Syria's deepening sectarian war bleeds across borders

Oren Dorell and Ahmed Kwider | USA TODAY

AMMAN, Jordan — The Syrian civil war is increasingly drawing in nations across the Middle East, a regionwide conflict that threatens to pit world powers against each other.

On Wednesday, the United Nations Human Rights Council pushed through a resolution to investigate the abuses of the Syrian regime, over the objections of the regime's ally Russia, who insisted the West was making matters worse.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry continued his travels in the region, trying to get all parties to agree to a peace conference in Geneva in the next few weeks. But councils representing the Syrian rebels again refused to join, demanding representatives of Bashar Assad's regime be banned.

This came in a week when Israel warned Russia it may use airstrikes to prevent Syria from activating sophisticated missile systems that Moscow says it is sending to Syria, home of Russia's only port on the Mediterranean. Early Thursday, Lebanese TV quoted Assad as saying the first shipment of Russian missiles has arrived in Syria. He made the comments in an exclusive interview, which was to air later in the day on Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar TV.

On Monday, the European Union lifted its embargo of sending arms to the rebels and could later decide to do so.

Meanwhile, a leading proponent of arming the rebels, U.S. Sen. John McCain, arrived this week in rebel-held territory in Syria on a surprise visit to offer his support.

In a war that is now clearly pitting the two main branches of the Islam — Sunni and Shiite Muslims — against one another, the dithering and differences between world powers is bringing about a desperate situation, according to experts.

"The war is spreading to Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, as we speak, and will only spread more. It's a regional sectarian war, where Turkey, the Gulf states and Iran, as well as the U.S., EU countries and Russia, other countries, are backing factions," says Andrew Parasiliti, a former foreign policy adviser to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and editor of Al-Monitor.com, a Middle East news and analysis website.

"The sooner regional peace can coalesce around diplomacy, the better. ... If this conference fails, the Sunni-Shia conflict will probably get worse."

CENTURIES OF CONFLICT

Whether the battle will be contained to Syria alone is in doubt now that Islam's two major strands have taken sides against one another, threatening to spark a wider war that is centuries in the making between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

"There is great fear over a massive sectarian war starting. If it does, the entire region will turn into a genocidal war, engulfing everyone," says Samir al-Ibrahim, 55, secretary-general of the Syrian Free Religious Scholars Association and a Sunni Muslim in Idlib, Syria.

Sunni Muslims who include the royal families of the Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms, have banded behind the rebels, who as Sunnis are the majority in Syria. The royal family of Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been funneling arms and cash to rebels, and Sunni Muslims who dominate al-Qaeda have dispatched fighters to the front.

Assad has appealed to the Shiites, who are helping him hang on to his regime. The Shiite theocracy of Iran has deployed officers and fighters from its Revolutionary Guards and the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hezbollah, which has fought two wars with Israel from its base in Lebanon, is pouring militants into Assad's forces.

Religious leaders from both Islamic branches in Sunni-dominated Egypt and Shiite-heavy Iraq have denounced each other for killing Muslims. Arab capitals have expressed fears that restive members of one sect or the other will erupt in the streets as they did in Bahrain during the Arab Spring of 2011.

Already, the fighting has bled across Syria's border with Lebanon, where Lebanese Alawites are fending off attacks from Sunni citizens of the same nation, leaving several people dead. Rockets have been fired back and forth between Turkey and Syria and Iraq.

Vali Nasr, dean of John Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, says the signs are there for a multination hot war and the Obama administration needs to act more forcefully to prevent it.

The Obama administration has resisted getting involved in the conflict "and has not seen this as vital to our national security interests," Nasr says. "That's becoming a more difficult position to maintain."

That's because multiple recent developments in Syria have made the two-year civil war a more immediate threat to the United States, its allies in the region, Europe and beyond, Nasr and other analysts say.

"The longer this conflict goes on the more chances it has of spilling over," he says.

SUNNI VS. SHIITE

The schism that gave birth to the Sunni and Shiite divide occurred in the seventh century soon after the death of Islam's prophet Mohammed.

Some Islamic leaders took the position that is was legitimate for Mohammed's successor to be chosen through consultation, and they selected the father of Mohammed's wife to be caliph, or leader of the Muslim world. Others believed Mohammed intended his cousin and son-in-law Ali, a blood relative, to be his rightful heir.

The disagreement led to war. Ali was killed as were his two sons. The two branches flourished as the Shiites, translated roughly as "the followers of Ali," and the Sunnis, "the people of the tradition of Mohammed and the consensus of the Ummah," or the Islamic world.

Over the centuries, there were many conflicts. The Sunnis achieved dominance in numbers, wealth and power. The Sunnis of the Ottoman Empire based in modern-day Turkey swept through the Arab world in the Middle East and controlled the caliphate for centuries until World War I.

The victorious allied powers divided up the empire into nations, turning power over to their favored tribes and leaders in newly created counties such as Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia -- but they also threw together Sunnis and Shiite communities and largely left Sunnis in positions of power.

Today, Sunnis are the majority in most Muslim countries, except in Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and Iran. Syrian leader Bashar Assad's Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

ASSAD 'MUST GO'

When Assad launched his attacks against the Syrian people, his Alawite-minority government was coming up against the Sunni majority. When his father, Hafez Assad, launched a similar slaughter against a Sunni uprising in the 1970s, the Arab world paid little notice.

The Arab Spring, which toppled dictators in several Arab world nations, gave rise to religiously affiliated parties that maintain direct relations with their brethren in other countries. And today, all eyes are on Syria.

President Obama said two years ago that Assad "must go." Yet the Obama administration's reliance on diplomacy without arming rebel fighters has helped put Russia, which for decades has been a minor player in the Middle East, in a position of expanding influence.

The United States has a history of tamping down conflicts in the Middle East before they become catastrophic. In the past two years, U.S. forces have intervened in Yemen to prevent that country from falling into the hands of al-Qaeda-linked rebels while negotiating the departure of Yemen's dictator, President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

In Syria, where Russia has been supplying the Assad regime with heavy weapons, the Obama administration has provided rebels with only non-lethal aid, such as food and radios. The State Department says it has been coordinating Syria's political opposition, which remains fractured.

Lebanese Shiite fighters recently joined forces with Syrian forces in the rebel-held city of Qusair. Assad in recent weeks launched a major offensive to retake the town, which both loyalist and rebel forces consider key to obtaining supplies from the Mediterranean. Though scores of Hezbollah fighters reportedly died in the fighting, Assad's forces have secured the air base in Qusair and are in control of sizeable parts of the town, according to media reports.

Now the Obama's administration's proposed solution is to join forces with Russia and co-sponsor a peace conference in June in Geneva between Syria's opposition leaders and the Assad regime.

At this stage in the conflict, "the only thing it (a peace conference) does is rehabilitate Bashar al Assad, and locks in a moment when he is making some gains around the city of Homs," says Tony Badran, an analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "You lock in that moment and say, 'Let's negotiate a settlement.' "

The Obama administration's stated goal, to negotiate Assad's departure, without giving aggressive lethal aid to the rebels or striking regime assets, such as air fields, "is premised on a fantasy," Badran says. Assad "is not going to leave voluntarily."

Michael Singh, managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says that without "putting any skin in the game," the United States has little leverage in determining the outcome of the Syrian conflict.

Singh sees Obama's Syria policy as "symptomatic" of U.S. policy across the Middle East and beyond, he says. "We maintain the rhetoric that we have core interests in the Middle East, but our actions do not match our words. We're pulling back in the Middle East, not putting more resources in."

With Russia sending weapons, Iran sending fighters and key Arab states involved, a diplomatic solution will only succeed "when all those parties around the table can arrive an outcome that for them is better than any likely alternatives," Singh says. "Without armed intervention… you're going into those negotiations without leverage."

Singh sees nothing wrong with Involving Russia in a potential solution, because that could prevent the Syrian conflict from becoming a proxy war between Russia and the United States, he says.

But "right now, Assad and his allies think they can achieve a military victory outside of the negotiating table," Singh says. "Once that prospect of a military victory is ruled out or reduced, the Assad regime might be willing to compromise," and the Russians would be willing to push them to do so, he says.

Parasiliti, the former foreign policy adviser, disagrees. He says diplomacy represents the best chance at stopping the conflict from engulfing the region.

Other observers say the timing couldn't be worse.

Nasr says the current proposed conference is unlike the talks that ended the Bosnian war in 1995, which came after a two-week U.S.-led NATO bombing campaign that left Bosnian leader Slobodan Milosevic with little choice but to compromise.

Then, "there was a serious show of force that made our position credible," Nasr says. "That's not the case here. The rebels are losing ground the week before we go into negotiations."

The flow of refugees and fighters across Syria's borders is exacerbating Sunni-Shiite tensions in neighboring countries that could engulf the region. It has already ignited fighting in neighboring Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan.

Violence in Iraq has also increased, with stepped-up suicide bombings attacks against Shiites reminiscent of the brutal Sunni-Shiite civil war that erupted months after the U.S. invasion in 2003.

Then there is the wildcard of Israel.

The S-300 anti aircraft system promised by Russia are so advanced that U.S. ally Israel has pledged to destroy them as soon as they arrive in Syria, fearing they will interfere with Israel's ability to operate over Syria.

Israel has already launched three airstrikes inside Syria to blow up weapons shipments it believed were going to Hezbollah's base in southern Lebanon. It has exchanged fire with the Syrian military in the Golan Heights, and its government is warning Israelis of a possible "surprise war" on multiple fronts, prompting a run on gas masks.

"Clearly, this move is a threat to us," Israel's defense minister Moshe Yaalon said.

"The shipments have not been sent on their way yet," Yaalon said. "And I hope that they will not be sent." But, "if God forbid they do reach Syria, we will know what to do."

One reason given by the Obama administration for refusing to arm rebels to topple a man it wants gone is concern over who will replace him. Sunni foreigners allied with al-Qaeda have been streaming into the fight and winning some battles.

The Obama administration has designated one, the al-Nursra front, as a terror organization and is concerned it could get a hold of the chemical weapons in Assad's stock should his government be overrun. But the Syrian rebels refuse to denounce the group.

Abu Said, 35, a Sunni member of the Revolution Council in Outer Damascus, a rebel group, says foreign fighters fill a void for anti-government fighters who are outgunned and out-funded by Assad's forces.

"There aren't even bullets or (rocket-propelled-grenade) shells, and when there are, the rebels can't afford them," Said says.

"As for al-Qaeda, it's not only our problem, but yours too," Said added referring to the West. "You've allowed our country to become a feasible environment for everyone to operate, whether al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, or Iran's and Iraq's volunteers. The United States has neglected working to empower humane values in this region and limit hatred. Had the superpowers intervened to solve the conflict…sectarianism would have been nipped in the bud.

Adnan Oumama, a hardline Lebanese Sunni sheikh, sees the strife already bleeding into his country.

"There is no doubt that the war in Syria has turned into a sectarian conflict pitting Shiites and Alawites against Sunnis," Oumama says.

Hundreds of fighters for the Iranian backed Lebanese Shiite militia, Hezbollah, have been killed in Syria in recent months, according to media reports. And "Hezbollah's involvement in the nearby war has exacerbated sectarian tensions in Lebanon," Oumama said.

Oumama pointed to reports of ethnic cleansing in Syria and of Shiite Hezbollah and Iraqi factions fighting there along sectarian lines. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has kidnapped injured Syrian Sunni refugees while on their way to hospital. Tents of Syrian refugees have been burned. And this week, two rockets were fired against Dahieh, a Hezbollah's bastion in the capital, he said.

The rockets were fired after Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said in a speech on Saturday that his fighters "will continue to the end of the road" in their pursuit of victory on Assad's side in Syria. In his speech, Nasrallah linked the battle in Syria with the fight against the "United States, Israel and the Takfiris" — a term for radical Sunni groups.

"We are against a religious war with the Shiites but if someone starts killing us based on our religion, we will defend ourselves," Oumama said.

Shiite cleric Sheik Mohamad Ali Hajj el Ameli also sees the Syrian sectarian war spreading to Lebanon.

"The Muslim street, whether Sunni or Shiite has radicalized," Ameli said, "Although politicians do not seem to want a war in Lebanon, it is doubtful they can maintain control of their followers, given the involvement of both communities in Syria. A religious war is thus a growing possibility, all the signs are pointing to one "

Dorell reported from Washington; Kwider in Amman. Contributing: Mona Alami in Beirut.