A new Islamist alliance among Syria’s rebels has given Assad the enemy he wants

 

 Amman — Beirut — Istanbul

I recently bumped into a senior officer with the rebel Free Syrian Army who was waiting in the passport queue at the Turkish border. I didn’t recognise him at first, out of uniform and without his entourage, and I told him so. He was following the example of the 7th-century Second Caliph, Omar bin al Khattab, he replied. The caliph was so humble he took turns with his servant riding a horse to Jerusalem to receive the city’s surrender. There was no imagery from Islamic history when I first met the officer a year ago. He was one of those ‘rebels’ western officials have in mind when they describe a ‘secular, moderate’ armed opposition. But more and more, rebels pepper their conversation with quotations from the Koran. With their lives on the line, perhaps people are turning to God. Perhaps, with the jihadis in the ascendant, such talk is politic. Later, the officer appeared on YouTube next to a notoriously bloodthirsty Chechen commander. ‘We kiss the hand that holds the trigger against Assad,’ he said. It should not have been a surprise, therefore, when last week several FSA brigades issued ‘Communiqué No. 1’ announcing an alliance with the Nusra Front, al-Qa’eda’s Syrian subsidiary. The communiqué rejected the Syrian National Coalition, the SNC, the body promoted by London and Washington as the ‘sole legitimate representative’ of the Syrian people. It gave voice to the fighters’ deep and long-held contempt for the SNC’s exiled politicians, who have spent the past two years squabbling in five-star hotels as Syria burned. ‘If any of them come here,’ a rebel commander told me, ‘I will hang them.’ Most importantly, Communiqué No. 1 says the rebels are fighting not for democracy, but for Sharia, ‘the sole source of legislation’. It was signed by what is probably the FSA’s biggest brigade, with thousands of men, Tawheed, or ‘one God’.