Seventeen months into the uprising against Assad, Syria's rebels are grateful for the support of Islamist fighters from around the region. They bring weapons, money, expertise and determination to the fight.
But some worry that when the battle against Assad is over they may discover their allies - including fighters from the Gulf, Libya, Eastern Europe or as far as the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area - have different aims than most Syrians.
"Our goal is to make a new future, not destroy everything," Abu Bakr said, sighing as he rattled his prayer beads. "As bloody as it is now, this stage is simple. We all have the same cause: topple the regime. When Bashar falls, we may find a new battlefront against our former allies."
Right now, for the rebels, al Qaeda is the enemy of their enemy. But they know that the common enemy will one day be gone. Then al Qaeda is just the enemy.
Strategypage writes about the need for outside help to prevent Syria from fragmenting and spilling over separatists problems to neighboring states:
From the beginning of the rebellion 17 months ago, regional "crumbling" and ethno-sectarian bloodbaths in the wake of the collapse of the Assad regime have been nightmares every responsible leader has sought to avoid. Preventing them requires political buy-in from all Syrian citizens, including Alawites. The Assads will eventually go. The Alawites will have to accept that. Gaining Alawite acceptance will require deploying an international security force inside Syria, to counter revenge attacks, Iranian subversion, and al-Qaeda trouble-making. The State Department needs to have its Syrian futurists focused on creating it.
The Alawites themselves are making it difficult to avoid revenge. Depending on what Assad decides to do to win or survive round one of the fighting in Syria, it may not be possible to restrain the desire for revenge against the Alawites.
But I thought Khadaffi's people did too much in that war to prevent a severe backlash, and it doesn't seem to have happened there--although the existence of so many militias means that might still happen.
But who moves in with perhaps hundreds of thousands of troops to keep Syria unified? The UN? Remember that the UN was chased out of Iraq early in the post-war phase by one big bomb attack on a UN building there. Al Qaeda is in Syria now and they could repeat that feat to get the UN to retreat from Syria. I just don't think the UN has the staying power to fight al Qaeda in Syria.
If we can even get past a Russian veto in the Security Council, I might add.
Everyone complains about the artificial states with borders that Europeans drew in Africa and the Middle East. But when they are threatened, nobody wants to think of abandoning them.
Mind you, I don't want Syria to break up and cause problems for neighboring states. But I don't have a lot of interest in committing US troops to that mission.
Would Turkey, Jordan, and even Iraq believe it is in their interests to occupy pieces of Syria under a UN banner to support a new rebel government until it can take charge of all of Syria?
I hope our State Department post-futurists are working on what we'd do with a balkanized Syria if the Unity War to maintain a single Syria fails.
How much effort to we expend trying to put Yugoslavia back together, after all?
