Dec 11, 2013

ALEPPO, Syria — The bombshell that Gen. Salim Idriss of the Free Syrian Army (FSA)'s Supreme Military Command dropped last week, that he would be willing to join forces with the regime against al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in Syria, came without too much scrutiny, especially when he subsequently tried to backtrack and sugarcoat his statement. But for the observant, the subtle message was all too clear: The “moderate” Western-backed FSA rebels in Syria are on their last legs, pushed to the limit and desperate. They are making their last stand, here and now.

That this statement came out of desperation, from an organization that swore it would never deal with President Bashar al-Assad and that its only stated goal was to topple him from power, speaks volumes about the machinations, intricacies and subterfuges of the Syrian conflict, now nearing its third year and drawing ever deeper into a chaotic and messy quagmire.

On the face of it, Idriss’ moderate rebels have had crushing military setback after setback, being no match for the regime’s superior fire power and usurped on their own turf by better financed and organized jihadist Islamist rebels, who maintain a totally conflicting agenda and ideology. This position between the hammer and the anvil might have proven the last straw, as Idriss’ men threw in their lot with that of the other hapless opposition organization, the Syrian National Coalition, whose leader Ahmad al-Jarba also triumphantly announced that they were going into the fray after being provided with “assurances” by global powers.

This has much to do with the Geneva II conference, set for Jan. 22, which promises to be a veritable who’s who of top players on the Syrian pitch, with each side fielding their best team in the hopes of outmaneuvering and scoring as many points as possible against the other, while gaining as many concessions as can be achieved in the time allotted.

The fact that some sides aren’t playing ball — or at least not by the agreed-upon rules, most notably the Saudis, who have opted to create their very own “Islamic Front” team — throws a spanner into the works. This new Saudi-backed Islamic Front is a fusion of Salafist jihadist Islamist groups, not as extreme in Ideology as al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) or Jabhat al-Nusra, but nevertheless by no means mainstream like the FSA. It openly calls for Islamic Sharia rule instead of secular democracy, and was even implicated in sectarian war crimes like the Latakia province incidents documented by Human Rights Watch.