For the casual observer, the Syrian opposition has been, for close to two years, an overlong Monty Python joke of self-cannibalization, petty revolutionary factionalism, and outsize egos all vying for a post-revolutionary role. There is of course truth in this assessment. However, the underlying tension that has led to such rampant dysfunction is a running geopolitical feud between opposition's two main sponsors: Qatar and Saudi Arabia. And that feud has had the most deleterious effect on the Syrian rebels' military capability. Here, both Gulf states have acted as divorcees, each trying to out-spoil their common child in exchange for professions of his absolute loyalty. The inevitable result has been an opportunistic offspring that, in its adolescence, has tried to have it both ways or ‘acted out' in frustration. Only in reaching psychological maturity do these tendencies stand a chance of being overridden.
In yet another groundbreaking report put out by the Institute of the Study of War, analyst Elizabeth O'Bagy identifies the central dilemma for the rebels as a competition between khaleeji patron-states and the "disparate sources of funding" that have gone into the Free Syrian Army. Sycophancy, rivalry, warlord-ism, and corruption are the byproducts of this competition, byproducts that have acted as hindrances to a once-and-for-all hierarchical structure with clear command and control capability.
O'Bagy gives a useful history of abortive attempts at creating just that - attempts which then run aground because Riyadh and Doha can't get along. Beginning in September 2012, for instance, the Joint Command for the Revolution's Military Council was announced as a Saudi-Qatari venture seeking to capitalize on rebel advances, particularly in Idlib and Aleppo. Qatar controlled the regional Military Councils, which ran supplies to local brigades, while Saudi Arabia controlled the Coordination Office, which handled communications and logistics. Fearing they were being outmaneuvered in terms of influence, the Saudis amplified the role of the Coordination Office, appointing loyalists in areas where they felt the Qataris reigned. Rebels fed up with such external meddling then created rival Military Councils consisting of elected, rather than appointed, leaders. Some provinces therefore had two bodies claiming to perform the same task at the same time. Internal fights broke out and rival leaders were sometimes exiled.
In another well-caught anecdote, O'Bagy mentions that on the sidelines of last November's Syrian National Initiative conference in Doha, the Qatari government convened a separate conclave of all Military Council heads, Joint Command brigades, and independent rebel commanders. Money was handed out just for attending, and weapons were duly promised. The Saudis could not abide by this unilateral power play and so made their own offer to rebel leaders not to attend the Doha conference. A few obliged. So just as the conference was underway there came the announcement of yet another rebel umbrella formation from within Syria: the so-called Five Fronts Command, which was announced on YouTube by Higher Revolutionary Council spokesman Louay Moqdad, a close associate of Lebanese businessman and Future Movement member Okab Saqr, who has coordinated gun-runs on behalf of Saudi Arabia. Mustapha al-Sheikh, the former head of the Free Syrian Army's Supreme Military Council, endorsed the Five Fronts Command. Al-Arabiya and Asharq al-Awsat covered it; Al-Jazeera ignored it.
Clever rebels played their own part in this opera buffa. As O'Bagy writes, "in order to receive funds from both sponsors, rebel organizations nominally split, sending one commander to Doha with the other staying in Syria. Although united under the same leadership structures, commanders claimed to be associated with different rebel groups and often professed affiliation to rival units." This is worth keeping in mind the next time you see an unnamed diplomat or Middle East expert quoted in the press blaming the ‘disarray' of the Syrian opposition on the opposition itself. Fortunately, that disarray is being more earnestly counteracted at the ground level.
The Supreme Military Command (SMC) is newish martial structure designed to serve as a kind of Defense Ministry for the Coalition. It incorporates figures and units from the Joint Command and Five Fronts Command, yet so far it has shown more of an inclination toward pragmatism and nation-wide coordination. It was the SMC that received and distributed those Croatian heavy weapons beginning in December-January (even though some of this materiel has wound up in the hands of extremists, the bulk of it has gone to more responsible actors). It was the SMC that brought a swift end to the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade's disastrous abduction of 21 U.N. peacekeepers last month, an episode which, bad enough as a human rights violation, threatened to see rebel credibility evaporate overnight. And it is the SMC to which John Kerry intends to send soon-to-expire halal food parcels and other "non-lethal aid."
True, the SMC includes members of the Syrian Liberation Front and the Syrian Islamist Front, both of which contain unpleasant Salafist-jihadist brigades. But at this late stage in the insurgency, the SMC has no other choice but to work with such elements if it doesn't wish to be subsumed by them. Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, is excluded from its ranks owing to its U.S. blacklisting as a terrorist organization.
Somehow unremarked in all the collapsing scenery last week was how SMC's intriguing response to the Hitto election demonstrates that some Gulf clients have learned the hard way that in order to be effective, they must keep a healthy distance from their paymasters. SMC head General Salim Idriss is close to Qatari financiers as well as to Coalition Secretary-General Mustafa Sabbagh, who is Brotherhood-linked and responsible for Hitto's premiership. But then why did Idriss initially refuse to recognize Hitto as interim prime minister? On the surface, this rejection was doubly strange given Idriss's serial complaints about the need for a transitional government in liberated Syria to shoulder the burden of civil responsibilities, such as restoring electricity and distributing bread, which overtaxed rebels are now satisfying.
The answer is that while the SMC may take money and guns from foreign interests, it is not necessarily ideologically beholden to them. O'Bagy rightly notes that the "negative view of the SNC and the Muslim Brotherhood has meant that the majority of SMC members prefer to keep their power structures and resource channels removed from the coalition. Thus, although officially operating within SOC's framework, rebel commanders are quick to point out that the Supreme Military Command functions on its own authority and as an independent body."
Such deliberate ambiguity creates an opportunity for the United States, should it seize it, to take over from Saudi Arabia and Qatar as the chief liaison and arms-dealer of the SMC. The goal should be to bolster the moderate and secular forces at the expense of radical ones. This will of course mean unintended consequences whereby arms fall into the wrong hands. But they have long been falling into such hands anyway, principally because the Obama administration's wariness has given way to the recklessness of outsourcing the pursuit of American interests to non-democracies that don't remotely have those interests at heart. This has been its own unintended consequence, one badly in need of correction.
