In the Middle East and around the world, jihadist-jittery governments are increasingly buying into the argument that Bashar al-Assad & Co. have been pushing since the start of Syria’s civil war: A rebel victory will turn Syria into a haven for Islamic extremism and foment instability throughout the region.
What they fail to realize is that an Assad victory promises the same.
In Egypt, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s jihadist-undertoned rhetoric in support of the Syrian rebels was one of the red flags that helped convince Defense Minister Abdel Fatah al-Sisi and the rest of the secularist military that the Brotherhood-backed leader had to be removed last June.
Egypt has since taken a 180 degree turn in its approach to the Syrian conflict. In December, news broke that Egyptian traders have been helping the Assad regime evade international sanctions, providing a crucial lifeline to its war effort — likely under the watchful eye of Egyptian intelligence. The anti-Islamist fervor in post-Morsi Egypt also confronts the once-welcomed Syrian refugee population with arrest, deportation and harassment from both police and ordinary residents, spurring an exodus of thousands.
In addition to long-time members Russia and China, the Assad “counter-terrorism fan club” includes the Algerian government, which stems from the same secular-nationalist roots as the Assad regime and has refused to vote against it in the Arab League since the conflict began. Even Jordan, whose northern border has become a springboard for foreign support to the Syrian opposition, refuses to pull its ambassador from Damascus.
To be fair, Assad’s charge that the Syrian opposition is Islamist-dominated is no longer completely false, as it was at the start of the revolution. The most extreme breed of Sunni jihadists are now a major menace in opposition areas. Slightly more moderate (but still anti-Western) advocates of Sharia law are now the uncontested tip of the rebel spear, prompting the United States to roll back the (limited) military support it had (briefly) offered the rebels.
Yet consider Assad’s own long-standing ties with extremists and contributions to regional instability. Begin with the Sunni jihadists he allowed to stream into Iraq during the US occupation: These same groups have now formed the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (Syria), or ISIS, which prioritizes forcing Sharia law on areas it controls ahead of actually fighting the Assad regime.
Indeed, the notable absence of regime airstrikes in ISIS-held areas in northern Syria has led many to believe that the regime is intentionally enabling the group’s growth in order to isolate the moderate opposition and validate Assad’s horrific prophesy of Syria as an al Qaeda haven.
In fact, locals have so grown to despise the ISIS that moderate and even nearly-as-extreme Salafist rebels have turned against them, leading to interrebel clashes throughout northern Syria. Will the United States take note of this anti-al Qaeda turnaround?
Then, too, the regime now depends on a flood of foreign Shiite extremists. A recent report by the Meir Amit terrorism center in Israel suggests foreign Shiite jihadists in Syria now outnumber the foreign Sunni jihadists among the rebels. Sent by hardline clerics in Lebanon, Iraq and Iran, these fighters aren’t exactly volunteering to ensure that Syria becomes a liberal democracy; indeed, their fundamentalist and anti-Western propaganda aims to recruit for what they openly brand as a holy war. These Shiite extremists lead Assad’s attacks on rebel bastions, ahead of his beleaguered conventional military.
If the rebels are ever defeated, Iran and Hezbollah won’t simply pack up and leave Syria without asking Assad to return the favor. Mirroring the feared “al Qaeda haven” scenario, Syria will become a training ground and launching pad for Hezbollah and other extremists in their fighting across the region and in the West.
Indeed, the Assad regime has already risked war with Israel multiple times by following Iranian orders to transfer anti-aircraft missiles and other advanced weapons to Hezbollah, which of course is listed as a terrorist organization in both America and Europe.
Meanwhile, Lebanon teeters on the brink of civil war, the stage for a mafia-style intimidation campaign led by the Assad regime and Hezbollah. A brazen Dec. 27 bombing in Beirut killed moderate anti-Syrian Lebanese politician (and former ambassador to Washington) Mohammed Chatah, the third such attack blamed on Assad-regime agents.
For those who truly care about preserving stability in the Middle East, the time has come to stop letting a dictator dictate the rules of the game, and to start empowering Syria’s moderates while they still exist.
Daniel Nisman is the Middle East regional intelligence manager at Max Security Solutions, a geopolitical- and security-risk consulting firm.