Middle East is sitting on a powder keg

Unless swift and coordinated action is taken, the region will be overtaken by small but toxic wars that extend from western Iraq to eastern and southern Syria and from northern Sinai to Yemen.
The checkered battlefronts promise to exhaust regime resources and bring instability to the entire region. The enemy in this case is a combination of radical militants who fight under different banners. In many cases they also fight among themselves to seize territory and spread terror. They want to enforce their own brand of Islam in areas under their control. They are behind sectarian conflagration that is sweeping the region.
In Iraq the army is trying to dislodge fighters belonging to the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL) who had occupied the city of Fallujah and extended their influence to the outskirts of Baghdad. Recently ISIL has made it clear that it has no association with Al-Qaeda, which it accuses of collusion with Iran. ISIL is waging a vicious sectarian war in Iraq and Syria. They are responsible for countless suicide attacks against civilians, police and army in Iraq.
ISIL has managed to extend its operations to northern and eastern Syria and is behind many atrocities against locals in these regions. Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Jabhat Al-Nusra accuse ISIL of fulfilling the regime’s agenda in Syria. Currently the two have joined forces to evict ISIL from Deir Al-Zour and areas north of Aleppo. The fighting has resulted in hundreds of deaths and has forced locals to flee from their towns and villages. This internecine war is unlikely to end any time soon. The fate of ISIL in Syria is linked to the outcome of confrontations in Al-Anbar in Iraq.
Reports spoke of an attempt by ISIL to move south to the governorate of Darra where the FSA and Jabhat Al-Nusra are in control, close to the borders with Jordan. The Jordanians are becoming sensitive to developments on the other side of the border. Twice in the space of one month they have deployed the royal air force to target vehicles trying to cross from Syria into Jordan illegally. But while the FSA and Jabhat Al-Nusra fight together in the north, they have become at odds in the south after the latter arrested the commander of the FSA’s southern front and put him on trial before a religious court.
If fighting breaks out between the FSA and Jabhat Al- Nusra in Darra, then Jordan can expect larger numbers of Syrian refugees fleeing the war. Many Jordanians, mostly Salafists, have joined Jabhat Al-Nusra and the authorities are wary of some of them returning to the kingdom to spread their ideology and confront the regime. Already their presence in the southern Jordanian city of Maan is causing concern. Many of the clans there have links to the tribes in Sinai, where the Egyptian Army has been engaging extremists for months now.
The main radical group in Egypt, Ansar Bait Al-Maqdes, is entrenched in northern Sinai and thought to be associated with Al-Qaeda, although the Egyptian authorities accuse Hamas in Gaza of training them.
They have been responsible for lethal attacks against army and police and of targeting Egyptian officials. Israeli reports spoke of attempts to link militants in Sinai with their counterparts in Syria through Maan. Obviously such links, if they do take place, will be a dangerous development.
The Egyptian authorities announced recently that some of the terrorists they have arrested admitted to have been trained in Syria.
In spite of regional and international efforts to destroy or weaken Al-Qaeda, the notorious organization remains active, through affiliates, in many parts of the Arab world. Yemen has become a major battleground recently as the Yemeni Army wages an unprecedented campaign against Al-Qaeda’s presence in Shabwa and Ibyen governorates. The campaign has been successful so far and many leading terrorists were either killed or arrested. The instability in Somalia has provided a base for Al- Qaeda affiliate, Al Shabab Movement, and with close proximity to Yemen some fighters are able to cross into Yemen to back their comrades.
The threat of militants, fighting under various banners, is spreading especially in light of political instability and weak local governments in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. Many fighters in Syria had come from Tunisia and with huge cache of weapons in post-Qaddafi’s Libya; there is no shortage of arms that are smuggled into Egypt and Sinai.
The war in Syria has changed the reality of confrontations and regional threats. Regardless of the fate of the Syrian regime, extremists have found a foothold in a region that extends from Al-Anbar to Deir Al-Zour and Darra with access to Sinai. This is a serious challenge to the countries of the region, one that they can’t afford to ignore.

• Osama Al Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman.