Don't be fooled: The United States is already knee-deep in the Syrian quagmire

Many in Washington are deeply worried about the spreading Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict reshaping the region. They are right to be concerned. The deepening sectarian divide poses profound risks and threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy of regionwide conflict, with a ceaseless stream of blood, repression of minorities, and torn social fabric. But ramping up the armed insurgency in Syria virtually guarantees that these divides will get worse, not better. The Sunni Islamist networks and individuals mobilizing public support for the Syrian jihad across the Gulf tend to be highly sectarian in their discourse. The United States should be pressuring Gulf states to crack down on this sectarian hate speech, but Washington isn’t going to be in a position to pressure the Gulf on anything.

The increasing dependence on the Gulf states isn’t the only opportunity cost of the proxy war strategy, of course. The United States desperately needs to recalibrate its thinking about Islamist movements — whose ideas, strategies, and relationships have rarely been more in flux. Certainly, Syria is part of that Islamist turbulence, with that jihad becoming the most potent site of jihadi mobilization since Iraq. But there’s far more to it than the battlefield fortunes of Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), or Ahrar al-Sham. Support for those varied fighting groups draws on extensive networks across the Gulf and the broader region, with fundraising and mobilization efforts for Syrian jihadists taking pride of place for Islamist rhetoric and organizational efforts. The Ansar al-Sharia organizations across North Africa and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, like the Syrian groups, are organizing local communities and demonstrating political savvy that many doubted they could muster. Jihadi groups are bidding for the loyalties of those Islamists who had put their faith in democratic participation only to see it crushed by Cairo’s military coup. And nobody yet knows how the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt will adapt to the military coup, repression, and nationalist wave of anti-Islamist rage.