The recent massacre of more than 100 people at Al Houla, in Syria, has further compounded the crisis in the country. While this latest atrocity pushed Russia to support a UN Security Council resolution, condemning the violence, Moscow hesitated to place sole responsibility for the killings on President Bashar Al Assad’s regime, saying the government there faces increased terrorist threats bearing the “clear signature of Al Qaida.”

Al Qaida has never been a key player in Syria. However, as the crisis drags on, it has turned from a political struggle to an armed conflict, bringing the consequences of chaos and desperation with it. Whether the recent bombings are the handiwork of the terrorist network is unclear, but what is certain is this — Syria has now become a proxy battlefield in which Al Qaida is labouring very hard to seek new refuge and to portray itself as a guardian of Sunnis. These are objectives that are in stark contrast to those of the majority of Syrian protesters.

As the Syrian conflict escalates and the danger of an all-out sectarian strife looms large, Al Qaida-like activists and factions will go to any length to establish a foothold in the country, like the way they did in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003. Their success will depend on how Syrians react to these foreign fighters and whether the aggrieved Sunni community will provide shelter.

The twin car bombings a couple weeks ago — that targeted a military-intelligence branch in a Damascus neighbourhood and reportedly killed more than 50 — did bear the hallmark of Al Qaida. The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, said in New York: “I believe Al Qaida must be behind it. This has again created a very serious problems.”

The Al Nusra Front, a jihadist militant group claiming responsibility for the bombings in Damascus, is extremely shadowy. Whether Al Qaida-inspired or not, Al Nusra should not be invested with much significance since there are dozens of opposition groups now operating independently in Syria.

While most avoid Al Qaida’s tactics and ideology and are either religious-nationalists or secular-minded activists, more and more protesters have taken up arms to defend their communities. The Free Syrian Army is only one among many armed units operating independently.

And increasing evidence points towards the arrival of jihadi fighters from Iraq, Lebanon, Libya and elsewhere. There is a consensus among American and Western intelligence services that Al Qaida fighters have joined the fray.

So far, there have been 11 car bombings in Syria, some of which were coordinated attacks that killed hundreds of civilians and security personnel. Although it is difficult to ascertain the identity of the perpetrators, Al Qaida’s alleged involvement is not surprising. The raging war in Syria has taken a sectarian Sunni-Shiite bent, which allows Al Qaida, a Sunni movement, to exploit the situation and position itself as a defender of the Sunni community. Most media accounts that assert either the presence or absence of Al Qaida in Syria are speculative and tend to be ideologically driven.

The current leader of Al Qaida, Ayman Al Zawahiri, has publicly called on jihadis to travel to Syria, fight against the Al Assad regime and defend persecuted Sunnis. “Don’t depend on the West and Turkey, which had deals and mutual understandings with this regime for decades and only began to abandon it after they saw it faltering,” Al Zawahiri said in a video message released in February. Urging Muslims in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey to join the uprisings, he said: “Depend on Allah alone and then on your sacrifices, resistance and steadfastness.”

Al Qaida’s infiltration into Syria, however, should not obscure a critical point: The terrorist organisation was not present at the beginning of the uprising more than a year ago. Yet, through the escalation of violence and continuing bloodshed, the Syrian government has succeeded in imposing its own reality on the essentially peaceful struggle, thrown the country into chaos, thereby attracting Salafist-jihadi fighters.

Whether in Iraq, Somalia, or Yemen, Al Qaida is a social parasite that feeds on social instability. In this way, Syria is beginning to resemble Iraq at the outset of the US-led invasion and occupation of the country. It is becoming a theatre, where not just Al Qaida, but also Salafist fighters are appearing.

When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaida in Iraq, had fewer than 50 fighters. By the time he was killed in a US air raid in June 2006, thousands of suicide bombings had been carried out in Iraq, a country that did not experience a single suicide bombing before the American invasion.

The escalation of the conflict in Iraq, particularly sectarian mobilisation along Sunni-Shiite lines, drew large numbers of Sunni Iraqis, Libyans, Tunisians, Saudis, Yemenis, Jordanians, Palestinians and Moroccans to the country to defend the Sunnis, who were seen as being victimised by both the Americans and the Shiites, including Iran. Syria was one of the conduits for this flow of Arab jihadis to Iraq.

A cursory look at some of the Salafist-jihadi websites now shows a similar mobilisation strategy in Syria, using a sectarian framework of Sunni-Alawite conflicts, to recruit fighters.

In the end, Iraq turned out to be the graveyard of Al Qaida. Though initially Sunni Arabs in Iraq welcomed Al Qaida with open arms, a few years later, the same community turned against the terrorist organisation with a vengeance. The tipping points were Al Zarqawi’s indiscriminate and gruesome attacks on civilians and his systemic efforts to trigger all-out sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites, together with the violation of tribal norms. Al Qaida has never regained its strong foothold there.

Yet, there is a real danger that if Syria descends into an all-out civil war like Iraq, Al Qaida will likely find a home and become a hub for fighters from neighbouring countries. This is a frightening development, one that plays straight into the hands of the Syrian regime. In a May 16 interview on the Russian state news channel, Rossiya 24, Al Assad stated that there are no peaceful protesters in his country, only armed gangs and terrorists of Al Qaida variety and that the uprising was part of a foreign-led-and-financed conspiracy.

For Al Qaida chief Al Zawahiri and like-minded jihadis, Syria provides an opportunity to embed the terror network in a local conflict and establish a presence in a strategic theatre. Al Zawahiri and his cohorts know well the importance of what they call Al Hadina Al Sha’biya (the popular embrace or base) and will try hard to appeal to the Sunni community in Syria by playing the sectarian card.

So far, evidence shows there are few buyers in Syria for Al Qaida’s sales pitch. With few exceptions, ordinary Sunnis in Syria see Al Qaida as a liability, not an asset. The Free Syrian Army has said Al Qaida is not welcome in the country and that it will militarily confront it if the extremist group ever establishes a base there.

The future of Al Qaida in war-torn Syria will depend on how the Sunni community there reacts to the arrival of jihadi fighters: Without fertile soil and a host, Al Qaida and other extremist elements will not survive.

— CSM

Fawaz A. Gerges is a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics where he directs the Middle East Centre. He is the author of ‘The Rise and Fall of Al Qaida’ (Oxford University Press).