Civil Wars and Proxy Conflicts

One might think that the rebels in Syria, the opposition leaders now recognized by the Arab League as the legitimate government in Syria, despite that the regime remains firmly in power in Damascus and seems to be on the very cusp of recapturing key areas long since claimed by the rebels, would be in a firmer position than they now appear to be. After all, the active militias representing an assortment of tribal and geographic militias calling themselves the Syrian Free Army, but lacking an overall head to coordinate their efforts, also have the considerable advantage of the ruthless fighting ability of seasoned Islamic terrorist groups.

It is, of course, the very presence of those seasoned Islamic terrorist groups that has held the West back from full support of the opposition and the rebel militias, for fear of such armaments to match the more advanced and powerful weaponry of the regime's military, ending up in the possession of al-Qaeda-aligned terrorist groups. Besides which, it is well enough recognized that Al-Nusra and other committed terror group of a Salafist flavour have every intention of making Syria over into a Sharia-led theocracy.

And here's the stunner; Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and Turkey among others have the funding in spades to provide the necessary arms to the rebels. Moreover their brand of Islam is as fundamentally fanatic as that exercised by Al Nusra. Wahhabist Islam has been spread by Saudi Arabia world-wide through the funding of madrassas and Islamic Centres focusing on fundamentalist Islam, a 'pure' Islam of antiquity and conquest. It is the conquest portion leading to the glorification of jihad that has motivated attacks against the West.

On the other hand, while Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States exemplify in their majority population status Sunni Islam, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah champion their own faith in Shia-Islam. They are equally ferociously Islamist in outlook, and much as the Sunni brand of terrorism impacts on the larger world, so too does the Shia version of extreme fanaticism. The civil war rending Syria is in fact a proxy war pitting Shia against Sunni; Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Sunni-majority countries against Iran, Syria, Lebanon (through Hezbollah) and Iraq as Shia-majority countries.

This is all overlaid with Russia and China, both ultra-world-power-aspiring status-seekers hoping to unseat the sole-world-power status of the United States. The United States has taken an uncharacteristic back seat on world affairs under the administration of President Barack Obama, while both Russia and China have become increasingly more supportive of any regime not finding favour with the West, and determined to update their conventional and nuclear arsenals in preparation for the possibility of any measure of threatening stand-off with the U.S.

This conflict in Syria is also representative of the growing isolation and suspicion evidenced between Russia and the United States. The irony is that neither of these countries holds any brief for the growing movement in the Muslim world to the political nazification of fundamentalist Islam in its fascist mentality of totalitarianism and militarism. Yet they find themselves at opposing, polarized positions with respect to the manifestations and aspirations of the two major Islamic sects.