What is Al Qaeda doing in Syria?
@import url(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/projects/assets/agenda/agenda-inline.css);That question has recently moved to the forefront of the West's debate over how to respond to the uprising against President Bashar al Assad of Syria - the bloodiest, most protracted and most explosive revolt of the Arab Spring.
Reports from Western officials, militant Islamist Web sites, neighboring countries and, to a limited extent, inside the Syrian opposition indicate Al Qaeda and homegrown militants are joining the fight and competing for influence.
And that poses a vexing question for American policy makers and politicians. So far all sides of the debate in Washington have called for supporting the insurgency and the only question is how much. The Obama administration talks of diplomacy and economic sanctions, while some Republicans push to provide weapons to the insurgents. Is the Uni ted States acting side by side with Al Qaeda?
The short answer is no. A group as numerically tiny as Al Qaeda could never by itself steer a movement as large as the Syrian revolt. And even if Al Qaeda or other anti-Western militants are seeking to exploit or direct the Syrian uprising - why wouldn't they? - that merely makes them rivals to the West for influence over the course of the revolt.
The West, for its part, is eager to deprive Iran of its principle regional ally, the Assad government. It is dominated by the Assad's Alawite sect of Islam, an offshoot of the Shiites who govern Iran.
The question of Al Qaeda's presence in the Syrian uprising, though, is also a kind of shorthand for the larger conundrum of how to understand the composition, ideology and ultimate vision of the fighters of the so-called Free Syrian Army now driving the uprising.
The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood - the franchise of the pan-Arab Sunni Islam ist group that won Egypt's presidential election - has long been considered the principle opposition under Mr. Assad and his father before him. The father, President Hafez al-Assad, killed tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members in his efforts to crush the group.
But in the context of the democratic uprisings of the Arab spring, Sunni Islamists are a broad spectrum, engaged in their own debate over the objectives of their movement. They range from the relatively secular and Western-friendly leaders of Turkey and Tunisia to the more conservative but pragmatic and nonviolent Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt.
There is also its stricter and more militant offshoot, Hamas, in Gaza, and so on along the spectrum from moderation to radicalism. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood is considered more conservative than its Egyptian counterpart; the Syrian Brotherhood also had more history of violent resistance to the Assads. But not much more is known about the current internal dynamics of the group.
Where the Islamist components of the Syrian insurgency might ultimately end up along that spectrum could determine the coming stages of the conflict. More radical or militant Sunni Islamists are most likely to see Mr. Assad's supporters, the Shiites or Alawites, as dangerous heretics, fueling their determination to fight on or face reprisals. Nor would a prominent role for Sunni militants make Syria's Christian and other religious minorities eager to join the fight.
On the other hand, more moderate or pluralistic Islamists are more likely to hold out the promise of a new government of national unity, enticing former Assad supporters to join them. Further down the road, if the Assad government collapses, militant dominance in Syria could also pose a threat to neighboring Israel and trouble the West in other ways as well.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta publicly acknowledged the question as far back as May. “We do have intelligence that indicates there is an Al Qaeda presence in Syria, but frankly we don't have very good intelligence as to just what exactly their activities are,†he said, adding, “They are a concern, and frankly, we need to continue to do everything we can to try to determine what kind of influence they are trying to exert.â€
The New York Times is also attempting to answer those questions. One recent article focused on Al Qaeda's ambitions, the views of the Shiite government of neighboring Iraq (where an Al Qaeda branch has flourished among the Sunni opposition and the border is increasingly porous) as well as the assessments of Western analysts.
Another article attempted to look more closely at the dynamics on the ground among the Syrian rebels, including their internal debates over what kinds of Islamist symbolism and ideology they want to embrace.
