Pearls and Irritations

The dramatic ‘rebel’ advance into Aleppo dominates the headlines. In history rather than headlines, however, the importance of current events shrinks into relativity, as the ‘West’ and its regional allies have been tearing apart, or trying to tear apart, Syria for more than a century. This is what the journalist and historian Patrick Seale called “the struggle for Syria” back in the early 1960s.

The Syria you now see is not what bilad al Sham (historic Syria) was. Up to the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, it included what is now Lebanon, Palestine (southern Syria) and the Turkish province of Hatay. In 1967 further territory, the Golan Heights, was taken and later annexed by Israel.

Syria’s western and regional enemies would like to see this partitioning taken further, with ethno-religious statelets formed around a Sunni Muslim state centring on Damascus. This is what the French aimed at during the mandate years. Divided, these mini-states would not be able to stand against the pressures directed against them.

As the most secular people in the Middle East, sectarianism is the nightmare antithesis of what most Syrian people want.

Many of the ‘rebels’ are not rebels at all because they are not Syrian. The foreign fighters that joined the proxy war launched against Syria in 2011 included Chechens, Uighurs, Tajiks, Pakistanis, Afghans, Libyans, Egyptians and other Arabs.

Heavy casualties have thinned out the ranks but many are still in northwest Syria, occupied by Turkey, or Idlib province, abutting Aleppo. Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) runs Idlib but under Turkish protection.

HTS was formerly Jabhat al Nusra, which was part of the Islamic State of the Levant (ISIL) until Nusra refused to surrender its autonomy to the ISIL caliph, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. The emir of HTS, Abu Muhammad al Jawlani, came out of Al Qaida in Iraq (2004-6) and spent years in US prisons in Iraq. Unconfirmed reports say he has already been killed in a Russian air strike on the HTS military command in Idlib.

In recent years HTS was strengthened by an alliance with some of the most vicious takfiri groups in Syria, including Nur al Din Zinki, one of whose members was filmed in 2016 cutting off the head of a 12-year-old boy. Up to that time Nur al Din Zinki was supported by the US State Department and trained by the CIA.

In April 2022, HTS was added to Australia’s list of proscribed terrorist organisations. Earlier, in May 2014, the US had put Jabhat al Nusra “aka Hayat Tahrir al Sham” on its list of “designated foreign terrorist organisations”. It is still on the list, but in late 2023 it was merely included in “entities of particular concern.”

Downgraded it seems, thanks to the alignment of its own strategic interests with those of Israel and western governments, converging in the drive to overthrow Syria’s legitimate government, which is the one in Damascus.

While HTS has imposed shari’a law throughout Idlib, with human rights organisations listing summary executions, torture and abductions among its alleged crimes, it is now trying to portray itself as a moderate Muslim movement that respects women’s rights and allows freedom of worship for Christians. On show before the world, its fighters have clearly been instructed to behave in Aleppo.

The war on Syria has reduced government control to 65 percent of the country. The US-dominated largely Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) hold 25 percent in the northeast and the rest, in the northwest, has fallen under the direct or indirect control of Turkiye. HTS holds Idlib under its protection, and Turkiye maintains ‘observation posts’ throughout the province.

Units from the ‘Syrian National Army’ (SNA) are reported to be taking part in the current offensive. Created and trained by Turkiye out of the original ‘Free Syrian Army’, the SNA has mostly been used against Kurdish forces in Syria although Turkiye has also sent contingents to Libya, Azerbaijan and reportedly Niger, in line with Ankara’s foreign policy objectives.

While seeking to minimise its role in the HTS-led offensive, Turkiye claims its origins lie in the refusal of the Syrian government to respect the “legitimate demands of the Syrian people.” As represented by Turkiye in 2012, these included the participation of the Muslim Brotherhood in the political process which, as a proscribed organisation with a long background of violence, Syria could not allow.

In the meantime, the Astana ‘peace process’ begun in 2017, involving Russia, Turkiye and Iran, aimed at de-escalation and reaching a ceasefire, has for the moment ended in deadlock, with all parties blaming each other.

The capture of Aleppo was a prime objective of the Turkish government from the moment it turned on Damascus in 2012 and threw its support behind a ‘Syrian National Council’ based in Istanbul and a ‘Free Syrian Army’ operating across the border in the southeast.

However, whereas in 2011-12 Turkiye was part of large coalition of Arab states and outside governments seeking the overthrow of the Syrian government, times have changed. These same Arab states are now standing by Syria and will be concerned at the expansion of Syrian territory under Turkiye’s direct or proxy control. Regionally, Turkiye and the US are now isolated in Syria.

The US tried to tempt the Syrian government by offering an easing of sanctions if it would cut off the land arms supply routes to Hizbullah, but Syria was not about to abandon its strategic allies or their goal of ‘de-Americanising’ the Middle East. This goal has growing support outside the ‘axis of resistance,’ with six Arab/North African states (and Turkiye) on the waiting list for BRICS membership.

Occupying northeastern Syria, in tandem with the SDF, the US also has a critical base at Al Tanf, in the southeast triangle where the Jordanian, Iraqi and Syrian borders meet and where the anti-government New Syrian Army (formerly Maghawira al Thawra, ‘Commandos of the Revolution’) is being trained by the US for operations across eastern Syria. Tanf is repeatedly targeted by resistance groups from Iraq.

Having captured Aleppo, the HTS-led forces began moving south to Hama, where Syrian ground forces are mobilising to drive them back, with the support of Syrian and Russian air strikes. Russia has it own strategic interests to protect in Syria. It has a major air base at Hmeimim, near Latakia, plus naval facilities at Tartus, along with its growing prestige across the Middle East and North Africa at the expense of the US.

Thousands of Hashd al Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation Forces) fighters are crossing the border from Iraq and IRGC units from Iran to join the fighting. Hizbullah will stay in Lebanon, given the crisis there, with Israel breaking the ceasefire from day one and getting ready to strike at southern Lebanon in force even as it expands its bases along the so-called ‘Netzarim corridor’ in Gaza.

The expansion of Iranian forces in Syria is very likely to start a direct Israel-Iran confrontation in Syria. The protection of Israel has been a dominant element in Western antagonism towards Syria since 1948.

Apart from the proxy ground war, sanctions, first imposed on Syria by the US in 1979, followed on by the UK, the EU, Canada, Australia and other countries, and progressively tightened up since 2011, are further immiserating the Syrian population.

Australia has also joined the US in military action. In 2016, it violated international law by joining the US in air strikes on a Syrian military base that killed at least 83 soldiers fighting the Islamic State, then holding Deir al Zor city in eastern Syria.

The US claim that it was an ‘accident’ was hardly persuasive and had the no doubt intended result of destroying a week-long ceasefire signed only five days before after months of negotiations.

In the eyes of the West and of Israel, even the flag of HTS waving in the middle of Damascus’ Umayyad Square and HTS’s emir, Abu Muhammad al Jawlani, sitting in the presidential palace would apparently be better than Syria’s secular government.

The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, says the Biden administration has “real concern” about the designs of HTS, a rather mild statement considering that it is listed by the US as a terrorist organisation, but “we don’t cry over the fact that the Assad government, backed by Russia, Iran and Hizbullah, are [sic.] facing certain kind of pressures.”

Sullivan openly admitted that the US and HTS have a common objective in the overthrow of the secular Syrian government. Between these converging vectors, the long “struggle for Syria” continues.

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