SINCE the start of Syria’s uprising, many people, not least in America’s war-weary administration, have eyed the crisis through the prism of Iraq—despite the two conflicts’ marked differences. In Iraq, a foreign invasion to unseat Saddam Hussein unleashed sectarian clashes that continue today; in Syria, a peaceful local uprising against President Bashar Assad has turned into a civil war in which foreigners are meddling on both sides. Yet some Syrians are now drawing on Iraq’s experience.
In eastern Syria, where Sunni tribes span the border with neighbouring Iraq, the rise of Jabhat al-Nusra, an extreme rebel group affiliated to al-Qaeda, is worrying Western governments and others in the Middle East. Some locals have dubbed the moderately Islamist Farouq rebel group the sahwa. In Iraq the term, Arabic for “awakening”, referred to Sunni tribal militias who paired up with the Americans to squash al-Qaeda in Iraq. Farouq got the sahwa label (the plural is sahwat)after clashing with Jabhat al-Nusra in areas where both vie for power. “They’re our sahwat,” says a man in Tel Abyad, a town north of Raqqa, a city of 250,000 people in Syria’s north-east which is the biggest that the rebels have captured from Mr Assad’s regime. On the other side of the spectrum, the jihadi blogosphere is awash with warnings against the threat of a sahwa developing under American, Jordanian or Saudi tutelage.
Farouq, which started in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, and spread east, was once the strongest outfit in the Raqqa area, partly because of Qatari funds and Turkish backing. Yet Jabhat al-Nusra and other Salafist groups soon outgrew them, thanks to more cash and a better strategy. Farouq men bemoan Jabhat al-Nusra’s capture of oil and cotton fields, and its often successful attempts to assassinate rival rebel commanders. Members of Jabhat al-Nusra retort that they are simply better fighters and attract more support, enabling them to capture weapons depots.
But it is not just rival rebels who are hostile to Jabhat al-Nusra. Civilians are turning against it too. “People are fed up with the group for stopping the small thieves who took cars and houses, but becoming the big ones who take the oil,” explains a sheikh who regularly deals with the organisation. “We’re scared of them,” says a woman who has a family member in the group. Protesters in Raqqa city, which is controlled by an assortment of rebel groups, have taken to the streets more than once to chant: “Raqqa is free free free, Jabhat al-Nusra get out of here” (which rhymes in Arabic). Local women who go without the hijab have refused to succumb to the group’s demands that they cover up.
Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria had been treading more carefully than al-Qaeda in Iraq. Responding to criticism, the Syrian group appeared to refrain from bomb attacks likely to cause civilian casualties between May and late summer last year. It gained some support by providing food and services to people in Aleppo, Syria’s second city. But the announcement in April of its links with al-Qaeda may have irreparably damaged relations with wary Syrians. “It would be great if all the Syrians were with us,” says a Jabhat al-Nusra fighter in eastern Syria. “But it is not important. Abraham and Sarah [in the Old Testament] were a minority against the infidels, but it didn’t matter because they, like us, were doing the right thing.”
