Jihadists eye Islamist rule after ouster of the regime

Members of the Free Syrian Army hold a giant opposition flag yesterday during a protest against President Bashar al-Assad in Bustan al-Qasr, a district in Aleppo.

AFP/Damascus 

Jihadist rule must spread over Syria after the ouster of Bashar al-Assad, the head of the hardline rebel Al Nusra Front said yesterday, accusing Washington of seeking to keep the president in power.

Al Nusra, blacklisted by Washington as a terror outfit, has claimed responsibility for the majority of deadly suicide bombings in Syria’s 21-month conflict.

Its fighters, many of whom are foreigners, have also played a major part in battlefield gains made by the rebels in the northwest in recent months.

In an audio tape posted online yesterday the head of the group, Abu Mohamed al-Jawlani, said clearly—and repeatedly—that Islamists must rule in post-Assad Syria.

“The fall of the regime will leave a vacuum and you are the best placed to fill that void,” Jawlani said, addressing his fighters.

Power must go to the “mujahideen”, he said.

In his message, entitled “People of Syria, we sacrifice our souls for you,” Jawlani told Syrians: “We have offered you our blood in defending your religion and your lands, and will continue to sacrifice ourselves one after the other.

“We will continue to make sacrifices so that the Syrian people can recover their pride and well-being that have been taken from them, until they can live under the banner (of Islam)... ruled by shura (principles of Islam),” he added.

Jawlani insisted that those who shed their blood in the fight against the regime of Assad, who hails from the minority Alawite community, an offshoot of Shia Islam, must reap the rewards without foreign intervention.

“This blood which was shed to emerge from oppression... should not be lost in the darkness of the West. He who sows must harvest the fruits,” he said.

Jawlani lashed out at the international community, particularly the US.

“The continued US and international support for prolonging the regime’s lifespan by giving extensions (for a political transition), sending observers and trying to negotiate peace is clear to everyone,” the said.

“The US is expressing its failure in the region by putting the Al Nusra Front on its terror list (merely) for helping the (Syrian) people,” he added.

Washington formally designated Al Nusra as a “foreign terrorist” organisation earlier this month, warning that extremists could play no role in building the nation’s future.

Jawlani said the blacklisting had prompted “popular anger among Muslims,” including “condemnation from 100 organisations”.

The mainstream opposition National Coalition, recognised by Washington as sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people, called on December 12 for a review of the US blacklisting. Al Nusra is not part of the coalition.

Reacting to Jawlani’s message, Middle East specialist Fabrice Balanche told AFP that Al Nusra has been buoyed by its battlefield successes and was in Syria to stay.

“Al Nusra did not come to Syria just to pull out once Bashar al-Assad falls,” the director of the France-based Gremmo research centre said. “Al Nusra has always been clear about its intentions, they are Salafists and want to set up a caliphate (Islamic state).”

Engineer on mission to save refugees from mines

AFP/Khirbet al-Joz, Syria

Armed with a basic metal detector, rebel engineer Abu Baeda endlessly scans the border with Turkey on a crusade to save refugees escaping Syria’s bloody conflict from limb-tearing landmines.

Samer Mohamed al-Ater became one such victim three months ago, after taking refuge in Turkey like tens of thousands of other Syrians.

One day he was on his way back with food supplies for his village of Khirbet al-Joz in northwest Syria’s Idlib province when he stepped on one of the countless landmines which rebels say were planted by the army.

“We’d just crossed the barbed wire and walked almost 200m down a track,” he recalled.

“The weather was bad and it was muddy. Suddenly, I felt something and was hurled backwards,” said the young man whose stump above the knee was still heavily bandaged.

“When the mine exploded, shrapnel hit the person behind me and he lost an eye,” said Ater who returned to Khirbet al-Joz after receiving hospital treatment in Turkey.

Abu Baeda, an army engineer who defected to join rebels in Syria’s 21-month revolt, has been tasked to try to minimise the risks faced by desperate refugees fleeing the fighting.

His equipment may be unsophisticated, but he has so far located almost 450 live mines.

“Here’s a mine that’s primed to explode. It’s been placed in the heart of an olive grove. As refugees try to cross the border, it will explode and blow off their legs,” said Abu Baeda, now a member of the rebel Kaws al-Nasser brigade.

According to Abdelwahed Wahud, chief of another brigade in Khirbet al-Joz of the rebel Free Syrian Army, the regime mined the border to curb the exodus of refugees to Turkey, where rebel forces last year set up rear bases.

“It was (Syrian President) Bashar al-Assad’s army that planted these mines in these areas,” he charged. “They planted them more than a year ago along the border, some on farmland, others along the border.”

Last month, campaigners said the Syrian regime was the only government in the world to lay new landmines this year.

The global International Campaign to Ban Landmines network said the Assad regime appeared to be using old stockpiles of the weapons produced by the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Each time Abu Baeda uncovers a mine, he goes through the same ritual: he ties a bag filled with rocks to a rope and then pulls it over the device to make it explode.

The rebels have stored hundreds of other mines which were safely recovered in an abandoned factory.

Turkey hosts almost 15,000 Syrian refugees in several camps close to the border and provides treatment and shelter for rebels who use its side of the frontier as a launch pad for operations inside Syria.

Ankara fell out with one-time close ally Assad after the Damascus regime unleashed a brutal crackdown on protests in March 2011, unleashing a conflict which a rights watchdog estimates has killed more than 45,000 people.

Two more generals defect to Turkey

Two Syrian air force generals have defected from the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and joined opposition forces in Turkey, a diplomat said yesterday. The generals, commanders of the Regional Air Force, have crossed the border and arrived in the town of Reylanli in southern Turkey, the Turkish diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity. The generals and dozens of lower-ranking officers and their families were taken to a separate camp where army defectors take refuge. Turkish officials refuse to give an exact number of Syrian generals currently on Turkish soil as some are returning to Syria to join the active fighters inside the conflict-wracked country. On Wednesday, General Abdel Aziz Jassem al-Shallal, commander of the Syrian military police, crossed into Turkey via the Cilvegozu border crossing in the town of Reyhanli.