Promotion of civilians in Syrian talks may weaken opposition

The decision of the Saudi-sponsored Syrian High Negotiations Committee (HNC) to replace representatives of armed groups with civilians is likely to weaken the opposition's position in UN-mediated talks with the Syrian government once they resume in Geneva.

The appointment of these figures was, in theory, meant to lend the committee clout in the talks but the paramilitaries played no substantive role in the first two inconclusive rounds of talks.

Protesting that the international community had failed to produce progress on security and humanitarian issues, chief negotiator Mohammed Alloush, politburo member of the rebel group Jaysh al-Islam, resigned before the reshuffle was announced.

He was a figurehead, cousin of Zahran Alloush, the founder of Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), who was killed in a Syrian government air strike last December. Jaysh al-Islam is a Saudi-fostered and funded coalition of fundamentalist factions based east of Damascus, the most powerful group in this area. In recent weeks it has lost ground to rivals and government forces.

High Negotiations Committee head Asaad al-Zoubi, who is expected to also stand down from the talks, is a former Syrian air force officer who defected and has become a general in the rebel Free Syrian Army, a major component of another coalition of armed factions grouped in the Southern Command, based in Deraa province where a ceasefire has largely held.

The preoccupation of Damascus, Moscow and Washington on the battle against Islamic State has allowed the ceasefire, proclaimed on February 27th, to break down and sideline the talks which UN mediator Staffan de Mistura had hoped to resume this week. He has set no new date for the third round.

Fighting around Aleppo has continued while the Kurdish-dominated Democratic Forces, bolstered by US special operations troops, has launched an offensive north of Islamic State's de facto capital of Raqqa, with the aim of seizing the town.

The Syrian government's ally, Russia, has said its war planes and helicopters have stopped attacking al-Qaeda offshoot Jabhat al-Nusra, deemed a "terrorist" organisation, so fundamentalist factions not considered "terrorists" can distance themselves from Nusra. But this has not worked.

Captured territory

The lack of military pressure on Nusra has enabled it to secure recruits and consolidate its hold on the northwestern

Idlib

province. Nusra forms the core of the Army of Conquest alliance which includes factions attached to the High Negotiations Committee. The alliance has captured territory around Aleppo from government forces.

Al-Qaeda Central, based in Pakistan has dispatched senior officers and ideologues to Nusra, regarded as the group's main external asset. Nusra's leader Mohammed al-Golani appears to have adopted a more pragmatic policy than his Islamic State rival Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Although branded a “terrorist” group, Nusra is, apparently, considered “semi-moderate” by Washington, which has castigated the Syrian and Russian militaries for attacking Nusra-linked insurgents belonging to the High Negotiations Committee.

While Nusra espouses the establishment of a "caliphate" in Syria, the group is divided over when to proclaim such an entity. Syrian civilians living under the group's control do not face Islamic State's punitive impositions and exactions, although pro-government soldiers, militiamen and villagers face execution if captured by Nusra.

The faction is said to enjoy support from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.