The French military's current
campaign to dislodge jihadist militants from northern Mali and the recent
high-profile attack against a natural gas facility in Algeria are both directly
linked to the foreign intervention in Libya that overthrew the Gadhafi regime.
There is also a strong connection between these events and foreign powers'
decision not to intervene in Mali when the military conducted a coup in March
2012. The coup occurred as thousands of heavily armed Tuareg tribesmen were
returning home to northern Mali after serving in Moammar Gadhafi's military,
and the confluence of these events resulted in an implosion of the Malian
military and a power vacuum in the north. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and
other jihadists were able to take advantage of this situation to seize power in
the northern part of the African nation.
As all these events transpire
in northern Africa, another type of foreign intervention is occurring in Syria.
Instead of direct foreign military intervention, like that taken against the
Gadhafi regime in Libya in 2011, or the lack of intervention seen in Mali in
March 2012, the West -- and its Middle Eastern partners -- have pursued a
middle-ground approach in Syria. That is, these powers are providing logistical
aid to the various Syrian rebel factions but are not intervening directly.
Just as there were
repercussions for the decisions to conduct a direct intervention in Libya and
not to intervene in Mali, there will be repercussions for the partial
intervention approach in Syria. Those consequences are becoming more apparent
as the crisis drags on.
Intervention in Syria
For more than a year now,
countries such as the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and European
states have been providing aid to the Syrian rebels. Much of this aid has been
in the form of humanitarian assistance, providing things such as shelter, food
and medical care for refugees. Other aid has helped provide the rebels with
non-lethal military supplies such as radios and ballistic vests. But a review of
the weapons spotted on the battlefield reveals that the rebels are also
receiving an increasing number of lethal supplies.
For example, there have been
numerous videos released showing Syrian rebels using weapons such as the M79
Osa rocket launcher, the RPG-22, the M-60 recoilless rifle and the RBG-6
multiple grenade launcher. The Syrian government has also released videos of these
weapons after seizing them in arms caches. What is so interesting about these
weapons is that they were not in the Syrian military's inventory prior to the
crisis, and they all likely were purchased from Croatia. We have also seen many
reports and photos of Syrian rebels carrying Austrian Steyr Aug rifles, and the
Swiss government has complained that Swiss-made hand grenades sold to the
United Arab Emirates are making their way to the Syrian rebels.
With the Syrian rebel groups
using predominantly second-hand weapons from the region, weapons captured from
the regime, or an assortment of odd ordnance they have manufactured themselves,
the appearance and spread of these exogenous weapons in rebel arsenals over the
past several months is at first glance evidence of external arms supply. The
appearance of a single Steyr Aug or RBG-6 on the battlefield could be an
interesting anomaly, but the variety and concentration of these weapons seen in
Syria are well beyond the point where they could be considered coincidental.
This means that the current
level of external intervention in Syria is similar to the level exercised
against the Soviet Union and its communist proxies following the Soviet
intervention in Afghanistan. The external supporters are providing not only
training, intelligence and assistance, but also weapons -- exogenous weapons
that make the external provision of weapons obvious to the world. It is also
interesting that in Syria, like Afghanistan, two of the major external
supporters are Washington and Riyadh -- though in Syria they are joined by
regional powers such as Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates,
rather than Pakistan.
In Afghanistan, the Saudis and
the Americans allowed their partners in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence
agency to determine which of the myriad militant groups in Afghanistan received
the bulk of the funds and weapons they were providing. This resulted in two
things. First, the Pakistanis funded and armed groups that they thought they
could best use as surrogates in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal.
Second, they pragmatically tended to funnel cash and weapons to the groups that
were the most successful on the battlefield -- groups such as those led by
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose effectiveness on the
battlefield was tied directly to their zealous theology that made waging jihad
against the infidels a religious duty and death during such a struggle the
ultimate accomplishment.
A similar process has been
taking place for nearly two years in Syria. The opposition groups that have
been the most effective on the battlefield have tended to be the
jihadist-oriented groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra. Not surprisingly, one reason
for their effectiveness was the skills and tactics they learned fighting the
coalition forces in Iraq. Yet despite this, the Saudis -- along with the
Qataris and the Emiratis -- have been arming and funding the jihadist groups in
large part because of their success on the battlefield. As my colleague Kamran
Bokhari noted in February 2012, the situation in Syria was providing an
opportunity for jihadists, even without external support. In the fractured
landscape of the Syrian opposition, the unity of purpose and battlefield
effectiveness of the jihadists was in itself enough to ensure that these groups
attracted a large number of new recruits.
But that is not the only
factor conducive to the radicalization of Syrian rebels. First, war -- and
particularly a brutal, drawn-out war -- tends to make extremists out of the
fighters involved in it. Think Stalingrad, the Cold War struggles in Central
America or the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans following the dissolution of
Yugoslavia; this degree of struggle and suffering tends to make even
non-ideological people ideological. In Syria, we have seen many secular Muslims
become stringent jihadists. Second, the lack of hope for an intervention by the
West removed any impetus for maintaining a secular narrative. Many fighters who
had pinned their hopes on NATO were greatly disappointed and angered that their
suffering was ignored. It is not unusual for Syrian fighters to say something
akin to, "What has the West done for us? We now have only God."
When these ideological factors
were combined with the infusion of money and arms that has been channeled to
jihadist groups in Syria over the past year, the growth of Syrian jihadist
groups accelerated dramatically. Not only are they a factor on the battlefield
today, but they also will be a force to be reckoned with in the future.
The Saudi Gambit
Despite the jihadist blowback
the Saudis experienced after the end of the war against the Soviets in
Afghanistan -- and the current object lesson of the jihadists Syria sent to
fight U.S. forces in Iraq now leading groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra -- the
Saudi government has apparently calculated that its use of jihadist proxies in
Syria is worth the inherent risk.
There are some immediate
benefits for Riyadh. First, the Saudis hope to be able to break the arc of
Shiite influence that reaches from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon.
Having lost the Sunni counterweight to Iranian power in the region with the
fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the installation of a Shiite-led government
friendly to Iran, the Saudis view the possibility of installing a friendly
Sunni regime in Syria as a dramatic improvement to their national security.
Supporting the jihad in Syria
as a weapon against Iranian influence also gives the Saudis a chance to burnish
their Islamic credentials internally in an effort to help stave off criticism
that they are too secular and Westernized. It allows the Saudi regime the
opportunity to show that it is helping Muslims under assault by the vicious
Syrian regime.
Supporting jihadists in Syria
also gives the Saudis an opportunity to ship their own radicals to Syria, where
they can fight and possibly die. With a large number of unemployed,
underemployed and radicalized young men, the jihad in Syria provides a pressure
valve similar to the past struggles in Iraq, Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan.
The Saudis are not only trying to winnow down their own troubled youth; we have
received reports from a credible source that the Saudis are also facilitating
the travel of Yemeni men to training camps in Turkey, where they are trained and
equipped before being sent to Syria to fight. The reports also indicate that
the young men are traveling for free and receiving a stipend for their service.
These young radicals from Saudi Arabia and Yemen will even further strengthen
the jihadist groups in Syria by providing them with fresh troops.
The Saudis are gaining
temporary domestic benefits from supporting jihad in Syria, but the conflict
will not last forever, nor will it result in the deaths of all the young men
who go there to fight. This means that someday the men who survive will come
back home, and through the process we refer to as "tactical
Darwinism" the inept fighters will have been weeded out, leaving a core of
competent militants that the Saudis will have to deal with.
But the problems posed by
jihadist proxies in Syria will have effects beyond the House of Saud. The
Syrian jihadists will pose a threat to the stability of Syria in much the same
way the Afghan groups did in the civil war they launched for control of Afghanistan
after the fall of the Najibullah regime. Indeed, the violence in Afghanistan
got worse after Najibullah's fall in 1992, and the suffering endured by Afghan
civilians in particular was egregious.
Now we are seeing that the
jihadist militants in Libya pose a threat not only to the Libyan regime --
there are serious problems in eastern Libya -- but also to foreign interests in
the country, as seen in the attack on the British ambassador and the U.S.
diplomatic mission in Benghazi. Moreover, the events in Mali and Algeria in
recent months show that Libya-based militants and the weapons they possess also
pose a regional threat. Similar long-lasting and wide-ranging repercussions can
be expected to flow from the intervention in Syria.
Scott Stewart, January 31, 2013 – 10:30 GMT
"The Consequences of Intervening in Syria is republished with permission of Stratfor."
"The Consequences of Intervening in Syria is republished with permission of Stratfor."
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