Whither/Wither Syria

"We are currently investigating events that took place over the weekend. While that investigation is under way, we will not be making any deliveries of equipment to the Supreme Military Council."
"We intend to resume support as soon as we and the SMC are satisfied the conditions on the ground allow the SMC to take safe delivery of equipment provided."
British Foreign Office statement

At the brink: A devastated area demonstrates the destruction in the Salaheddin district of Aleppo    Source: Achilleas Zavallis/AFP/ Getty Images

The inevitable is the inevitable. A dreaded event come to pass, with the full knowledge that sooner or later it is destined to do just that. It is something that has happened time and again in the past. And there really is no way in the chaos of historical conflict in the making to prevent it. Whichever militia is in the ascendance will avail itself of whatever arms and equipment happen to be available when they successfully roust their opponents.

Syria represents a crowded geography of competing Sunni Muslim militias, many of which have little in common but the overwhelming intent to defeat the forces of the Shia-Alawite regime of Bashar al Assad. For his part the butcher of his civilian population has the estimable battle techniques and strategic alliance of Shia Hezbollah and the Iranian Republican Guard Corps. The division of the country will be ultimately inevitable.

As Syria has been hollowed out through the desperate migration of its Sunni civilian population anxious to escape with their lives, and leaving behind whatever made their lives as Syrians meaningful, an ongoing influx of militias arriving from all points of the Islamist compass has arrived to further complicate the chaos-filled situation of those who should be allies finding themselves actual enemies.

Non-Islamist Syrian rebels have no wish to see their country become Shariah-imposed, a bastion for the expansionist plans of dedicated jihadists intent on completing a sacred mission of achieving a pure Islamist geographic spread, with themselves as willing martyrs. It is the Sunni martyrs spurred on by Salafist and Wahhabist purity, meeting in deadly conflict with the Shia martyrs dedicated to their own pure ideology.

So temporarily and perhaps even permanently, given the manner in which the battlefield has been extended and overtaken by Sunni jihadist militias supported by Saudi Arabia, Britain and the United States will now wait to determine the permanence of the Islamist presence in Syria. Russia has skilfully managed to negotiate the U.S. into a further confusion of partial support for the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah triangle; a true confliction of purpose.

The Islamic Front combining several brigades who, while including non-Al-Qaeda groups are looking to achieve a hard-line Sharia state, rejected allegiance to the opposition Supreme National Council as well as refusing to take part in peace talks scheduled to take place next month in Geneva, through both British and U.S. envoys hoped to persuade them otherwise.

Their seizure of FSA headquarters close by the Bab al-Hawa crossing with Turkey, leading to their possession of body armour, communications equipment, armoured vehicles and other non-lethal goods, has stamped finish to the possibility of cooperation with Western interests and its absolute rejection of the Free Syrian Army and its Supreme Military Council.

Furthermore the abduction and execution of two FSA commanders by one of the Al-Qaeda factions, the Islamic State of Iraq & Al-Shams near the border town of Azaaz is delivering another stark message of non-Islamist rebel defeat. The recent abduction of one of Syria's leading  secular activists among the first to raise opposition to President Al-Assad along with her husband, mitigates against hope of any accommodation between the original rebel groups and their Islamist competitors.

Leading to the very real possibility of Syria becoming partitioned into possibly three areas; controlled by the current regime in the south, the Sunni Islamists in the north, who continue their commitment to achieving a Caliphate, and the Syrian Kurds in the north-east. What the fate of the millions of displaced Syrian civilians will eventually be as they trudge back home to Syria under the control of three disparate governing forces will be questionable.