The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for the recent car bomb explosion in the Harat Horeik area of Beirut's southern suburbs, a stronghold of the Shia group Hizbullah. The bombing sets a worrisome tone for 2014, a year that may see further escalation in the war between Al-Qaeda affiliates on the one hand and Hizbullah on the other. For the past few months, Hizbullah has emerged as the spearhead of the Iranian-Syrian axis, but it is not acting alone. Coming to its aid have been several Shia groups from Iraq's increasingly divisive sectarian landscape. The eruption of violence in the Al-Anbar governorate in Iraq has been a further indication that the region may be teetering on the verge of a drawn-out sectarian war. This is a war that the Sunni community as a whole wants to avoid, but that extremists from the ISIS and Al-Nusra Front have been only too thrilled to join. Only a few days ago, the Lebanese police managed to arrest Majed Al-Majed, a well-known Saudi terrorist and the leader of the Abdallah Azzam Brigades, another Al-Qaeda affiliate. The Brigades began their activities in areas distant from the operations of the Syrian-Iranian axis, but the temptation of a sectarian fight in the Levant was too alluring for its operatives to resist. The Brigades launched their first operations in Sinai in 2004. Later, they targeted US warships in the Gulf of Aqaba and claimed missile attacks on the Jordanian port of Aqaba and the Israeli port of Eilat. Now Saudi Arabia finds itself at the receiving end of Hizbullah's anger, with the organisation's leader Hassan Nasrallah accusing it of bombing the Iranian embassy in Beirut last November. Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Birri, a close associate of Hizbullah, admitted that the charges were “of a political nature”. In this quagmire of terror, militant rivalry, and sectarian mistrust, it is easy to miss the fact that Al-Qaeda affiliates, far from doing the bidding of the organisation's notional leader Ayman Al-Zawahri, are going their own way. Al-Qaeda, which started as a conglomerate of Arab fighters in Afghanistan, gained international attention through the actions of Osama bin Laden, a Saudi citizen who left his country to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and then turned his attention to the American troops deploying in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. The original focus of Al-Qaeda was on Western targets, but its affiliates seem now to have shifted their attention, as well as tactics, to people of different sects living in the Middle East region. When Al-Qaeda planned the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, it was solely focused on intimidating the Americans, but now the jihadists who have been swelling the ranks of the ISIS and Al-Nusra Front seem to have other things on their mind. Despite its jihadist rhetoric, Al-Qaeda's sectarian discourse has never been as crude as that of its local affiliates in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. The defining moment in this shift in the jihadist mood seems to have happened after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was at this time, when the Iraqi Shias seemed to be forging close ties with the Americans, that Sunni extremists pledging loyalty to Al-Qaeda sprang into action. The civil war in Syria, in which a regime with Shia affiliations and friends has cracked down on a largely Sunni majority, is just the kind of thing that attracts Al-Qaeda affiliates. It is in such circumstances that the ISIS is now flaunting its sectarian agenda. However, the links between Al-Qaeda and its affiliates have to be taken with a pinch of salt, since ISIS can be considered to be a breakaway faction rather than an offshoot of Al-Qaeda. This is evidenced by the fact that the ISIS refused to disband even after Al-Zawahri commanded it to do so. Al-Zawahri is a man with few, if any, humanitarian qualms. Indeed, it is said that he was the mastermind behind Bin Laden's own sustained forays into global terror. But on purely political grounds, Al-Zawahri can probably sense the kind of perils that the ISIS is doing to his organisation's credibility. It is also curious how Al-Qaeda's leaders seem to be appalled by the actions of the men who seek to emulate them. Some years ago, Bin Laden himself had to publicly distance his organisation from the atrocities that Abu Mosaab Al-Zarqawi, the founder of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, was committing. Stick to fighting the American occupiers, Bin Laden told his wayward and self-appointed lieutenant. Al-Qaeda may take pride in declaring itself to be a franchise organisation and one that commands the loyalty of militant groups in various parts of the region. However, the reality is more complex. People like Al-Zarqawi have turned their militant groups into instruments not only of global jihad but also of sectarian warfare — something that Bin Laden and Al-Zawahri have refrained from sanctioning. The ISIS is the direct descendant of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and it has carried its skewed vision to new proportions as well as new territories. Al-Qaeda affiliates are now fuelling sectarian mistrust throughout the region, a matter which will have immediate repercussions. In Iraq, the Americans had no trouble rallying the local tribes against Al-Qaeda operatives in what was known as the “awakenings”. These awakenings, Al-Qaeda affiliates fear, may now soon emerge in Syria as well. There is also the question of the alleged rapport between the ISIS and the Syrian regime. Those who claim that the regime is secretly helping the ISIS in order to blemish the Syrian revolution may have felt vindicated when they heard that ISIS officials were threatening to hand over areas in the Syrian city of Aleppo to forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. The Al-Nusra Front seems to have a more restrained agenda and one closer to Al-Zawahri's ideas. Its leader, Abu Mohamed Al-Julani, recently said that the front was “more interested in Sharia than in power”. This statement should be compared to the assertions of the ISIS leaders, who see themselves as the guardians of a future Islamic caliphate. Taken as a whole, the fighting in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq is symptomatic not just of local rivalries but also of sectarian conflict on a regional scale. Something of this sort also happened five centuries ago in Europe, when it was called the Thirty Years War. When Hizbullah got involved in the fighting in Syria, it added fuel to this regional conflict. Today, Hizbullah claims that Sunni jihadists were going to get involved in Lebanon even if the Shia group stayed out of the war. But there is no denying that it was Hizbullah's involvement in Syria that ignited the jihadist spirit in Lebanon and elsewhere. It was also Hizbullah's involvement in Syria that made the jihadist organisations attractive in the eyes of many young Sunni men. One of those, Lebanese university student Qoteiba Al-Satem, blew himself up outside Hizbullah's headquarters in Beirut's southern suburbs a few days ago. It may be a grim prediction, but unless something is done to rein in the current cycle of sectarian violence, the region may soon re-enact something like the religiously-motivated war that devastated Europe in the early 17th century.
