Beirut: In the Syrian city of Raqqa on the banks of the Euphrates River, Isil militants are busy building a capital fit for their followers.
Human rights observers say they have stoned women to death for adultery, while residents report that religious textbooks have been imported for schools and the market flooded with black cloaks for girls as young as 6. Even as it wages war on multiple fronts, the group has had time to focus on the details, recruit thousands into its forces and celebrate victories by parading the heads of its enemies.
It’s a reflection of how entrenched the group has become in Syria and how difficult it will be to uproot it from the country where it was able to assemble and train enough forces to push into Iraq in June. US air strikes alone won’t do it and the international community doesn’t have any other options to fall back on, Kamran Bokhari, vice-president for the Middle East at Texas-based consulting firm Stratfor, said from Toronto.
“Who’s the other force that’s going to fight the Islamic State [isil] on the ground?” said Bokhari. “Its presence in Iraq is based on its strategic depth in Syria and to truly eliminate the threat from Iraq you have to weaken it in Syria.”
Al Assad offered cooperation
Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s government, which has said that its three-year civil war has been against foreign- backed terrorists rather than freedom-seeking protesters, offered to cooperate in the fight against the extremists.
Foreign Minister Walid Mua’alem said on August 25 any counter-terrorism effort must be done in coordination with the Syrian government, a demand that White House press secretary Josh Earnest has dismissed.
French President Francois Hollande said Al Assad can’t be an ally in the battle against terror. Al Assad is an “objective ally” of the Isil, Hollande told French ambassadors in Paris.
The US is aiming to tackle the Isil without helping the Al Assad regime, though that may prove difficult, according to Michael Desch, professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame.
“This is a circle that can’t be squared,” Desch said by e-mail. “In both Saddam Hussain’s Iraq and now [Al] Assad’s Syria we tried to overthrow brutal dictators only to find that their replacements were even worse.” Isil “is far more of a threat than [Al] Assad and if attacking the former bolsters the latter, so be it,” he said.
Evolved from Al Qaida
The Isil, which evolved from Al Qaida in Iraq, appeared in Syria two years after the anti-Al Assad uprising began, emerging in April 2013 following its break from the Al Qaida- affiliated Al Nusra Front.
It made its first statement from Raqqa in May 2013 with the public execution of three civilians wrongly accused of being army officers. They were Alawites, the branch of Shiite sect that Al Assad belongs to.
Mohammad, a Raqqa resident who declined to give his full name because of fear of reprisals, said people are unhappy with the strict social codes imposed by the Isil.
Fighters get $400 a month
Women cannot leave home without a male guardian, shops have to close five times for prayer and people accused of theft have their hands cut off in public, he said. “People yearn for the pre-war days,” he said after arriving in Beirut. “But they’re too intimidated to speak out.”
With money from oil fields it controls in Syria and Iraq, it has managed to attract recruits. More than 6,300 mostly Syrian fighters joined the group in July, according to the observatory, which has been documenting the war through a network of activists. Syrian fighters get $400 a month, plus $50 for each child and $100 for each wife. Foreign fighters receive an additional $400 a month, it said.
Al Assad’s forces had engaged less with the group than other rebels partly because its brand of extremism fit the Syrian government’s narrative that terrorists are behind the insurgency against it and not activists seeking democracy.
That may change as the Isil digs in, said Austin Long, an assistant professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. The group may “push harder on the Syrian government” if it suffers military reversals across the border in Iraq, he said.
The next step
The next step for Isil will be to consolidate its gains and engage in activity that’s going to keep the other side off balance, such as anti-Shiite bombings in Iraq, said Bokhari, co-author of Political Islam in the Age of Democratisation published last year. It also will seek to exploit the differences among rebels fighting Al Assad’s forces, he said.
Raqqa, about 300km northeast of the capital, Damascus, became the first provincial capital to fall to the opposition in 2013. The isil captured most of the province from other rebel groups earlier this year. Last weekend, it completed its takeover of the province from the government when it seized the Tabqa military airport.
Bokhari said if Isil comes under US aerial attack, many of the more moderate rebels may not join a war against it that could potentially boost Al Assad’s regime by weakening one of its main enemies.
“From the rebel point of view they don’t want a fight that strengthens the regime,” said Bokhari. “So today even if they go and fight Isil, tomorrow they could have a hard time fighting the government.”
— Washington Post
