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| Demonstration in Aleppo, Syria |
I have recently written two articles, The Coming Battle for Damascus, and a follow-on piece, The Coming Battle for Damascus - Addendum. There will be a Battle for Damascus, and I predict when it is all over, the Syrian people will have overthrown the dictatorial party that has ruled the country for five decades. That is a good thing, but that victory will lead to the second battle for Syria, the "Battle after Damascus."
In the beginning of the Syrian revolution, which has just entered its third year, the various grass-roots opposition groups united under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The FSA was a loose amalgam of local groups across the country. It was not long before military officers who had defected to the FSA, bringing with them military organizational skills, began to coordinate the disparate operations and begin to bring a quasi-military structure to the group, forming battalions, then brigades. Just this last week, we saw the creation of the FSA's First Infantry Division in the Damascus Countryside governorate.
Not long after the creation of the FSA, foreign fighters began to join the fight, and some elements of the loosely organized FSA began to appear more Islamist. Watching the hours of videos posted to sites like YouTube and LiveLeak, I noticed the clips showed increasing instances of Islamist chants and the appearance of the black Islamist flag normally associated with al-Qa'idah and its affiliates.
It came as no surprise when the Jabhat al-Nusra (Victory Front) declared its affiliation with al-Qaidah, followed by the joint declaration of the Front and the Islamic State of Iraq (also known as al-Qa'idah in Iraq) that they had formed a joint organization called The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
Why has the FSA decided to cooperate with the Islamists? Simple - they offered capable assistance and support while the West, including the United States, sat on the sidelines, or offered "non-lethal" aid. I watch hours of Syrian opposition videos everyday - the term ghayr qatali (non-lethal) has become a joke among the Syrian fighters.
Do the more secular Syrians who make up the bulk of the FSA want an Islamic state in Syria after the fall of the Bashad al-Asad regime? Probably not, but right now is not the time for that battle. The secularists and Islamists are locked into an uneasy alliance based on a common enemy - they have decided that they will cooperate for now, knowing full well that there will be a major ideological clash in the future. There will be a fight over the future structure of the follow-on government of Syria. That battle will follow the coming battle for Damascus - the future of Syria will be decided in the streets of Damascus.
The FSA is aware that they may have mortgaged a piece of their future to the Islamists. Many of their supporters are not happy about it and have expressed their displeasure with the FSA leadership. The Christians - Arab, Assyrian and Armenian - are wary of supporting the FSA, but many have thrown in with the FSA. Most of the Kurds have reluctantly gone along as well.
However, there are secularists who are taking a hard line against the Islamists. The picture above of a group of women holding a sign the northern city of Aleppo illustrates the point. For my fellow Arabic linguists, the language is a bit awkward - it is a poem and it must rhyme.
The sign reads:
"Oh, what a pity for the Al-Qa'idah [men]
The [FSA] men are in jail and the Muslim women are free
And to trample their dignity would make them (the al-Qa'idah) despicable."
There is no illusion among the secularists that there is not another fight ahead of them. It too will not be an easy struggle.
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