Syria Confirms The Rise Of Radicalism In West Asia

There are signs of a new Cold War on the horizon between the US and the China-Russia combine and in this setting India's strategy would be to remain 'independent' in counselling for stoppage of armed confrontations and commencement of negotiations for peace

The capture of Damascus by the radical Islamic forces resulting in the flight of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to Moscow for political asylum on December 8 was seemingly a sudden development but it marked the culmination of what had been happening in Syria and Iraq for years signifying impact of religion on the old superpower rivalry in the region that was somewhere also changing the geopolitics at the global level.

It may be recalled that way back in 1928, a Muslim thinker Hasan Al Banna had founded Ikhwanul Musalmeen or Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria to oppose the regimes of Gamal Abdul Nasser and Hafez Al-Assad --father of Bashar Al-Assad -- who were looked upon as pro-Soviet 'nationalist' Arab leaders.

Banna believed that the Quran was the best Constitution for Muslims and that an Islamic state could live 'in competition, not conflict with the West'. The US-led West appreciated the Muslim Brotherhood movement and even encouraged it.

Going into the history

When Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, an admirer of Hasan Al Banna, launched Jamaat-e-Islami at Lahore in 1940, this pro-West Islamic stream spread to the Indian subcontinent too and became the ideological anchor of Nizam-e-Mustafa defined by President Zia-ul-Haq as the goal for Pakistan.

Syria ran into a 'civil war' kind of situation internally because the Assad regime had become suppressive in economic distress facing the population and also because it was confronted by Islamic radical forces of Al Qaeda and ISIS on one side and the pro-West Islamic groups on the other.

Developments in Syria should be seen in the backdrop of the Arab Spring of 2011 which was a movement for democracy against dictatorial Arab regimes.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was in the lead and that pleased the US.

As it proceeded in the Arab world, however, the stir allowed radical forces to come to the fore and the Western support to the ruling dispensation in the Arab countries became dependant on whether it was friendly towards the US or not.

Muslim societies in general tend to fall back upon their own God in times of difficulties and while this may be true of others as well, they yield to a fundamentalist line or even to the call of Jehad more readily because of the 'pull of exclusivism' of faith that worked on them in those situations. Those behind the faith-based militancy used social media for indoctrination and this is what ultimately made 'radicalisation' a source of terror threat at the global level.

Radical Islam has a place in the spectrum of faith and cannot be totally discarded by Muslim societies.

For ISIS both the US and Russia with their godless ideology were on the same footing as far as encroachment on Muslim territories was concerned.

The US-led West and the China-Russia alliance want a competitive presence in West Asia for political and economic reasons.

The US has been countering its primary enemies in the region -- Al Qaeda and ISIS -- by taking out their leadership in Intelligence-based operations.

Osama bin Laden was killed in a military operation at midnight carried out at his residence at Abbottabad near Islamabad in May 2011 while his successor Ayman al Zawahiri was eliminated based on precise intelligence in a drone attack in Afghanistan in 2022.

Interestingly, the present chief of Al Qaeda -- Saif Al Adel -- is said to be operating out of Iran. ISIS emerged as an offspring of Al Qaeda having been created by Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in 2013 to operate in Iraq and Syria.

Nusrat Front, another Al Qaeda affiliate active in Syria, continued to work there independently. Its leader, Abu Mohammad Al Julani who had renamed Nusrat Front as Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, has emerged as the new figure of power in Damascus after the departure of Bashir Al Assad.

Al Julani also had organisational links with the Islamic State. It may be mentioned that in Iraq the US had launched air strikes to prevent ISIL from expanding into northern Iraq, as it wanted to shield Christians and Yazidis -- who believed in both the Quran and the Bible. The US also released videos showing how ISIL fighters beheaded Western aid workers and journalists.

In 2019 Baghdadi was killed in Syria in a US raid during which he exploded his suicide vest.

ISISI-K becomes the main face

After Baghdadi, ISIS-K -- 'K' standing for Khorasan -- became the main face of the parent organisation.

Khorasan is the region covering Afghanistan, Persia and Turkmenistan. The whole scene in the Iraq-Syria region was marked by violence along sectarian lines. Such conflicts always tended to become unending and indeterminate.

From the Indian perspective, it is a challenge to maintain bilateral relations with the major powers in the Middle East-Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel and advocate the cause of global peace and human development.

There are signs of a new Cold War on the horizon between the US and the China-Russia combine and in this setting India's strategy would be to remain 'independent' in counselling for stoppage of armed confrontations and commencement of negotiations for peace.

India has done this in the case of both the Ukraine-Russia armed conflict and Israel's operations in Gaza.

India’s standing in the scenario

India had no hesitation in promptly condemning the terror attack of Hamas on Israel on October 7 last year. This country must be firmly against faith-based violence and must continue to call for condemnation of terrorism in all its forms, from different multi-lateral forums of which it is a part -- ranging from BRICS and Quad to G20.

The problem for India regarding radicalisation is substantially linked to the dubious role of Pakistan which had found a way of remaining on the right side of the US despite its proven track record of harbouring Islamic radical outfits and using terrorism as an instrument of state policy.

Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) operates from Pakistan and ISIS-K elements are said to have been seen on the Kashmir front.

The Sino-Pakistan alliance is known to be working for covert operations against India.

The use of Chinese drones for dropping arms and narcotics in Kashmir and Punjab has been reported multiple times and the two hostile neighbours were also in concert in the sphere of anti-India cyber operations.

The flux in West Asia in general and in Syria and Gaza in particular, is a reminder for India that developments in the Islamic world have to be closely watched for their impact on the internal security of this country.