Jihadist fighting force Jabhat Fateh al-Sham could be the alliance that saves Syria

HOPES for Syria fading as Russia and Assad continue their relentless assault on Aleppo — but a new alliance threatens to break their stronghold.

Russia and the United States have entered a dangerous diplomatic deep-freeze. Picture: AFP

FINISHING off the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq has become a side issue as Russia and the United States enter a dangerous diplomatic deep-freeze, which has only served to give Russia the opportunity to further bombard Syrian civilians with impunity.

World leaders are not exaggerating when they say that Syria has sunk to its lowest point in five years.

The watching world struggles to comprehend how in an era of precision-targeted bombs, designed to reduce civilian collateral, they are being used directly against citizens and aid workers in besieged cities such as Aleppo; along with illegal, cut-rate killing canisters of napalm and chlorine.

Though there are glimmers of hope in Iraq, there are none for Syria.

Syrian regimen forces gather at the Kindi Hospital as smoke billows following aistrikes on Aleppo. Picture AFP

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pounding of Aleppo — and the deliberate bombardment of hospitals and clinics, everywhere — represents a rolling series of war crimes that has left the US powerless to act, short of the unthinkable: attacking Russia’s air and naval bases on Syria’s coast and starting World War III.

Putin, with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is using the dying embers of Barack Obama’s presidency to launch an unforgiving free-for-all designed to expose Obama’s weakness on Syria but which will forever mark Putin and Assad among the cruellest modern leaders.

In creating a state of terror for the remaining three million Syrian citizens, the plan is to force them to flee to the refugee camps, already brimming with seven million displaced people. This will give the temporary alliance of Syria, Russia and Iran a clear run at the opposition fighters left standing.

According to a Middle Eastern doctor interviewed by News Corp this week, people regard hospitals and clinics as the last places of sanctuary and hope: by destroying them, they will be left no choice but to join the exodus.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is teaming up with Assad to launch a relentless assault on the civilians of Aleppo. Picture: AP

This week, after repeated missile assaults on non-combatants in Aleppo, the US suspended peace talks with Russia, effectively leaving Russia to continue hammering the city to dust.

Twitter, the only real available news service from the city, loaded up with images of dead babies in the rubble and video pleas from children for the bombing to stop.

Putin, in an ominous act of bloody-mindedness, used the occasion to end a 16-year agreement with the US to dispose of 34 tons of weapons-grade plutonium that could be used to make thousands of nuclear bombs.

Putin has already pushed east into the Ukraine and Crimea, and is entrenching Russia’s military foothold on Syria’s Mediterranean coast. Should the war ever end, Assad, now hopelessly indebted to Putin, must effectively surrender his country to Russia, along with whatever share Iran demands.

But a new alliance could confound the plans of the big players.

Jabhat al-Nusra senior member and former Sydney Sheikh Abu Sulayman al-Muhajir is part of the biggest jihadist fighting force in Syria.

Those opposing Assad and Russia can loosely be classed into several key groups: ISIS, which is under intense pressure; the demoralised non-jihadist Free Syrian Army; and al Qaeda, represented by Jabhat al-Nusra, or the al-Nusra Front, the biggest jihadist fighting force in Syria.

In July, al-Nusra announced an amicable separation from al Qaeda and rebranded itself as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, or JFS, in order to offer the multitude of anti-Assad forces common purpose in the fight.

JFS is anti-Assad, anti-Russian, anti-Iran, anti-ISIS and anti-American. And it is targeted by them all. It is appealing to Syria’s non-jihadist forces by claiming it has no external terror ambitions on the West and exists only to destroy Assad.

It says it would recreate Syria as a conservative sharia state, with room for all Sunnis, rather than the medieval Caliphate proposed by ISIS.

US terror expert Charles Lister has said that as the world has “transfixed on the more aesthetically shocking actions of ISIS”, JFS has quietly become one of the most powerful players in Syria.

JFS’s international spokesman is a former Australian cleric, Mostafa Mahamad, or Abu Sulayman, aged about 33, who departed Sydney in 2012 or 2013 to join al-Nusra and who earlier this year was designated a terrorist by the US Treasury.

A Syrian civil defence volunteer, known as the White Helmets, stands on the rubble of destroyed buildings during a rescue operation following a government forces air strike on the rebel-held neighbourhood of Bustan al-Basha in the northern city of Aleppo. Picture: AFP

Mostafa says JFS is now “deeply embedded” across Syrian life — and Lister agrees. It presents a less extreme face than ISIS, gives humanitarian assistance and takes the battle to Assad and Putin.

One problem for JFS and other anti-regimen forces is that wherever they go to fight, civilians get pounded. The US had thought this would turn them off JFS, but Lister said it hadn’t panned out that way.

With the US-led Coalition offering trapped Syrians no shield against the attacks of Russia and Assad, they now consider JFS “a more effective and loyal protector of their cause and lives than the United States and its allies in the West”.

Mostafa did not respond to an interview request this week, but recently told the BBC: “JFS is not an affiliate of al Qaeda. We’re a completely independent body working to establish the common goals of revolutionary forces in Syria.”

He called ISIS “deviants” and “isolationists” who “disregard all the efforts of other Muslims in the world. I think the differences between us and them are extremely clear.”

America believes JFS is simply al Qaeda rebranded, and behind its new mild language is a long-term plan to use Syria as an international terror launch pad; Syria, Russia and Iran have long believed that under whatever name al Qaeda travels, it is a far bigger threat than ISIS.

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A Syrian boy collects items amid the rubble of destroyed buildings in Damascus. Picture: AFP