SYRIA'S ANNIHILATION THREATENS THE MIDDLE EASTERN REGION BUT THE WORLD IS MORE CONCERNED ABOUT THE 'RETURNING JIHADI THREAT' TO EFFECTIVELY BRING PEACE

 



Syria has faded from the news, and consequently from people's consciousness.  A conflict such as Syria should have and hold the attention of everyone, but almost three years on, people have written it off as nothing more than another failing country that has little bearing on the Western World falling into inevitable chaos. 

The reality is that the fate of Syria should be of interest to everyone, since the dissolution of the state, and the geographical splintering will soon comport serious consequences for the whole middle East, and to Israel, to the point where the Western world will no longer be able to ignore it.

Why then is Syria being left to slowly wither and fail?

Until Syria becomes a threat that cannot be denied, Syria will continue to suffer, to hobble and crawl, under the violence that is coming from numerous parties, all of it gruesome and horrific. 

But the piecemeal destruction of Syria is now so widespread and unstable that Israel is forced to consider what the consequences of Syria in the hands of warring sectarian jihadi factions will mean to its livelihood.

Israel is far enough that it is not saddled with the immediate consequences of the conflict, such as radical jihadists spilling over the borders, or a never ending diaspora that is affecting of all Syria's neighbors.  But the consequences to Israel in the long run, of having a failed state, ruled in part by jihadi groups so near it geographically, has to be a major concern. 

And the conflict is not as far away as it seems.  Syrian rebel fighters are increasingly coming to the Golan Heights to receive medical aid.  And the story that the legitimate Syrian fighters tell is increasingly dark.  And Israel is using the Golan medical structures to gain intelligence on the activities, locations and military arms employed by the jihadists.  

The problem with this approach however, and the renewed focus of the threat of jihadist in the area who have come to Syria to fight a war that is not theirs, but that could afford them a new base of operations and a transit corridor for arms from Iran, across Iraq all the way to the middle East, is that it could translate into Israel spending less time seeking a lasting peace treaty with the Palestinians.  

Israel and Syria have been mortal enemies for decades.  There no reason to believe that Israel would not like to see regime change.  But it also is preoccupied with gathering intelligence and to throw its support to Syria Free rebels in a very limited way.  That in return, has allowed the Assad government to accuse Israel of aiding the Syrian rebels and to maintain a solid footing amidst the chaos.  

Some are likening Israel's covert support for Free Syria rebels to the Lebanon conflict against the PLO, when Israel armed Christian to contrast the PLO's activities.  But the equation here is very different.  And those who think that Israel wants regime change at all cost, could be wrong.  Israel wants regime change only if the passage does not lead to the kind of chaos that presages itself under the current condition.  That ambiguity, born of necessity, also means that there is not an overwhelming commitment on the part of Israel to intervene in Syria.

The civil war however, is doing something that Israel has been hoping for for 40 years: Assad's regime, however strong, is losing strength daily and is facing ruling over a devastated economy.  If Syria has been honest in handing over all of its chemical weapons cache, it also will be rendered helpless against Israel's undeclared nuclear arms.  Even with Russia's unwavering support and re-armaments, Syria's regime is nowhere near the power it had before the civil war erupted.  

The nightmare scenario of Hezbollah getting their hands on powerful or lethal weapons, handed over eagerly by the Assad regime to their natural allies, may have been diminished with the chemicals weapons handover, but has it really addressed the whole question of what Hezbollah may have been able to get before the Russian intervened to strike an agreement with the US?  Although Israel had assidously monitored Hezbollah activity and tried to curtail their arrival in locations where lethal weapons or heavy armaments were stored through pinpoint strikes, there is little reason to believe that Hezbollah has been completely stopped. 

What is worse, the border regions of Syria are becoming the new haven for Al Qaeda affiliates such as Al Nusra and ISIS, even though Al Qaeda is trying to distance itself from these groups in recent times, but only because their cause is distracting from Al Qaeda's main goal: attacking the West.  But that does not mean that the Syrian border regions is not becoming the new haven for terrorists.  Not only are radicalized youth arriving every day from the EU region, it might very well also be that the next large scale attack against the West will be hatched and planned in that very region. 

The problem is also the great permeability of the border region with Turkey which is extremely easy to cross.  This in fact, is where the EU recruits to join both the Free Syria Army and the foreign jihadist groups land at the Gaziantep airport, and from there cross into Syria.  

Britain is one of the countries most concerned with this permeability.  Intelligence reports have already tallied the number of British subjects who have joined the conflict to be in the hundreds.  

Together with would be jihadists, refugees crossing in the opposite directions and the general chaos of personnel from NGOs and other aid groups, there are increasingly a number of covert operators from the UK, the US and many other countries who are all operating in the area to try to map the where and who of the Syria civil war.  

Just a few days ago, the Homeland Security agency declared the Syria conflict a direct threat to the US, in much the same way the UK has deemed it.  While in the past US citizens who traveled to Yemen or Afghanistan were eyed with suspicion as potential terrorists, in the case of Syria things are much more muddled.  US's stance against the Assad regime, although justified, puts it in a position where it is seen as giving support to those rebels who are legitimately fighting for regime change usually operating under the umbrella of the Free Syria group.  But how is the US to separate those US citizens who travel to Syria and end up in the ranks of the jihadists versus the ones who are traveling to offer support to the Free Syria rebels?

Worse still, Assad is playing cat to the US's chemical weapons destruction's mouse. The deadline has come and gone, and promises to finally destroy the cache seem to be increasingly an excuse to delay the process. 

But Homeland Security in the US has already declared Al Nusra and ISIS to be enemies and threats to the US, and ones who are already in the planning stages of an attack stateside.  Is this premature?  Some think so.  Additionally, such focus on the jihadis takes away from the efforts to bring peace in Syria. 

What is becoming more apparent each day, however, is that the much vaunted diplomatic approach is not working, and the peace talks have all but failed.  The moment of glory has faded, both for the US and Russia, with Lavrov just today accusing the US or derailing the peace process.  That failure translates in more wasted time, and more dead Syrians.

What is at stake here is what the jihadists are planning beyond the Syrian borders, rather than what will happen to Syria or to the Syrians.  It is becoming increasingly clear that the Europeans who have come to Syria to offer their help are being groomed to return to their respective countries and plot terrorist acts there under the cover of their legitimate citizenship.  That has now become the main focus of the countries who have a spy presence in the conflict area.  But it does little or nothing to stop the civil war.

In fact the Syria jidahi camps and the border regions are being compared to the semiautonomous regions of Pakistan, where jihadists roam freely and work to plan attacks.  
Although there is some amount of coordination with Syria's neighboring countries for cross cooperation in monitoring jihadis, the problem really is how do you stop the chaos and reestabilsh order in Syria.  It seems that the great effort to identify potential terrorists and naming names and groups has taken precedence over stopping the conflict. That amounts to fixing the consequence without fixing the cause.  The longer the cause subsists and thrives, the more jihadis there will be count.  Is that what the Middle East policy amounts to?  Do the deaths of Syrian people, which have grown exponentially after the diplomatic agreement, really matter anymore?

The problem in the end, is that different countries are backing different rebel factions.  That has splintered the Muslim world, and negated a meaningful intervention from the Arab world and beyond to resolve the Syrian civil war.  As long as that subsists, Syria's slow demise will continue with little hope for resolution. 

Of course, the real victims, the Syrian people, have and will have almost no say on their country's future anymore. But they still are the real casualty of the civil war.

Op-Ed

Source : The Guardian/Independent/  1.14.14

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