A Stronger Syria

"Today I tell you, Syria is stronger ...   In less than a week they were defeated (in Damascus) and the battle failed.  So they moved on to Aleppo and I assure you, their plots will fail."  Foreign Minister Walid Moualem

Minister Walid Moualem made his statements from Tehran.  Where he doubtless conferred with his country's major supporter, likely Syria's only supporter, aside from Hezbollah.  There is China and there is Russia, of course, but their support lies in the strategic fact that neither of those countries is enamoured with the very idea of any outside force interfering with the legitimate sovereignty of a country's interior situation.

And both of those countries, as suppliers of armaments and jealous of their hegemonic placement in the Middle East with its vast stores of fossil fuels, have their interests to tend to.  Their self-interests, however, are nowhere near as impressively vital as is Iran's in the potential outcome of this civil war that is wracking Syria.  The current administration is as close to secular in its governance as possible without abandoning its Islamic identity.

Many of its opposition are also secular minded, while of the Sunni sectarian demographic.  But far many more are both Sunni and religiously orthodox, deploring the secular aspects of the Alawite regime as un-Islamic and unsupportable.  The Muslim Brotherhood is present and accounted for among the opposition, prepared because of their majority status and longtime presence, along with their association with other branches of the Brotherhood, to reflect in Syria what has occurred in Egypt.

They have been complemented by members of al-Qaeda, and other Islamist Salafist groups eager to bring down the government and install their version of Islamic precepts and values where none now exist to their satisfaction.  Little wonder that there is no cohesion and co-operation between the political and the military groups each insisting they represent the major rebel factions.

Meanwhile, with Bashar al-Assad's government declaring its victory in retaking Damascus entirely, pounding the rebels, forcing them to retreat, and going street by street to roust supporters out of their homes, looking for rebels shielding their presence, they have been successful in reimposing themselves within the capital.  Aleppo is where the rebel fighters claim to be holding off the regime.

"I don't think the [Syrian] Army will come here.  We killed it before" said one of the rebels.  Yet they are there to face the regime, to bring themselves to battle again for its removal.  "If someone from the Free Army dies, we don't get said.  For sure they are in Paradise."  "We will not let the Syrian Army get into Salaheddin before we die", claimed another.

It is Aleppo that the regime must retake.  Damascus is important, but Aleppo is equally important, as the economic heart of the country, and with its more populous numbers.  Several hundred thousand of whom have fled the deepening battles, for other parts of the country not as unsafe, or for border areas where they hope their families will gain shelter.

“Those whose intentions are not for God, they had better stay home, whereas if your intention is for God, then you go for jihad and you gain an afterlife and heaven.”

Map

Video Feature

Analysts and activists see jihadi groups now emerging, standing apart from the Free Syrian Army of local militias, army defectors, civilian volunteers.  Funding flowing to the opposition is arriving from donors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region, from religious donors impelled by their Salafist leanings.  Rebel commanders in the area claim a total of 50,000 fighters, with 1,000 representing foreigners.  Shrugging off their significance.

A larger Muslim cause has emerged, however, alerting and attracting fighters representing various degrees of Islamism.  Among the Sunnis the Alawites represent a heretical offshoot of Shiite Islam.  Those who fought previously in Libya have moved on to Syria, much as the Islamists battling the Russians in Afghanistan later moved on to create al-Qaeda, as guests of Pakistan, later sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan, both supported by Pakistan's military and Intelligence service.