Nation: The peace negotiations between the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad and the insurgents seeking to topple him and his one-party Baath state were headed on the rebel side by Mohammad Alloush, leader of the Saudi-backed Army of Islam (Jaysh al-Islam, or JI). Russia and the Syrian government objected to Alloush’s group being in Geneva, viewing them as Salafi jihadis, i.e. as Al Qaeda Lite, and as more terrorists than insurgents. The United States and its allies, especially Saudi Arabia, prevailed in insisting that Alloush not only remain invited but head the rebel delegation. The Army of Islam has during the past month been fighting fiercely—but not against Assad’s Syrian Arab Army. Rather, in the eastern suburb of Damascus, East Ghouta, Alloush’s forces have been ranged against another rebel group, a former friend now allied with Syria’s Al Qaeda (the Nusra Front). The fighting has left some 300 dead. Neither side in the Ghouta mini-war wants democracy or equal rights for all citizens. Why is the Obama administration going along with Saudi Arabia’s legitimation of JI?

What’s left of the previous Free Syrian Army in the region is an alphabet soup of fundamentalists, some more moderate Muslim Brotherhood elements, others armed with a blueprint for a puritanical Salafi regime in which there is no room for secularists or religious minorities, or for democracy. Some 35 to 40 percent of Syrians belong to ethnic or religious minorities, and the remaining Sunni majority is split between avowed secularists and the religious. Saudi-style Wahhabi Islam, which Riyadh appears to dream of imposing on Damascus, would definitely not work there. Meanwhile, the leftist Kurds of the northeast, who have been one of the most vigorous fighting forces against ISIS, and among whom US special forces troops have embedded, have so far been excluded from the Geneva negotations, at Turkey’s insistence.

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