September 17, 2013 | Quote
Just How Extremist Are the Rebels in Syria?
Nearly half of the rebel forces battling to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are jihadist or hardline Islamists, a British defense consultancy has warned its private clients, thus contradicting claims by Obama administration officials that opposition ranks are predominantly moderate.
According to a study by IHS Jane’s for commercial clients, the rebels number around 100,000 fighters and are spread across more than 1,000 fragmented bands that are often at odds with each other. They are increasingly engaged in infighting over war spoils and the control of seized property, from oil wells to state bakeries, as they seek revenue.
Charles Lister, an insurgency expert with IHS Jane’s and author of the analysis, estimates that around 10,000 are jihadists fighting for al Qaeda affiliates (the Islamic State of Iraq and the smaller Jabhat al-Nusra), while another 30,000 to 35,000 are hardline Islamists who have less of a global jihad vision, but share a focus on establishing an Islamic state to replace Assad. Another 30,000 or so are more moderate Muslim Brotherhood Islamists.
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While acknowledging that Lister’s overall assessment is a “good-faith effort to gain an understanding of a murky battlefield” and is based on an increasing rarity of on-the-ground research in Syria, Jonathan Schanzer, a Middle East scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, D.C.–based think tank, worries about the distinctions being employed between militants who follow radical ideologies. He draws little comfort from the idea that most, if they were able to choose, wouldn’t align with the jihadists.
“How does one really differentiate between jihadists, Salafist Islamists, and many of the Muslim Brotherhood–aligned rebels?” he asks. “In the end my takeaway is that most of the rebels fighting in Syria are fighting in the name of religion, and that augurs badly for what happens after Assad in terms of establishing a stable, democratic Syria.”