Feb 20, 2014

A four-month study of residents of Aleppo organized by the mapping firm First Mile Geo and Caerus Associates, a company founded by David Kilcullen, an Australian counter-insurgency expert and former aide to retired Gen. David Petraeus, suggests that international mediators are ignoring changing dynamics in Syria that have discredited both the Damascus government and, increasingly, the externally-based Syrian National Coalition.

The spreading catastrophe of the Syrian civil war has alienated most Syrians and indeed a plurality of 40% of the 561 Aleppo residents surveyed from September through January tend to believe that “no one” represents the Syrian people, according to the study.

A surprise, according to Nate Rosenblatt of Caerus, was the low degree of support enjoyed by the Syrian government even in the regime-controlled western portion of the city. Between 20-40% of residents in those neighborhoods, many of them heavily Christian, described the regime of Bashar al-Assad as the “greatest threat to Syria,” Rosenblatt said. Citywide, the government had the support of only about 12% of the population while the externally based Syrian National Coalition was backed by less than 2%. These Syrians, with less than 15 percent support in Aleppo, participated in the recent failed peace talks in Geneva. So-called Islamic brigades, including Jabhat al-Nusra, had about 29% support, with other Syrian-led forces next at about 21%.

Kilcullen said that Jabhat al-Nusra, unlike the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), was borrowing tactics from organizations such as Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah by providing social services as well as protection to those under its control.

“If al-Qaeda and Hezbollah had fallen in love and gotten it on, their love child would be Jabhat al-Nusra,” Kilcullen said. The group is escorting children to school and making deals with the Syrian regime to bring in supplies, not targeting opponents and “sawing off their heads on television” like ISIS is wont to do, he said.