Who is Backing the Syrian Rebels?

The world is plunging into an extraordinary period of widespread political instability at incredible speed. Ukraine, France, South Korea, Lebanon/Gaza, plenty of turmoil in Africa and S America, and let's not forget the bonkers leader of the free world about to reappear in the White House. No-one is betting he's got a clue how to calm seismic changes from occurring - he couldn't even stop his own Capitol from being invaded by extremists. Indeed he encouraged it. Nor is anyone going to be surprised if he just adopts the pose of two of the three wise (?) monkeys covering his eyes and his ears, but continuing to spout divisive rhetoric from his uncovered and now legally protected mouth. "Not our problem"... 

The USA does not occupy the planet in isolation, even if it's physical borders are unlikely to ever be threatened by an invading army other than desperate people seeking a safer life. Perhaps Trump should read the inscription on his Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door". However, American digital interests do not have land borders, and intercontinental ballistic missiles have got faster and sneakier. If Trump does want to pull out of world affairs, he'll soon regret turning his back on them.

We woke up this morning to news that a group called HTS (with origins from both IS and Al Qaeda, but now an amalgamation of armed groups defined by who they're not being supported by in Syria - especially Iran and Russia - have swarmed into Damascus after taking Aleppo and Homs (and they do seem to have extraordinary numbers - no doubt boosted dramatically by scared Syrian soldiers throwing away their uniforms). But who is funding and supplying these chaps? And who, as in state actors, needs Assad out of the way?

I'm betting, ironically, it's Israel in partnership with Turkey and Saudi. The Jewish state supporting the Islamic State as the lesser of all other evils?! Maybe they also provided HTS with bleepers and walkie-talkies just in case.

First of all, who is it not backing the rebels? The UK/Europe and USA would never risk the optics of supporting the same mob behind 9/11. But then again, they don't want Iran and Russia to control Syria - especially since the Russian invasion of Ukraine has become a threat to Europe. They also tacitly support the Kurds (some of whom helped them defeat Saddam Hussain twenty years ago) but who are at war with Turkey. However, Turkey is part of NATO and in alliance with Russia and Iran to stop the PKK northern Kurds ceding territory in South East Turkey, while the Peshmerga, who are Sunnis, so not in bed with Iran and therefore tolerated by the West, are fighting for Kurdish independence in Northern Syria and Northern Iraq. Turkey is no longer comfortable being in bed with Russia or Iran. It also has 3 million Syrian refugees to house and feed, and who will only return to what's left of their homes when Assad and his cronies have gone - and as long as the next cronies to run the show are prepared to safeguard basic human rights - something Al Qaeda and IS aren't famed for.

Which brings us to the Sunni/Shia layer of affiliation. 

HTS are Sunni. Basically, in the Middle East, Sunnis are led by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (and therefore also the Taliban in Afghanistan). The Shia are led by Iran. It's a deadly attrition between these two sects -  based, as I understand it, on who they believe succeeded Mohammed as the leader of Islam. I'm sure there must be more to it than that to explain 1,400 years of deadly division, but apparently this difference is worth killing each other for. So one might assume that the rebels are a proxy for Saudi and Turkey who are also on a mission to woo the West and, in time, once things have settled down, make peace with Israel alongside other middle-east countries like UAE, Jordan and Egypt. It's a business thing.

Both Israel and Saudi have divergent but vested interests in preventing Iran (and Russia) from arming Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen. And the West wants Russia out of the Mediterranean - they have an air base in Hmeimim and a naval base in Tartus, both of which, we might assume, are effectively under HTS control or at least under pressure to control, now that supply routes to both those bases will no longer be protected by Syrian troops. Surely Russia will be forced to abandon them quickly. The last thing Russia wants right now is another war.

Despite helping HTS to keep Iran and Hezbollah out of the game, the Israelis won't trust them to play nice. So while the Syrian military were otherwise distracted (hiding and pretending not to have been brutal thugs for decades), Israel launched airstrikes against stored Syrian weaponry like nasty chemicals and toys that make big bangs to ensure they can't be used against them in the future, by anyone - no doubt their new chums HTS told them where to find them.

But the West cannot openly engage with a group(s) they were recently bombing (in a weird collaboration with Russia and Iran... "if you don't shoot at me while I'm bombing naughty people in Syria, I won't shoot at you."). Hence their tacit support for their proxies in the region - Israel and Saudi - who respectively need to make sure that Lebanon and Yemen remain separated from Iran.

So if you think Syria is now ready to start building on a foundation of peace and tranquillity, you've not looked at a map of who controls which bit of Syria. IS/Qaeda seem to still hold a lot of territory in the East, and several flavours of Kurds hold the North. Hezbollah also hold sway next to Lebanon and there are no doubt plenty of smaller groups hoping to have a say in the future of the country, especially the Alawites - Assad's mob - who won't disarm willingly while their boss is hiding in Moscow, leaving the rest of them to face retribution for all the brutality and horrors perpetrated against Syrians over the decades he and his dad reigned.

What a complicated world. How relaxed are you in believing that Donald Trump has a plan? Maybe his confusion or simplified way of dealing with things that are beyond his comprehension means he won't stoke any fires as his predecessors did in Iraq and Libya.

But what will become of Syria now that it has its own version of mullah-led Taliban in control. Very early signs, if you trust anything they say, are that they will be West leaning and therefore restore some sort of democracy - not that democracies have a promising history in that part of the world. Hopefully they'll be supportive of basic human rights for everyone irrespective of tribe, gender and belief... but their record in such things doesn't fill me with confidence. 

And even if they do and say what we might judge to be 'the right things', who in their right mind would invest in their country? Although bribery and corruption will no doubt ultimately introduce opportunities for outsiders to restore parts of their economy, as long as they can get enough food out of the countryside, clean water to drink and electricity into homes, factories and public institutions, they stand a chance of rebuilding a viable state - unlike other examples of start-again countries like Libya and Iraq. Both saw exactly the same scenes of toppled statues being smashed by jubilant crowds just as we've witnessed in Damascus this week. Both are today failed states controlled by armed gangs previously referred to as terrorists by the incumbent regimes, and freedom fighters by the world's press.  

Perhaps, like Trump, we too ought to ignore labels and history we don't understand, and simply offer whoever emerges in control, a supportive hand... in the hope they won't revert to form and cut it off. Run for cover when you start seeing bearded mullahs holding the tiller.