Are U.S.-Taliban Talks Linked to Rebel Support?

Bloomberg is reporting this morning of a rebel car-bomb attack on the military airport in Aleppo:

The bomb killed at least 12 government loyalists and destroyed several buildings inside Minnigh Airport, which is partially under rebel control, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-mail. Syrian government forces, backed by Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon, launched an offensive earlier this month to try to retake the strategic city, Syria’s largest. 

The attack on the airport came a day after the U.S. and 10 other nations pledged to increase support for rebel forces in Syria, without saying what specific steps they would take or how much firepower may be needed.

Sarah El Deeb reporting for The Associated Press says that the government has begun shelling rebel-held suburbs north of Damascus:

Activists, meanwhile, reported heavy shelling of many districts north of Damascus, apparently an attempt to cut links between rebel-held districts that have served as launching pads for operations against the capital. Three children, including two from the same family, have been killed in shelling of the outlying district of Qaboun since Friday, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on an extensive network of activists in Syria. 

The Lebanese TV station Al-Mayadeen, which had a reporter embedded with Syrian government forces in the offensive, quoted a military official as saying that the operation aims to cut rebel supply lines, separate one group from another and secure the northern entrances to the capital. The regime's forces have struggled for months to regain control of these suburbs.

Jeffrey Fleishman has an informative piece, despite a misleading headline, for the Los Angeles Times; he describes how the Arab states are using the Sunni-Shiite divide to distract their restive populations from government corruption and the lack of jobs:

"Arab states see Syria as a place to exhaust Iran's capabilities and keep it distracted from other issues it might be concerned with in the Arab world," said Rabha Alam, a researcher at Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "Hezbollah entering the equation has quickened the pace of sectarian rhetoric and turned it into a Sunni-Shiite conflict." 

Hezbollah embodies the fear that Sunni-led nations have of Iran, the preeminent Shiite voice, using the Syrian war to foment wider instability. Syria has become a struggle not just between Assad and the rebels, but for opposing Shiite and Sunni radical networks whose fighters come from as far away as Cairo and Tehran. 

"Hezbollah is part of the Iranian conspiracy which has a strategic objective in the region," said Mustafa Alani, a senior analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Geneva. "It has really changed the rules of the game." 

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah argues a counter-narrative: Before his men arrived in Syria, gulf state-funded Sunni militants, some with ties to Al Qaeda, infiltrated and are now commanding rebel factions. This scenario, he says, endangers Hezbollah's benefactor, Assad, and also threatens neighboring Lebanon with a volatile brand of Sunni extremism.

Political manipulations of Shiite-Sunni enmity, which dates back centuries to a struggle over a successor to the prophet Muhammad, may also be at work. Arab states, according to some analysts, may find it tempting to play on religious suspicion to deflect public attention from economic and social problems. 

Saudi Arabia is contending with a huge population of disillusioned, unemployed young people. Egypt's economy is faltering and political unrest is deepening ahead of demonstrations planned for Morsi's one-year anniversary as president on June 30. Across the Arab world, the broken promises of the uprisings have triggered despair and rising anger. 

Hezbollah's entry into the Syrian civil war "has led preachers and leaders in gulf states to adopt the discourse of 'victory for [Sunnis],'" said researcher Alam. "This keeps populations distracted from internal issues. This provides an important service to the gulf."

"This is happening in Egypt now," she said, as leaders and clerics try to siphon attention away from the government's failings. But there are consequences of rallying the region's young men around the fractious Syrian war and its dangerous religious implications.

"If we are sending our children to Syria, then which banner will they fight under ... what will they be armed with?" Alam said. "Or will we just be sending them off to die."

I'm surprised that so far there have been no stories linking negotiations with the Taliban, a Wahhabi political construct of the Gulf Arab monarchies, and the increased role of the United States in organizing the Syrian opposition. It seems obvious to me that there is a quid pro quo here. The U.S. promises to lead the effort to oust al-Assad as long as Saudi Arabia and Qatar exert influence on the Taliban to bargain with the Western puppet Karzai. But as Javid Ahmad argues on the AfPak Channel, "Peace talks only benefit Taliban." So the U.S. gets wet on both ends of the stick while the Wahhabis laugh all the way to the bank.