Holding back al-Qaeda
by Jonathan Spyer, February 23, http://www.meforum.org/3761/
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit this week to an IDF field hospital where wounded Syrians are receiving treatment served to showcase the Israeli humanitarian effort to respond to the crisis facing Syrian civilians caught up in the ongoing conflict. Recent reports suggest that the Israeli focus on events in southern Syria goes beyond purely humanitarian concerns.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits wounded Syrians at an IDF field hospital near the Syrian border. (Image source: Israel Government Press Office)
Increasing attention is being paid by Israeli planners to the buildup of extreme Sunni Islamist forces close to the border with the Golan Heights. There are indications that Israel has already begun to implement a strategy intended to keep the jihadis from the border.
According to a report by prominent Israeli Middle East analyst Ehud Ya’ari published recently at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Israel is currently moving toward ‘assuming a modest role in the Syrian civil war.’
Ya’ari notes that the extent of Israel’s humanitarian operation inside Syria suggests that ‘a system of communications and frequent contacts have been established with the local rebel militias.’
The Israeli analyst reports that the background to such increased engagement is the loss by the Assad regime of control of most of the border area between southern Syria and the Golan Heights. Israeli contacts with the rebel militias in this area would serve to facilitate the latter acting as a de facto buffer against the jihadis.
This largely off-the-radar activity in the south forms part of a broader Israeli concern at the increasingly prominent role played by jihadi and Sunni Islamist elements in the Syrian rebellion.
An un-named senior IDF officer quoted in a recent article in Defense News noted that ‘Today, rebels control most of the area of the south Golan Heights…Among rebel forces, the moderates are increasingly exhausted while the radicals have become strengthened.’
He added that ‘For the moment, they are not fighting us, but we know their ideology. … It could be that, in the coming months, we could find ourselves dragged into confrontation with them.”
IDF Military Intelligence head Aviv Kochavi, meanwhile, in an address at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv on January 29 estimated that around 30,000 jihadi fighters were active in Syria. Ya’ari, meanwhile, estimated the strength of Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) as around 40,000 fighters.
These numbers are of particular interest in that they are considerably in excess of the estimates made by most analysts of Syria concerning the numbers of extreme jihadis present on the Syrian battlefield. While accurate estimates of combatant forces on the Syrian rebel side are notoriously hard to come by, the more usual estimate of the combined strength of al-Qaeda linked forces in Syria would be between 15-20,000.
This suggests that Israeli estimates may take a somewhat broader definition of what constitutes extreme salafi and al-Qaeda linked groups than those made by western analysts.
A third openly salafi force plays a prominent role mainly in northern Syria. This is the Ahrar al-Sham group, thought to number around 20,000 fighters. This group has no known links with the central leadership of al-Qaeda. Yet it adheres to an extreme salafi ideology. One of its leading members, Abu Khaled al-Suri, recently described himself as a member of al-Qaeda.
If it is indeed the case that Israeli analysts would include Ahrar al Sham and groups of this type under the rubric of potentially dangerous Sunni jihadi forces (and there are good reasons to do so), then this has interesting implications.
Ahrar al-Sham is a component part of the Islamic Front, which is the largest single rebel formation, numbering over 60,000 fighters, and which is the beneficiary of extensive aid from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. So if Jerusalem regards this force as on a par with more obviously al-Qaeda aligned groups, this is a significant point of contention between the two main anti-Iran countries in the region – Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Israel’s concerns regarding the Sunni jihadis are certainly not limited to the border area. The al-Qaeda linked cell whose capture was announced on January 22nd was apprehended while preparing to enter northern Syria via Turkey for training purposes.
It has also not escaped Israel’s attention that a de facto sovereign jihadi -controlled zone now exists in eastern Syria’s Raqqa province, stretching into western Anbar province in Iraq.
Such an enclave has never existed in the Levant before. The jihadis are busy fighting Assad and his Iranian backers now. But they are open in their desire to engage also against Israel.
While close attention should be paid to Israel’s concerns re the Sunni jihadis and the consequent relationship with the rebels in the south, there are also factors likely to militate against any broader Israeli intervention into the Syrian war.
Firstly, the Iran-led regional bloc remains by far the most potent and dangerous alliance challenging Israel at the present time. As Kohavi said in his address: ‘The new phenomenon of Global Jihad at our borders is disturbing, but we shouldn’t be confused. Our mortal enemy remains the ever-strengthening axis of evil formed by Hezbollah, Syria and the Iranian regime.’
This point, and the Iranian responsibility for events in Syria was underlined by Netanyahu in his remarks made at the field hospital. The Iran-led bloc includes paramilitary clients but is led by a powerful state with nuclear ambitions. There is no parallel structure to this on the Sunni jihadi side.
Secondly, unseen but unmistakable, the trauma of Israel’s long involvement in Lebanon remains written into the DNA of Israeli commanders and planners and of the Israeli system as a whole. There is a very deep aversion to anything that might look like interference in the internal processes of neighboring states – particularly where this could involve Israeli boots on the ground and hence loss of Israeli life.
This salient institutional memory will probably ensure that despite its very real concerns, Israel’s engagement against the Sunni jihadi threat in southern Syria will remain as far as possible invisible, and on a limited, deniable scale.
Yet this engagement is taking place. On a daily basis, a few kilometers north-east of Tiberias, Israeli forces are involved in the complex task of keeping al Qaeda at a safe distance from the Golan Heights and the northern Galilee.
Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
@ yamit82:
Well you have shot down yet another “hero”! That leaves only you and Charles Krauthammer left!,amd I have a intuition Charlie will fall next. Thank for the above comments they drive back to the chocolate box my only refuge
honeybee Said:
1- Bolton is a card carrying neocon.
2- His track record of being right in hind sight is mixed.
3- He represents most of the major military contractors and oil companies and the last thing they want is any reductions of American military procurements.
Whether he likes it or not agrees with it or not American policy today is Obama’s, so I don’t know how Obama can be subverting his own policy.
America spends today on her military more than the combined military spending of the rest of the world. With all that spending America lost in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. America has hundreds of overseas bases and installations costing hundreds of billions of dollars. Are they all needed? Most are survivors of the cold war against Russia. Does it make sense to spend billions on an aircraft carrier that a 10,000 dollar missile can sink?
When America left Iraq they left billions in vehicles and other hardware because it was cheaper to leave them than to ship them home. When conservative and not so conservatives voice concern over the American national debt nobody seems to connect the cost of maintaining such a wasteful inefficient and in most cases unnecessary military posture. The next wars will not resemble past wars and the needs of the military should reflect the present and the future not necessarily the past.
America can’t even identify who their enemy is today to justify the expenditure they are making. Why should America be speaking about Social Security reform and Medicare reform and ignore the military. China does not need to go to war against America they can bring her down economically. Russia’ economy is a shambles and they don’t have the money to either compete or fight the Americans. In ten years or so the Muslims will become a majority in Russia. You can’t have a modern economy based solely on selling gas and oil and weapons of so so quality. So why does America need such a massive and expensive military????
@ yamit82:
Scary Do ypu watch John Bolton on Fox News, he said Obama is subverting American foreign policy.
The IAF ‘scalpel’ and the epidemic of weapons transfers
Monday’s alleged IAF strike against Hezbollah-bound weapons is yet another stage in the deadly game playing out in the border regions to Israel’s north
ArnoldHarris Said:
Arnold Darlin,you disappoint me. I has visions of “Shaherazade” dancing through my head. We are being screwed by Govt. because we keep on bending over.
@ honeybee:
Honeybee, I was thinking mostly of geopolitical demography, not revenge, and certainly not lustful nights on the steppe-lands of Southwestern Russia.
On the other hand, we all are getting screwed more than enough by our current president and secretary of state. And not just by their feckless and foolish foreign policies.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
>
ArnoldHarris Said:
You mean our answer to our problems is to screw!!!!!!!! our enemies of course,Arnold what were you thinking.
Israel being dragged into the Syrian conflict may well be of far lesser international consequence than the upshot of the weekend overthrow of the elected Russian-oriented presidency of Ukraine, which is now a fait accompli. Russia, regardless of who rules that mighty empire, under any social, economic or political system, remains one of three leading powers.
An anti-Russian government in control of the entire Ukraine, always shall prove utterly intolerable to the Moscow Kremlin. The victory of mob rule in Kiev, with the instant impeachment of its elected president, who is the most prominent leader of the Russians who form the majority population in about one-half of Ukraine, and the threats to arrest him, are very likely to trigger collective action by the Russian population to break off the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine from that country and openly ask Moscow to re-incorporate their lands and cities back into the Russian Federation. Neither the EU, the UNO, NATO or the USA have the power to block or undo such a move, short of starting a nuclear war.
In the event of such an action, Israel, the Palestinians, Iran, South Korea, and just about everything else will be as forgotten as if they never had existed. Which is precisely what Israel needs right now and ought to take full advantage of, should likeliness in Kiev become certainty in Kharkov. (Forget about the Ukrainian signs spelling it “Kharkiv”. Nothing comes down quicker in nationalist revolutions than street signs and statues.)
On top of that, Russia supplies most of Europe’s natural gas; the Ukrainian economy is all but non-existant, and runs on 120-proof corruption; most of the major industrial and income-earning investment centers are located in the Russian-populated parts of the country; Russia has strategic bases in the Crimea which block off Western Ukraine from the Black Sea. And mobody but nobody in Europe is lining up to die for Ukraine and its frenzied mobs. There, as in Syria and Iran, Kerry’s and Obama’s blandishments and threats will come to nothing when the Kremlin calls their bluff.
Not for northing are Jews regarded as successful advantage-seekers. Justify that reputation by getting busy and doubling the Jewish population of Shomron and Yehuda every 01-12 years. Inside of 25 years, Shomron, Yehuda, Golan and annexed Jerusalem will have almost three million Jews. The best way to defeat our enemies is to make it impossible for them to carry out their Jew-hating schemes.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
To late,already there!!!! My Great-Aunt Annie always said”don’t mix in”, mixed!!!!!