The Syrian civil war is promising to do more than disrupt the Middle East. If it lasts much longer, it might redraw the whole MIddle East in sectarian zones.
Turkey, like other neighboring countries to the devastating Syrian conflict zones, is accepting refugees en masse, and otherwise supporting the rebels who are trying to overthrow the Assad regime.
But if the past is to be a lesson, the problems now facing Kenya with infiltrators from Somali terrorist groups, should allow for much greater caution and supervision of the refugee camps.
Amidst the refugees are members of Al Qaeda, who are using the conflict as a way to infiltrate otherwise peaceful zones, such as Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and so forth. They are in many way, circling the wagons. They are in the Sinai, in the Iraq-Syria border and so forth.
If the trend is not stemmed, the Turkish authorities face the kind of security failures just experienced in Kenya.
To be truthful, Turkey has been quite vocal on the need to intervene on the ground to end the civil war for a long time now, and it has its own interests in mind when doing so, besides other humanitarian concerns.
Turkey's policy of unconditional support of the Free Syria rebels however might be backfiring faster than Turkey can manage to stop it. The problem is that the wide embrace of the Turkish government has also meant inclusion of islamist faction like Al Nusra front, who are now making the porous border their main avenue in and out of Turkey.
The Turkish army was quick to assert their position on Islamist infiltration saying that they had fired upon and ISIL and Al Nusra contigents at the border.
The problem is that Turkey is aiding the rebels through the supply of arms and weaponry which can easily change hands. And that is a concern many are raising.
In fact Human Right Watch has recommended that Turkish authorities exercise better control and supervision of the border regions and camps.
The problem is also that foreign fighters seem to be entering Syria from the Turkish side, through rebels and facilitators at the border. But some of these foreign factions are believed to be responsible for the recent massacre of 190 Alawite citizens in a village near the border with Turkey. And that is causing even wider concerns, since Turkey is the only country which is still lax in its control of the border traffic. Jordan for example exercises a very tight control on the passage of people and arms through its borders and refugee camps. So Turkey is the soft spot, so to speak, the place where entry is easiest.
But some in Turkey actually suspect that some in the Turkish administration are complicit with the foreign rebels loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda, although the foreign minister, Davutoglu, has denied such accusations.
And the problem is the radicalization of the Turkish citizens who have taken up arms to support the Syrian cause. In fact almost 150 Turkish nationals are believed to be in Syria fighting. These people, when they come back, could very easily begin networking for change of some sort or another in Turkey too. Some of the Turkish citizens fighting in Syria are members of the PKK, a Kurdish faction that has undertaken terrorist action for decades in Turkey.
Turkey is asking for help in monitoring its borders, saying that it is nearly impossible for the country to control the long border with Syria.
Source : Rudaw - U. Bulut / 10.17.13
No comments:
Post a Comment