While the peace talks begin to build a peaceful future for Syria, in the governorates near the border with Turkey, confusion reigns. The rebel Islamist front, formed by a galaxy of armed groups, has in fact been fragmented, generating an internal war between rival groups.
We see well with order.
So far, the only friction between jihadists operating in Syria was that between the Islamic State and the fundamentalist militiamen operating in the north who, although with different acronyms, responded to the single cartel of Jaish al Fateh, the infamous Army of Conquest, constituted and armed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. In the city of Aleppo an alliance aid was provided by Fatah Halab (Conquest of Aleppo) who shared the battle against Assad's troops with the cartel. For months there has been a situation that is nothing short of tangled and at times paradoxical: Islamist rebels, Kurds, Turks and Syrian armed forces were fighting against ISIS; the jihadists, however, mainly continued to fight the Syrian army and the Kurds, even if the alliance between the latter was limited to the Aleppo sector; the Turks engaged against ISIS actually operated against the Kurds, who in turn broke with government forces in the northeastern regions; the government forces engaged against rebels and ISIS, kept the frost with the Turks and the Kurds, both active in Syria against the official will of Damascus.
With the Syrian reconquest of Aleppo, the single Islamist front has begun to creak: the common goal, that is to resist the government, has failed, the cracks have come to light.
It was actually the intervention of Turkey with the operation Shield of the Euphrates to definitively break the balance on the field. It all starts in the summer of 2016. The massive offensive of Ankara in Syria, officially turned against ISIS (actually aimed at downsizing the Kurds), has served to Erdogan to present himself at the negotiating table as a protagonist. The price to pay was to cut the bridges with that part of the Islamist militias not willing to dialogue and not directly connected to the Turkish interests in the region.
The most important consequence has materialized in recent days: the Salafi Islamist group Jabhat Fateh Al Sham (the former filoturchi of Al Nusra, Syrian branch of Al Qaeda), strong at least 15.000 militia, launched a military offensive in style against Ahrar al Sham, another Salafi group financed by Saudi Arabia but closely linked to the Muslim brotherhood and then to Erdogan's Turkey. Some factions of the Free Syrian Army, also en route with Jabaht Fateh al Sham. In this regard it should be remembered that the Free Syrian ArmyWidely extolled over the years, as a shelter for Assad's deserters, it ended up being a Turkish shoulder in the offensive against ISIS, and more generally in penetration into northern Syria.
Only a few days ago it had been announced by them Jabaht Fateh the expulsion of a jihadist branch linked to Al Qaeda (Jund al Aqsa) for dissent linked to internal supremacy.
In the coming weeks we expect military news and a further deterioration of relations between rebel Islamic factions. Everything is linked to an ineluctable political development: not all the subjects who have operated more or less freely in Syria, will be able to be part of its future. Without the blessing of Turkey, in negotiations with Russia and indirectly with Iran, for many there will be no more space.
(photo: web /Türk Kara Kuvvetleri)
