Syrian rebels are gunning for Damascus. Turkey may like the prospect

 

Syrian rebel advance. Source: Reddit

By James M. Dorsey

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Syrian rebels know what they want. Having captured two of Syria’s four largest cities, Aleppo and Hamas the insurgents are gunning for Homs, the country’s third largest urban center, and then the capital Damascus.

The rebels barely announced their capture of Hama, Syria’s fourth largest city, when video emerged of a long line of rebel military vehicles heading toward Homs, 45 kilometres further south on the M5 highway that stretches from Syria’s border with Turkey to the border with Jordan and connects the country’s foremost urban centers.

The rebels are already eying Damascus. Syrian state media reported the downing on Thursday of two “enemy” drones above the capital.

Syria’s M5 highway

The closer the rebels get to Damascus, the harder the going is likely to get, particularly with President Bashar al-Assad’s Iranian and Russian backers unlikely to let Syria go without a fight.

In televised remarks, Defense Minister General Ali Mahmoud Abbas insisted Syrian troops “redeployed” to the outskirts of Hama ”in a “temporary tactical measure.”

The minister alleged that the rebels had used artificial intelligence to create “fabricated” news to “fake” the capture of Hama and undermine the military’s morale.

Syrian Minister of Defense, General Ali Mahmoud Abbas says troops in Hama “redeployed.” Credit: Visegrad

For policymakers in Tehran and Moscow the question is whether Mr. Al-Assad’s forces have the stomach for a fight. The loss of Aleppo and Hama in little more than a week has to make them wonder.

The calculation for policymakers in Ankara, the Turkish capital, is very different. Senior Turkish officials have been testing the waters in talks with their Iranian and Russian counterparts as well as in contacts with US President-elect Donald J. Trump’s entourage on how far the rebels, who maintain close ties to Turkey, can go without upsetting Turkish apple carts in Washington, Moscow, and Tehran.

So far, the rebels have advanced further than many would have expected.

“The real question is does (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan want to take over Damascus… This is a legacy issue for him as a leader of the Islamic world. I think he wants to go to Damascus, he wants his rebels to go to Damascus, to have a friendly Syria that would be an Islamist-run Syria, and more than that be a real leader in the Midde East… He would like to come out with Syria firmly in the Turkish camp,” said Syria scholar Joshua Landis.

Moreover, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees the rebel offensive as a way of convincing US President-elect Donald J. Trump that Turkey is the obvious buffer capable of limiting Iranian and Russian influence in the Middle East.

“The target is Damascus. I would say we hope for this advance to continue without any issues,” Mr. Erdogan said on Friday in his most explicit support to date of the rebel offensive.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the largest and best armed Syrian rebel group with some 40,000 fighters, headed by Ahmed Hussein al-Shar'a, better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, a 41-year-old former Al Qaeda and Islamic State operative with a $10 million US bounty on his head, is prepared to be Mr. Erdogan’s ‘friendly Islamist.”

The Islamic State has labelled Hayat Tahrir and Mr. Al-Jolani apostates. The group described the rebel offensive as a proxy war in which Turkey seeks to annex parts of northern Syria and force Mr. Al-Assad to normalize relations with Turkey on Turkish terms.

Mr. Al-Jolani’s recent battlefield successes crown his efforts in recent years to shed Hayat Tahrir’s jihadist antecedents and win hearts and minds by focusing on the delivery of public goods and services while upholding conservative religious precepts.

In recent years, Mr. Al-Jolani has turned Idlib, Hayat Tahrir’s base in northern Syria and historically the country’s poorest province, into its fastest-growing region, despite scars of frequent Syrian and Russian air attacks.

In doing so, Hayat Tahrir lives up to Mr. Erdogan’s profile of a suitable replacement of Mr. Al-Assad’s regime.

“Every brick built in the liberated areas advances us hundreds of kilometres towards our fundamental goal, which is the liberation of Damascus—Inshallah (God willing),” Mr. Al-Jolani said in a speech earlier this year.

Al-Badawi Mall in Sarmada, Idlib. Credit: Aymenn’s Monstrous Publications

In that spirit, Idlib today boasts luxury shopping malls, upmarket housing estates, a university with 18,000 gender-segregated students, two zoos, a refurbished soccer stadium, and 24-hour electricity, more than Damascus can claim.

“The rebels put on a new face for themselves… They… (are) saying they have changed their objectives… They are sending out messages to the Christians of Aleppo and the Christians of Syria not to side with Assad, that…they’re future will be assured under this new leadership… They’re working very hard to try and divide Assad’s camp and separate some of these minority communities from the Alawites, the main backers of Bashar al-Assad,” Mr. Landis said.

Christians and other minorities supported Mr. Al-Assad, a member of the minority Shiite Muslim Alawite sect, during the civil war because they feared the predominantly Sunni Muslim Islamist and jihadist rebels would treat them as infidels.

With the rebels sweeping down the M5 highway, many fear that Hayat Tahrir may emulate the Taliban in Afghanistan by introducing a repressive ultra-conservative Muslim regime that brutally imposes its misogynist vision but has no ambition of exporting it as part of a jihad.

Mehdi Hasan

“You’ll have women oppressed, you’ll have Christians persecuted, you’ll have Shiites, minority Muslim groups, targeted,” warned journalist Mehdi Hasan.

Mr. Al-Jolani sought this week to counter those fears when he visited Aleppo’s 13^th century Citadel, waving to supporters from an open-top car.

Mr. Al-Jolani has long insisted that his group has severed its ties to the jihadists, saying its form of Islamic rule would not be “according to the standards of IS (Islamic State) or even Saudi Arabia.”

Bishop Hanna Jallouf. Credit: Middle East Eye

In a series of statements this week, Mr. Al-Jolani called on his fighters to "respect civilians" in Aleppo, a city of  two million, including some 30,000 Christians. “Diversity is a strength,” Mr. Al-Jolani said.

“We were reassured by the revolutionaries that all our rights will remain as they are,” said Bishop for the Latin-rite Catholics in Aleppo, Hanna Jallouf.

Furthermore, Mr. Al-Jolani urged his fighters to refrain from violence against alleged supporters of the Assad regime saying, “I beg you that this victory will be without revenge and merciful.”

 

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leader Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani counsels fighters against revenge. Credit: @@OzKaterji

So far, there have been no credible reports of acts of violence in Aleppo and Hama.

Even so, a man tells prisoners sitting on the ground with their hands tied behind them in a video on social media, “We will heal the hearts of the believers by cutting off your heads, you swine.”

Similarly, Mr. Al-Jolani’s track record in turning his stronghold, Idlib, into an economic success story didn’t stop thousands of protesters from taking to the streets earlier this year and shouting ‘Down with Jolani’ instead of ‘Down with Assad.’

Mr. Al-Jolani’s brutal crackdown on thousands of critics, obsessive fear of conspiracies, and the high taxes and custom duties his regime imposes sparked the protests.

More to the point, the protests suggested that a significant number of Sunni Muslims are wary of Hayat Tahrir’s version of Islamic rule, even though many see the Islamists as the only viable alternative to the Assad regime.

Anti-Jolani protests in Idlib. Source: Reddit

“The Sunni Arabs make up seventy per cent of the Syrian population. Not all, but many of them are fed up with this regime. They are fed up with minorities ruling Syria. They’re fed up with a secular government. They want an Islamist government. They want a much larger degree of Sharia law. That’s what’s at stake,” Mr. Landis said.

To Hayat Tahrir’s credit, the group created a complaints committee in response to the protests, declared a general amnesty for detainees who had not violated the law, and cancelled residential building fees.

Mr. Al-Jolani’s notion of governance, involving the emphasis on delivering public goods and services and respect for minority rights will be put to a litmus test in Aleppo, Hamas, potentially Homs.

In Aleppo, Hayat Tahrir wasted no time in drawing a contrast with areas controlled by Mr. Al-Assad.

Rebels distribute bread in Aleppo. Credit: @EastVoiceSpeaks

Immediately after capturing the city, the group announced phone numbers for locals to enquire about administrative services, started reconnecting water and electricity services, revived garbage collection, provided fuel to bakeries, delivered bread to thousands, and offered assistance to foreigners wanting to leave the city.

In addition, Hayat Tahrir quickly began withdrawing its fighters from Aleppo and handing over control to the police and civilian administrators.

“This is very promising. Syrian rebels have learned many lessons over the years,” tweeted Omer Ozkizilcik, a Turkey-based Syria analyst.

Indeed, the contrast with government-controlled areas could not have been starker.

Mr. Al-Assad “promised his people that there would be after the civil war some kind of peace dividend.  There has been no peace dividend. Electricity has not come back. There are no jobs. The economy continues to contract,” Mr. Landis said.

With an exchange rate of 1.5 million Syrian pounds to the dollar, journalist Rasha Elass quipped that on a recent trip to Damascus inflation was “so high that I found myself having to help relatives not so much to carry groceries…but (to) carry the heavy bags of cash required for them to run their daily lives.”

That may give Mr. Al-Jolani a leg up but by no means guarantees smooth sailing.

“Jolani and his forces remain, at heart, an authoritarian armed group. If they are to win support among distrustful locals—and grudging acceptance from the watching West—they will have to make sure that the plethora of bureaucratic initiatives launched in recent days are more than just a PR operation,” said Aaron Y. Zelin, the author of a study of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.