The Al Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham are in two minds about a deal which leaves one rival, the Assad regime, in power but may eliminate another rival, the Islamic State
Abu Muhammad al-Golani is an Islamist fanatic, a head-chopper (although only in moderation), and the leader of the Al Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate that is classified by the United States as “terrorist”. He spent almost a decade killing American occupation troops and Shia civilians in Iraq as a loyal member of the Sunni extremist organisation that is now called Islamic State before going home to Syria in 2011. He was sent home to create a Syrian clone of what was then called ‘Islamic State in Iraq', on the orders of Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State and now the self-proclaimed Caliph of all Muslims. Golani named the Syrian branch the Al Nusra Front, and it did so well that he broke with Islamic State and went out on his own in 2013.
There was a three-month turf war between Islamic State and the Nusra Front in Syria in early 2014 that killed an estimated 3,000 jihadis. Islamic State won it and now controls most of eastern Syria (and all of western Iraq). Golani managed to hang on to northwestern Syria, where the Al Nusra Front and another extreme Islamist organisation, Ahrar al-Sham, now dominate a rebel alliance that also includes several smaller ‘moderate’ outfits.
So you would not expect Golani to favour a peace deal that left the brutal Assad regime, secular in form but Shia-dominated, in power in Damascus. And indeed he does not: In a rare interview recently, he condemned the peace deal being cooked up by the US and Russia as “unacceptable”. It was, he said, a plot to merge more moderate rebel fighters with Assad's forces in order to fight extremist groups like his own and Islamic State.
Golani was right to be suspicious, and yet he may go along with the deal in the end, because it isn't really a permanent peace settlement that is being discussed. It's actually just a ceasefire that will leave all the players in Syria in control of the territory they now hold — except for Islamic State, which they can then all concentrate on destroying.
You can’t admit that that’s what you are doing, of course, so you talk in terms of a peace settlement. That’s what Russian Foreign Minister Sergei lavrov and US Foreign Secretary John Kerry were doing in Moscow on Tuesday, and the result is that a United Nations Security Council resolution endorsing the Syrian peace process was passed on Friday.
The current round of ‘peace talks’ began in Vienna on 23 October, with no Syrians present, just Russia, the United States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. It subsequently expanded to include about 20 countries, and the organisers are now deciding which Syrians can attend the next round of talks, probably early in the new year.
On one side, obviously, will be the the representatives of the Assad regime. On the other side will be some of the leaders of the armed opposition, but not all of them. Islamic State won't be there, of course, and at the moment the Al Nusra Front says it won't be either. Since those are the two most powerful groups fighting the Assad regime, what's the point of talksIJ But Al the Nusra Front's close ally, Ahrar al-Sham, did show up at last week's meeting in Riyadh where decisions were being made on which groups could attend the peace talks. At one point it walked out — and then, after some thought, it added its signature to the joint declaration.
The Islamists of the Al Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham are clearly in two minds about a ceasefire (disguised as a peace agreement). On one hand, it would leave the Assad regime in power. On the other, it would give them time to consolidate their control over the territory they now hold, and maybe to eliminate their most dangerous rival, the Islamic State. So in the end, they may go along with the idea.