Last week – clearly and officially – the war in Syria widened to become an extraordinary regional conflict. First, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, formally acknowledged that his forces are indeed fighting alongside those of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. Meanwhile, in Iraq the confrontation between the government of Nouri al-Maliki and demonstrators in the Sunni provinces entered its bloodiest phase. And then, as the week ended, we saw the Israeli bombing of targets inside Syria. The entire region is now undergoing the most important geopolitical shift since the political map of the Middle East was redrawn after the first world war.

 

We are now reaping the consequences of the international community’s hesitation over Assad’s regime. This hesitation created the space for Assad to continue to brutalise his people. While Russia and Iran continued to supply the Syrian regime with weapons, the US and EU imposed sanctions that had a negative impact on the Free Syrian Army; especially regarding anti-aircraft weapons. It was feared these weapons would fall into the wrong hands, but at that time the Syrian revolution was purely internal: jihadists had no real presence. With the increase in regime brutality and international apathy, the situation on the ground began to change in favour of jihadist groups. [Link]