  

The fact that the French intervened literally saved Mali from falling apart, and exposed the weakness of many other African nations to defend themselves from similar situations as Mali. Niger, Burkina Faso, and then beyond, to the countries of the African Atlantic coast, are fair game to an organized and complex military campaign waged by jihadist groups intended to ignite and exacerbate tribal and ethnic differences in order to destabilize them enough to meet the jihadists’ goals. This reality check provoked a series of reforms and new institutions regarding regional security, with the UN, AU, and ECOWAS considering a permanent reaction force — a specialized army of sorts — to handle situations such as this, and also to react against commercial insurgencies such as those active today in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This course of action, in regard to African regional security, might become catalyst for a more secure and economically and socially developed Africa, and also toward a more substantial economic and political integration of the continent.    

Another lesson to be taken from Mali is that no nation exists in a vacuum. When Libya disintegrated into civil war, it was inevitable that the thousands of Tuareg soldiers of the Qaddafi regime would find their way back home, and being heavily armed, they were determined to seize their independence. Mali was unprepared for such a predicament, and paid the price for it. Mali’s security is very important for the security of its neighbors. Recent attacks in Niger by MOJWA fighters operating from Mali show that the domino effect in West Africa is a real possibility when it comes to the rise of jihadists in the region.    

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Tribalism remains a primary form of communal identity among Arab Sunnis across Syria, regardless of whether they live in rural or urban areas. As a powerful source of socio-political mobilization, Syrian Arab tribalism has shaped the conflict since the first demonstrations against the Bashar al-Assad government were led by disaffected tribesmen in the northeastern city of al-Hasakah in February 2011. The popular anger mobilized in �ٱ����’a governorate by inter-tribal activist networks of mainly young and displaced tribesmen over the arrest and murder of two tribal youths, fueled a national uprising. Currently, Syrian Arab tribal groups are active participants in pro- and anti-Assad militias, as soldiers in the Syrian military and members of tribally-organized militias are concerned with protecting their tribe and its autonomy from both the Syrian state and the armed opposition.

Of particular concern in the context of Syria’s civil war is the possibility of an alliance, however temporary, between Syria’s Arab tribes and militant Salafist groups such as the al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra (Victory Front). In the northeastern governorates of al-Raqqa, al-Hasakah and Deir al-Zor, collectively referred to as al-Jazirah (bordering Turkey to the north and Iraq to the east), the majority Arab Sunni tribal population coexists uneasily with groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, that have a strong presence in the region. A tribal sheikh of a major tribal confederation in the area asserted that, without international support, Syrian tribes would do what they had to do to protect their assets, including working with militant Salafist groups or even Iran.

Tribal Organization in the Civil War

Syrian Arab tribes are divided into qabila (national and trans-national tribal confederations) and ashira (individual tribes). Ashira are further divided into fukhud (clans), khums or ibn amm (lineages) and, at the lowest level, al–bayt or ����’i���� (extended families). Due to the geographically dispersed and localized nature of the Syrian conflict, Syrian tribal armed groups, like other participants in the civil war, generally participate in fighting near their home areas. In spite of the generally localized nature of mobilization of armed groups in the Syrian Civil War, there is a clear distinction of scale and group solidarity that differentiates a tribal ashira from a tribal qabila, the main units of organization that tribal armed groups have displayed thus far in the conflict.

Although they may occasionally be referred to as qabila and include fellow tribesmen from Syria’s neighboring countries, ashira are usually present and powerful only in a particular region within Syria. Such ashira include al-Haddadine in the northwestern Aleppo and Idlib governorates, al-Muwali in Idlib governorate, al-Damaakhla in Idlib, Hama, Aleppo, and Raqqa governorates, the Bani Khalid in the central-western Homs and Hama governorates, and al-Zoubi in the southern �ٱ����’a governorate and across the border into northern Jordan.

The Bani Khalid and al-Muwali ashira have active fighters in the armed opposition and exemplify the role of a local ashira in the fighting in western Syria. Several battalions of Bani Khalid fighters who are aligned with the armed opposition’s umbrella group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), continue to participate in the fight for the city of Homs and its . The “” of the Bani Khalid in Hama governorate is also a constituent fighting force of the western Syrian umbrella armed opposition group, the Front of Syrian Revolutionaries. are fighting against the Syrian military in the vicinity of the large town of Ma’rat Numan, south of the city of Idlib, where the tribe is present in large numbers. They are active in the fight for the control of the town and the nearby Syrian military base of .

Three armed opposition battalions that claim to be tribal, but are without a specifically stated tribal affiliation, have been active in western Syria. One of these groups is called the Battalion of the Free Tribes, which, like the al-Muwali and the al-Damaakhla, is active around the town of Mar’at Numan, participating in the fight for control of . This group is also associated with the Syrian nationalist, Sunni Islamist umbrella armed opposition group, (Descendants of the Prophet). Another tribal battalion, the , was organized in �ٱ����’a in February and claims to have been formed by defecting Syrian soldier tribesmen from �ٱ����’a, Aleppo, al-Raqqa, al-Haskah, and Deir al-Zor governorates. The Free Tribes of al-Sham are a battalion of the al-Omari Brigades, an Alwiya Ahfaad al-Rasul affiliate in . Another coalition of tribal militias composed of many Syrian army defectors, calling itself the , was formed in Aleppo in April.

Syrian Tribal Qabilain the Civil War

The largest qabila in Syria, particularly the Ougaidat, Baggara and Shammar, are transnational tribal confederations that have constituent clans throughout the country. These qabila are, however, present in the greatest numbers in the Jazirah region. Some qabila in Syria, such as the Anaza of Homs governorate, the Ta’ie of al-Hasakah governorate, and the Na’im, are present in Syria in smaller numbers than in neighboring states. Of these smaller qabila, al-Na’im is the largest and some al-Na’im tribesmen have raised an in the Damascus countryside.

The qabila of the Ougaidat is emerging as one of the most active tribally organized, armed anti-Assad coalitions. Ougaidat fighting groups, organized on the local level, are part of a national tribal coalition that calls itself the . These brigades are very active in Homs governorate in and around the small city of al-Rastan, north of Homs and in Deir al-Zor governorate, where they have particular strength inside and south of the city of Deir al-Zor in a belt of communities that includes the towns of Mayadin and Abu Kamal on the Iraqi border. Ougaidat brigades also participate in the fighting around the northwestern city of Idlib near the Turkish border.

The Ougaidat have also been active participants in an opposition exile group, the Council of the Arab Tribes in Syria. Several prominent members of the Syrian opposition are Ougaidat tribesmen, including Sheikh Nawaf al-Faris, the former Syrian ambassador to Iraq; Syria’s first astronaut, Major General Muhammad Faris; the chairman of the FSA Military Council of Aleppo, Colonel Abd al-Jabbar al-‘Aqeedi; and the former chairman of the Latakia Political Security Branch, General .

There are also challenges that confront effective intra-tribal coordination and unity in Syria that are caused by geographic dispersal inside the country and internal divisions created by local power realities in a particular governorate. Our research indicates that the most pronounced example of intra-tribal divisions in the conflict occurs within the Baggara tribal confederation. Baggara tribesmen participate in armed activities, both in support of and against the opposition. The Baggara were particularly hard-hit by the Syrian Ba’ath Party’s policy of undermining tribal autonomy and the economic deprivation caused by the decade-long drought that devastated Syria’s rural, agriculture-dependent regions.

Baggara tribesmen are also religiously divided by the conversion to Shi’ism of a reported quarter of the Baggara confederation in villages south of Aleppo as a result of Iranian-funded proselytization. Tribal leaders from the Shammar and Ougaidat confederations offered a cultural explanation for the Baggara’s lack of internal tribal coherence and Sunni to Shiite conversions, by suggesting they were the result of the Baggara’s roots as a sheep or goat-herding tribe, and not a “noble” camel-herding tribe.

Arab tribes that are recognized by Arabs as legitimate have their origins in pre-Islamic Arabia. Arab tribes differentiate between those that claim noble status based on their camel-herding origins (al-Bedu) versus those of lower status, associated with sheep and goat herding (al-Shwaya). In the case of Syria, the Shammar, Anaza, and Ta’ie, fall into the first category, and the Ougaidat, Baggara, and Jabbour, fall into the second. The Baggara and Ougaidat are mostly limited to Syria, with smaller numbers in Iraq and even fewer in Jordan and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. The Shammar, Jabbour, Anaza, and Ta’ie, have a significant presence in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and are found in smaller numbers in the GCC states and Jordan. Al-Na’im, a highly decentralized tribal confederation without a clearly defined leadership, is found mainly in Syria with a smaller presence in the GCC states.

In , Baggara fighters are reported to work with the Syrian military to attack opposition controlled neighborhoods in the city, and Syrian opposition fighters also claim to have fought Baggara tribesmen supporting the Syrian military during a fought to free prisoners held at the Aleppo Central Prison. Overall leadership of the Baggara was at one point claimed by Sheikh Nawaf Raghib al-Bashir, the son of the now deceased former paramount Sheikh of the Baggara. Sheikh al-Bashir, who was one of the prominent opposition figures who signed the 2005 reformist Damascus Declaration, was jailed by the Syrian government in 2011 and reportedly forced to issue a in support of President al-Assad. Following his defection to Turkey, Sheikh al-Bashir became a prominent within the Council of the Arab Tribes in Syria and the leader of the Jazirah and Euphrates Front to Liberate Syria.

The Jazirah and Euphrates Front to Liberate Syria is an opposition organization that, according to , consists of approximately 138 armed opposition battalions and brigades in the Jazirah region that coordinate closely with the FSA’s Supreme Military Command, but are autonomous from the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces and the Syrian National Council. Interviews indicate that Sheikh al-Bashir also has personal command of approximately 500 to 3,000 armed fighters, organized into fighting groups that are reportedly coordinated under Alwiya Ahfaad al-Rasul’s umbrella in areas of northern al-Raqqa and al-Hasakah governorates.

Anti-Kurdish Militancy

Sheikh al-Bashir has organized several armed groups that have actively sought to Kurds in and around the ethnically mixed city of Ras al-‘Ayn in the northeastern area of al-Hasakah governorate, along the Turkish border. Pro-government Baggara fighters, without links to Sheikh al-Bashir, are also stated to have participated in attacks against the Kurdish Partiya Yekitiya Demokrat (PYD – Democratic Union Party) in the ethnically mixed northern Aleppo neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsud. The participation of Baggara tribal fighters in attacks against Kurds demonstrates the continuingly fragile state of Kurdish and Arab tribal relations in ethnically mixed regions such as Aleppo and al-Jazirah.

The cities of al-Hasakah and Qamishli in the northeastern area of the governorate of al-Hasakah, near the borders with Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan, have emerged as a site of conflict between Arab tribes and Kurds. In Qamishli, members of the Ta’ie tribe have been organized into pro-Assad “Popular Committees” under the command of the Syrian MP and Ta’ie Sheikh Muhammad Fares, and are reported to have engaged in several clashes with Kurdish fighters from the PYD. However, local Arab tribal leaders and Kurdish notables who grew up together, have formed a joint council in Qamishli to avoid such conflict. The conflict on the Kurdish side is generated by individuals and groups linked to the PYD.

Conclusion

Tribal identity is used in restive areas of Syria to mobilize and direct the armed activities of tribesmen, in support of both the government and the opposition. Further, tribal identity (even where dormant, as is often the case in major cities) will, as occurred in Iraq, assert itself more prominently among Arab Sunnis across Syria as the country further destabilizes, including in the major urban areas of western Syria such as Aleppo and Damascus. Tribalism is a socio-cultural fact throughout Syria, not just in the less developed eastern governorates of the country. It is an important form of traditional civil society that will help determine the success of local or foreign-supported security arrangements, affect good governance, and impact the sustainability of long-term stability operations and economic development throughout the country. As anti-Assad states in the international community debate options for implementing potential post-Assad stability operations, Syrian Arab tribes will be a critical part of this effort.

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Nicholas A. Heras: To what degree does Boko Haram represent a threat to international security? Is it accurate to say that Boko Haram is primarily a Nigeria-based militant movement without aspirations for regional power by waging jihad?

Jacob Zenn: I believe that Boko Haram represents a threat to international security for three reasons. First, it has a close operational relationship with Ansaru, which was, in my view, created by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). In many ways Ansaru is the internationalist component of Boko Haram; although, it may not exist as a distinct entity from Boko Haram, since the French intervention in Mali in January led to the two group’s integration when Ansaru lost contacts with a retreating AQIM. Boko Haram and its affiliates in Ansaru seek foreigners to kidnap for ransom; although, many foreigners have departed from northern Nigeria because of Ansaru already. Boko Haram may also orchestrate attacks on foreign embassies or the United Nations, which some of its al-Shabab and AQIM-linked militants already attacked in a suicide car bombing on August 26, 2011. It is also likely that Boko Haram fighters are connected to regionally-focused militant groups such as AQIM, Ansaru, and the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO).

Second, Boko Haram thrives in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, which is on the country’s border with Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. Thus far, Boko Haram has carried out operations in Niger and Cameroon, while it imports weapons from Chad and its fighters have fled into Chad when they are pressured by security forces.

Third, Boko Haram fighters and other Nigerian militants traveled to Mali in 2012, when the militant Salafist groups AQIM, MUJAO, and Ansar al-Dine controlled the northern part of the country. Boko Haram established deeper relations with these groups.

Assessing Boko Haram’s threat to international security cannot be done without considering its relationship to AQIM, MUJAO, and Ansaru. At this point, however, I do not believe that either Boko Haram or Ansaru is planning attacks outside of Nigeria and the West African sub-region. The international community should, however, watch for “little Boko Harams” emerging elsewhere in West Africa.

Heras: Where in West Africa do you anticipate “little Boko Harams” forming, and how would they present a threat to regional security?

Zenn: I don’t want to overuse the term “little Boko Harams.” I call them “little” because it is hard to imagine them becoming as big as Boko Haram has in northern Nigeria. Little Boko Harams could emerge anywhere in the region where you see similar characteristics to northern Nigeria. These characteristics include conditions such as: a high number of al-majiri youths without formal education and who only learn Arabic and Islamic religious studies, and survive by begging for money for their teachers who they live with; ongoing Muslim-Christian rivalries; poverty caused by desertification and endemic unemployment; illicit arms trafficking; and infiltration from militant groups such as AQIM and MUJAO. Senegal, in particular, seems to have all of these characteristics, especially the al-majiri system.

I consider “little Boko Harams” a threat to regional security because they would be grassroots movements that reject the current international order in the region, including secular democracy and states with definable borders. Moreover, little Boko Harams would advocate for Taliban-style Islamic law, which is bound to be anathema to the people of West Africa and Western interests.

Heras: Who are these al-majiri youths, where are there large concentrations of them, and what is their significance to the socio-politics of Islam in West Africa?

Zenn: Northern Nigeria and Senegal are two places where the al-majiri system can be found, but it exists throughout the Sahel region. I saw it also in Cameroon and Niger, for example, when traveling through those countries last year. I really would defer to Alex Thurston’s May 2012 review of the system for for a more in-depth look at the system.

I think that these countries — Senegal, Cameroon, and Niger — may be more likely to see groups like Boko Haram emerge because of the al-majiri system. When you have millions of young boys, as is the case in northern Nigeria, for example, that are part of a largely unregulated educational system where all they learn is Arabic language Qur’an recitation from Islamic scholars, whose credentials and loyalties may be dubious, it can make those boys more susceptible to violent interpretations of the Qur’an that Boko Haram endorses.

The targets of this violence are secular democracy, Christians, and Nigerians with a “Western” education. In addition, without financial or familial support, these boys in the al-majiri system might find even the small amount of financial support or camaraderie that Boko Haram offers to be enticing.

As it applies to the socio-politics of the region, consider that whoever funds the al-majiri system will have a say over the curriculum and possibly the ideology taught. If the Saudis or Salafist groups are funding this education, then you can expect that boys will be inclined towards Salafism, possibly militant Salafism. They will also likely have an “Us vs. Them” mentality, especially towards Christians. I would recommend one reads , where he discusses the “Arabization of Cameroonian Islam,” for more information on how foreign-funded radicalization of youth can occur in contemporary West Africa.

Heras: Since France deployed its military in Mali, there has been increasing attention paid to the trans-national nature of militant Salafist organizations in West Africa and the international efforts to defeat these groups. How much will this increased attention, and potential foreign military action, affect the evolution and objectives of militant Salafist groups in the region?

Zenn: Although there is increased international attention being paid to militant Salafist groups in West Africa, there is still no coherent regional strategy to counter them at the ideological or operational level. In Nigeria, the ideological battle with Boko Haram is being fought by the Sultan of Sokoto and other traditional West African Islamic leaders, whose authority is inherited from their family connections to the original Sultanate of Sokoto. Importantly, militant Salafist groups such as Boko Haram/Ansaru, AQIM, and MUJAO, argue that they are fighting in the name of Usman dan Fodio, the Sultanate of Sokoto’s ancestor. There needs to be attention paid to countering this militant Salafist narrative because the ideology of these groups is not like that of Usman dan Fodio, who was a Sufi.

In the context of their regional cooperation, militant Salafist groups in West Africa are able to operate from southern Libya through Niger to northern Nigeria. Unfortunately, there is insufficient cooperation between states in the Sahel to combat the regional security threats presented by militant Salafist groups, as each state in the region acts on its own initiative. Sahel states need to begin to cooperate more effectively with each other because they are all targeted by militant Salafist groups.

Put another way, Niger or Cameroon, for example, cannot simply say to Nigeria that Boko Haram is “Nigeria’s problem.” This is a flawed approach because the challenge posed by Boko Haram to Nigeria could very easily cross the border and impact Niger and Cameroon — and it already has. In May, Boko Haram inmates held in a prison near the Nigerien capital of Niamey, utilized support from their comrades in Nigeria and Niger to launch an attack on their prison guards. Boko Haram also crossed the border and kidnapped a French family in Cameroon in February 2013 and killed a defector in Kousseri in 2012. Western nations such as France and the United States may have a role in bringing West African nations together in regional security partnerships to confront militant Salafist trans-national threats.

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The question of Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War has become more intense following the recent capture of the strategic Syrian border city of al-Qusayr in the Homs governorate, by Syrian military and Hezbollah forces. After al-Qusayr fell, mass media reports emerged that Hezbollah is set to deploy, or has already deployed, 2,000-4,000 fighters to the north-western Syrian governorate of Aleppo — at the Aleppo Military Academy of Military Engineering, and in the enclave of the large, Shiite Syrian villages of Nubul and al-Zahraa — northeast of the contested city of .  

Nubul and al-Zahraa are situated northwest of Aleppo on the major highway 214, which runs to the Syrian-Turkish border. The highway approaches important Sunni-majority villages that act as armed opposition staging points, running from southern Turkey into northern Syria in the vicinity of Aleppo. Of special importance is the large village of Azaz, northeast of Nubul and al-Zahraa and due north of Aleppo, that was seized by the armed opposition in July 2012. It has been a of several Syrian military airstrikes and is central to a current military operation against the opposition in the area north of . Nubul and al-Zahraa are also reported to be the staging point for Syrian military and Hezbollah operations seeking control of the important , in the vicinity of .

Pro-Assad Enclaves Nubul and al-Zahraa

Nubul and al-Zahraa have been receiving significant attention from Hezbollah, which has supported Lebanese and pro-Assad Syrians since late 2012. Nubul and al-Zahraa, with a combined population of approximately 70,000-100,000 people, are located in a contested area near the Turkish-Syrian border between the Kurdish-majority northwestern Afrin sub-region, near several armed-opposition controlled areas and staging points from Turkey into . Tension between the residents of pro- and anti-opposition villages in the area has led to communal recriminations and .

The Syrian armed opposition has consistently accused Hezbollah of participating in Syrian military operations staged from Nubul and al-Zahraa. Colonel Nour Hassoun, a Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander in the south-central city of Homs, that Hezbollah fighters have been moving into the vicinity of Aleppo and Idlib, where they would be used as “infiltration” units to directly attack armed opposition positions already under artillery and aircraft attack by the Syrian military. The villages of Nubul and al-Zahraa, in particular, have been accused of being staging points for anti-opposition operations. Syrian armed opposition groups have asserted via a  that they have been battling Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard fighters in Nubul and al-Zahraa, and Syrian military units and shabiha (ghosts) paramilitary based in the villages.

Iraqi Shiite fighters of the Abu Fadl al-Abbas Brigade, who normally operate in the southern Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab, are also by the opposition to be fighting with Hezbollah and the Syrian military in the area around Aleppo. However, pro-government Popular Committee militias in Nubul and al-Zahraa deny Hezbollah’s involvement in the fighting and state that the rumor of the movement’s participation in the battle is “disinformation” put out by the armed .

The powerful Syrian armed opposition group, Liwa al-Tawhid (Oneness of God Brigade), recently released a video that it states was taken by one of its fighters who infiltrated a recruiting session of shabiha militia in Nubul and al-Zahraa, with senior Syrian military commanders and the governor of the Aleppo Governorate. The assembled people in the video can be observed chanting Shiite sectarian slogans, and are offered significant financial rewards in exchange for a “cleansing operation” in the area, and forgiveness for prior avoidance of mandatory .

The video, with Liwa al-Tawhid’s logo prominently displayed, was embedded on Al-Arabiya’s website. The assembled crowd in the video chanted “We follow you, oh Hussein,” and Hezbollah slogans popularized by the movement’s media during the July War of 2006 against Israel. In response to the crowd, their Syrian military recruiter, referred to by Al-Arabiya as Brigadier General Muhammad Kaddour of the Aleppo Security Committee, stated that they “fight under the banner of Hussein.” Louay al-Miqdad, one of the most prominent spokesmen of the opposition FSA, subsequently accused the Syrian military and Hezbollah of preparing, on the orders of Russia or Iran, a “” against the Syrian opposition in the area of Aleppo.

Hezbollah and Arab media, sympathetic to the Assad government, have brought special attention to the plight of Nubul and al-Zahraa's residents. During the winter of 2013, it was reported that flour, bread, sugar, food, cooking oil, and medicine were scarce in the villages as a result of a blockade imposed by the Syrian armed opposition. The blockade was also stated to have prevented the Syrian Red Cross and Red Crescent from accessing the villages’ .

A Hezbollah media outlet stated that the blockade had been imposed by the militant Salafist Jabhat al-Nusra, which it referred to as a “takfiri” group, and was leading to a “humanitarian disaster” in Nubul and . Further emphasizing the existential threat of militant Salafist fighters to sectarian minorities such as Shiites and Alawites, one Lebanese newspaper reported that 30 young men from Nubul and al-Zahraa had been by Jabhat al-Nusra and its “Wahhabist” allies, and published a graphic photo of the beheading of two young men that it claimed were from the villages.

The existential struggle and trauma of war suffered by the residents of Nubul and al-Zahraa is becoming a rallying cry for the pro-Hezbollah Lebanese. As Syrian military and Hezbollah forces approached victory in al-Qusayr, a popular Facebook group sympathetic to Hezbollah declared: “.”

Conclusion

Rebel control over large sections of the region of Aleppo provides the Syrian armed opposition with strategic rear and interior lines of communication from southern Turkey. The disruption of rebel held areas of the northern Aleppo governorate, particularly its logistics route north-to-south from the Turkish border through the contested areas around Nubul and al-Zahraa’ to the front-lines of Aleppo, would be a significant blow to the armed opposition.  

Control over Nubul and al-Zahraa provides the Syrian military and its allies with a convenient staging point to apply pressure to the armed opposition in the city of Aleppo, and attempt to disrupt and seize key opposition logistical nodes such as Azaz. Combat in Aleppo and its suburbs provides Hezbollah and the Syrian military an opportunity to continue to refine their coordinated counter-insurgency strategy by building the capacity of local Popular Committees to hold loyalist or neutral areas, and to conduct offensives against opposition villages and market cities surrounding major contested cities, such as Aleppo and Homs. 

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Hezbollah's military intervention in the Syrian Civil War will have a significant impact upon both the current conflict in Syria and on the movement's future involvement in conflicts of the greater Middle East. Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hezbollah, has clearly articulated the movement's rationale for its involvement in the civil war. In response to criticism from the Syrian opposition and its sympathizers, including pro-opposition Lebanese, Nasrallah reiterated that Hezbollah's involvement in the Syrian conflict on the side of the Bashar al-Assad government is a defensive action against militant Salafists in league with the West and Israel. Emphasizing Hezbollah's defensive jihad against radical Sunni fighters, Nasrallah addressed his movement's critics by asserting that Syrian Salafist opposition fighters would turn their weapons on Lebanon if they succeeded in defeating the al-Assad , and that it would not allow Syria to be defeated by "American, Israeli, or takfiri [militant Salafist] ."  

Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, Sheikh Naim Qassem, reaffirmed that Hezbollah’s participation in the Syrian conflict was part of its obligation to resistance against Israel and stated that it was a “severe blow to the American-Israeli-Takfiri ." Further summarizing the existential nature of the conflict that Hezbollah viewed itself engaging in Syria, Qassem warned the armed Syrian opposition that: “The region’s people have set their minds on recovering their lands and their .” Thus, emboldened by a narrative of resistance, emphasizing that it is assisting the Syrian military to overcome a militant Salafist (i.e. Gulf Sunni Arab)-Western-Israeli conspiracy, Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian conflict is placed within the context of a defensive war waged not only as a great humanitarian struggle to protect Syrians from mass murder and deprivation, but also to defend the Lebanese people. 

Further, in spite of its casualties, the continued involvement of Hezbollah in the Syrian conflict is providing the movement’s military branch with invaluable experience in clear-and-hold, urban warfare, and counter-insurgency combat; techniques that may be useful in future communal wars in rural and urban Lebanese areas, or in a hypothetical Hezbollah invasion of the Galilee region in northern Israel. Nasrallah stated in a February 16, 2011 speech that Hezbollah fighters would one day be prepared to “liberate” the . Hezbollah affiliated media has produced an interactive graphic presentation on the basic approach of a Hezbollah invasion of the .

Perhaps referring to the widely stated belief that Hezbollah was bleeding its manpower in Syria instead of confronting Israel, an important Hezbollah official, Sheikh Nabil Qaouq, stated that “all options were on the table” and that “tens of thousands of fighters in the south” were ready to create the “Galilee equation that Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah had .” 

Although its Lebanese, Arab, and international opponents may not be convinced by the movement’s newly updated “resistance logic,” the perceived existential threat of militant Salafist fighters in Syria, with many comrades-in-arms in Lebanon, is a worrisome trend for many non-Sunni Lebanese and Syrians. In an unstable environment of communal conflict and hardening sectarian tensions, this narrative of resistance to the near enemy of militant Salafism propped up by the far enemy of Western, Gulf Arab, and Israeli connivance, may provide Hezbollah and its ally, the al-Assad government, with a successful counter to the Syrian armed opposition and its local and foreign proponents’ narrative of resistance to the Ba'athist regime and its allies. The evolution of Hezbollah’s narrative of resistance may be its greatest success resulting from its participation in the Syrian Civil War.  

*[This article was originally published by .]

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Syria’s Turkmen community is becoming increasingly involved in the country’s opposition movement. The mostly Sunni Turkmen of Syria represent a significant ethnic minority that is located throughout the country, particularly in diverse and highly strategic areas that are currently the sites of significant conflict. The Turkmen community is charged by the Assad government of being militantly pro-Turkey, pro-opposition, and in support of the re-imposition of Turkish dominance over .

Syria’s Turkmen communities are descendants of Oghuz Turkish tribal migrants who began moving from Central Asia into the area of modern-day Syria during the 10^th century, when the Turkic Seljuk dynasty ruled much of the region. Under the Ottomans, Turkmen were encouraged to establish villages throughout the rural hinterlands of several Syrian cities in order to counter the demographic weight and influence of the settled and nomadic and semi-nomadic Arab tribesmen that populated the region. Syrian Turkmen were also settled to serve as local gendarmes to help assert Ottoman authority over roads and mountain passes in diverse regions, such as the Alawite-majority, northwestern coastal governorate of . After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, communities of Turkmen continued to reside in the country.

Syrian Turkmen opposition leaders, many of who are in exile in Turkey, assert that while Turkey is a cultural “Father” country to their communities, are committed to a pluralistic, territorially intact Syria, with a polity that is representative of all of its ethnic and sectarian groups and is no longer ruled by the largely . Citing strong historical and cultural ties and his country’s deep affinity for their ethnic compatriots, Turkey’s President Abdullah Gül stated that: “.” Syrian Turkmen leaders report that their efforts to win the support of anti-Assad Arab states were rebuffed because their community was seen by those states as already having a sponsor in the .

Discrimination and Repression

Turkmen leaders assert that their community suffered discrimination and repression under Ba’athist rule. Turkmen were unable to teach the Turkish language and their cultural and historical subjects in schools, Turkmen villages were given Arab names, and Turkmen land was appropriated for the use of Arab . These factors — as well as tribal divisions within the community and the lack of a large contiguous area within the country where Turkmen are a plurality of the population — are blamed by Syrian Turkmen leaders for their community’s lack of participation in the country’s political opposition prior to the .

Turkmen leaders also assert that under the Hafez al-Assad government, their community was viewed as a potential “fifth column” for Turkey, which had a hostile relationship with the Syrian government for much of Hafez al-Assad’s rule. They also state that Hafez al-Assad’s position on the Turkmen was adopted by his son Bashar al-Assad after the onset of the Syrian uprising and the Turkish government’s consequent support for the Syrian opposition. As a result of this history of dispossession, Syrian Turkmen opposition leaders are seeking the recognition of their community as an integral part of the country and their cultural and linguistic rights guaranteed in a post-Assad Syrian .

Turkmen-Kurdish Relations in Syria

The of the Syrian Turkmen community are not dissimilar from those of Syria’s Kurdish community, which also suffered from repression of its cultural and political rights. Kurdish and Turkmen communities are reported to have a tense relationship in contemporary Syria because of Syrian Turkmen ties to Turkey, and because of the desire of some Syrian Kurds for a Kurdish-ruled autonomous region. Syrian Turkmen leaders assert that any Kurdish attempt to create an autonomous “Western Kurdistan” within Syrian territory would to displace tens of thousands of Turkmen.

Turkmen communities coexist within Kurdish majority areas in a geographic region near the Syrian-Turkish border that runs from the northwestern governorates of Idlib and Aleppo to the northeastern governorate of Raqqa. Fearing the displacement of a claimed 290 Turkmen villages in this area if an autonomous Syrian Kurdish region were to emerge, Syrian Turkmen leaders state they experience “” at this prospect and reiterate their desire to work with Syrian Kurds as . Of particular concern to Turkmen leaders is the widespread conflict between Turkmen opposition fighters and Kurdish fighters of the aggressively pro-autonomy Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat (PYD, Democratic Union Party), reported to be an ally and ideological offshoot of the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK, Kurdistan Workers’ Party).

Syria’s Turkmen communities are located in several strategic areas, including the Jabal al-Turkman region near the city of Latakia, the city of Aleppo and its northern suburbs stretching towards the Turkish border, and in villages north and north-west of the city of Homs near an important highway linking Damascus to the generally pro-Assad coastal governorates of Tartus and Latakia. There are also important populations of Turkmen in the southwestern governorates of �ٱ����’a (bordering Jordan) and Quneitra (in the Golan region bordering Israel), the northwestern governorate of Idlib near the Turkish border, and in the northeastern governorates of Raqqa and Deir ez Zor. The total population of Turkmen communities in Syria is believed to be approximately 200,000, or 1 percent of the country’s population. Although, this figure is a matter of controversy and is disputed by Syrian Turkmen leaders who claim there are more than 3.5 million Turkmen in Syria; though some two million speak only Arabic as a result of state . This figure is not only much greater than what is commonly believed to be the Syrian Turkmen community’s population, it would make the Turkmen one of Syria’s largest minority groups on par with Syria’s Christian, Alawite, and Kurdish communities.

Active Participants in the Syrian Opposition

Syrian Turkmen communities are active in the opposition. Although, some Turkmen opposition leaders assert that the Syrian opposition movements, particularly the Syrian National Council (SNC), were slow to recognize Turkmen as “Syrians” and only included Syrian Turkmen in their membership after the intervention of Turkish . Several Turkmen opposition parties have been formed over the course of the uprising, both within Syria and in exile, primarily in Turkey, including the Syrian Democratic Turkmen Movement, the Syrian Turkmen National Bloc and the Syrian Turkmen Platform. Currently, Turkmen are reported to hold 16 seats out of 310 seats within the SNC and three seats out of 60 seats within the larger opposition conglomerate of the .

In late March, the Turkish government several Syrian Turkmen opposition parties and assisted the formation of a new Syrian Turkmen opposition coalition called the “Syrian Turkmen Assembly.” The Turkish Foreign Ministry and Syrian Turkmen leaders state this coalition was organized in order to provide a unified “Turkmen” front to engage in a transitional process in a potential post-Assad Syria. Syrian Turkmen Assembly members, representing both Syrian Turkmen opposition parties and armed groups, are seeking at least one Cabinet seat to be devoted to Syrian Turkmen in a . This political maneuvering is occurring as several Syrian Turkmen armed opposition groups, either as part of or in cooperation with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) continue to engage in combat against the Syrian military and its allied paramilitary forces throughout the country.

are especially active in the Jabal al-Turkman region in Latakia and in Aleppo and its suburbs, such as the district of Hanano. It is reported that more than 10,000 Turkmen fighters are mobilized in armed opposition groups throughout Syria, with the greatest number of groups concentrated in Aleppo and its immediate suburbs. Some of the Syrian Turkmen armed opposition groups in Aleppo carry names that evoke the memory of the Ottoman Empire, including the .

In Latakia governorate, the Syrian military is accused of shelling and striking Turkmen villages from the air in the Jabal al-Turkman region, which is now considered to be firmly under the control of the . Current fighting in and around the southern regions of the Jabal al-Turkman is reported to be fiercely contested, with overtones of communal animosity between and . Turkmen opposition leaders allege that the Syrian government has a policy of forcing Turkmen communities out of the area in order to create an autonomous Alawite region in the event of the collapse of the .

Syria’s Turkmen communities are active participants in the Syrian opposition and stand to benefit from this participation in any post-Assad Syrian state. The political and diplomatic support of the Turkish government, in the context of weakened al-Assad government control over many regions of the country, provides Syrian Turkmen opposition groups with a benefactor as they position themselves to participate in a potential post-Assad transition period. Syrian Turkmen leaders appear to be pursuing citizenship-based representation in a future Syrian government, and thus far appear to be carefully seeking to legitimize their community’s status as “Syrians” in a diverse Syrian polity.

This narrative of inclusion, politically important for the community as a minority without a distinct political or geographical base, may be tested in the event of a bitter communal conflict between Turkmen and other Syrian communities, particularly Alawites and Kurds. In the context of potential widespread conflict in a post-Assad Syria, Turkmen armed opposition groups, relatively small in number and geographically dispersed, may be limited in their ability to protect the property and lives of their community and cannot necessarily depend on the intervention of the Turkish military to support them. A pluralistic, post-Assad Syrian state that can guarantee the physical security of all its communities, and that considers Turkmen to be “Syrian,” is thus an important objective of the current Syrian Turkmen opposition.

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Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool (Brigades of the Descendants of the Prophet) is an increasingly powerful national umbrella organization of locally-based Syrian Sunni Islamist armed opposition fighting groups which are active belligerents against the al-Assad government. It is a “franchise” organization whose constituent kata’ib (battalions) announce that they are formally part of, and fight under the banner of, the national “Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool.” The number of kata’ib throughout Syria stating that they are a part of Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool has been growing quickly since the organization’s founding in July 2012.     

The organization was first announced in , where three kata’ib in the city’s suburbs joined together to form the Liwa’ Ahfaad ar-Rasool (Brigade of the Descendants of the Prophet). This new group stated that it sought to fight jihad against the kuffar (unbelievers) — implied to be the al-Assad government which is considered to be dominated at its highest levels by Alawites — in the path of God and promote the victory of religion and truthful righteousness in Syria. It currently maintains this message, without the mention of fighting kuffar, and with a greater focus on striving for God and being willing to die in order to accomplish that . As part of a movement engaged in waging jihad, kata’ib of the Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool encourage prayer and reflection before battle, and the organization advertises this concern for the spiritual well-being of its members through its official .

Kata’ib of the organization are very active belligerents against the Syrian military, conducting operations in both and battle spaces. These operations are diverse, and include targets such as tanks and military , attacking paramilitary barracks with , firing artillery at Syrian military , , and shooting down Syrian military . It also claims to have successfully conducted three attacks against high-level Syrian government targets. The first occurred in  when Liwa’ Ahfaad ar-Rasool, then stated to be a part of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), claimed responsibility for a truck bombing that targeted a Syrian security forces center and military depot in central Damascus. The second operation, directed against Lieutenant Jamil Hassan, the head of the powerful Syrian Air Force Intelligence Directorate, resulted in his assassination by poisoning — an act that Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool claims to have . The third attack occurred on September 2 against an officers’ barracks in the General Administration Building in central  Damascus, which Liwa’ Ahfaad ar-Rasool claims killed or wounded approximately 200 Syrian .  

Organization, Ideology, and Alliances

Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool claims to fight in 13 Syrian , with particular strength in the north-western province of Idlib; in Damascus and its southern suburbs; in the central-western city of Hama and its suburbs; in the south-western governorate of Quneitra and the Golan region that borders Israel; and in the north-eastern governorate of Hasakah, particularly in the vicinity of the restive and mixed Kurdish and Arab city of Ras al-'Ayn. It also has growing strength in the city of and its suburbs, and in the north-eastern city of Raqqa and its suburbs, where the organization is emerging as a major armed opposition combatant and administrator of local opposition-controlled civil in coordination with other armed opposition organizations, including the al-Qaeda affiliated movement Jabhat al-Nusra (The Victory Front). Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool also has constituent kata’ib in the north-western coastal governorate of and in the central-western governorate. At present, it is unclear how many fighters participate in the kata’ib of the organizaton, although one figure that has been proposed is approximately throughout Syria.

Ideologically, the kata’ib of Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool can generally be described as “Syrian Sunni-Islamist nationalist,” although some of them may also be inclined towards more secularist or militant Salafist ideological persuasions. Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool’s logos are highly symbolic of the organization’s purported worldview. Its original , which remains the icon on its well-updated Twitter feed, features a green field upon which is laid a tall mosque, the shahada (declaration of faith), and the name of, and a benediction to, the Prophet Muhammad. Currently, the “franchise” of Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool has become mostly uniform amongst the organization’s kata’ib throughout the country, a process which began to show in their Internet media output starting in late October 2012. The logo features the green, black, and white striped with three red stars flag of the original post-Independence Syrian Republic (1930-1958) shaped into a crescent, upon which is a gold plate with the shahada written upon it. A rifle and a sword cross beneath the gold plate.

Some of the kata’ib of Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool also incorporate their own logos, including with the “black banner of the Prophet,” a simple black flag with the shahada written in white upon it. This banner is also popularly associated with Islamist movements, and in some contexts, with jihad and militant Salafism. The use of the black banner by some of the organization's kata’ib is diverse, and includes the banner in the hand of a warrior on , wrapped around an AK-47 placed upon a .

The national organization of Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool does not currently state that it has a supreme commander. It does claim to have some type of command and control structure, even if symbolic, organized under the auspices and media outreach of its “.” At the present time, Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool appears to be led at the local level, at the initiative of the commanders of each of its kata’ib. Membership in the constituent kata’ib of the organization, based upon the author’s analysis of the videos released on the Internet by the battalions, appears to be a mix of defected Syrian soldiers, and local militiamen and youth. As a result of the diverse leadership of its kata’ib, and the incipient nature of the Syrian armed opposition as a whole throughout the country, Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool's battalions maintain an ambiguous relationship with the other armed opposition organizations operating in their particular area.   

These organizations include the member fighting groups claiming to belong to the  and its ruling , , and the two largest coalitions of armed opposition groups currently active against the Syrian government, the (SILF), which includes the large organization Kata’ib al-Farouq and its constituent fighting groups, and the (SIF), which is dominated by the large Syrian Salafist organization . Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool maintains active relations with all of these groups, particularly in militant operations.   

Frequently, Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool actively joins in combatant “alliances” with other armed opposition groups in order to conduct larger offensives against the Syrian military. It also cooperates in civil society administration in regions of Syria that are under the control of the opposition, including in and in , where it is reported to be working with several other organizations, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham, to install a system of shari'a courts to adjudicate local grievances through the interpretations of Islamic law. As a result of the participation of some of Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool’s kata’ib in efforts to institute “Salafist” civil administration in these regions, and the general “Islamist” ideology that many of the members of the constituent kata’ib of the organization are reported to hold, Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool is frequently referred to as part of the in the ideological development of Syria’s armed opposition groups.

A captured leader of Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool also recently made a “” on Syrian state-run television where he asserted that funding and weapons for the organization came from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Jordan, and that they prayed and fought with the al-Qaeda affiliate . This connection to Qatar as a major source of the organization’s funding has also been asserted by , which interviewed Western security and intelligence officials, and in . In addition to the foreign support that Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool might receive, the organization’s national presence and willingness to fight in some of the fiercest fronts in the Syrian Civil War are qualities that are providing it with an authentic message that is a truly committed fighting force seeking the overthrow of the al-Assad government.

This willingness to fight against the Syrian government has led Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool into two important combatant alliances: The (Gathering of the Partisans of Islam in the Heart of Damascus) in Damascus and its suburbs, and the Ma’rakat aj-Jasad al-Wahad (The Battle of the Single Body). The Tajam’u Ansar al-Islam was formed in Damascus in August 2012 as an alliance of several constituent armed Sunni Islamist organizations in order to defeat the “criminal gangs of Bashar al-Assad.” Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool is an integral fighting group within Ansar al-Islam. Its constituent kata’ib in Damascus and its suburbs have participated in some of the fiercest fighting in the city, especially in the diverse and restive southern suburbs around the Palestinian refugee camp of and around the very important Shi’a shrine of . Ansar al-Islam also claims to have conducted a September 25, 2012, suicide minivan attack against a Syrian military headquarters in Damascus that killed four Syrian soldiers. 

The Ma’rakat aj-Jasad al-Wahad was formed in late April 2013 following the of 145 civilians in the western Syrian coastal city of Baniyas in the Tartus governorate. Syria’s opposition blames the al-Assad government and its paramilitary forces for perpetrating the massacre. As a result of the massacre at Baniyas, several armed opposition organizations with strong presences in Syria’s western governorates, particularly in Aleppo, Idlib, Hama, and Homs governorates, declared the formation of the Ma’rakat aj-Jasad al-Wahad in order to coordinate their activities to defeat the al-Assad government and avenge the deaths of the Baniyas . Some of Syria’s largest and most powerful armed opposition groups, including Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham, Suqoor ash-Sham (Falcons of the Levant), Kata’ib al-Farouq al-Islamiyya (Islamic Farouq Battalions), Liwa al-Tawheed (Holy Unity Brigade), and Liwa al-Haqq (Brigade of Divine Truth) are fighting alongside Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool in this campaign.

Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool is an important constituent organization in this nascent effort, particularly in Idlib and Hama governorates where it has a plurality of its kata’ib. Both its  and battalions are active participants in the combat fought under the banner of the Ma’rakat aj-Jasad al-Wahad. The Hama and Idlib kata’ib of Liwa Ahfaad ar-Rasool are devoting most of their current operations to supporting the attacks that are performed through the Ma’rakat aj-Jasad al-Wahad’s new campaign, which is demonstrated by the media output that is uploaded onto their social media sites.  

Outlook

Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool is growing in its influence as an armed organization on the ground inside of Syria. The willingness of the organization’s kata’ib to engage in fierce fighting with the Syrian military in battlefronts throughout the country, gives membership in the Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool both wide geographical reach and a certain valorous panache that appears to be increasingly attractive to members of the armed opposition. Although it is ideologically inclined towards social, if not militant, Sunni Islamism — which is not necessarily a threatening or foreign philosophy to Syria’s Sunni rural and disenfranchised urban communities from which many of the fighters of the revolution come from — Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool is careful to assert its “Syrian nationalist” credentials and focus on its country above all else. As a result, the organization does not yet appear to have foreign fighters in its ranks, or to have the stigma of fighting in the name of the global jihad that is applied to Jabhat al-Nusra. 

The ongoing Ma’rakat aj-Jasad al-Wahad campaign in western Syria is very important to Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool. It is providing the organization with the opportunity to strengthen its ties with the other particularly powerful armed opposition organizations in the country, especially the Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham, with which it already had been building relations through coordinated attacks against the Syrian . The camaraderie formed between some of Syria’s most powerful armed opposition groups in the Ma’rakat aj-jasad al-Wahad in several important and strategic western governorates, could have great repercussions in a post-Assad or transitioning Syria.  

While the anti-Assad international community seeks to better coordinate the movement of weapons and war material into Syria for the use of approved armed opposition , one of the conditions of continued support and largesse will be greater control and coordination of the armed opposition force on the ground. Those organizations, except Jabhat al-Nusra, that are best organized and most likely to inflict damage upon the Syrian military, will also be best placed to seek foreign support. Thus, the organized forces of Ma’rakat aj-Jasad al-Wahad, with Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool constituting a vitally important part of its efforts, are building an incipient and increasingly coordinated network of fighting groups in strategic regions of western Syria that could be well-placed to justify increased foreign support.   

As a result of its current militant efforts, Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool is seemingly well-placed to continue to increase the reach of its “brand” through Syria. Its constituent kata’ib, having chosen freely to join its ranks, display great pride in fighting under the “banner” of Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool in continuous combat against the Syrian military. This is an esprit de corps that should benefit the organization into the foreseeable future. Alwiya Ahfaad ar-Rasool is a Syrian armed opposition organization that is poised to become one of the most heavily observed and commonly cited fighting forces of the Syrian Civil War.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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As the Syrian Civil War enters its second year, the lijaan sha’abiya (“Popular Committees”), local defense forces supported by the Syrian military, are taking on an increasingly important role in the country’s conflict. The Popular Committees (sometimes referred to as “Peoples’ Committees”), are reported to have been organized initially as to protect pro-government or politically neutral neighborhoods that were not actively policed by the Syrian military.

Some of the Popular Committees are accused of perpetrating communal violence, with or without the support of the Syrian military. The asserts that some Popular Committees have committed kidnappings, arbitrary arrests and killings of Syrian opposition members.

Although accused by the Syrian opposition of serving the same function as the Shabiha (“Ghosts”) paramilitary units that have earned a notorious reputation for committing massacres against Syrian opposition members, the Popular Committees, unlike the Shabiha, are not generally deployed in battle outside their area of residence. They are generally armed with light weapons and are organized on the village and city district level. Popular Committee forces man checkpoints, conduct door-to-door raids and occasionally provide against the armed Syrian opposition in divided, heavily-contested areas of the country by holding areas cleared of armed opposition members. A reports that some Popular Committee forces are being trained in guerilla irregular warfare, surveillance, infiltration, and counterintelligence. These military disciplines are widely understood to be specialties of Hezbollah’s armed wing.

Minorities and the Popular Committees

The are frequently associated with Syria’s minority communities, including Christians, Druze, and Alawites. Both men and women are recruited as fighters in the Popular Committees. The committees are typically mobilized to defend specific villages or urban enclaves, such as , against armed opposition attack. Syria’s has also organized Popular Committees, particularly in areas where Kurds are concentrated, such as Aleppo and the northeastern al-Jazira region. There are even reports of forming Popular Committees in restive areas of the country, including in and around the battlefields of Damascus’ southern suburbs.

Some of these Popular Committees, such as those formed in the diverse suburban district of Jaramana in southern Damascus, are reportedly composed of local fighters forming that have been particularly effective in stalling armed opposition offensives. Palestinian Popular Committees formed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) are also active in fighting against pro-opposition Palestinian factions inside the neighboring and against the Syrian armed opposition in the districts of Hajar al-Aswad and al-Midan. According to , the Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), who was speaking at a press conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York,more than 86% of Yarmuk’s pre-civil war population of 150,000 people has been internally displaced in Syria or have become refugees in Syria’s neighbors due to fighting around Yarmuk.

Cooperation with Other Pro-Assad Forces

To enhance the ability of the Popular Committees to assume a greater burden of local and regional defense against the armed opposition, the Assad government is seeking to integrate the Popular Committees into a larger , reportedly trained with the assistance of the Iranian Quds Force. , at least in the strategic central-western province of Homs, is also believed to be assisting in the mobilization, training, and deployment of Popular Committees. The of village and urban district-level Popular Committees (usually composed primarily of one ethnic or sectarian group from the local area) is designed to raise pro-Assad, pro-Syrian nationalist morale over communal group identity.

A potential model for the Popular Committees/National Defense Forces as effective auxiliaries to the Syrian military or its allies, such as Hezbollah, is found in the strategic central-western Syrian governorate of Homs. Currently, thisregion of Syria is receiving a great deal of international attention as a result of Hezbollah’s involvement in the area and the importance of the Homs governorate to both the Assad government and the opposition. Popular Committees have been raised in several mixed-faith villages in the Orontes River Valley region west of al-Qusayr, where tens of thousands of residents claim Lebanese nationality.

The Homs region along the Lebanese border is strategically important because it links Damascus to the generally pro-government coastal regions of Syria by highway. Control of the region by the Syrian military, Hezbollah and the Popular Committees prevents the opposition from launching attacks against Hezbollah areas in Lebanon and provides pro-regime forces a route for supply and the transit of fighters from Tripoli and Akkar in northern Lebanon into the battlegrounds of Homs, Damascus, and Idlib. Hezbollah’s involvement in the villages of the Orontes River valley, west of al-Qusayr, is the result of clan and familial ties between the Shi’a living on both sides of the border. Hezbollah, both better-armed and more established militarily in the border region than the Lebanese military, is able to provide security for the Lebanese villagers in the area of al-Qusayr.

The Popular Committees are reported to be among the first in the area to have been under the NDA. Armed conflict between nominally pro-government villagers and armed opposition groups, including militant Salafists, led to the initial organization of Popular Committees in the . These committees are believed to be fighting opposition forces that include Jabhat al-Nusra, the Farouq Battalions (aligned with the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front), and several other fighting groups aligned with the .

The Battle for al-Qusayr

Recent fighting in the region was launched by the Syrian military and its allies (allegedly including Hezbollah) with the support of Syrian military airpower in order to seize from armed opposition forces. Popular Committee fighters are reported to be patrolling the Lebanese-Syrian border around al-Qusayr and al-Qasr and to be fierce defensive and limited offensive engagements against committed opposition fighters. These operations are noteworthy as demonstrations of the willingness of the Popular Committees to confront, clear, and hold pro-Assad government villages retaken from the armed opposition groups.

The evolution of the Popular Committees over the course of the Syrian civil war has important implications for the future of civil society in the country. As the Popular Committees in Syria’s most restive regions evolve into locally cohesive divisions of a “National Defense Army,” they have the capacity to present a great challenge to the future military efforts of the armed opposition. Popular Committees, professionally trained in military doctrine and tactics and battle-tested in communal warfare, are demonstrating in Homs and in Damascus’ southern suburbs a readiness to assume the burden of civil defense that the Syrian army increasingly cedes to them.

Conclusion

In the event that the Assad government would have to contract its area of control into an Alawite-dominated “rump state” with a capital in Damascus connected to a coastal strip of territory in Homs, Tartus, and Lattakia provinces, Popular Committees organized on a local level would provide a source of security and manpower to aid police efforts in confronting the armed opposition. The Popular Committee/NDA units could also provide a pan-sectarian, “Syrian patriotic” political veneer and military front for a state likely to remain politically dominated by Alawites but dependent upon a loyal but minority-dominated base of support. In the event of the total collapse of the Assad government, the Popular Committees and the NDA may face severe retribution from the armed opposition and could become major combatants in communal warfare throughout the country.

Militant Islamist organizations such as Jabhat al-Nusra and the militias of the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front, including Ahrar al-Sham and the Farouq Brigades, are reported to have been involved in some of the bitterest communal fighting in the country.�� The potential for communal violence in highly diverse, socially complex regions of Syria, such as Homs, the cities of Damascus and Aleppo and the northeastern al-Jazira region in and around the city of Qamishli, poses immense challenges to necessary transitional processes, including demobilization, disarmament, establishment of the rule of law and the re-integration of militarized communities such as the Popular Committees into a wider Syrian body politic.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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As the Lebanese government moves towards establishing commercial extraction of the country’s natural gas and petroleum resources in its maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), questions remain over whether regional instability coupled with Lebanon’s ongoing political deadlock, sometimes deadly social conflict, and insufficient infrastructure will prevent it from benefiting from resource revenues. Although not yet realized, the extraction of Lebanon’s energy resources could provide the country with significant benefits. Gibran Bassil, Lebanon’s Energy Minister, stated that eventual revenues from energy resources could dramatically reduce Lebanon’s $54 billion debt (175% of the country’s GDP) and provide the country with 100 years of energy for its chronically underperforming and infrastructure. 

The US Geological Survey estimates that Lebanon has 122 million cubic feet of natural gas and 1.7 billion deposits. On February 1, the Lebanese government obtained bids from international companies seeking to pre-qualify for natural gas and oil exploration drilling in its territorial waters, and has established May 2 as the date for the submission of for exploration. In 2011, the Lebanese government created PetroLeb to administer the bidding process for energy companies to . Currently, over 40 energy companies are reportedly bidding with natural gas extraction . In addition to extraction, significant investment in liquefied natural gas plants and pipelines will need to be obtained for Lebanon’s energy resources to be exported. 

The currently limited ability of Lebanon’s military to protect offshore energy infrastructure from conventional military assaults or terrorist attacks will be a security concern when resource extraction begins off the country’s shore. At present, Lebanon’s naval forces are focused on a “coast guard” role with an emphasis upon search-and-rescue and smuggling interdiction operations. In this capacity, Lebanese naval forces are currently working with the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in implementing UN Resolution 1701 by policing the flow of weapons smuggling into the country. One recent high-profile example of this role was the April 2012 impoundment of a Sierra Leone-flagged ship sailing from Libya, destined for the Lebanese port of Tripoli. The ship was reported to be groups based in the northern Lebanese city. 

Lebanese naval forces have also established blockades and provided offshore fire support for the Lebanese Army’s littoral combat operations, such as the between the Lebanese Army and the Fatah al-Islam jihadist group in the , north of Tripoli. The Lebanese navy, recognizing the local and international significance of the country’s offshore energy resources and the need to protect energy extraction infrastructure, is beginning to orient itself towards establishing a policy based on building its capabilities in Lebanon’s territorial waters.  

Lebanese Navy chief Admiral Nazih Baroudi recently wrote in the US Naval Institute’s  magazine that the Lebanese Navy’s ten-year military strategy acknowledged the responsibility and the imperative of the Lebanese Navy to be able to patrol its EEZ, and from attack. The recent commissioning of the US-built 43.5m Lebanese Coastal Security Craft Trablous, an advanced multi-role patrol craft sold to the Lebanese Navy with the approval of the US Navy, is another indicator of the Lebanese Navy’s evolving orientation toward fielding adaptable craft that will allow it to patrol and defend its EEZ to protect future energy resource extraction. 

In addition to military assistance, the United States has been active in working with the Lebanese and Israeli governments to delineate a maritime border between the two countries so that conflicting claims over energy resources are divided in a manner that is agreeable to both sides. A draft maritime boundary agreement is now being negotiated between Israel and Lebanon through the mediation efforts of the United States at the UN, with that it will eventually be agreed upon.  In line with these recent diplomatic negotiations, the Lebanese and Israeli navies are also beginning to cooperate in patrolling their nominal maritime boundary. This cooperation reportedly includes a joint Lebanese-Israeli naval effort to prevent pro-Palestinian activists from reaching Gaza, including the monitoring of from Lebanon.  

Lebanon’s political deadlock is also complicated by the potential of energy revenue. Noting this reality, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah emphasized that any potential revenues derived from energy resources belonged to all the Lebanese people, and that a fair distribution method of energy revenues needed to be designed. In addition, Nasrallah in his January 3 speech that Lebanon needed to adopt a national military strategy to incorporate maritime defense of its energy resources. 

As indicated in Nasrallah’s speech, the pro-Syrian March 8 bloc (of which Hezbollah is a member) is likely to use the issue of energy resource revenue distribution to continue to reproach the anti-Syrian March 14 bloc (and particularly the Future Movement) for supporting laissez-faire — Beirut-centric economic policies that failed to build the country’s infrastructure or provide equitable economic growth. Politically, Hezbollah and its March 8 allies, could further their populist agenda for public sector overhaul and national infrastructure development by being forceful advocates of the use of energy-derived revenues and products for modernizing Lebanon’s woeful public energy sector, and for using these energy revenues for greater investment in several sectors of the Lebanese economy that are identified as being of utmost concern. 

The potential effect of energy resource revenue on internal Lebanese politics will present a challenge to Lebanon’s government. Lebanese political parties have yet to solve endemic state corruption and have neglected to effectively rebuild infrastructure and develop the country’s inadequate public service, which has experienced frequent labor disputes, strikes, and a reduction in already limited service. The poor state of Lebanon’s public electrical infrastructure is a particularly intractable challenge that the country’s energy resources could address. 

It was that the country’s power plants can only accommodate 60% of its electricity requirements. Many rural areas of Lebanon have only 12 hours of electricity a day and rolling blackouts are common even in Beirut. Electricité du Liban, the state electrical utility, reportedly costs the Lebanese government over $1 billion annually; increasing the country’s national debt for poor electrical service that results in the widespread use of expensive generators for commercial and residential needs, electrical grids maintained by political parties or small enterprises, and the from the public system. Lebanon’s energy concerns are significant enough that the country commissioned a Turkish firm for a three-year contract to operate two off the country’s coast. 

In the foreseeable future, the potential political conflict over the exploitation of energy resources off the Lebanese coast is most likely to follow the predictable pattern of conflict between the March 14 and March 8 blocs. It will accentuate the long-simmering public debate inside Lebanon over the deficiencies of public infrastructure and services that affect the daily lives of Lebanese citizens. These deficiencies are becoming greater sources of political conflict, not just for the majority of Lebanese, but also for the growing influx of unemployed and impoverished Syrian refugees that continue to enter the country and stay in some of its poorest and most underserviced regions. 

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Malaysian security forces have been battling a militant Filipino organization called the “Royal Army of Sulu” (RAS) in Malaysia’s Sabah State, in the northeastern region of the Borneo island. RAS fighters, the majority of whom are ethnic Tausug from the Philippine islands of the Sulu Archipelago that border Sabah, claim fealty to the Manila-based Sultan Jamalul Kiram III. Sultan Jamalul III is one of nine competing descendants of the historical Sultanate of Sulu who claim control over Sabah. The fighters are also reported to be led militarily in Sabah by his brother Agbimuddin Kiram.

The Sultanate

The Sultanate of Sulu was a local maritime empire dominated by the Tausug. It was based on the island of Sulu in the Sulu Sea between the Philippine islands of Mindanao, Sulu, and the Sabah Province of Malaysia. Historically, it controlled the region of Borneo island that is now the Sabah State in Malaysia, after being granted that part of the island by the Sultanate of Brunei as a reward for being a steadfast and effective ally in war. 

In 1878, the Sultanate of Sulu either ceded or leased (there is a dispute over the exact translation of the agreement) control of northern Borneo to the British North Borneo Company in exchange for a yearly sum of money. The British claim to North Borneo was subsequently recognized by the Spanish who controlled the Philippines, and in 1885, the Spanish agreed to relinquish their claim to sovereignty over northern Borneo. Following the onset of US control over the Philippines, the United States and Filipino diplomats continually attempted to regain control over northern Borneo for the Philippines — an effort that was rebuffed by the British, who made the area a colony under direct control of the British king through the charter of the North Borneo Company in 1946.  

Although the Filipino government never relinquished its historical claim to northeastern Borneo, the region was incorporated into Malaysia upon the country's independence in 1963. Sabah joined the federation government of Malaysia on the condition that it remain an autonomous state with powers of self-determination. These powers of self-determination were generally respected by the Malaysian government.

The Philippines vehemently contested the annexation of northern Borneo into Malaysia as Sabah State. Strained diplomatic relations existed between Malaysia and the Philippines until the early 1990s partly due to the dispute over northern Borneo. The government of the Philippines still considers northeastern Borneo as part of the country, and the Malaysian government pays the descendents of the Sultanate of Sulu $1,700 a year as either "payment" or "rent" of Sabah State.  One of the major demands of the Royal Army of Sulu, in the absence of the transfer of power of Sabah from Malaysia to the Philippines, is a larger rent payment from the Malaysian government to the Sultan of Sulu.

The RAS

The RAS invasion began on February 9, when approximately 200 southern Filipino militants belonging to the group landed in Sabah from the southern Philippine islands near the busy port city of Lahad Datu . On March 1, fighting between Malaysian security forces and the RAS broke out after several weeks of failed negotiations for the withdrawal of the RAS from Sabah. The fighting, which has included air strikes and mechanized raids by Malaysian security forces, is reported to have killed 62 RAS fighters and 10 Malaysian soldiers. Malaysian and Philippine naval forces are attempting to stop the movement of RAS reinforcements by imposing a blockade on vessels moving from the islands of the Sulu Archipelago into Sabah. The Philippine navy seized three vessels carrying 38 RAS members, while the government is reported to be seeking to indict the fighters on charges of possessing illegal weapons.

Interests From Abroad

Sabah’s palm oil industries are very important to the state’s economy —  the state is the third-largest palm oil producing region in the world. Sabah’s most productive areas for palm oil production are in the eastern region of the state, in and around Lahad Datu . As a result of the fighting in the area, three palm oil shipping ports in eastern Sabah, Tawau, Shabat, and Kunak have been closed. Sabah is estimated to have 11 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.5 billion barrels of petroleum in both on- and offshore reserves, equaling 25% and 12% of the Malaysia’s total natural gas and petroleum reserves.

China is emerging as one of the most important investors and trade partners for Sabah. Chinese government officials and investors have expressed a willingness to work with Malaysian partners to explore implementation of projects focused on the eco-tourism, environmental rehabilitation, information and communications technology, aquaculture, and palm oil processing industries. China is the largest importer of palm oil products originating in Sabah. Sabah is also beginning to be aggressively marketed as a vacation destination for wealthy Chinese, and as a new concentration of Islamic banking firms for Chinese and southeast Asian Muslim investors. 

US corporations have also committed to investment in the state’s agriculture and aquaculture industries. Darden Aquasciences, a subsidiary of Darden Restaurants Inc., the world’s second-largest full service restaurant company, agreed to invest over $640 million in a partnership with the government of Malaysia and Malaysian companies to develop a large lobster farming project off of the Sabah coast. Dole Fruit, the world’s largest fruit and vegetable producer, has agreed to invest over $300 million in vegetable and fruit farming in Sabah.

A widened rural insurgency in Sabah outside of the region of Lahad Datu would threaten international investment in the state. International investment in Sabah has been increasing due to the state’s large deposits of energy resources, fertile farmland, deep ports, and natural beauty. Sabah's palm oil industry feeds the three largest markets for palm oil in the world — China, India, and Indonesia — and is considered an important "cluster" industry for further economic growth in the state. Continuing conflict in the Sabah region is reported to be delaying the production of processed palm oil products in Sabah. A lengthy conflict could severely damage the long-term health of the industry in the state.

Wider insurgency in Sabah would also present the government of the Philippines, particularly President Benigno Aquino III, with the difficult choice of participating militarily against Filipinos in Sabah, and inflaming public opinion in the southern Philippines in an election year, or doing nothing and risking the ire of Malaysia. Malaysian diplomatic and military peacekeeping support helped strengthen the process of negotiations between the Philippine government under President Aquino III and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which was seen as an important accomplishment of his administration. Malaysia has also become an important investor in the Philippine economy and an important destination for employment for Filipino workers who send remittance income back to the Philippines. 

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Lebanon has not had the same experience of the Arab Uprisings as have other nations in its region. Instead, some Lebanese, particularly those that support the anti-Assad March 14 coalition, argue that Lebanon had its “Beirut Spring” and “Cedar Revolution” with the withdrawal of the occupying Syrian military forces from the country in 2005. The intervening years since then have witnessed the entrenching of pan-sectarian political coalition blocs against one another. This is, ironically, an evolution of ��������ԴDz�’s historical narrative of political sectarianism from the time of the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1990, when inter-sectarian parties disputed and warred against one another.

The discourse of sectarianism in Lebanese politics and society is as strong as it has ever been, however, even amongst Lebanese youth. Much of the potential reformist furor of ��������ԴDz�’s youth is being channeled into well-established sectarian political parties with tired, civil war-era leadership. Since the beginning of the Arab Uprisings in December 2010, some pan-sectarian movements, established in Lebanon by Lebanese of diverse sectarian and socio-economic backgrounds, have attempted to confront the Lebanese Nizam (regime). Thus far, only the largest of their rallies have attracted a few thousand people.

��������ԴDz�’s Nizam is not an autocratic state and an alliance of military and business syndicates, as occurred in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere in the region. Instead, the Lebanese Nizam is a socio-cultural construction of political sectarianism. This Nizam, which includes most of ��������ԴDz�’s political parties — pro or anti-Assad — frequently engages in militant sectarianism, has yet to solve endemic state corruption, and has neglected to effectively rebuild the country’s inadequate and under serving public infrastructure. Further, the Lebanese state is generally unable to provide a reliable social welfare safety net for impoverished and disaffected communities throughout the country.

Lebanon and the Syrian Civil War

��������ԴDz�’s political system is a consociational republic that guarantees the social and cultural rights of each of its seventeen officially recognized religious communities, as well as some type of representation in government for them. This has proven remarkably resilient to systemic shock since the end of the civil war in 1990. Recent shocks to the Lebanese socio-political system began with the 2005 assassination of the former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and the subsequent withdrawal of Syrian military forces from Lebanon. Following this, the May 2008 combat was waged between March 14 and March 8 supporters in several areas of the country. Such events have yet to lead to another widespread internal conflict on the scale of a civil war. The civil war in neighboring Syria, the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees moving into impoverished areas of Lebanon as a result of the conflict, and the active participation of feuding Lebanese political parties in the Syrian Civil War are all trends that put enormous pressure on Lebanese society and politics.

The ongoing environment of insecurity in Lebanon, caused by the Syrian conflict, deeply affects the Lebanese. Many Lebanese report a great sense of frustration, and a general feeling of powerlessness, to reverse the deterioration in their country’s security. In defiance of this mood, both the March 14 and March 8 coalitions are promoting a “Resistance” narrative to their members. This concept, of resistance, is a politically important term in Lebanon.

Both the March 14 and March 8 blocs have opposing narratives of resistance. These narratives, however, are not newly caused by the events of the Syrian Civil War. They have been have been ongoing since the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon in 2005. The March 14 coalition insists that its support for the Syrian opposition, un-armed and armed, is helping Syrians resist the oppression of the Bashar al-Assad government. March 14 also views the defeat of al-Assad as an act of resistance to a potential Syrian re-occupation of Lebanon.

The March 8 coalition, for its part, insists that the al-Assad government still has a strong role to play as a pivotal member of the Axis of Resistance to defeat possible Israeli wars against Lebanon. With the rise of militant Salafism in the Syrian armed opposition, March 8 also considers the Syrian military as a vital ally in the struggle to protect Lebanese and Syrians of diverse sectarian identity from armed radical Salafist organizations. As a result of the Syrian conflict, the broad perception within Lebanon of the growing strength of the more militant Salafist currents in Lebanese Sunni politics is a cause of great concern for the other sectarian communities in the country.

These fears could play a strong role in ��������ԴDz�’s internal politics in the planned June 2013 Parliamentary elections in the country. Although it is too early to predict how the Lebanese electorate will vote, it is safe to assume that ��������ԴDz�’s relationship with the Syrian government, an already well-worn topic much beloved by Lebanese politicians, will be updated to include the Syrian Civil War in the context of the dueling narratives of resistance between the March 14 and March 8 coalitions.

How ��������ԴDz�’s Christian community votes, especially whether it votes in greater numbers for or against the March 8 member Free Patriotic Movement, which has a large Christian constituency, will have an important role in determining the future shape of ��������ԴDz�’s Parliament. Hard-line Christian political partisans, particularly those belonging to the March 14-allied movements such as the Lebanese Forces and the Kata’ib Party, may not switch votes. But Lebanese Christians only nominally attached to these groups might defect if they feel that they trust the March 8-aligned Shi’a majority parties, Hezbollah and AMAL, more than they do the Sunni majority Future Movement and ��������ԴDz�’s emerging Salafist organizations.

Syria’s civil war complicates ��������ԴDz�’s internal political and social sectarian rivalries. As the conflict rages in Syria, the rhetoric between ��������ԴDz�’s two major political blocs, the anti-Assad March 14 and the pro-Assad March 8 coalitions, is growing sharper over ��������ԴDz�’s role in the civil war. ��������ԴDz�’s long-boiling political and socio-cultural disputes, which have been debated, politicked, and at times fought viciously over since the withdrawal of the Syrian military in 2005, are being exacerbated by Syria’s turmoil.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Tripoli’s street battles are once again the center of international attention. In the last two weeks, sectarian-inspired fighting between the Alawite community of Jebel Mohsen and the Sunni neighborhoods of Bab al-Tabbaneh, Ibbe, Abi Samra, al-Mankoubin, and Beddawi, has led to the deaths of 17 people and wounded almost a hundred. These battles, another in a series of street wars between Tripoli’s heavily impoverished northern districts, are becoming increasingly inspired by the example of the Syrian Civil War.

The Firing Line

Tensions on both sides of the firing-line, Alawite and Sunni, are inflamed by each community’s increasing sense that this battle, for control of Tripoli, is an existential conflict that they both must engage in. In spite of the best efforts of the Lebanese military, which now patrols and operates checkpoints throughout Tripoli, neighborhood combat between these two sectarian groups in this forlorn corner of the city has not abated. As a result, serious questions are now being raised about the ability of the Lebanese military to halt the violence for any extended period of time.

The Lebanese military is already stretched thin all over Lebanon to keep the peace along other simmering sectarian fault-lines in Beirut, the southern city of Saida, and in the eastern Biqa’ Valley. The military is also tasked with patrolling and interdicting human, weapon, and drug smuggling in the northern Akkar and the Biqa’. Tripoli’s conflict, long-boiling before the start of the Syrian conflict, is now intractably linked to the war waging in Syria. Syrian armed opposition forces are also using Lebanon, especially Tripoli, as a base of strategic depth for military action in Syria, and have brought their wounded to hospitals in Tripoli, and use the city and its suburbs as a place to house their families.

Tripoli’s sectarian warriors, on both sides of the firing line between Jebel Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh, are increasingly using a narrative of “resistance” to justify their conflict. The Lebanese Sunni fighters of Bab al-Tabbaneh and its allied neighborhoods insist that their support for the Syrian opposition, especially its armed elements, is necessary to help the Syrians resist oppression. These Sunni partisans also see the defeat of the Bashar al-Assad government as an act of resistance to lingering Syrian influence in Lebanon, and a possible Syrian re-occupation of the country.

The Arab Democratic Party (ADP), which is the most powerful Alawite-majority political party in Lebanon, and the dominant political and military force in Jebel Mohsen, views the struggle with their neighbors as a vicious war of survival. Alawites, numbering 60,000 in a city of almost half a million potential Sunni enemies, and surrounded on all sides by neighborhoods that they are locked in seemingly interminable combat with, identify more strongly with the Alawite-led Syrian government than ever before. As the Syrian Civil War has progressed, and expressions of sectarian hatred and bloodshed between Sunni opposition forces and Alawites has increased, the Lebanese Alawite community of Jebel Mohsen has become even more convinced that it is resisting its potential annihilation at the hands of committed Tripolian Salafist fighters.

Tripoli’s Salafist Fighters Inspired by the Syrian Armed Opposition

The Sunni demographic advantage in the regions of northern Lebanon surrounding Tripoli offers a logical base of support for the development of an incipient, highly-motivated, and combative Lebanese Salafist social current to develop. Tripoli’s Sunni-majority, impoverished neighborhoods are the particular front-lines and proving-ground in this developing process of communal solidarity. The battle between Tripoli’s restive Sunni neighborhood and Jebel Mohsen is the new training ground of an aspiring generation of Lebanese Salafist fighters looking to emulate the model of their Syrian compatriots. A constant presence of armed Syrian opposition members, and their families, in these Sunni front-line neighborhoods and the constant inspiration they provide Tripoli’s Sunni fighters.

Local Salafist fronts, such as the “Martyr Commander Khodr al-Masri Brigades,” named after a slain Bab al-Tabbaneh sectarian fighter and now local folk hero, are examples of the developing neighborhood fighting groups being built.

Learning from the example of the armed opposition groups in Syria, Sunni fighting organizations such as the Khodr al-Masri Brigades are beginning to post videos on YouTube. These are their official declarations of opposition against al-Assad in solidarity with the Syrian rebels and criticizing Hezbollah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah, and videos of their fighters engaging in combat with the Alawites of Jebel Mohsen. The cell-phone video quality of filmed combat operations bears striking resemblance to those performed by affiliates of the Free Syrian Army and other armed opposition groups inside of Syria.

Hussam Sabbagh, a Tripolian Salafist sheikh with murky ties to the jihadist organization Fatah al-Islam, who is also a popular and respected street commander in Bab al-Tabbaneh, was elected the head of all Salafist fighting forces in Tripoli. This action is reported to be inspired by the organization of disparate Syrian Salafist fighting organizations into the “Gathering of the Ansar of Islam” in northern Syria. The more militant Salafist sheikhs throughout Tripoli and northern Lebanon are also calling for Lebanese Sunnis to refrain from fighting in Syria, where there is no shortage of Syrians willing to fight and die to topple the al-Assad government, and to instead focus their energies on the battle for the control of Lebanon, starting in Tripoli and against the Alawite community.

As the awakening and reorganization of Salafist groups in Tripoli inspired by the struggle of Syrian rebels increase, tensions are rising between these organizations and already established Sunni political groups in the city. These include the long-standing Salafist Tawhid Movement, an ally of the March 8 bloc, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Miqati’s Solidarity Bloc, and the mainstream Future Movement. Targeted attacks have been conducted against Sheikh Bilal Shabaan, the leader of the Tawhid Party, and death threats leveled against the Sunni Mufti of Northern Lebanon, Sheikh Malek Shaar, who as a consequence of these threats is now in self-imposed exile in Paris.

At the moment, and into the near future, the Syrian Revolution-inspired Lebanese Salafist militias in and around Tripoli are in an incipient state of organization. These groups are organized on a sub-district level within larger neighborhoods like Bab al-Tabbaneh, and do not currently have enough weapons or the logistical capacity to overcome their “near enemies,” the Alawite community of Tripoli. Groups such as the Khodr al-Masri Brigades are emulating the organizing model of Syria’s Islamist militias in the hope of building the communal solidarity and fighting cohesion necessary to defeat their Alawite neighbors. In doing so, these organizations are hoping to strike a major blow to what they see as the lingering al-Assad influence inside northern Lebanon. This ultimately includes developing a highly-motivated, battle-tested, and committed fighting force that could in time confront the Shi’a parties of Hezbollah and AMAL, and their political allies inside of Lebanon.

A Winter of Worry in the Levant

The addition of hundreds of thousands of unemployed and impoverished Syrian refugees in ��������ԴDz�’s most poverty-stricken regions, especially Tripoli and in the Akkar, presents an enormous socio-economic burden for Lebanon and the local communities impacted by this population movement. The cost of living in areas of northern Lebanon has dramatically increased due to the number of Syrians entering the local communities and the loss of most of the cross-border trade between Lebanon and Syria. ��������ԴDz�’s poorest residents, including many people in Tripoli and the Akkar, benefited significantly from cheap consumer goods imported from Syria into Lebanon. With the severe disruption of this trade due to the war in Syria, middle and working-class Lebanese people, especially in highly vulnerable districts of Tripoli like Jebel Mohsen and its Sunni neighbors, have less purchasing power and are vulnerable to slipping into severe poverty .

As the rainy, damp-humid winter season begins in the Levant, caring for these Syrians, and ensuring that they are fed, medicated, provided shelter, and their children educated, is a task that the Lebanese government will not be able to afford alone. Unlike in Jordan, and now increasingly in Turkey, Syrians in Lebanon live amidst the Lebanese population, either sheltered by Lebanese families, or renting their own room or apartments in Lebanese villages and cities. It is estimated that a full third of Syrian refugees now present in Lebanon are living with Lebanese host families, the majority of them in poor, underserviced regions such as Tripoli and the Akkar.

Sectarian political competition and uneven and inequitable social development throughout the country, was one of the major stress causes of the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1990. Tripoli, with its high poverty rate, stagnant economy, large influx of desperate Syrians, and violent inter and intra-sectarian disputes, is becoming a city under duress. The stresses placed upon the city and its surrounding areas in northern Lebanon is tattering its civil society as the Syrian Civil War worsens.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Aleppo evokes pleasant memories. The city for me will always be the emerald-colored sky. Nights in the city were often a glowing green, a neon-soft light pleasant upon the eyes. The night-time sky above the city was illuminated from hundreds of mosques; their minarets cast a verdant shine. Aleppo was an ancient city full of energy and vitality. It always seemed grander than its sisterly rival, Damascus.

Perhaps this majesty was the product of over four thousand years of international trade and the mingling of diverse people in Aleppo. Or, perhaps, it was because the city was always a seat of trade and relied on the mercantile acumen of its people for its prosperity, while Damascus was a political capital, relying upon the capricious twist of political fortune for its importance.

Aleppo, unlike Damascus, after all, was one of the most important “links” in a great chain of cities that stretched from the Mediterranean to China. Its desirability was spun on the Silk Road. Aleppo was a truly “global city.”

Aleppo: A Cosmopolitan Core of Syria

Throughout its history a wide variety of people moved into Aleppo. The city has had multiple ethnic and religious identities that have impacted its daily life. Aleppo was a cosmopolitan core in Syria, the home of a rich variety of traditions. Ethnically, Aleppo was Arab, Armenian, Kurdish, Circassian, Turk, and Syriac. Religiously, it was Sunni and Shia Muslim, Christian, Ismaili, Alawite, and Jewish. These peoples brought with them millennia of fine craftsmanship passed down through their communities. Aleppo benefited from their knowledge.

Aleppo was a city of skilled tradesmen and investors, gifted in wood and metal-working, textile-spinning, soap-making, and cooking. It was the whirl and rush of humanity, gathered into one Middle Eastern city. It was an urban center of historical sights, upbeat sounds, and refined tastes. It was a mecca for those seeking an exotic gift for the well-beloved, such as a silk tablecloth, or an aromatic soap of honey and olive. The memory of its cooking lingered on the tongue of the visitor.

The spice of Aleppo was magic. It was a delightful mélange. Aleppo was symbolized by its signature dish, Kabab al-Karaz (a dish made with sour cherry sauce). When lovingly savored in an Aleppan kitchen, it was a kingly pleasure. A dish as diverse as its city, borrowing from Jewish, Muslim, and Christian cooking traditions, carefully balanced, neither sweet nor spicy, a perfect moment of bliss. Kabab al-Karaz was a welcoming culinary refuge, like its city, a recipe of cosmopolitanism. To be Halabi (Aleppan) was to belong to a special blend of cultural spice.

Aleppo: The Corpse of Syrian Multiculturalism?

Now, Aleppo’s bright night-lit skies are swallowed in cordite smoke. A great maw hangs over the city. War has come, and the relative unity of its diverse peoples may soon be swallowed by the tempest of sectarianism and religious fanaticism. Aleppo may soon become a corpse for the promise of Syrian multiculturalism. The great questions of a generation, on the lips of so many young Syrians, are now being shouted across the city’s streets.

What is the future of Syria? Where goes the Watan (homeland)? By what recipe will it be made and by what ingredients will it be served? The questions carry the bitterness of artillery shells, the rancidity of bullets, and a spoiled copper of blood. They are local questions, economic questions, socio-cultural questions, and geo-political questions; questions of great international importance.

Syrians will be answering these questions. The people of Aleppo will be answering these questions. As will their kin in Damascus, Homs, Hama, Idlib, Dera’a, and Deir ez-Zor. Countless villages, some ageless and others quite new, throughout Syria will answer these questions. Sunnis, Alawites, Christians (Arab, Assyrian, Armenian), Kurds, Ismailis, Druze and Shi’a…they will answer these questions. Their answers to these questions will go far to determine the future of the Middle East.

Read the first part, .

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Syrian Civil War has finally come to Aleppo. This city, the control of which is vital for Bashar al-Assad and his government’s survival, is aflame with conflict. The Syrian regime is in the process of unleashing the “Mother of All Battles” upon the armed opposition in Aleppo, which in return, has promised the international community that all of the city will be liberated in the very near future. Some analysts believe that the Syrian rebels are seeking to capture Aleppo not only to strike a massive blow to the al-Assad government’s morale, but also to use the city as a Syrian “Benghazi;” Benghazi was the free territory in Libya from which the Libyan rebels prosecuted their successful campaign to remove Muammar Qadhafi from power.

An ongoing and worsening humanitarian crisis, due to the fighting in Aleppo, threatens to leave millions of the city’s residents hungry and homeless. Currently, over 200,000 of Aleppo’s denizens have fled the fighting, with more said to be joining the displacement every day. The supply of daily essential items in the city such as food, clean drinking water, cooking gas, and medicines, already strained by the harsh economic struggles in Syria prior to and exacerbated by the uprising, are rapidly becoming inaccessible to a large number of people in Aleppo. The fighting threatens to make Aleppo both a humanitarian disaster as well as a battlefield.

Aleppo: Syria's Most Illustrious City

Aleppo’s importance in contemporary Syria cannot be overstated. It is Syria’s largest city by population with over 4 and a half million people living within its limits or in its close suburbs. It is also, perhaps, Syria’s most illustrious city, and a great center of the country’s wealth. Aleppo is a majority Sunni-Muslim city with a large number of Christians (Arab, Armenian, and Assyrian), as well as other sectarian, ethnic, and social groups, including Kurds and Sunni Arab tribes. At present it is reported that these different social groups are highly distrustful of one another, with divided loyalties for and against the al-Assad regime.

Historically, Aleppo has always been blessed with a predominant place in Syria that caused it to be the envy of its rival, sister city of Damascus. It has been a center of commerce and culture since ancient times, and the city particularly flourished as the last major stop on the Silk Road before the Mediterranean and Europe. Aleppo was considered to be the third most important city in the Ottoman Empire due to cultural wealth and its economic power, based upon its craft industries such as in textiles. These industries attracted significant trade relations and investment from European nations, which led to its role as a market town for nearby and outlying agricultural areas.

Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the imposition of French Mandate rule over the territory that is now modern-day Syria, Aleppo was made a semi-autonomous “State” (province) by the French. It retained this relative independence until 1930, when it was joined with Damascus to form the State of Syria which would evolve into the Republic of Syria in 1936. It is the green, black, white, and red-star flag of the Republic of Syria that is waved so proudly by the Syrian opposition at demonstrations, and carried into battle as the war-banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and its affiliated armed opposition groups now fighting the al-Assad government in the city.

Prior to the outbreak of the Syrian Uprising, Aleppo was experiencing significant growth in its tourist industry due to its numerous historical sites and its authentic Arab cultural heritage. Foreign investment, especially from the Gulf countries, was increasing to capitalize on the city’s natural appeal to the outside world. The University of Aleppo was welcoming a growing number of Western students eager to learn Arabic in a city that was considered a great capital of the Arabic language.

Within a decade, it was rumored, Aleppo would outrun its natural rival Damascus as the preeminent city in Syria, and become one of the most visited and invested cities in the entire region. All was not as rosy at it sounded, however. Aleppo, like Damascus, experienced inflation, increasing unemployment and a depressed wage market in several sectors due to an influx of economic migrants from rural areas in northeastern Syria. The lower-income suburbs of the city suffered the heaviest, as population density and wage deflation drove an increasing number of Aleppans into desperate poverty.

A Pivotal Battlefield in the Syrian Civil War

Before the current fighting in the city, Aleppo had been the site of both opposition demonstrations and pro-Assad demonstrations, with sporadic armed conflict in its poorer and more restive suburbs. Aleppo, however, was for the most part considered to be nominally “pro-Assad” due to the large number of socially conservative, Ba’ath Party-linked Sunni petit bourgeoisie that lived and did business in the city, its large Christian population, and the heavy presence of Syrian military forces in and around it. Anti-Assad demonstrations in the city were met by larger pro-Assad demonstrations, and the Syrian security apparatus was well-entrenched in Aleppo’s everyday life. The hinterlands of Aleppo belied this perception, as they were the site of fierce battles against the Syrian military by the armed opposition.

In spite of its ethnic and sectarian diversity, Aleppo is noteworthy for its strong Islamic culture. The city was named the “Islamic Cultural Capital of the World” in 2006. Aleppo’s pervasive Islamic culture was rarely viewed as a threat to civil cosmopolitanism until the current civil war brought an increase in sectarian-motivated violence and the infiltration of al-Qaeda fighters into Syria to wage jihad against the al-Assad government.

Armed opposition Salafist groups have been forming in Aleppo’s immediate suburbs and the hinterland of Aleppo Governorate. It is reported that members of the city’s Christian community have been threatened by these groups for their perceived pro-Assad political position. As a result, some of the city’s Christian residents, including its Armenian community, have turned to both the al-Assad government and allied ethnic and political parties in Lebanon for weapons to form neighborhood-level militias for communal protection.

The fighting in Aleppo has evolved into an existential battle for the control of Syria. Syrian opposition forces are seeking to earn irreversible momentum towards the creation of a post-Assad Syrian government on the battlefields of the city and its surrounding suburbs. The al-Assad government is hoping to turn its fight against the armed opposition in Aleppo into the decisive battle in the Syrian Civil War, and through a victory for its forces in the city to initiate the beginning of the end of cohesive insurrection against its rule. For both sides, defeat in Aleppo appears to be unacceptable.

Read the of Nicholas A. Heras' two part series on August 16.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The geographic divide between the Syrian opposition in exile and the opposition inside of Syria could end very soon with the establishment of a ‘Free Syrian Republic’ (FSR), within the territorial boundaries of the country. Syrian armed opposition groups are believed to be fighting to seize Aleppo out of a motivation to decisively capture a major Syrian city that can be used as a physical and political capital for an independent territory within Syria. From this territory, an alternate system of political and military administrations could be established that allows for the relocation of the internationally-supported Syrian National Council (SNC) and the military command of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), now in exile in southern Turkey, into Syria itself. This is the ‘Benghazi’ that many of the Syrian opposition’s supporters in the international community have been searching for to support.

On July 24, 2012, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserted that the Syrian opposition and the international community would need to actively plan for the “day after” the fall of the Bashar al-Assad government. Clinton also stated that territorial victories earned by armed opposition groups within Syria would result in a “safe haven” that would be a base of operations for further action by the Syrian opposition. The question remains where a safe haven/FSR would be established inside Syria, or if multiple Free Syrian Republics could exist simultaneously within the county until the whole of the country is brought under a post-Assad government’s rule.

A Free Syrian Republic

Currently, increasingly larger areas of Syria are now under the control of the armed opposition. The greatest concentration of these areas is in the relatively autonomous “liberated territories” resting in the northwestern Idlib and Aleppo Governorates. A majority of this territory is presently autonomous from the rule of the al-Assad government as a result of the defeat or withdrawal of Syrian military forces from these areas.

Residing in close proximity to the Syrian-Turkish border, these autonomous zones have yet to be contiguously united with one another. There is also no common ‘capital’ from which an opposition administration can oversee the unification of the exiled and internal Syrian opposition, or oversee and command the operations of the disparate armed opposition groups that fight the Syrian military. At present there is no internal Syrian movement, political or military, that appears to have the international support, prestige, weapons, or the funding necessary to challenge the SNC and the FSA, if these organizations were to establish a command-and-control territorial foothold inside of Syria.

The major criticism, however, of the leadership of the SNC and the FSA is that they are in exile, safely away from the combat and bloodshed that internal armed opposition, political demonstrators and civilians face daily. Without the physical presence of these organizations inside of Syria, the necessary process of establishing their legitimacy as the fundamental “morning after” governing bodies of a post-Assad Syria, which the anti-Assad international community seems to favor, cannot begin.

As appealing as a Free Syrian Republic may sound to members of the anti-Assad international community, the armed Syrian opposition is still reported to be under-armed, under-supplied, and only slowly improving its coordination of multiple groups to wage attacks against the Syrian military. While its coordination is believed to be better, the armed opposition still has not completed the total conquest of a mid-sized or larger Syrian city. Its hold on Idlib, a relatively minor market city in an impoverished, agricultural-economy oriented governorate, does appear to have grown stronger. Idlib, could, in the absence of a total victory for the opposition in Aleppo, be the ironic “Free Capital” of the FSR.

In order for the FSR to be born, the anti-Assad international community, or at least Turkey, would need to acquiesce to be its mid-wife. The FSA and the SNC are currently based in Turkey at the sufferance of the Turkish government. Turkey has also, reportedly, allowed the movement of fighters, weapons, and supplies for the armed opposition from Turkey into Syria.

Potentially, if the Syrian opposition is able to maintain control over several border posts along the Turkish border with the Idlib and Aleppo Governorates, and if the Turkish government gives its approval, a concerted effort to move fighters and material from Turkey into Syria could greatly accelerate the consolidation of autonomous authority of the FSR. Northwestern Syria would be a convenient and more easily re-supplied region of Syria to build the new republic.

Challenges to a Free Syrian Republic

There are, however, significant military, political, and demographic obstacles to the establishment of an FSR in these regions. At present, it is reported that these areas are now controlled militarily and administratively by a diverse array of armed and unarmed opposition groups. Most of these organizations are affiliates of either the FSA or the SNC, but some are distrustful of the major Syrian exile groups, and include Salafist organizations and other groups that are potentially affiliates of al-Qaeda. The FSA would need to institute its unchallenged authority inside of the new republic to ensure its security.

Incipient Syrian Kurdish nationalism, or the Kurdish push for autonomy within a post-Assad Syria, may also threaten the political realization of the FSR in northwestern Syria. At present, the Kurdish National Council (KNC) and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) are the most powerful Kurdish parties in the area. Although the two groups are nominally allied with one another towards the goal of improving the status of the Kurdish people in Syria, they are distrustful of each other.

The KNC is an affiliate of the SNC and is stated to have the support, supply, and tacit military training provided by the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). It is believed to have the blessing of Massoud Barazani, the President of the KRG and the most powerful Iraqi Kurdish political leader. The KNC is seeking to collaborate with the Syrian National Council to create a post-Assad political arrangement that would reaffirm and guarantee Kurdish rights, but not outright autonomy from the rest of the country. It is also currently coordinating closely with the FSA to attempt to bring Syrian Kurdish arms to bear on the Syrian military.

The PYD is an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), was recently in a tacit alliance with the al-Assad government, and is believed to be working towards the goal of complete autonomy for the Kurdish regions of Syria. Its predominance in Kurdish Syria at present is an anathema to Turkey due to its connection with the PKK.

The group was reportedly allowed virtual autonomy in Kurdish areas in a "wink-and-nod" agreement with the Syrian military, which withdrew its forces from Kurdish villages and cities throughout northern Syria to strengthen its military operations in other areas. These included the suburbs of Damascus, in Idlib, and in Homs. Internal Kurdish rivalries, supposedly suppressed in the name of improving the brutally marginalized social position of Kurds in Syria, could very well flare up into violence inside of the territory of the FSR and weaken the nascent state’s stability.

In addition, the Syrian military would continue to pose a grave existential challenge to the FSR due to the quality and volume of the arms it possesses, including heavy weapons and aircrafts. Larger numbers of defections from the Syrian military could be the result of the announcement and successful defense of the FSR, although these movements of troops from one side to the other cannot be guaranteed. The armed opposition attacking from the FSR would still be at a numerical disadvantage, and would need to ensure that its manpower, supply, and command-and-control structures were not deteriorated to the degree that it was unable to maintain the newly-won borders of the republic.

The Goal of a Functioning Free Syrian Republic

Prior to the establishment of the FSR, the Free Syrian Army and Syrian National Council would need a physical presence, with territorial control recognized internationally, inside of Syria. This would be the actual FSR, from which to test its incipient authority and develop the state structures needed to assume control of Syria after the Ba’athist regime. This would be the build-up to the “day after” the al-Assad government loses its power, and the Free Syrian Republic would be the foundation of the new post-Assad Syrian state. Legitimizing the local authority of the state structures of a republic, under the FSA/SNC, could then take place.

As part of the process of the legitimization of this new authority, the FSA and SNC, recently in exile, would need to include the positive establishment of a governing civilian political body in the FSR. This governing body would need the experience of collaborative interaction between local village and city councils elected by the internal opposition prior to the institution of the new republic. In addition, concrete policies towards integrating ethnic and sectarian minorities, fully and equally into the FSR, would need to be developed and successfully implemented. An internal FSR economic program, scalable to the rest of Syria, would also need to be approved. This would include potentially resuscitating, inside the Free Syrian Republic, the nearly dead trade between Syria and Turkey that was so lucrative for both countries prior to the uprising.

The new republic would also need to establish an enduring and responsive security and political structure. These would represent the foundation of a new Syrian republic that could police and rule itself, administer a successful military campaign against the al-Assad government, and expand the new government’s authority throughout the rest of Syria. In spite of these difficulties, the audacious idea of the establishment of a nascent Free Syrian Republic could be an inevitable reality within the coming months.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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For much of the world, Tripoli is symbolized by the Jebel Mohsen-Bab al-Tabbaneh conflict. It seems that most of the attention that the city draws to itself is the result of violence that occurs between these feuding northern neighborhoods. The dramatis personae of their conflict are well known: the Alawites of Jebel Mohsen versus the Sunni Muslims of Bab al-Tabbaneh and its allied Sunni-majority districts that surround Jebel Mohsen. Simmering conflict between the two neighborhoods has led to the international perception that they, and by extension the entire city of Tripoli, are locked into an interminable cycle of warfare. Relations between residents of Jebel Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh have become a Geiger counter to forewarn of another vicious sectarian war in Lebanon.

Syria Street is the internationally infamous fault-line that separates the two warring neighborhoods. It is a long thoroughfare inside Bab al-Tabbaneh which borders the sloping hill that climbs into Jebel Mohsen. The road is a popular destination for many of Tripoli’s lower classes due to its cheap markets such as the large and crowded Bab al-Tabbaneh market, its low-cost automobile garages, and its affordably priced restaurants. Several Sunni mosques, including the large Bab al-Tabbaneh Mosque and smaller Salafist mosques, are built on the street and are popular with local residents. These active houses of worship have become major centers of anti-Assad political activity in Tripoli.

This thoroughfare is heavily patrolled by the Lebanese military, which has a well-established system of checkpoints and a series of tank and machine-gun operations all along the street. Syria Street is typical of Lebanese sectarian firing lines in that it is surrounded by lively, crowded neighborhoods that are clothed by battle damage. Both sides of the avenue are badly mauled, with heavy caliber bullet holes and RPG burns decorating the sides of still inhabited apartment buildings.

An Old Grudge and a Modern Battle

The Jebel Mohsen-Bab al-Tabbaneh conflict has its origins in the socio-economic rivalry and sectarian suspicions that are held between Alawites and Sunnis who migrated to Tripoli from natal villages in the Akkar. Many of these Akkari migrants arrived in the northern suburbs of Tripoli, and settled in and near modern-day Jebel Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh. A majority of the Alawite population in the Akkar came to settle in Jebel Mohsen, establishing a sectarian enclave in the district that made it the largest and most important center for the Alawite community and its social solidarity in all of Lebanon. Sunnis and Alawites at first fought fiercely with each other for wage labor. The best positions in this came from newly established urban contacts developed by their sectarian peers that had earlier settled in the city. Competition between the Sunni Muslim and Alawite communities in Tripoli was made worse by the dominant stereotypes that they held of each other’s customs.

Alawites practice a religion that evolved from Shi’a Islam, and which is distinguished from the orthodox Sunni faith by the Alawites’ veneration of the Imam Ali and his family, a belief in the reincarnation of souls, the celebration of holidays associated with other religions such as Christmas and Nowruz, and a belief in the ascension of particularly worthy souls as stars in heaven, amongst other nuances of their faith. Many conservative Sunni critics of the Alawites view them as dangerous apostates that spurned the true teachings of Islam for a false religion. The Alawite stereotype of Sunnis in turn is that of fanatic representatives of a series of historically aggressive and oppressive Sunni-dominated states that at best heavily taxed and at worst actively sought to kill Alawites.

Economic competition and sectarian misconceptions of the “Other” led to haphazard fighting between the two communities during the Lebanese Civil War. The Syrian military’s intervention in the war, and its subsequent occupation of portions of Lebanon from 1976-2005, led to the exacerbation of these long-held socio-economic and sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Alawites in Tripoli. This was made worse due to the common Tripolian Sunni perception that Alawites received preferential treatment, at least nominally, from the occupying Syrian military under the command of Syrian Alawite officers as a result of the Alawite community’s political support of the al-Assad government.

The political differences vis-à-vis the al-Assad government that are held between Alawites and Sunnis in Tripoli is an important, but not the most important, aspect of these communities’ conflict. Sectarian ill will is the major source of conflict between Sunnis and Alawites in the northern neighborhoods of Tripoli. Appeals to sectarian sentiment provide a rallying “battle cry” for the most militant members of both communities. This existential conflict of faith-based social organization makes the fighting between Jebel Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh, a seemingly intractable war of identity and communal survival.

Enemies Close to Home
Jebel Mohsen is the reputedly insular (its critics would call it “xenophobic”), majority Alawite stronghold of 60,000 people. Although physically situated on the “high ground” of a towering hill that overlooks Bab al-Tabbaneh, Jebel Mohsen is surrounded on all sides by hostile neighborhoods. These include Ibbe and Beddawi, which are reported to be centers of armament and organization for Lebanese Salafist fighters and Syrian armed opposition members. In the event of a protracted conflict with its neighbors, the entire community of Jebel Mohsen could be cut off and placed under siege.

The neighborhood of Jebel Mohsen is politically dominated by the pro-Assad, Syrian Ba’ath Party-inspired, Arab Democratic Party (ADP). Ali Eid and his son Rifaat lead the ADP, and it maintains a small but effective militia called the “Red Knights” under the command of Rifaat. It is the Red Knights that engage in periodic combat with the anti-Assad Lebanese Sunni political parties, and now Syrian armed opposition members, that predominate in the Sunni-majority areas surrounding Jebel Mohsen. Matching its constituency in Jebel Mohsen, the ADP has evolved into an almost exclusively Alawite political party that represents the majority of Tripoli’s, and by extension, Lebanese Alawites.Politically supportive of the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria, the ADP and its constituency in Jebel Mohsen hold a strikingly nuanced view of the internal political realities of Lebanon, and are cognizant of their role in the geo-political balance of power in the broader Levant.

As the conflict between the al-Assad government and the Syrian armed opposition within Syria increases in its intensity, the ADP has been taking a stronger and more militant stance in support of the al-Assad government and Alawite sectarian rights in the face of rising hostility towards the Alawite community by its Sunni neighbors. It is also well aware of the potentially extinctive ramifications for the Lebanese Alawite community that would result from defeat in extended and extensive warfare between Sunnis and Alawites in Tripoli.

Tripoli is a politically important city in the context of Lebanese Sunni politics and anti-Assad sentiment. A large number of the city’s Sunni Muslim population was opposed to the Syrian military occupation of Lebanon from 1976-2005, and many of Tripoli’s Sunnis fought against the Syrian military inside and around the city at various points in time during the occupation. Militant Lebanese Salafist fighters viewed the Syrian military, even its conscript Sunni and Christian soldiers, as displaying kufr (disbelief in God) by supporting an apostate government commanded by Alawites.

This sentiment has since been transferred to the nearest “agents” of the Syrian government in Tripoli, the Alawite community in Jebel Mohsen, and has intensified due to the bloodshed of Syrian Sunni civilians in the Syrian uprising. The Alawites of Tripoli are thus indicted by their sectarian commonality and political sympathy with the al-Assad family and its closest allies in the Syrian security forces.

Bab al-Tabbaneh is a teeming Sunni Muslim-majority neighborhood that is infamous for being the recruiting ground for a whole generation of militant Salafist partisans and the front-line battleground for the mainstream Lebanese Sunni-majority political parties. These include parties such as the Future Party and supporters of the current Lebanese Prime Minister and Tripoli native Najib Miqati, looking to bolster their political image of practicing muscular Sunni sectarianism. Unable to attack the al-Assad government directly due to distance, exile, and the still imposing power of the Syrian military, an increasing number of Lebanese and Syrian armed opposition fighters view their neighbors, the al-Assad ally, ADP and its Alawite constituency, as a convenient “near enemy.” Sectarian warriors in Bab al-Tabbaneh and its allied districts surrounding Jebel Mohsen can engage in relatively costless combat, compared to the scale of casualties in Syria, and are only separated by meters, rather than hundreds of kilometers, from their enemy.

Never Far From Syria
Tripoli’s conflict has become even more magnified in the global imagination since the beginning of the Syrian uprising. As a result of the uprising, there has been a large influx of anti-Assad Syrian refugees and opposition members, some of them armed, into Tripoli. Many of these Syrians have come to live in the affordable Sunni-majority neighborhoods that surround Jebel Mohsen such as Bab al-Tabbaneh, Beddawi, and Ibbe. In some of these areas, such as Bab al-Tabbaneh and Ibbe, anti-Assad demonstrations occur weekly, and are viewed as provocative displays of sectarian fury towards Alawites.

The fighting between Jebel Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh were once regarded by analysts of the Levant as a template of the manner in which tensions in neighboring and competitive districts could be exacerbated into a shooting war by sectarian and geo-political differences. The specific combatant communities in the Jebel Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh fighting, Alawites and Sunni Muslims, were held to be particularly applicable to Syria because of the existing tensions between the Alawite-dominated Syrian Ba’ath Party government and a politically restive Sunni majority population.

This template of sectarian ill will and bloodshed is now a gruesome reality throughout Syria. An example of this development is Tripoli’s sister city in Syria, Homs, which is now demonstrating some of the same patterns of sectarian turmoil between Alawites and Sunni Muslims as Tripoli. Syrian government-linked militias called the shabiha (ghosts), which are believed to be a majority Alawite, are reported to have used Alawite neighborhoods in Homs, such as Zahra, to attack neighboring Sunni-majority districts such as Karm al-Zaytoun that are held in rebellion by the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

The shabiha evolved from criminal syndicates that smuggled people and goods throughout the Levant, especially into Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon, and included Syrians, Turks, and Lebanese of all sectarian affiliations. One result of these cross-border activities was the development of significant relationships between Alawite shabiha and militiamen amongst Jebel Mohsen’s Alawite community, and Sunni shabiha and militant Salafist Sunni networks in Lebanon.

Ironically, Syrians and Lebanese attempting to smuggle FSA fighters and weapons for the armed opposition’s war efforts inside of Syria to fight against the military and its allied shabiha are utilizing the same smuggling routes as their former Lebanese and Syrian Alawite shabiha compatriots. Tripoli’s Alawites, as a community, are now derogatively referred to as "shabiha" by their Lebanese and Syrian Sunni foes, further indicating the corrosive effect that the Syrian uprising is having upon tenuous communal relations in Tripoli.

More Than Kin, Less Than Kind
The people of Jebel Moshen and Bab al-Tabbeneh have more in common than their political and sectarian differences might at first indicate. They both suffer from the same fear of economic depression, lack of public infrastructure, and a crowded local labor market that is depreciating wages and purchasing power. Both communities are experiencing an increasingly crumbling quality of life. The young men of Jebel Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh are migrating in greater numbers to Beirut for better labor opportunities, in the hope of someday affording their own apartment to be able to marry and start families. In the working-class districts, in the Beirut suburbs where these young men live, they more often than not mingle freely with one another, shedding the skin of sectarian hostility they held in Tripoli, for the common solidarity of Beirut’s urban proletariat.

Residents of both neighborhoods shop mostly at the same low-cost markets and dine at the same affordable restaurants that are common to their neighborhoods. Many of the people of Jebel Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh are co-workers and fellow students that hold a common, proud Trablusi (Tripolian) identity. They even vacation in many of the same popular locations in the regions surrounding the city: such as in the Christian-majority town of Zgharta, northeast of Tripoli, and Ayoon al-Samak (Eye of the Fish) in the Akkar. The residents of Jebel Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh are more than kin, but seemingly less than kind to one another.

Read the of Nicholas A. Heras' multi-part series exploring Tripoli, Lebanon on July 26.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post A Particular Province of Syria: An Enemy Too Near appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Tripoli is a city of hope for more than just the residents who live within its boundaries. Many of the city’s daily visitors live in the nearby Akkar. This area to Tripoli’s immediate north, stretches 398 square miles from the Mediterranean coast to the Lebanese border with the Tartus Governorate in Syria, and east to its border with Syria’s Homs Governorate. Generally an underdeveloped and seemingly forgotten area of Lebanon, the Akkar has been thrown into the spotlight of international attention due to violence in neighboring Syria.

The Akkar and the Syrian Uprising

Since the outbreak of the Syrian uprising in March 2011, the Akkar has been the site of furious Lebanese political mobilization against the Bashar al-Assad government, and host to a growing number of Syrian refugees fleeing the fighting between the armed opposition and government forces throughout the Homs Governorate. 123 miles from Tripoli, Homs is the nearest other major city, for the majority of the Akkar population.

Over the course of the Syrian uprising more than 26,000 Syrians have fled into Lebanon, of which more than three-fourths were women and children, according to the United Nations. A large number of Syrian refugees moving into Lebanon use the Akkar to transit into the country, or have settled in areas throughout the Akkar and in and around Tripoli. Many of the Syrian refugees have settled with sympathetic Lebanese hosts who are generally anti-Assad. Lebanese and Syrian smugglers are reported to be working with considerable difficulty to smuggle fighters, weapons, and materiel into Syria through the Akkar. The training of armed Syrian opposition members by experienced, anti-Assad Lebanese fighters is also reported in the Akkar.

The Akkar, like Tripoli, also has a reputation for Sunni Salafist militancy. It is reported that the Akkar was the site of a substantial amount of Sunni jihadist recruitment for the Iraqi insurgency against the United States and Iranian linked Shi’a Muslim militias in Iraq. Some districts of the Akkar — such as the near-suburbs of Tripoli Minneyeh and Dinneyeh, the south-eastern Akkari village of Bebnine, Halba in the central Akkar, and Wadi Jamoos in the eastern Akkar — are generally cited by Tripolians and Akkaris as having active Salafist networks. These networks are rumored to be involved in the Bab Al-Tabbaneh and Jebel Mohsen fighting in Tripoli, and to have contributed fighters and weapons for urban combat between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims in Beirut’s southern and central districts. The Akkar region is thus key to understanding the contemporary and likely future state of ��������ԴDz�’s geo-political relations and its internal security.

From the Farm to Tripoli

The Akkar is a primarily agricultural region with the highest rate of poverty in Lebanon. Its population is slightly higher than 250,000. Around 80% of Akkaris are employed in some type of farming labor. According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), more than 63% of residents in the Akkar live at or below the poverty line. Infrastructure in the region is severely lacking, characterized by damaged roads, unreliable electrical and sewage connections to homes, understaffed schools that are desperately in need of repair, and nearly non-existent hospital and medical care. Akkaris seeking all but the most basic medical checkups must make the journey to Tripoli, or, especially before the Syrian uprising began, to the city of Homs.

The majority of the Akkar’s population is Sunni Muslim, with a minority of Christians and Alawites. Its largest city is Halba, which is approximately 16 miles north of Tripoli. The economy of the Akkar is heavily dependent upon Tripoli as its major market town and as the primary source of demand for its excess wage labor. Wages in Tripoli are generally better and the work more consistent than in the Akkar, although the wages are not as high as in Beirut. Tripoli’s comparatively cheaper cost of living and its closer proximity to the Akkar, however, offset this disadvantage.

Most Akkaris working in Tripoli choose to rent a cot in a shared room in an apartment in one of Tripoli’s hay sha’abi (popular neighborhoods), particularly in the northern areas of Beddawi and Bab Al-Tabbaneh. The cost of rent and daily food in the city is comparatively cheaper than commuting from the villages of the Akkar to Tripoli every day. Akkaris in these neighborhoods, the overwhelming majority of whom are Sunni Muslim, are easily integrated into the local communities, and often marry into Sunni Tripolian families. The remittances that are brought to the villages of the Akkar by Akkaris working as wage laborers in Tripoli, are essential to the daily survival of many families in the area.

Some laborers from the Akkar travel to Tripoli on a daily basis in spite of the nearly prohibitive cost of a group van or shared taxi from Halba, the Akkar’s major transportation hub, to the Beddawi and Bab Al-Tabbaneh neighborhoods. The majority of Akkaris that commute from their villages to Tripoli on a daily basis are generally required to make a stop in Halba, switch taxis or vans, and then proceed south to Tripoli. This is a pricey process that can cost $5 a day, a considerable amount for the majority of the Akkar’s economically struggling population.

Many of Tripoli’s Sunni Muslims and Alawites can trace their origins to the Akkar, and Sunni Muslims in particular maintain active links to their ancestral villages in the region. Tripolians seeking a cheap family vacation often travel to the Akkar, including the nearby resort of Ayoon al-Samak (Eyes of the Fish), which has a waterfall flowing amidst sweeping foothills and green valleys no more than a half hour car ride from Tripoli. The movement to and from Tripoli and to the Akkar, is consistent and further draws the Akkar into the general metropolitan area of Tripoli.

From Syria to the Akkar

Syria has both a strong historical and present influence on the people of the Akkar. The Akkar has had especially strong social and cultural links to Tripoli’s “sister city” of Homs in the Homs Governorate, serving as a route of entry from the hinterlands of Homs to the Mediterranean port of Tripoli. The area stretching from Tripoli to Homs lies in a fertile agricultural zone from Tripoli on the Mediterranean to Homs on the Orontes River. In both the Akkar and Homs Governorate, the most important economic activities are agricultural, including raising and processing crops in light industry, and shipping agricultural products via trucks. The Akkar is a popular route for cargo trucks moving from the Mediterranean port of Tripoli and the Syrian ports of Latakia and Tartus, inland to the cities of Homs and Hama.

Additionally, a significant number of Syria’s excess agricultural labor is resident in the Akkar and the regions that form the immediate suburbs of Tripoli. Although Syrian guest workers have been migrating to Lebanon for decades in pursuit of higher wages, their movement into Lebanon became more intense following the near collapse of the agricultural economy in the eastern and south-western regions of Syria. This process has been heightened during the last decade due to a historically difficult drought, government mismanagement, corrupt use of water resources in these regions, and the inflation of the price of existential goods throughout Syria.

Unemployed and hungry rural Syrians moved from the eastern and south-western regions of the country to western cities, particularly Damascus and Aleppo, but also to the smaller, traditionally agriculturally-oriented cities of Homs and Hama that historically had high demand for farm labor. The excess labor pool in Homs and Hama, caused by the migration of unemployed and hungry rural Syrians, has put enormous stress on the menial service sector in these cities. Insufficient work opportunities, especially in and around Homs, are pushing Syrian agricultural workers into the Akkar region and Tripoli. Syrian refugees that have settled in the Akkar and Tripoli over the course of the uprising have added to the number of desperate Syrians seeking work in the local economy.

These Syrians join Palestinians from the destroyed Nahr Al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, north of Tripoli in the Akkar. These Syrians become the main “foreign” competitors to Lebanese laborers in the north. Nahr Al-Bared’s destruction during fighting between the militant Islamist organization Fatah al-Islam (Victory of Islam) and the Lebanese Army in 2007 removed one of the Akkar’s most vibrant markets and one of the best and most consistent sources of income for Palestinians in the area. As a result, many Palestinians from Nahr Al-Bared settled in the nearby Beddawi camp in the Beddawi district of Tripoli, adding to the city’s labor crisis. Competition between Syrians, the Lebanese, and Palestinians in the Akkar and Tripoli, combined with a deteriorating local economy in northern Lebanon, is putting enormous socio-economic strain on the poor and on working class Akkaris and Tripolians. This competition of labor is felt like an economic tremor that is shaking Tripoli.

The Akkar, like Tripoli, has become another, if particular, province of Syria over the course of the Syrian uprising. Syrian refugees and armed opposition members are out of the sights of the Syrian military in the Akkar and often receive support from its local population. This is a source of significant strategic depth for the Syrian opposition, both politically and militarily. The Akkar, an impoverished area of Lebanon dependent upon Tripoli, has great importance for the future development, and potential victory, of the Syrian uprising.

of Nicholas A. Heras’ multi-part series exploring Tripoli, Lebanon on July 19.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post A Particular Province of Syria: An Eye on the Akkar appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The post A Particular Province of Syria: Go Take a Taxi appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Lebanon's Iraqi refugee population is smaller than Syria's and Jordan's, with approximately 40,000 Iraqis living in Lebanon as estimated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and local humanitarian organizations. Iraqis in Lebanon are concentrated in the eastern and southern suburbs of Beirut, with smaller populations in Tripoli, around Baalbek in eastern Lebanon in the Beqaa Valley, and in and around the southern cities of Saidon and Tyre. Although smaller than in Syria or Jordan, the Iraqi population in Lebanon is in no less precarious a situation. Many Iraqis in the country have overstayed their visas and depleted their savings, and suffer from economic hardship and fear of imprisonment or deportation back to Iraq. The psycho-social trauma that also impacts Iraqi refugees is overwhelming and worrying.

The Iraqi refugee population in Lebanon is represented by a diverse number of sectarian groups. According to the Danish Refugee Council, approximately 60% of the population of Iraqi refugees in the country is Shi'a Muslim, 20% is Sunni Muslim, and 20% Chaldean or Assyrian Christians. Iraqi refugees have generally adopted the sectarian divisions present in the country, choosing to reside in areas where they belong, or where they are the same general faith as the predominate sectarian community. Iraqis of different sectarian affiliations in Lebanon have not normally mingled or networked.

This is a result both of sectarian fears linked to the conflict in Iraq and due to the reality that many Iraqis are afraid of being detained while in transit outside of their immediate neighborhoods. Iraqis smuggled into Lebanon are often told by their smugglers where to live, and are deposited in what the smuggler deems to be the appropriate area: Christian Iraqis in Christian neighborhoods and Muslim Iraqis in Muslim neighborhoods on opposite sides of the city. As a result, this makes these Iraqi refugee populations in and around Beirut distinct and geographically separated. The Iraqi refugee population of Beirut and its environs expresses this sharp division. The population here consists of Chaldean and Assyrian Christian Iraqi families living in the eastern suburbs and generally young, single Shi'a Muslim men in the southern suburbs.

The areas where Iraqi refugees live are called hay sha'abi (popular neighborhoods), which are working and lower middle-class. These neighborhoods are particularly attractive to Iraqi refugees because they have relatively cheaper rent, and the cost of food and essential items is lower. Moreover, these areas are busier and more crowded and thus easier to blend into. Significantly, the neighborhoods are generally less likely to be the subject of the Lebanese General Security Organization's (GSO) attention, except in the most extreme circumstances such as civil strife or rampant criminality. The hay sha'abi also experience significant movements of people into and out of them.

Integrating into their surrounding environment is difficult, and there is an immediate distinction between Iraqis and Lebanese due to their different dialects of Arabic, appearance, and in the case of the Assyrian and Chaldean Christian Iraqis in the eastern suburbs of Beirut, entirely different languages spoken in the home. Iraqi children have difficulties in Lebanese schools because they are not used to the multi-lingual curriculum and are "different" from their classmates. Iraqis in Lebanon try to become "Lebanese," not only to blend in and protect themselves from the attention of the GSO but also to appear non-threatening to their Lebanese neighbors. Some young Iraqi men even take Lebanese wives, predominately in the southern suburbs of Beirut and in the Beqaa Valley. The disadvantage of these unions is that children of these families are not officially recognized as Lebanese citizens, as Lebanese citizenship is granted through patrilineal descent. They would have to return to Iraq to have citizenship, and until that point are essentially stateless.

Iraqis in Lebanon: The Law is Not on Their Side

The situation of Iraqi refugees in Lebanon is complicated under Lebanese law. Officially, most Iraqi refugees are classified as "tourists," for recreation, business, or medical visits, or are simply residing in the country illegally. Illegal Iraqi refugees have either entered the country legally on tourist visas, or were smuggled into Lebanon, through Syria. Exact figures are hard to come by, but it is estimated that the majority of Iraqis in Lebanon were smuggled into the country, often for expensive fees. Most Iraqis who have registered with the UNHCR are seeking resettlement in third-countries, especially the United States and nations in Western Europe. Although registering with the UNHCR is the only likely path to resettlement for Iraqis, many choose not to register out of fear that their registration as refugees with the UNHCR will prevent them from being resettled. This is a false impression according to the UN agency.

Lebanon does not have an official law to deal with refugees. The UNHCR, working with local and international NGOs, is generally the sole provider of services to Iraqi refugees. It is also the source of registration for refugee status for Iraqis in Lebanon. At present, no Lebanese government ministry is responsible for recording and administering the Iraqi refugee population in the country, except for the GSO, which has under Lebanese law arrested and detained Iraqi refugees with no or an expired visa. In the southern suburbs of Beirut, the majority of Iraqis are young men illegally smuggled into Lebanon from Syria, while in the eastern suburbs the majority of illegal Iraqis are families that came legally and then overstayed their visas. Iraqis who reside in Lebanon illegally go to great lengths to avoid arrest. If they move from their resident neighborhoods, they plan their movements meticulously, and learn what days and what roads there are Lebanese military, and thus Lebanese GSO, checkpoints.

The interaction between the GSO and the UNHCR, and its allied NGOs, has improved in the last few years. In an attempt to help Iraqi refugees feel more comfortable with the registration process to receive better services, the GSO has begun to provide selective amnesty to Iraqis who are in the country illegally and wish to stay. In order to apply for amnesty, Iraqi refugees must pay a fee and obtain a Lebanese sponsor, either a current or potential employer or a concerned person. Once received, the amnesty process requires registration with the UNHCR and a comprehensive background check of the individual refugee or refugee family. Unfortunately for the majority of Iraqi refugees, the cost of the application for amnesty, approximately $633, is prohibitive and finding willing Lebanese sponsors is extremely difficult.

The legal status of Iraqi refugees in Lebanon significantly weakens their relationship with the local population. Many Iraqi refugees report that they are abused by employers and landlords, who are aware of the refugees' limited status. Iraqi women that are employed in the underground economy also frequently report inappropriate sexual advances and abuse from their employers, who do not fear legal reprisals because of the Iraqis' weariness of attracting the attention of Lebanese authorities. Iraqis who remain in the country without a valid visa are classified as "illegal migrants," and are thus at the complete mercy of their neighbors, employers, and landlords to corroborate their stories and to protect them from being exposed to the GSO. Iraqis in the southern suburbs of Beirut are at a slight advantage to their peers in this regard, as they reside in areas that are under the exclusive security control of Hezbollah and away from the authority of the GSO.

Lebanon: A Transit Country of Frustration

Although the Iraqi population in Lebanon is composed of a diverse group of people, all Iraqis in the country are forced to battle similarly pervasive existential dilemmas. Many Iraqi refugees in Lebanon express feelings of desperation and insecurity. They have moved from unstable and potentially deadly situations in Iraq to living in poverty and the threat of detention and deportation in Lebanon. Many also express the simple desire to be able to provide for their families on a day-to-day basis. Unable to work for consistent periods of time, Iraqi refugees in Lebanon encounter the challenge of being unable to afford the relatively high cost of living in the country and find it problematic to acquire food, necessary medicines, and pay their rent. The general lack of employment and income and under-serviced living conditions creates severe existential and emotional difficulties for the Iraqi refugees.

Frequently, Iraqi refugees in Lebanon struggle to find reliable and well-paid jobs because they must compete with Syrian and south Asian guest workers, most of whom have valid work permits from their Lebanese employers and thus a legal right to stay in the country. In polyglot, tourist-economy based Lebanon where knowledge of English and French is often a requirement in the service industries of restaurants and hotels, Iraqi refugees are at a disadvantage because they often cannot speak even simple English or French. This precludes Iraqis from all but the most insecure and lowest-paying menial labor, such as in construction and domestic work, where they are still at a disadvantage because these jobs are most often given to guest workers with legal residency status.

Iraqis in remote areas of Lebanon, such as around Baalbek and in southern Lebanon, generally are better integrated into their surroundings and can find relatively plentiful work as itinerant agricultural laborers. This labor advantage for rural Iraqi refugees is eroding quickly, however, as greater numbers of Syrians fleeing from violence between the Bashar Al-Assad government and armed Syrian opposition groups enter Lebanon. Many of these Syrians are seeking temporary labor, and the agricultural sector is the most likely place for them to find this work. Already fierce competition at the lowest levels of the Lebanese market between guest workers and refugees in the country is likely to become even more intense.

No matter where in the country they are located, Iraqi refugees suffer from psycho-social trauma and are extremely vulnerable to lingering psychological issues. Many Iraqis in Lebanon suffer from depression and anxiety and display enduring trauma due to the events they witnessed in Iraq. An atmosphere of frustration, and sometimes irrevocable despair, lingers over many Iraqi refugees. Iraqis in Lebanon are left with the sense that they are not in a protected environment, but instead are lost and suffering in silence.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�'s editorial policy.

The post Going Nowhere Fast: Iraqi Refugees (Part 2/2) appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The daily existential struggle of millions of Iraqi refugees has become lost in the coverage of the unexpected, tumultuous, and geo-politically spell-binding Arab uprisings. Although the coalition's mission in Iraq is declared officially over, and the Iraqi government is encouraging their return, millions of Iraqi refugees remain unconvinced that life in their homeland is improving.

Since the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power in 2003, an estimated 4 million Iraqis of all sectarian identities and social classes have fled the country for other nations in the region, especially Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. Sporadic violence, poverty, lack of infrastructure, and a pervasive state of instability prompted their exodus from Iraq. The displacement of Iraqi refugees is considered by many experts to be the largest movement of people in the Middle East region since 1948, when Palestinians left what is today Israel for the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and neighboring nations.

At present in the Middle East, civil war-like conditions in Syria, elections, popular protests and instability in Egypt, conflict in Libya, and a powerful Al-Qaeda insurgency in Yemen have overshadowed the consistent sectarian-killings that still plague Iraq. The sectarian conflict erupted in Iraq following the 2006 bombing of a Shi'a shrine in Samarra by Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The bombing led to widespread sectarian warfare between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims and a period of the largest flow of refugees from Iraq. Although sectarian violence has lessened in intensity, it has not completely abated.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have returned, for a myriad of reasons. These include: the desire to reunite with the family they left behind, a severe lack of money after their savings ran out and as wages in their host countries could not cover their expenses, an inability to secure passage to permanent resettlement in a third-country, and because their enduring hope for a better life in Iraq became too compelling to ignore.

Still, many Iraqi refugees remain in their host countries disagreeing with the idea that life in Iraq is safer and potentially more prosperous for them. A great number of Iraqi refugees are caught in a vicious cycle of poverty and urban squalor, dependent on international aid organizations and interminably frustrated by the delayed processing of a coveted visa to a potential third host country outside of the region. These countries are usually the United States, Australia, or one of the nations in Western Europe. The majority of Iraqi refugees are caught in a state of limbo, impoverished and frustrated by having to live by a day-to-day mindset for many years without any guarantee for their future.

Iraqi Refugees in the Middle East: Urban and Unremarkable?

The largest populations of Iraqi refugees live in Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. Overall, the Iraqi refugee population in the Middle East resides in or near big cities, primarily Damascus, Amman, and Beirut, and is concentrated in working poor and lower middle-class neighborhoods that are heavily populated by "the locals." The International Organization of Migration describes the Iraqi refugee population in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon as the largest refugee population in the world concentrated in urban areas and living amongst the host countries' native population.

Some neighborhoods in these countries – such as the Sayyida Zeinab suburb of Damascus that is the site of major Shi'a Muslim shrines and pilgrimage sites of Sayyida Zeinab and Sayyida Ruqayya – have such large concentrations of Iraqis that they are now famously known to be "Iraqi" and not "Syrian." The majority of the Iraqi refugee population in the Levant have become part of a large and essentially indistinguishable urban proletariat in the capitals of Damascus, Amman, and Beirut.

Iraqi refugees compete with Syrians, Jordanians, Lebanese and foreign guest workers for increasingly harder-to-find labor, deprecating salaries, and housing that is in a poor state of repair. Competition from Iraqi refugees – especially from middle-class and wealthier Iraqis who arrived in their host countries with savings and liquid capital – has been seen as contributing to the rising cost of apartments in areas of Damascus and Amman. Iraqis, of all social classes, are frequently viewed by their host countries' native population as being "rich Gulf Arabs," due to Iraq's oil wealth, and thus able to afford higher rents and cost of living. As a result, many young Syrians and Jordanians in neighborhoods with a large number of Iraqi refugees feel they are priced out of affordable rent, and have had to delay their plans for marriage and starting families. Generally, the Iraqis are blamed for these difficulties. This tension between Iraqis and their host countries’ populations has become a troubling and slightly embarrassing subject for discussion in the region.

The Iraqi refugee population in the Middle East also has uneven legal protections in its host countries. Formally, many nations in the region, including Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, have not signed the 1951 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Refugees or the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees which bolstered the 1951 Declaration. In general, although Iraqi refugees in countries such as Syria and Jordan have been given access to state-funded social services, they do not have the same ability to work in a wide range of professional fields as the natives of their host countries.

Syria and Jordan, the nations with the largest Iraqi refugee populations, maintained relatively lenient "open-door" policies for Iraqis seeking entrance into their respective territories. This leniency was unofficially ended by Jordan in 2009 and by Syria since the outbreak of the Syrian uprising in March 2011. Lebanon, with the third largest population of Iraqi refugees in the region, is generally more difficult for Iraqis to enter and more committed to deporting Iraqis that are caught residing in the country illegally.

Many Iraqis, especially men, and even those with advanced degrees in fields such as engineering and medicine, have difficulty finding all but the most menial of labor. Often, this work is found on the "black market," which is beyond the regulation of local authorities. As a result, many Iraqi refugee families are becoming extremely poor and vulnerable, and have suffered horribly from psychological trauma due to threats and violence they witnessed or were the target of in Iraq.

These existential conditions can become so bad that some Iraqi refugee women and teenage girls, usually single-parent female heads of households and especially in Damascus, are reported to have turned to work in prostitution to bring income for their families. A large number of Iraqi refugee households with both parents are only earning income from the women of the family, who have an easier time securing black market employment, usually as domestic workers.

It is reported that many Iraqi men who were the breadwinners in their households in Iraq, are increasingly feeling disempowered and emasculated. This is thought to be causing instances of violent frustration from unemployed Iraqi men against women in refugee households, and therefore, leading to higher rates of domestic abuse.

Most Iraqi refugee populations in the Middle East are stuck in a culture of vulnerability, with few prospects to improve themselves or their surroundings.

Read of Nicholas A. Heras' research on the Iraqi refugee population in the Middle East on June 22. 

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�'s editorial policy.

The post Going Nowhere Fast: Iraqi Refugees (Part 1/2) appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Tripoli's reputation can make it an intimidating place to travel to for the first-time visitor. The sporadic violence in neighborhoods in the outlying districts of Tripoli is an instant and enduring international headline. Often, Tripoli is portrayed as a parable of Middle Eastern geo-political disaster and an example of the perniciousness of sectarian communal violence and ideological extremism in Lebanon. The city, in spite of its relative sectarian diversity, is derisively nick-named "Fallujah on the Water" by some of its local critics. This is a reference to Fallujah, Iraq and its role as a strongly contested battleground and a locus of armed Sunni resistance during the occupation of Iraq following the defeat of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003. The perception of Tripoli as a center of militant Sunni Islamism is based upon the aesthetics of public space in many neighborhoods of the city, the armed Sunni Islamist groups in certain areas in and around the city, and due to its recent history.

Waving the Black Flag: Tripoli, the Stronghold of Muslims

In the Lebanese popular imagination, Tripoli is an unabashedly "Sunni city." Although the majority of the city's population is Sunni Muslim, it is the use of the public space in Tripoli by politicized majority-Sunni parties that crafts this image. Public space in Tripoli is clustered with slogans and flags of both the Sunni-majority Future Movement headed by the former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, and several smaller Islamist organizations, a number of whom are conservative Salafists. It is in the use of public space and in the presentation of its urban environment, that Tripoli garners the most immediate and fearful reaction from visitors.

Many of its neighborhoods prominently display a plain black flag, simply adorned with white Arabic calligraphic letters stating: "There is No God but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God." The flag is frequently associated with Salafist groups throughout the region. It often indicates the bearers' willingness to strive (militarily if needed) to establish and uphold a society governed by the strictures of a conservative interpretation of the Qur'an, and in the recorded sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions. The allusion to Fallujah is also a result of the flag's strong resemblance to the flag of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. It is this black "Banner of the Prophet" that has become the most enduring, and discussed public symbol in Tripoli.

The Salafist flags are a common sight in the city, and are hung on the front of apartment buildings and storefronts in many neighborhoods, particularly in Beddawi, Ibbe, and Bab Al-Tabbaneh. Street "medians" consisting of a barrel with the flag are also common throughout these neighborhoods. Along with these street medians the black flag is painted on the walls of some buildings as a quick and easy means to delineate "liberated" territory; liberated, in the minds of the most conservative Salafists, from the Bashar Al-Assad government in Syria and the Lebanese government which does Al-Assad's bidding. The black flag, it should be noted, is also freely available for purchase in some of Tripoli's stores. Significantly, it has been bought by a number of international tourists and visitors to the city.

In contemporary Tripoli, this black, Salafist "battle-flag" is commonly associated with anti-Assad, pro-Syrian opposition Salafist movements who are actively supporting members of the armed Syrian opposition and engaging in combat against pro-Assad Alawite fighters in the Bab Al Tabbaneh, Ibbe, and Jebel Mohsen firing zones. Although there is a great deal of truth to this political stereotype, geo-political considerations and internal Lebanese politics have driven some of Tripoli's Salafist groups towards an alliance with the pro-Assad, Hezbollah-led Axis of Resistance political bloc.

Many of the Salafist flags belong to the Tawheed (Oneness of God) Movement and Jam’at Islamiyya (Islamic Groups), which are parties who are currently allied with Syria. Similar to elsewhere in Lebanon, local rivalries and ideological differences provide ripe opportunity for a large number of unlikely political alliances. Sectarianism, however, especially between Sunni Muslims and Alawites, remains an important organizing factor for the violence in Tripoli.

Several public monuments in Tripoli are also a site for the attestation of its “Islamic” character and further add to the city's reputation. The most infamous example of these public monuments is a large monument represented by the Arabic word for God, Allah, written in Arabic letters. The monument is placed in the center of Seehat Nour (Divine Light Square). Seehat Nouris the first roundabout running south to north that directs the flow of traffic on Tripoli's largest road, Fouad Shehab Street. Most travelers from Beirut are welcomed to the city by the square.

Erected in the median in the square, the large, black Salafist flag-adorned monument not only spells out the name of God in Arabic. Written underneath it is a large inscription that states: "Tripoli: The Fortress of Muslims." The presence of the monument at the gates of Tripoli is derisively viewed by some Lebanese as an affirmation that the majority of Tripoli's population is comprised of Islamist militants who view themselves as separate from the rest of the country.

Battleground Tripoli: The Soon-to-Be Islamic Caliphate of the North

Along with the public aesthetics of space in Tripoli, the currently active, if somewhat overhyped, and not always mutually cooperative, network of Salafist movements add to the area's reputation as a source of militant Sunni Islam. These networks exist in certain neighborhoods of Tripoli, such as Bab Al-Tabbaneh, Beddawi, and Ibbe, and in its close environs’, such as in the Akkar villages of Dinneyeh and Minneyeh.

Tripoli's Salafists are often linked with international, militant Sunni Islamist aspirations to create a world-wide "Islamic Caliphate," with some of these groups proposing that the first stones of the fortress of Islam be laid in Tripoli and northern Lebanon. Indeed, occasional threats against the city's Christian population by fiery and militantly ambitious Salafist fighters, can lead to heightened fears that a return to Christian-Muslim sectarian conflict is imminent. These threats are often made by leaflets and by anonymous individuals, and they result in the heavy presence of Lebanese military personnel in front of Tripoli's churches.

Militant Sunni Islamist groups from Tripoli and the Akkar have been accused of funneling local and foreign jihadists to fight coalition forces in Iraq. Reportedly, during and after the Syrian military's occupation of Lebanon until 2005, foreign and local Salafist fighters were allowed to recruit, organize, and raise funds in northern Lebanon, with the knowledge of all concerned local parties; Lebanese (such as the anti-Assad Future Movement), Syrian, and other international parties. As long as the Salafist groups agreed to focus their energies and operations in Iraq, and not to operate within Lebanon's borders against the Syrian military and its partners, they were tolerated. Ironically, these same groups and their networks are reportedly being utilized in support of the armed Syrian opposition against the Al-Assad government inside Syria by providing experienced fighters, weapons, and money.

Tripoli and its environs' recent history of being the site of operations conducted by armed Islamist groups, such as Fatah Al Islam (Conquest of Islam) has also not helped its public perception. The city's history has sometimes been portrayed internationally and locally as a long dirge of impending chaos and radical Sunni Islamist-perpetrated violence.

Besides the consistent, if spasmodic, politicized sectarian fighting between Sunni Muslims and Alawites in the Jebel Mohsen and Bab Al-Tabbaneh neighborhoods, Tripoli fulfilled the role as a battlefield in the global War on Terror in 2007. In May of that year, the reportedly Al-Qaeda inspired Fatah Al-Islam armed movement performed bank robberies in Tripoli and launched a series of attacks against Lebanese army checkpoints outside of the movement's base, inside the Nahr Al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp nine miles north of Tripoli. Fatah Al-Islam was comprised of Palestinian, Lebanese, and foreign fighters that sought to establish an Islamic Caliphate in Tripoli and the Akkar. Nahr Al-Bared was at the time one of the most important centers of economic activity for the Lebanese and Palestinians in the entire Tripoli region.

The resulting siege of the Nahr Al-Bared camp by the Lebanese Army lasted until September 2007, resulting in the deaths of 170 soldiers with a further 500 wounded, the deaths and capture of over 450 Fatah Al-Islam and its allied movement Jund Al-Sham (Soldiers of the Levant) fighters, while destroying large sections of the camp. The siege caused almost all of the camp’s nearly 30,000 – primarily Palestinian refugees – population to flee to the nearby Palestinian refugee camp of Beddawi, a northern suburb of Tripoli. Several Fatah Al-Islam members retreated from the camp, and were believed to be hiding in the Beddawi refugee camp closer to Tripoli proper and in the Ain El Helweh Palestinian camp in the city of Saidon, south of Beirut.

Many of Nahr Al-Bared’s residents have yet to return to the camp, with a large number of them eking out their existence in the Beddawi camp and in the suburb surrounding it.

The Battle of Nahr Al-Bared was the most intense campaign the Lebanese Army has waged since the end of the Civil War in 1990, and is widely remembered and intensely honored in the battle-rolls of the military. It was the siege of Nahr Al-Bared, more than any other event in the city's recent history that cemented Tripoli's global and local reputation as a haven of radical Islamists and as at the beating pulse of jihad in the region.

This is an unfair assumption, because many Tripolians, including many of the currently active, local Salafist fighters, were angered by Fatah Al-Islam and its willingness to carry out its jihad inside Tripoli and in the surrounding area against fellow Muslims that it stated it wanted to protect. They were also angered by the high number of casualties suffered by Lebanese soldiers from the nearby Akkar in Nahr Al-Bared. Many Tripolians are either originally from the villages of the Akkar, or have close relatives in the villages of the Akkar. These reasons combined with the armed robberies, and general state of fear that Fatah Al-Islam struck in many Tripolians, diminished most of the support it might have had with the indigenous militant Salafist groups in the area.

In spite of the posturing in support of international jihad by some of the Salafist groups in and around Tripoli, Tripolians are fiercely loyal to their local identity and pride in their city and the regions around it. To many Tripolians, Fatah Al-Islam was a foreign front staffed mainly by foreign fighters. The pretension of international jihad was removed when Fatah Al-Islam turned its weapons on Tripolians.

The blow to Tripoli’s good name and the confidence of its people aside, the warfare and destruction of Nahr Al-Bared also weakened the area’s economy by displacing some of its most productive economic actors, both Lebanese and Palestinian. This forced them into a more tenuous position as itinerant laborers in Tripoli's already crowded lower-wage labor market that included Lebanese, Syrian and south Asian guest workers, and Iraqi refugees. The resulting deprecation in local wages combined with Tripoli's stagnant economy and Lebanon’s high cost of living, has put enormous economic pressure on a large number of Tripolians, of all sectarian affiliations. All Tripolians, whether they are Sunni Muslim, Alawite, Christian, Lebanese or foreigner, face the same existential struggles. It is this endemic economic recession in Tripoli that is the most serious threat to the city's well-being.

Read of Nicholas A. Heras' multi-part series exploring Tripoli, Lebanon, on July 5.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�'s editorial policy.

The post A Particular Province of Syria: “Fallujah on the Water?” appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Author’s Note

Politicized sectarian violence again returned to Tripoli’s beleaguered northern neighborhoods of Bab Al-Tabbaneh and Jebel Mohsen over the weekend of June 2-3. The combat between Sunni Muslim fighters in Bab Al-Tabbaneh and Alawite fighters in Jebel Mohsen has left 14 people dead and over 50 wounded. This most recent fighting is just the latest chapter in the conflict between the two neighborhoods. Fighting between the two sides in May left 11 people dead and over 100 wounded. As a result of the violence, the Lebanese Army has increased its already significant presence along Syria Street, the front-line thoroughfare that divides Bab Al-Tabbaneh from Jebel Mohsen. The streets of Tripoli, usually vibrant and crowded with traffic, are reported empty as the population of the city watches and waits for a sign that the feuding combatants can be convinced to lay down their arms.  

Market Tripoli: The North’s Most Important City

As Lebanon’s second largest city, Tripoli is often portrayed as a quaint northern cousin of Beirut, forever in the shadow of Lebanon’s capital and serving the role of a “precious” living museum of what urban life in Lebanon once was. In spite of these stereotypes, Tripoli is an important commercial and cultural center in the country, drawing tens of thousands of people to it daily for work, play, and a sense of communal belonging. 

Tripoli, which is the official capital of the North Lebanon Province, is also the most important city in the geographical region of northern Lebanon. This geographical area extends northward along the coast and inland into the fertile, rural Akkar region that borders Syria to the north and east. It follows to the hill villages directly north and east of the city, and onward to the plunging gorges and breath-taking mountains of the Mount Lebanon range that sweep down towards the eastern Beka’a Valley. It also extends along the coastal road leading southbound to Beirut as far as Batroun, which is a hopping beach resort town that is well-known for its boisterous nightlife. Tripoli represents the area of greatest economic activity in this region, serving both as a port of entry for shipping and as the predominate market town for the villages of the Akkar. It is also the most important transportation hub linking these diverse communities with Beirut and the Syrian cities of Tartus to the northwest and Homs and Hama to the far northeast. 

The geographical area where Tripoli predominates is diverse both in its scenery and in its people. Sunni Muslim and Christian villages neighbor each other and are spread across the region around Tripoli and in the Akkar. The area represents the historical stronghold of the Maronite Christian population in Lebanon throughout the Mount Lebanon range. Greek Orthodox Christians hold several important sites of religious learning in the northeastern hill suburbs, particularly in the large village of Koura and its allied municipalities. Tripoli is itself the most important center of Sunni Muslim cultural and religious life in Lebanon, with a vibrant Christian community that includes Maronite Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and Armenians. The Alawite area of Jebel Mohsen, a northern neighborhood of Tripoli set upon a hill and surrounded on all sides by Sunni Muslim neighborhoods, is the most important concentration of Alawites in all of Lebanon. 

Historically, Tripoli has been a prized port city fought over by numerous empires in the Mediterranean region, with its most prosperous periods of cultural and economic flowering under the Egyptian Mameluke dynasty from the 13th-15th centuries, and under the Ottomans in the late 19th century. The Mameluke era in Tripoli gifted the city with most of its most famous historical and cultural attractions. This includes its soap-making markets and the Taynal Mosque, a beautiful, multiple-green domed, marble constructed house of worship that is as physically striking as it is a source of pride and distinction for the city’s Sunni Muslim community. 

The municipality of Tripoli includes not only the city proper – generally the neighborhoods that surround the city center that is focused on the iconic Ottoman-era clock tower called Seehat Tell (Hill Square) and the old souqs (markets) that are a major tourist destination for the city – but two other semi-autonomous conglomeration of neighborhoods that were in the past distinct entities from Tripoli. Over time and due to increasing urbanization, these areas became incorporated into the city. 

The first of these neighborhoods is Al-Mina (The Port), a relatively prosperous, multi-sectarian (predominately Sunni Muslim and Christian) area with the city’s most expensive and active commercial real estate that extends out into the Mediterranean. Al-Mina not only houses Tripoli’s wealthiest residents (including the personal home of Lebanon’s current Prime Minister, Najib Miqati) but is also the site of one of its most popular attractions, the sea-hugging walkway called the Corniche. Like its larger cousin in Beirut, Tripoli’s Corniche is a well-known destination for local residents and a free-for-all of uncontrived sectarian interaction. The Al-Mina neighborhood is also the most important center of the retail and service industries in Tripoli, and a major source of employment for the city’s less prosperous residents. 

In addition to the Al-Mina neighborhood, the second semi-autonomous area of Tripoli is an arc of neighborhoods. This lies directly to the north and east of the city, from the municipality of Beddawi bordering the sea, inland north east-ward through the hill neighborhoods of Bab Al-Tabbaneh, Jebel Mohsen, Qobet Al-Nasr (locally referred to as Ibbe and pronounced “Ib-bay”) and Abi Samra. The Abu Ali River, which winds down Mount Lebanon through Tripoli and empties into the Mediterranean Sea, now reduced to a sliver of a trash-filled rivulet, separates these areas from the central sections of the cities. The ongoing politicized sectarian conflict between Bab Al-Tabbaneh and Jebel Mohsen is generally confined to this area, with the surrounding neighborhoods of Beddawi, Ibbe, and Abi Samra further east serving as major points of strategic depth and re-supply for Bab Al-Tabbaneh’s Sunni Islamist fighters. 

Beddawi in particular has become such an essential commercial section of the city, especially for farm produce, construction materials such as cement and limestone, and labor, that it is difficult to justify its exclusion from Tripoli proper. The bulk of Beddawi’s economic activity occurs around the Beddawi Palestinian refugee camp inside of the neighborhood, and is linked to the rest of Tripoli through the active and crowded Seehat Bab Al-Tabbaneh (Bab Al-Tabbaneh Square). Beddawi and its adjacent neighborhoods are referred to as hay sha’abi (popular neighborhoods), lower middle class and working class neighborhoods where the bulk of the city’s 500,000 people reside.

Pit-Stop Tripoli: The Nothing-to-See Here City

Tripoli is widely regarded as a place of poverty and frustration, with its people shackled to a local economy that is underdeveloped and unbalanced, suffering from endemic underemployment, and spectacular bouts of violence and rancor. Even the nicer stereotypes of the city have the effect of shallow compliments. Tripoli, the “Treasure of the East” as its more ebullient backers call it, still has to overcome the notion, especially from potential tourists and travelers, that it is a city that closes its doors after dark. In essence, Tripoli is regarded as one large bedroom community that has some appealing diversions by day, and less attractive prospects for personal enjoyment by night. 

Travelers go to Tripoli for the maamoul, helwet al jibn, and baklawa, pastries that have earned the city regional and international fame, and enjoy a cup of Arab-style coffee, black as the devil and sweet as a stolen kiss of course, to compliment them. The city is cheaper than Beirut, and proudly advertises that fact, enticing the visitor for a quick snack en route to Lebanon’s more famous tourist destinations and symbolic sites. Tripoli is not too far from the soaring Cedars of northern Lebanon, the “Cedars of God”, and the picturesque red-tiled roof villages that rise from the hills, peering down upon the majestic Qadisha Valley that surround them. After a quick bite to eat in Tripoli, the traveler is usually off to the bone-white sands of the beach resorts of Chekka slightly south of it, and to the night clubs of Batroun, where unlike conservative and traditional Tripoli, the fun does not stop at 9pm. 

Tripoli’s status as the “First City in Syria,” its wealth of historical sites, including bath houses, bazaars, mosques, and a foreboding Crusader-era citadel that overlooks the city from the north, are regarded as interesting, but not quite as splendid as the cultural treasures of the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Damascus. Embattled Homs and Hama, Tripoli’s historical trading partners that are only an hour and a half drive from Tripoli across the Syrian border, have a reputation for having the more emotionally-powerful and important historical sites. In this sense, Tripoli is reduced from the second-largest city in Lebanon with a treasure trove of valuable cultural and historical attractions, to an “ugly cousin” city that is more a provincial town with a depressed economy and an active and embarrassingly lingering action chain of sectarian conflict. 

Read of Nicholas A. Heras' multi-part series exploring Tripoli, Lebanon, on June 14.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post A Particular Province of Syria: Getting to Know Tripoli appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Lebanon’s tortured Tripoli is back in the news, and it never seems to be for a happy reason. This northern port city of 500,000 people, with a majority Sunni Muslim population and significant minorities of Alawites and Christians, is again the focus of international attention due to violence. The most recent situation concerns the ongoing violence between Alawite and Sunni Muslim residents that started on May 12 and has thus far left several people dead and hundreds wounded. Pro-Bashar Al-Assad Alawite and anti-Assad Sunni Muslim gunmen battle for supremacy in Tripoli’s economically depressed and sectarian-divided northern hill neighborhoods. Fears abound that this forlorn corner of Lebanon is finally dragging the country irrevocably into the Syrian conflict. With every bullet and RPG that is fired, Tripoli is becoming an extension of the crisis.

Tripoli: Lebanese, yet Dancing to a Different Beat

In less turbulent times, Tripoli’s numerous historical sites from eras ranging from Roman to Umayyad to Crusader to Mameluke to Ottoman times; its majestic mosques, authentic souqs (markets), bath houses, and its famous Arab pastry shops, draw international visitors seeking the exotic culture. The city’s enticing historical, cultural, and gastronomical treasures are widely lauded and celebrated, both in Lebanon and abroad. Tripoli is at once “Lebanese,” and also different from the rest of the country. It shares in the controlled chaos that is daily Lebanese life, and the highly developed sense of “Lebanese” identity, while maintaining a distinct, almost “foreign” local culture. Tripoli’s urban tempo, slower and perhaps “sleepier”, is reminiscent of popular stereotypes of what it means to be living in an “Arab” country.

As a result, and not entirely inaccurately, Tripoli is nicknamed by the Lebanese as the “First City in Syria.” This moniker is applied to Tripoli due to the Lebanese perception of its atmosphere as being closer to that of a “true Arab” country like Syria, than to Lebanon’s consciously composite culture that actively embraces local custom with outside (typically “western”) influences. It also speaks to the reality that Tripoli and its environs, perhaps more than any other place in Lebanon, have an especially intense relationship with the occult hand of “Sister Syria.”

Many members of the city’s majority Sunni Muslim population were particularly opposed to the Syrian military occupation of Lebanon from 1976 to 2005, and a large number of Tripoli’s Sunni Muslims (and others) fought against the Syrian military inside of and around the city. Few communities in Lebanon celebrated harder than Tripoli’s Sunni Muslim population when the Syrian army withdrew from the country in 2005 and the fierce antipathy of many Sunni Muslim Tripolians towards the Al-Assad government has not abated.

A center of Lebanese support and international fundraising for the Syrian opposition and a refuge for Syrian opposition members, Tripoli’s geo-political importance to Syria has long been noted by analysts. The anti-Assad Sunni Muslim Future Movement dominates Tripoli’s politics. Tripoli also has a large population of conservative Sunni Muslims and a growing number of militant Sunni Salafists that are anti-Assad and allied with the Future Movement. These groups stand in opposition to the city’s Alawite community, which numbers approximately 60,000 concentrated in the Jebel Mohsen neighborhood. The Alawite community is politically organized by the Arab Democratic Party (ADP), which is nearly ideologically identical to the pro-Assad Syrian Ba’ath Party. For its part, the Lebanese Army stands between the two sides, literally and figuratively, maintaining checkpoints and disarming the feuding fighters along the gloomy, decrepit, and bullet-riddled front-line of the seemingly appropriately named Syria Street.

These political and sectarian affiliations with the Al-Assad government have led the ADP and its Alawite constituency into frequent conflict with its majority Sunni Muslim and politically anti-Assad neighbors in the surrounding areas of Bab Al-Tabbaneh, Qibeh, and Abi Samra. All three of these neighborhoods are the sites of weekly Friday demonstrations against the Al-Assad government, and have a strong presence of the anti-Assad March 14 political party — the Future Movement—and militant Sunni Muslim Salafists. They have been bolstered by an influx of the armed Syrian opposition including members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The heightened tension caused by the Syrian uprising and the political and sectarian differences between the ADP and the Sunni Muslim parties and activists, is a past, present, and likely future source of conflict in Tripoli.

Souq… Sweets… Sectarianism… Syria.

These four words summarize outsiders’ perception of Tripoli and the city’s significance to the world community. Tripoli is a caricature of communal violence, an edgy tourist destination in a nearly failed state. The city is close to, but not quite, the rest of Lebanon and with every new street battle, seems poised to plunge into the inferno of neighboring Syria.

Or is it? In spite of popular perceptions, communal relations in Tripoli are not just a sectarian bloodbath in waiting. The city is more than its Lonely Planet image of being a cool place to eat tasty baklawa and buy locally made soap from the souq. It is, like so many places in the Middle East, far more complicated and worth understanding. The city's daily life captures the underlying tensions that have led to demonstrations and revolutions throughout the Middle East: poverty, lack of economic opportunity that leads to frustration, and political aspirations. Tripoli, in spite of its politicized sectarianism, its violence, and its endemic existential frustration, is also a place of beautiful moments of cooperation, pan-sectarian goodwill, and above all else, hope.

Read of Nicholas A. Heras’ multi-part series exploring Tripoli, Lebanon, on June 7.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Lebanon is again at the brink of widespread strife. The most recent explosion of violence in Lebanon has afflicted the country’s two largest cities, Beirut and Tripoli. Several people have been killed and many more wounded as weekly demonstrations in the city occur against the Bashar Al-Assad government. Moreover, in the capital Beirut, two people have been killed and more than 20 wounded, with large demonstrations being held against both the Lebanese and Syrian governments.

In Tripoli, the fighting has followed ��������ԴDz�’s patented political sectarianism, with anti-Assad Sunni Muslims fighting pro-Assad Alawites in the latest edition of the Jebel Mohsen-Bab Al Tabbeneh sectarian battles. Beirut’s crowded and vibrant Tarek El-Jdeideh neighbourhood is normally a firing line between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims and was the epicenter of combat in May 2008. The fighting here is attributed to disagreement over support of the Syrian government between Sunni Muslim majority political parties, rather than to overt sectarianism. The once celebrated, and now maligned, Lebanese Army has been deployed in both cities to restore the civil peace.

There is war coming, people fear. It will be a “civil war,” according to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Perhaps an overtly sectarian war, naturally, between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims. Lebanon is, after all, the former, present, and future geo-political battleground between the Saudi and Iranian governments. Any potential war may be more inclusive, and simply divide itself between the supporters of Assad and his enemies. Maybe the coming war will be one that ends all wars in Lebanon. It might present another opportunity for this diverse country that internalized the political concept of “no victors, no vanquished” to finally — through another round of blood and combat — determine a victorious group and a vanquished group to decide its fate.

At the least, this is the worst violence in Lebanon since the May 2008 “mini-Civil War” that saw fighting in the capital, a storm of combat in the south-eastern Beirut suburb of the Shoueifet, and in the northern city of Tripoli. All of it was caused, so they say, by the occult hand of the Al-Assad government. This state of events, with Lebanese fighting and dying over the political questions of neighboring Syria, seems to make a lie of the common Lebanese assertion that the country is distinct with a political identity and destiny independent of Syria.

Tiny and tortured Lebanon is now rapidly becoming another, if particular, province of Syria. It seems that the battleground of the Syrian uprising is no longer limited by Syria’s international boundaries, and has extended its sanguinary fury into Lebanon. Syrian refugees in the thousands gather in the northern Lebanese region of the Akkar, and in and around the city of Tripoli. Friday sermons in cities, neighborhoods, and villages throughout Lebanon call for the end of the Al-Assad government, and the defeat of the Hezbollah-led, Syrian-approved Resistance Bloc and its control over the Lebanese Cabinet. Armed Syrian opposition smuggling routes run from Lebanon into Syria. Rumors abound of weapons, material, and money that are being raised by the Lebanese for distribution to the armed opposition inside Syria. Under the gun and pressure from the Syrian military inside Syria, the Syrian armed opposition has found strategic depth in Lebanon, and a spiritual, if not physical, Benghazi in Tripoli.

Yet again the internal political divisions within Lebanon; the “are you with Assad or are you against Assad” question is making a mockery of the notion that Lebanon would somehow be immune to the political crises of the Arab uprisings. Although the majority of ��������ԴDz�’s population does struggle to make ends meet, the causes of the Arab uprisings: frustration towards endemic poverty, inflation, and lack of economic opportunity, combined with political repression and human rights abuses perpetrated by repressive governments against their populations, were not sparks in Lebanon until recently. Perhaps, fittingly, it took large demonstrations and widespread armed conflict in Syria to bring the Lebanese into the Arab uprisings. For better, or for worse, Lebanon is now a front-line in the Syrian uprising.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

*[A version of this article was originally published by Siyese.com on May 24, 2012].

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History has a strange (and sometimes sordid) way of repeating itself. In the case of Syria, not only history, but a certain day: February 3, brings with it a sense of déjà vu. It was on February 3, 1982 that the forces of the now deceased President of Syria, Hafez Al-Assad, launched their offensive against the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Hama. The offensive was a result of over six years of conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Syrian government, including the attempt on Hafez Al-Assad’s life in June 1980 and the subsequent passage of Syrian Law No. 49 in July 1980 which banned membership to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The siege of Hama lasted almost a month, and claimed an estimated 7,000 to 40,000 lives. Syrian soldiers, Muslim Brotherhood fighters, and civilians in Hama were all killed in the fighting. The destruction of the city of Hama was so exemplary that it inspired the New York Times writer Thomas Friedman to coin a phrase that still has resonance for students of the politics of the Middle East; “Hama rules.”

As with the current Syrian uprising, the Syrian government placed severe restrictions upon the foreign media in 1982, making access to accurate reporting of the events in Hama extremely difficult. If it was not for the brave and daring reporting of veteran Middle East journalist Robert Fisk, the events in Hama might not have been covered even in the limited detail that they received. Even then, the coverage of the battle being fought inside Hama was mostly limited to a cordon of security forces pounding the city from the outside, and interviews with shell-shocked survivors and refugees fleeing the city’s combatants.

Thirty years to the date, a new Assad, Hafez’s son Bashar, continues to oversee another offensive, this time launched against Hama’s sister city of Homs. Homs, and its Bab Al Amr neighborhood in particular, is now the main “firing line” in the year-long Syrian uprising. The city has endured almost a month of concerted attacks by the Syrian security forces. Fighting between the Syrian army and the Free Syrian Army and residents of Homs who have armed themselves is being waged daily, as the city seems poised to repeat the painful lessons of Hama. History may repeat itself in Homs, but how that history is recorded will surely not be repeated.

Foreign journalists are covering the events in Homs, producing daring and nuanced reporting for a worldwide audience. As death-defying as their work is, even more spectacular and impactful are the labors of ordinary Syrians; the residents of Homs. An entire army of citizen journalists, armed with cellular phones, video cameras, Skype, and the all-important Internet connection, are ensuring that the events unfolding in Homs are made accessible, often in real-time, to a global viewership.

Homs’ citizen journalists are demonstrating a striking acumen for utilizing the Internet to communicate their experiences under conflict. They distribute their videos of the situation on YouTube, stream footage live, update foreign commentators and audiences via Skype interviews and blog postings, and contribute significantly to the content that major foreign news outlets produce via their uploaded web content. Sometimes, the citizen journalists of Homs, like their fellow citizens, are killed in the conflict as well.

In the past week, Rami Al Sayyed, one of the more recognizable citizen journalists of Homs who had uploaded over 800 videos of the conflict and was noted for his live streaming of the fighting, was killed by artillery fired by Syrian security forces into his home in Bab Al Amr. Sayyed is just one of many Syrian citizen journalists who have been killed.

Through their actions, these Syrian citizen journalists are shaping the international perception of their revolution in a gritty, uncensored manner. They are winning the war for hearts and minds in the court of international public opinion, and making a powerful statement to the tenacity of their resistance to the Al-Assad regime. Without their resolve, this resistance would be just another Hama.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Arab League’s acrimony towards the government of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria has reached a new height of intensity. On Sunday, the Arab League adopted a resolution that asked the United Nations Security Council to support the deployment of an Arab League-led peacekeeping force in Syria. In addition to this measure, the Arab League asked its 22 member states to break off all diplomatic contact with the Syrian government, increase its already emplaced sanctions on the Syrian government, and to increase support for anti-government opposition groups, although which anti-Assad groups specifically would be supported was left unmentioned.

This was the latest move in over six months of diplomatic activity against the Syrian government by the Arab League. In November 2011 the Arab League proposed a peace plan in which Arab League military and civilian observers would be allowed to monitor the Syrian government’s handling of the anti-Assad protests. Although the Syrian government accepted this plan initially, its refusal to allow observers into Syria sparked the ire of the Arab League, which proceeded to impose economic sanctions on the Syrian government. The sanctions included a restriction on transactions with the Syrian Central Bank, a travel ban to Arab League states, and a freeze of the assets of senior officials in the Al-Assad government.

Pressured by the actions undertaken by the Arab League, the Syrian government allowed the now disbanded Observer Mission into Syria; a mission that ended on January 28 with assertions made by the Arab League that the Syrian government was un-cooperative and perpetrating violence against its citizens. Prompted by this failure, the Arab League, working in co-ordination with its allies in the UN Security Council (most notably the United States, France, and Great Britain) unsuccessfully attempted to pass a tough-worded resolution denouncing the Al-Assad government, two weeks ago. Amongst the clauses in the first draft of the resolution was a demand that President Al-Assad cede his authority to his Vice-President Farouk Al-Sharaa, an arms embargo against the Syrian government until Al-Assad stepped down, and a 15-day timeline for the plan to be implemented under the threat of “further measures.”

In response to resistance from Russia, on the grounds that the first draft resolution would be a violation of Syrian sovereignty and would have the effect of leading to an escalation of hostilities in the country that would lead to civil war, the original draft resolution was modified to remove the clauses calling for Al-Assad to step down immediately and the embargo on the sale of arms to the Syrian government. The resolution was vetoed by Russia and China on February 4.

Syria has become the cause celebre of the Arab League, and the increasing violence of the Syrian Uprising is a new test of the Arab League’s will to police its member states. The Arab League has been especially forceful in expressing its discontent with the Syrian government. Responding to its diplomatic failures with a resolution for an armed peacekeeping intervention in Syria, the Arab League is demonstrating a previously unseen resolve to use military force to end the Syrian government’s resistance to the protests. Key Arab League states such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt have been early and vocal opponents of the Al-Assad government and the Arab League’s efforts against the Syrian government are not likely to end soon.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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