Qaeda is endangering the Syrian revolution. Earlier this year, the rebels blamed the Assad regime for the first of the car bomb attacks. It did not seem an unreasonable claim for a dictatorship fighting for its life and quite prepared to slaughter 10,000 of its own people in order to survive. Unfortunately the evidence is now mounting that suicide car bomb attacks, the latest last Saturday, targeting government security offices, are indeed the work of Al-Qaeda. Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) first seen in Iraq, then in Afghanistan and now Syria, are another hallmark of the terror group. The fact that IEDs have twice been used against UN convoys, on each occasion when the commander of the monitoring force was present, only adds to the evidence. While it remains possible that Assad's security people planted these devices, Al-Qaeda has a strong interest in bringing on the chaos in which it will hope to thrive again, after several years of waning influence. If the shadowy Al-Nusra Front is indeed behind the spate of bombings, as it claims, and is, as some intelligence sources believe, the local name for Al-Qaeda, then the Syrian rebels have a problem. There is pathetic disunity within the Syrian National Council, the political body which is supposed to be presenting the international community with the free and democratic alternative to Assad's repression. The failings of the SNC in no way mirror the bravery of ordinary Syrians, who are still prepared to come out onto the streets to protest, even though they stand a good chance of being gunned down or arrested afterwards and disappearing. Al-Qaeda has no interest in stepping into the political vacuum. Its only interest is to take advantage of the rebels' inability to agree on a common platform. Unlike the Free Syrian Army, it has no fronts to maintain and no civilians to defend. It can choose to wreak its havoc and destruction wherever it wants. Events are likely to show that it is as happy to turn on the opposition, as it is on the regime in Damascus. Yet it is not the physical threat of Al-Qaeda fanatics that is the greatest danger. The presentational effect of their meddling in the conflict is likely to be far reaching. Washington and European capitals are at the very least, now extremely uneasy that the terrorists are part of the anti-Assad forces that they are supporting. There will be similar soul searching in the Middle East. In the midst of what looks more and more like a civil war, how is it ever going to be possible to cut out the Al-Qaeda cancer? Of no less concern must be the views of those Syrians who, though sympathetic to the rebels, have held back their support because they fear the consequences of an unstable Syria. The emergence of Al-Qaeda in the mix will surely have forced many of them to conclude, however reluctantly, that supporting the Assad regime may be the lesser of two evils. __
