by Aron Lund, editor of Syria in Crisis.

I wrote a post for Syria Comment last year listing the top events of 2014 and what to look for in 2015. So here’s another one—a very long one, in fact. It has been compiled in bits and pieces over a few weeks but was finalized only now, a few days after the fact.

In keeping with the buzzfeedification of international political writing, I have decided to make it a top ten list and to provide very few useful sources, just a lot of speculative opinion. I’ll rank them from bottom to top, starting with number ten and moving on to the biggest deal of them all. Enjoy!

10. The Death of Zahran Alloush.

In October 2013, the esteemed proprietor of Syria Comment, Professor Joshua Landis, compiled a top five list of Syria’s most important insurgent leaders, excluding al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Kurdish YPG. It contained the following five names:

• Hassane Abboud (Ahrar al-Sham)
• Zahran Alloush (Islam Army)
• Ahmed Eissa al-Sheikh (Suqour al-Sham)
• Abdelqader Saleh (Tawhid Brigade)
• Bashar al-Zoubi (Yarmouk Brigade)

Of these five, two remain alive but have been demoted to second-tier ranks in their factions. In March 2015, Ahmed Eissa al-Sheikh merged his group into Ahrar al-Sham and took up a less prestigious job in the new outfit. In October, the Free Syrian Army heavyweight Bashar al-Zoubi was reassigned to run the political office of the Yarmouk Army, as it is now called, and replaced as general commander by Abu Kinan al-Sharif.

The other three are dead. Abdelqader Saleh was hit by a missile in Aleppo in November 2013. Soon after, his powerful Tawhid Brigade began to fall apart. Most of its subunits are now dispersed across two rival-but-allied outfits, called the Levant Front and the First Corps, which are both active in Aleppo. Hassane Abboud was killed alongside other Ahrar al-Sham leaders in a September 2014 bombing—or whatever that was. And on Christmas Day 2015, Zahran Alloush suffered the same fate. A missile hit a building in the Eastern Ghouta where he was meeting with other local rebel leaders.

Since Zahran Alloush died just a week ago, we don’t know how much this will matter in the end. But he was indisputably one of the best-known rebel commanders in Syria, the one best positioned to dominate Damascus if Assad lost power, one of the very rare effective (because ruthless) centralizers within the Syrian opposition, a trusted ally of the Saudi government, and the most powerful Islamist leader willing to engage in UN-led peace talks. Those five qualities all seemed to promise him a major role in Syria’s future. But now he’s dead. And since his group always seemed like it had been built around him as a person, many now fear/hope that it will start unraveling like Saleh’s Tawhid Brigade in Aleppo. We’ll see. If the rebels start to lose their footing east of Damascus, it will be an enormous relief for Assad.

9. The Failure of the Southern Storm Offensive.

Map by @desyracuse

This summer, the loose coalition of rebel units known as the FSA’s Southern Front got ready to capitalize on a year of slow and steady progress, during which Sheikh Miskin and other towns had been captured from Assad. They encircled the provincial capital, Deraa, for a final offensive dubbed Southern Storm. The city actually looked ready to fall. After Idleb, Jisr al-Shughour, Ariha, Palmyra, and Sukhna, the fall of Deraa was intended to be the nail in Assad’s coffin and a show of strength for the Western-vetted FSA factions in the south, drawing support away from their Islamist rivals.

Stories differ on what happened next, but the Southern Storm campaign was a fiasco. Regime frontlines hardly budged, the Allahu Akbars trailed off into a confused mumble, and commanders were called back to Jordan. Half a year later, with Russian air support, Assad has begun an offensive to retake Sheikh Miskin in the hope of finally loosening the rebel stranglehold on Deraa—although at the time of writing, this is still a work in progress.

What happened? I really don’t know. Many things, probably. The operation seems to have been poorly coordinated, with rebels pursuing a plan that their foreign funder-managers in the Military Operations Center in Jordan didn’t agree on. Stories have been told about some nations cutting support, rebels defecting to Assad or heading for Europe, arms having been sold on to jihadis, and groups splitting over obscure internal intrigues. Some of those stories may be false, but the failure was a fact and the rebels have since been restrained from further advances.

Of course, it might seem strange to say that rebels not taking a city was Syria’s ninth most significant event in 2015. It is not even a Dog Bit Man story, it’s a Dog Didn’t Bite Man story. But the Deraa affair seems to have done a great deal of damage to Western and Arab hopes for the FSA’s Southern Front, which had until then been portrayed as a model for the rest of Syria’s insurgency. Unless the southern rebels manage to reorganize, unify, and go back on the offensive, I think the events of summer 2015 might end up being seen as a turning point in the southern war.

8. Operation Decisive Quagmire.

In keeping with local tradition, the princes of Saudi Arabia can be wedded to four regional crises at once. In early 2015, they were sulking over Syria, emotionally drained by Egypt, flustered by unfaithful Libya, and at wits’ end over that shrew in Baghdad, when Yemen suddenly walked into their lives—a huge, incoherent, boiling mess of splintering armed factions, collapsing institutions, Africa-level poverty, jihadi terrorism of every imaginable stripe, and aggressive interference by rival foreign governments.

It was love at first sight.

Since then, the March 2015 Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen has of course turned out to be exactly the self-defeating, facepalm-inducing clusterfuck that everyone who is not a member of the Saudi royal family had predicted.

To make a long story short, the Saudis are still in Yemen with no victory on the horizon and no face-saving exit available. This means they have much less time and resources left for Syria than they did a year ago. They have become more exposed to Iranian pestering and are more dependent on their regional and Western allies, several of whom do not share their views on how to deal with Bashar al-Assad. Rather than being able to leverage their intervention in Yemen against Iran and Assad in Syria, the Saudis now seem at risk of having it leveraged against them.

Thanks to the over-confidence and under-competence of the Saudi royal family, Syrian rebels may therefore turn out to be among the biggest losers of the Yemeni war.

7. Europe’s Syria Fatigue vs. Assad’s Viability

The huge numbers of refugees coming from Syria and other countries to the European Union in 2015 had many causes, but one of the effects was to rearrange Europe’s list of priorities in the Middle East. Goals number one through three are now as follows: stability, stability, and stability. Number four is anti-terrorism, number five is economic growth, and then there are a few others along those lines. Promoting democracy is also on the list, right after ”fix the nose of the Sphinx.”

In 2015, we have also seen a slow but persistent drip of terror scares and occasional massacres, including two big ones in Paris in January and November. This is obviously not the refugees’ fault, but many Europeans link these attacks to Syria anyway—including some of the attackers, like the wanker that began stabbing random people in the London Underground this December.

These things tap into the West’s darkest impulses. Reactions to immigration, painful social change, and terrorist pin-pricks may be irrational—in fact, they mostly are—but they carry real weight and win votes. Policy specialists might recommend some mixture of strategic patience, cautious reform, and nuanced rhetoric, but European rightwing populists eat policy specialists for breakfast.

Islamophobic far-right movements were already growing all over Europe, for reasons largely related to the continent’s own internal diseases, but the refugee crisis and the terror attacks are a godsend for them. Some of these groups are not content with merely hating and fearing the Syrian rebels for their Islamism, but also adopt pro-Assad positions. In addition, European extremists on both the far right and the far left are increasingly friendly with Putin’s Russia; some are even funded by the Kremlin. These parties are no longer bit players. They’re going to be in government soon, or close enough to government to shape policy. Add to that the old-school authoritarian national-conservatism that has begun to resurface in Eastern Europe, including Hungary, Poland, and other places, and the fact that countries like the Czech Republic and Hungary are already the Baath’s best advocates in the EU, and you have the nucleus of a slowly forming pro-Assad constituency.

Of course, many European politicians are also re-evaluating their views on Syria for perfectly non-racist and non-paranoid reasons. The most common one is probably a widespread and profound loss of faith in the Syrian opposition, not merely as an alternative to Assad, but even as a tool for pressuring him and engineering a solution. Others were never interested in a policy to overthrow Assad, although they happen to think he’s a crook.

The point is that all of these things now reinforce each other and for the Syrian regime, it looks like vindication. In 2011, Bashar al-Assad made a bet, wagering that (1) the West would one day recoil from its love affair with Middle Eastern revolution and return to the familiar comfort of secular authoritarianism, and that (2) his own regime would still be standing when that happened.

It is now happening, but whether or not Assad’s regime is still standing, qua regime, is a matter of definition. The Syrian president has so far shown little ability to exploit political openings like these. To an increasing number of European politicians, he does indeed look like the lesser evil, but also like a spectacularly incompetent evil. His regime appears to them to be too broken, too poor, too polarizing, too sectarian, too inflexible, and too unreliable to work with—more like a spent force than a least-bad-option. Assad’s diplomacy may be far more elegant but is ultimately no more constructive than that of Moammar al-Gaddafi, who, as you may recall, kept refusing every kind of compromise and even shied away from purely tactical concessions, until he was finally beaten to death by screaming Islamists in a country so broken it will perhaps never recover.

Then there is the question of Assad’s own longterm viability. Even in pre-2011 Syria, no one could be quite sure whether the Baathist regime would remain in one piece without an Assad at the helm. In a conflict like this, there must be dozens of assassins trying to worm their way into the Presidential Palace at any given moment and for all we know one of them could get lucky in 2016, 2017, or tomorrow. And what about his health? The Syrian president turned 50 this September. That’s no age for an Arab head of state and he looks perfectly fine in interviews. But if Western intelligence services have done their due diligence, they’ll know that his father Hafez suffered a ruinous stroke or heart attack at age 53, which nearly knocked him out of power. Who knows, maybe it runs in the family?

At this point, however, a growing number of European policymakers are so tired of Syria and its problems that they’ll happily roll the dice on Assad being the healthy, happy autocrat that he looks like. They would be quietly relieved to see Syria’s ruler reemerge in force to tamp down the jihadi menace and stem refugee flows with whatever methods, as long as they don’t have to shake his bloody hands in public and on the condition that he delivers a semi-functional rump state for them to work with, at some unspecified point in the future.

Obviously, Assad isn’t going to become best friends with the EU anytime soon, but it might be enough for him if major cracks start to appear in the West’s Syria policy. If so, there is now a window of opportunity opening up that wasn’t there for him a year ago. If the Syrian president manages to break some bad habits, tries his hand at real politics instead of Baathist sloganeering, and produces a stabilization plan slightly more sophisticated than murdering everyone who talks back to him, then 2016 could be the year that he starts breaking out of international isolation. If not, he’s likely to stay in the freeze box for at least another year—and since his regime keeps growing weaker, nastier, and less state-like by the day, it’s uncertain if he’ll get another chance.

This is a potential game changer worth watching, but don’t get too excited. Given the way that the Assad regime has conducted itself in the past half-century, the odds are long for transformative politics and persuasive diplomacy from Syria’s strongman.

6. The Vienna Meeting, the ISSG, and Geneva III.

While not the most important, the November 14 creation of the International Support Group for Syria (ISSG, not to be confused with ISIS or ISIL) was certainly the most unambiguously positive piece of news of the year.

A debating club of interested nations and international organs won’t be enough to end the Syrian war, but it means that the terms of the debate have been readjusted for the better. Recognizing the conflict’s international dimension and engaging constructively with the fact that this is now partly a proxy war was long overdue. As currently construed, the ISSG might be too broad and unwieldy to function properly, since the core players (USA, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc) always seem to have to hold preparatory pre-meetings before settling down in the ISSG format. But if that’s what it takes to get the screaming and sulking teenagers that rule Tehran, Ankara, and Riyadh to sit down and talk like adults, then so be it.

That the creation of the ISSG has for the first time made Iran a formal party to the Syria talks is a good thing, whatever Syrian rebels and their Saudi paymasters may think of it. Iran is a key player both on the ground and in the diplomatic struggle over Syria; that’s not something you can change by pretending otherwise, though many have tried. Of course, now we’re all waiting for Iran to come to the same conclusion about the Syrian rebels, instead of childishly insisting that Assad must be allowed to negotiate with an opposition of his own choosing.

After its meetings in Vienna and New York, the ISSG has empowered UN envoy Staffan de Mistura to call for a new round of Syrian-Syrian talks, currently scheduled for January 25 in Geneva. As many have already pointed out, these talks are unlikely to solve Syria’s problems. The ISSG-backed goal of a transition through free and fair elections by 2017 is almost cartoonishly unrealistic.

So, what to do about that? Many pundits have reacted to the Vienna statement and the Geneva peace process only by ridiculing it and then restating their preferences for the outcome. That’s not helping. The talks are indeed almost certain to fail to reach their overly ambitious goals, but then let’s work from that assumption instead of scoffing at it.

The actors involved in Syria’s war should plan for failure even more than they plan for success. They should already be preparing for a post-Geneva situation where they need to salvage, secure, and build on any shred of progress achieved in the talks.

Reaching a comprehensive ceasefire by June seems incredibly difficult, but a dampening of violence just might be possible, with some luck. If serious about it, Syrian negotiators could presumably also reach meaningful agreement on more limited and less controversial issues.

They could also agree to keep talking. Since so many now favor some sort of political resolution, and unsuccessful negotiations may give way to military escalation, it would be useful to avoid a full stop and the taste of failure. A faltering Geneva process could be drawn out into many sessions and postponed, with negotiators on both sides sent back for a couple of months to do their homework, instead of ended. Transforming the Geneva process into a semi-permanent platform for negotiations on a talk-while-you-fight model would transfer some of the combatants’ attention to a political track. That would be a good thing, both in the hope of achieving a breakthrough later on and for day-to-day crisis management.

Most of all, international actors should make sure to safeguard the ISSG framework, or some version of it, against an underwhelming performance in Geneva. Even if the war goes on and intensifies, some form of international contact group will be useful to facilitate communication and solve side-issues, and it remains a necessary ingredient in any future de-escalation deal.

5. The Donald.

The politics of the United States is a key part of the politics of Syria, although the reverse is rarely true.

Right now, it looks very likely that Donald Trump will either win the Republican nomination for president, or run as an independent and split the Republican vote out of pure spite. If so, Hillary Clinton is almost certain to be elected president of the United States, which would give her final say over the superpower’s Syria policy from January 2017 to 2020, or even 2024.

Of course, one never knows: some extraordinary scandal could knock her out of the race, or maybe Trump slinks away or is bought off after losing the primaries. We’ll see. But right now, Clinton seems like the smart person’s bet.

From what we know of her performance as President Obama’s secretary of state during the first three years of the Syrian war, a Clinton presidency would probably mean a more hawkish attitude to Assad. For example, she keeps declaring herself in favor of a no fly zone to ground the Syrian air force. Whether that is feasible is another matter, what with these Russian jets and air defense systems all over the place, and tough talk on the campaign trail will not necessarily translate into White House policy. But a more interventionist American line in Syria could definitely make a difference in the war, for good or bad or both.

The high likelihood of a Clinton presidency also means that we can tentatively exclude the sort of radical break in American Syria policy that might have followed a Republican restoration. Some of the GOP candidates are more aggressively anti-Assad than Clinton and have no interest in preserving any part of Obama’s legacy. Others are the exact opposite: more or less pro-Assad and starkly opposed to the rebels, whether for pandering to the anti-Muslim vote or out of anti-interventionist principle. But because of Donald Trump, it now seems like those points of view are going to get schlonged back into permanent opposition.

4. The Iran Deal.

The effects of the Iranian nuclear agreement, which was finalized between April and June 2015, are only very gradually becoming apparent. But unless the deal is somehow scuttled by the combined efforts of hawks in the United States, Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, it could reshape the region.

As a consequence of the agreement and the American-Iranian thaw, the international isolation of Tehran is withering away. After four years of being shut out of Syria diplomacy, but not out of Syria, Iran has been invited to the UN-led negotiation process via the ISSG. The United States is also starting to accept Tehran as a regional power to be engaged coldly but constructively, although this is still unfamiliar terrain for all involved.

Meanwhile, European companies are flocking to Tehran to get a slice of the end-of-sanctions pie. Expecting billion-dollar construction contracts and racing to beat their Russian, Chinese, American, and Arab competition, the EU governments will soon start to pay a lot of attention to what Iranian diplomats have to say. More soft power for the ayatollahs, then.

Though often viewed, somewhat inexplicably, as a third-tier actor in the Iran talks, Russia is also paying the greatest attention to this process. Once the nuclear deal was done, Putin swiftly began to transform a complicated but friendly relationship into an emerging pact, seeing in Iran’s combination of oil, gas, military muscle, and poor ties to the West a perfect regional ally for Russia. Russian state media just announced that Moscow will start shipping its powerful S-300 air defense system to Iran next month.

This is all great news for Bashar al-Assad, of course, though it’s not yet clear whether his regime can stick around long enough to fully capitalize on Iran’s growing influence.

3. The Continuing Structural Decay of the Syrian Government. 


Assad took some real body blows in spring and summer 2015. After an upward curve in 2014, the Syrian army started to seem exhausted by the end of the year and its offensive in Aleppo petered out after a last hurrah in spring 2015. With rising support for the rebels, the hollowed-out base of Assad’s regime began to show.

Most obviously, Assad lost a lot of territory in the first half of 2015. In March, a coalition of Islamist rebels captured Idleb City in the north and Bosra in the south. In April, Jisr al-Shughour fell, followed by the Nassib border crossing to Jordan. In May, it was time for Ariha in Idleb, with other rebels pushing into the Ghab Plains. Further east, the Islamic State took Sokhna and Palmyra. Southern rebels grabbed a military base known as Brigade 52 in the Houran in June and began preparing their (ultimately ill-fated) assault on Deraa, the provincial capital. That same month, Assad’s forces in Hassakeh were mauled by the Islamic State. They survived only thanks to an uneasy alliance with the Kurds, which increasingly turned into dependence on them. In July, Assad was hard pressed and held a speech declaring that the army would have to focus on keeping the most strategic areas of Syria, though it would not stop striving for total victory.

The rebel and Islamic State offensives have mostly been blunted since then, thanks to raised levels of Russian and Iranian support, and they did not go far enough to deal critical damage to the regime. Yet, at the time of writing, Assad remains unable to recapture any of the cities he lost in the first half of 2015. The northern Hama front, in particular, continues to cause headaches for his government.

Even though you can’t see it on a map, Assad has also lost strength in other ways in 2015. His primary source of power—apart from the military—was always the fact that he controlled the state, and along with it a number of institutions on which every Syrian family relies, including courts, police, public services, state-run businesses and banks, and a system of food and fuel subsidies. While it does not mean that the regime’s subjects love their president, it has allowed Assad to co-opt, control, and mobilize millions of Syrians in ways that the insurgents cannot. Owning the government also allows Assad to hold out the promise of continued central control, institutional rollback in the provinces, and coordinated reconstruction—i.e., some sort of plan for a post-war Syria.

By contrast, his opponents may be skilled at breaking down existing institutions, but they have so far proven unable to build new ones that stretch further than a few towns. This weakness is a primary source of Assad’s strength.

The Islamic State and the Kurdish PKK are partial exceptions to the rule, clearly capable of organizing rudimentary governance after destroying, expelling, or subjugating regime-connected local elites. But, for various reasons, they are not credible alternatives to the existing central state. As for the situation in the remaining Sunni rebel regions, it is very bleak. After nearly five years, there is a handful of multi-province militias, three or so regional networks of Sharia courts (the Sharia Commission of Ahrar al-Sham & Co. and the Nusra Front’s Dar al-Qada in the north, and the more broadly based Dar al-Adl in the south), a lot of little local councils linked to the exile opposition, and a web of foreign-funded aid services operating out of Turkey and Jordan, but not much more.

When Idleb fell to the insurgency earlier this year, it was only the second provincial capital to slide out of Assad’s hands, after Raqqa. It was destined to become an example of what rebel rule would mean. And what happened? The city started out at a disadvantage because of the war, Assad’s retaliatory bombings, and so on. A decent number of public employees seems to have stayed and continued in their jobs, but salaries and electricity provision dried up. That meant that things like water pumps and schools went out of commission. Rebel factions did what they could to organize civilian life, such as forming a joint council, which has administered the city through some combination of inherited municipal regulations and Sharia law. Despite the prominent role of al-Qaeda in the Jaish al-Fath coalition now running Idleb, foreign governments have chipped in by donating food and medical supplies to avoid a humanitarian disaster. Still, even under a comparatively well-organized, broadly based, and locally rooted coalition like Jaish al-Fath, the basics of a new political order never seem to fall in place. After eight months of insecurity, crime, and armed men swarming the city, the new rulers have yet to organize a credible police force. Whatever the opposition may claim, such failures are not merely the result of Assad’s barrel bombing.

The rebels’ manifest inability to govern, along with merciless airstrikes on nonregime territory, is what makes Assad able to compel most of the population to live under his rule; and the fear of irreversible state collapse is what has made foreign states hold back support from the rebels at critical junctures. However, this key advantage of the Assad regime is also slowly fading away, along with the state itself. The resulting problems are almost too many to list.

For one thing, the Syrian army’s manpower deficit is turning into a major issue. Assad has mobilized his security apparatus to hunt down draft dodgers through house calls and flying checkpoints, in order to replenish thinning ranks. The main effect seems to have been to send a growing stream of seventeen and eighteen year old men across the border, often with their families in tow. They may or may not prefer the government over the rebels, it doesn’t matter. In a Syria at peace they would have grumblingly gone for their one-and-a-half years of army training. But as things stand, they know full well that army service has no time limit: discharge is equal to death. As it turns out, most Syrians have no intention of giving their lives in service of Bashar al-Assad and draft dodging is now pervasive. Tensions have become so great that in the Druze-majority Sweida region in the south, the government apparently decided in 2015 to abstain from normal recruitment to the Syrian Arab Army out of fear of provoking a local rebellion. Druze men can instead report for home defense units, on the understanding that they won’t be shipped away to die in distant Hassakeh or Latakia. A similar arrangement reportedly applies in Aleppo and they seem to be creeping into other regions as well.

On the frontlines, Shia foreign fighters are taking a greater role. They appear to be behind much of the successful offensive south of Aleppo. Iran is rallying Iraqi and Lebanese fighters with both religious and financial inducements, but its client groups—Hezbollah, the Badr Organization, Asaeb al-Haqq etc—do not seem able to mobilize enough fighters. According to some reports, Iranian authorities have resorted to press-ganging young Hazara Shia refugees into going to Syria, under threat of deporting their families back to Afghanistan.

Russia has acted even more decisively, by sending its own air force and huge amounts of military materiel to shore Assad up.

Drawing on all of these resources, the Syrian president and his allies have managed to supply the army with the manpower it needed to regain some sort of strategic composure after the difficult first half of 2015. The army now seems to stand its ground again. But though the regime’s counterinsurgency apparatus is now back in working order, this is still the military-logistical equivalent of fixing your car engine with chewing gum and a prayer.

Though it remains the country’s single most powerful armed force, the Syrian Arab Army appears to have boiled down to a skeletal organization. Many elite and specialist units remain in service, but officers have far fewer regular soldiers under their command and are haphazardly recruiting local hangers-on to pad out the ranks in their sector. A huge number of more or less local militias have been set up by pro-Assad civil society figures, including businessmen, neighborhood strongmen, and tribal leaders, and Iran has helped Assad to organize tens of thousands of fighters under the National Defense Forces umbrella. Much of the broader ground force has thus been replaced by local irregulars, although army and intelligence officers still appear to oversee the action and report back to Damascus.

An example of what the Syrian Arab Army now looks like is Brigade General Soheil al-Hassan’s Tiger Force. So called after its commander, whose nickname is ”The Tiger,” it is one of the government’s most acclaimed elite units, which shuttles back and forth across northern Syria to put out fires and break up stalemates. While the Tiger Force is presented in regime media as an exemplary representative of the regular Syrian Arab Army, Hassan is in fact an air force officer who reportedly served as part of Air Force Intelligence at the Hama Airport when the conflict began. Having moved into a frontline role from 2011 onwards, he does not seem to control a huge force, instead relying on local troops and a smaller entourage of personal loyalists from varied backgrounds. Even now, when he is stationed on the front against the Islamic State east of Aleppo, he is surrounded by some of the local militias he worked with in Hama earlier in the war.

The civilian side of the government is also suffering. The state economy has declined at an accelerated pace since summer 2014. Then, the Syrian pound began to lose value quicker, fuel supplies dwindled, and the government was forced to begin a painful retreat from its costly system of subsidies for basic goods. Assad also lost access to the Jordanian border in 2015, complicating trade with Iran and the Gulf Arab markets and hurting farmers and other exporters. Iran’s decision to turn the credit tap back on in spring 2015 surely helped to slow the decay. But with Assad having run down his currency reserves and facing an array of other problems, the value of the pound continues to melt away, the lack of fuel causes cascading problems throughout the economy, the institutional rot worsens, and we’re seeing an accelerating middle class exodus from Damascus and the big cities.

When I recently polled some specialists on the Syrian economy, answers were uniformly pessimistic. Jihad Yazigi, who publishes the well-regarded economic newsletter The Syria Report, concluded that 2016 will see Syrians ”poorer, living a more miserable life, and emigrating in higher numbers.” José Ciro Martínez, an expert on food in conflicts, noted that bread prices have tripled in government-controlled areas (and also in the parts of Syria under Islamic State control), while they are stabilizing in rebel-held regions, where foreign governments are trucking in flour and food.

For the Baathist government, which still today controls a sizable majority of the Syrian people, this has started to eat away at one of Assad’s most important competitive advantages: his ability to provide basic goods and salaries in areas under his control, which draws civilians away from the bombed out and broken rebel badlands and places them under the control of his state, army, and security apparatus. In the past year, humanitarian workers and diplomats monitoring these issues have started to speak about internally displaced people being turned away from government areas that no longer feel that they can afford to care for them, or view them as potential fifth-columnists for the Sunni insurgency. The situation is so bad that in northern Syria, thousands have headed for Islamic State-run Raqqa—a city ruled by fundamentalist psychopaths and targeted by a dozen different air forces, but still safer and more livable than wherever they came from.

The decay of the central government, the army, state institutions, and the Syrian economy more generally means that Assad is growing less credible as the steward of all or part of post-war Syria, even for those inclined to imagine him as such. For years, the Syrian government has spent considerable resources running basic governmental functions even in areas outside of its control—for example by paying salaries to government workers, teachers, and hospital staff in some opposition-held regions. As a consequence, many insurgent areas are paradoxically enough dependent on regular payments and institutional services from the government they’re fighting.

In some cases, these are quid pro quo deals, where the government tries to leverage its ability to shut down services, in order to get the rebels to let traffic through a checkpoint or stay out of certain towns. In other cases, there are overriding shared interests, such as when the government and Islamists work out arrangements to keep Damascus and Aleppo supplied with potable water. There is also the spectacle of unhappy government oil workers sent out to run power plants under Islamic State supervision, because both sides want to keep the lights on and hope to make money off of the other.

But in many other cases, the central government simply seems to be paying for services in areas it does not control. This is not a humanitarian measure and neither is it mere bureaucratic inertia. (Sometimes, the government shuts down services and stops food deliveries as a means of collective punishment.) Rather, it appears to result from a strategic choice to maintain a skeletal grid of institutions in as many regions as possible. That’s a core interest for the Syrian state as such, but also for Assad personally, who hopes to win the war by safeguarding the government’s institutional base and making it contingent on the continued existence of his regime.

Given current trends, it seems unlikely that the central government will be able to keep these payments up forever. In so far as the current rulers of the state are forced to chose, they will no doubt prioritize loyalist areas. (Or corruption and clientelism will make that choice for them.) Also, many areas have already lost any presence of the state and functioning public institutions, whether due to the war, rebel depravations, or regime terror bombing. Recreating them will be even more costly than just keeping them in operation. If Assad’s government does not have the resources or the institutional capacity to rebuild reconquered areas, then it will rule no more effectively than the rebels. If it turns out to be too dependent on radical sectarians to allow Sunni refugees back, and cannot in fact operate as an institutional state and a national government, then President Assad is just a warlord with a fancy title.

For the regime, this is a do or die issue. Unless it manages to bring these structural problems under control in 2016, Syria may be heading into unknown territory.

2. The American-Kurdish Alliance.

Since late 2014 and early 2015, the United States Air Force has transformed itself into something that more closely resembles the Western Kurdistan Air Force. Under U.S. air cover, Kurdish forces are constructing their own autonomous region (called Rojava) and in autumn this year, the U.S. started delivering ammunition and small arms directly to Arab units working under the Kurdish umbrella, currently called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). We’re still in the early stages of what may or may not turn out to be a longterm relationship, although certainly not a monogamous one.

Militarily, it is a match made in heaven and the results are impressive. Despite their limited numbers, the Kurds have created a disciplined force that uses air support effectively. They’re chewing up jihadis and spitting them out from Kobane to Hassakeh. At the moment, they’re threatening to march against Shedadi near the Iraqi border and have just seized the October Dam on the Euphrates, giving them land access to Manbij and the Aleppo hinterland.

Such victories do not look like much on the map, but they are doing systematic and significant damage to the jihadis in sensitive areas. Oil fields, roads, border crossings, and bridges: these are things the Islamic State cannot live without. Now, the American-Kurdish coalition is buzzing around northern Syria like a giant vacuum cleaner, gobbling up all those goodies and leaving nothing for anyone else. If 2016 turns out to be the year when the Islamic State begins to crack and contract, the Syrian Kurds will have played a huge role in getting us there.

Politically speaking, however, the American-Kurdish alliance is not such a perfect marriage. It’s more like an unfortunate Tinder date: initial ambitions align, but you don’t have a lot of interests in common and your friends roll their eyes.

First of all, the Kurds are an ethnic minority with a very particular set of problems and ambitions in Syria, which have little to do with the wider war within the Sunni Arab majority. Their current crop of leaders are ideologically doctrinaire PKK loyalists. They have atrociously poor relations to the rest of the U.S.-backed opposition and disturbingly (as seen from the White House) close contacts with Moscow. If it wishes to act on the central stage of Syrian politics, the United States ultimately needs to win strong allies within the religiously flavored Sunni Arab majority, but it has instead come to rely on a foreign-linked, Russian-friendly, authoritarian, and secular Kurdish group with a (partly undeserved) reputation for separatism. Needless to say, this rubs every dominant ideological camp within the popular majority the wrong way: Islamists, Baathists, Syrian nationalists.

Secondly, the PKK is listed as a foreign terrorist organization in the United States. That means it is illegal for American citizens to provide it with any form of ”material support or resources,” possibly including enormous truckloads of ammunition and billions of dollars worth of close air support. Of course, the sanctioning of the PKK is more due to its violent conflict with Turkey than because of any Kurdish attacks against Americans. Therefore, one would logically expect there to be at least a debate in the United States about whether this key anti-jihadi ally should perhaps be removed from the black list, since this would seem to be an urgent national security interest. But there is nothing of the kind. Instead, the executive branch just goes about its business and the PKK gets its guns as intended. It is a rare case of a political system being so dysfunctional that it becomes super-functional, but it might not last forever.

Third and last, but not least—you may have heard of NATO. The United States is in a military alliance with Turkey, which is a key backer of the Syrian Sunni Arab opposition but also the PKK’s arch-enemy. Both Ankara and the Kurds rank each other far higher than Assad or the Islamic State on their respective lists of evils for urgent destruction. It’s getting worse, too. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is currently sending jets and tanks to bomb Kurdish cities, and he is backing attempts to destroy the HDP, which serves as PKK’s Sinn Féin and is a necessary component of any peaceful solution to Turkey’s conflict. If Turkey-PKK relations were antagonistic before, they are positively murderous right now.

These contradictions threaten to rip apart the United States’ Syrian alliance network, undermining its policy to pressure both Assad and the Islamic State. Resolving them is probably impossible; ignoring or transcending them won’t be much easier. At the moment, the United States is drifting towards the PKK almost by default. This is both because the Kurds have offered something that actually works on the ground and because Erdogan has been such a singularly unhelpful ally in Syria. Turkish obstructionism may have started to fade away now, with Ankara belatedly realizing its need for Western support and the costs of playing spoiler. That could change things. But unless Turkey’s behavior changes radically and other current trends continue, the unlikely alliance between the Pentagon and the PKK looks like it might just beat the odds and survive for the long term.

1. The Russian Intervention.

Here we are, at number one, and it’s an easy choice. The single most important event of the Syrian war in 2015 was of course Russia’s September 30 military intervention. Unfortunately, it’s much harder to pin down exactly why this is so important: because it strengthened Assad so much or because it didn’t strengthen him enough?

Most of the discussion in Western Europe and the United States has been over whether Russia intervened against the Islamic State, as it claims, or against other rebels backed by the United States, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. That question is easy to answer: Russia did not intervene against anyone in particular, it intervened for Assad. Who gets hurt depends on who stands in his way. So far, attacks overwhelmingly focus on the other rebels, not the Islamic State—although the Russian government and its media toadies continue to claim otherwise with a sanctimonious pigheadedness unseen since Baghdad Bob.

If we instead judge the Russian intervention against its undeclared but actual goal, which is to aid Assad, a nuanced picture emerges. The airstrikes themselves are intense and seem effective, but they will ultimately matter little unless a capable ground force can exploit the openings created. Assad’s army leaves much to be desired, as already noted, and his government will struggle to resume firm control over the areas and populations it might capture.

So far, there have been limited gains on the ground, mostly in low-value areas south of Aleppo and some hard-won mountain terrain in northern Latakia. The Syrian army is also seeking to wrest back control of Sheikh Miskin in the south, to make Deraa easier to hold. Less visibly but perhaps more importantly, a series of local ceasefire-and-evacuation deals have helped neutralize rebel strongholds in the Homs and Damascus regions. Since the costs to Russia seem to be fairly limited, they can probably keep this up for a long time, meaning that Assad is in no hurry and can focus on preserving cohesion and manpower.

But on the other hand, three months have already passed and Assad has not recaptured a single one of the cities he lost in spring and summer 2015. Not Jisr al-Shughour, not Bosra, not Idleb, not Palmyra. And on the North Hama front, which has been a main focus for the Russian Air Force, Assad has actually been pushed backwards. Soon after the Russians intervened, he lost Morek, a small town that has been fiercely contested for both sides; that was no sign of strength. If the rebels were to move just a few villages further south of Morek, they’d be within comfortable range of Hama City and could start shelling the crucially important Hama Military Airport. (Perhaps that is a reason for why Assad and the Russians are now hastily restoring the discontinued Shaayrat Airport southeast of Homs?)

In other words, while the intervention has helped Assad turn the tide, he’s nowhere near as effective at capturing territory as his enemies were half a year ago. By now, the initial shock and awe has started to wear off. The Russian state media continues to claim that they’re winning, winning, winning, but if people were willing to listen to that on September 30, they don’t any longer. After three months of nonstop lying and braggadocio, the progress reports from Russia’s ministries of defense and foreign affairs seem no more credible than the shrill propaganda we’ve grown accustomed to from Syria’s rebels and regime.

That said, I think it is quite possible that the Russian bombings will have made a deep cut in the rebellion’s fortunes by spring 2016. The longterm and cumulative effect of all this pressure should not be ignored. How long can the Idleb insurgents fight a three-front war against forces coming from Aleppo in the east, Latakia in the west, and Hama in the south? Both the Syrian and the Russian air forces are now hitting munitions storages, supply routes, and transports all over Idleb and Aleppo. The longer-term effects of these bombings may remain invisible to us still. They are also bombing civilian trade and points of access for food and medical aid in areas that had previously been off limits to the Syrian air force. This is either a calculated gamble or part of a deliberate strategy to create a humanitarian disaster, since the Russians are well aware that hundreds of thousands of people depend on deliveries channeled through these areas. Whatever the case, it stirs up the situation all over northern Syria. Rebel forces could theoretically begin to unravel structurally in the same way that the Islamic State is now doing on some fronts, after a year of mostly Iraqi, Kurdish, and American pressure.

Indeed, we are seeing signs that all is not well in the Syrian rebel movement. The Jaish al-Fath coalition, a powerful Idlebi alliance built on the Nusra-Ahrar axis, has just issued a desperate-sounding call for outside support and foreign fighters. The fact that the alliance now openly invites foreign jihadis to come join them breaches a longstanding redline for the non-Qaida segments of the Islamist opposition. One of Jaish al-Fath’s founding factions, the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Feilaq al-Sham militia, was so troubled by this (and perhaps by how their funders would react) that they pulled out of the alliance days after the statement. That Jaish al-Fath’s dominant factions would throw caution to the wind in this way, to the extent that the alliance is starting to wither, is a sign of how much pressure they are under since September 30.

Another possible metric is the death of senior commanders. There is no shortage of new recruits for the rebellion, so one shouldn’t overstate the overall significance, but if leaders get killed it’s at the very least a sign that something is wrong. Since September 30, there has been a lot of reports about dead and injured senior figures in the insurgency. The most well known victim is of course Zahran Alloush in Damascus, though we do not know if the Russians were involved in that attack. Further north, recent deaths include Abu Abdessalam al-Shami, an Ahrar al-Sham member who served as Jaish al-Fath’s governor of Idleb City, Ismail Nassif, who was the military chief of the Noureddine Zengi Brigades, and his counterpart in the Thuwwar al-Sham Front, Yasser Abu Said. All three were killed on the south Aleppo front. Jaish al-Fath’s chief judge, the Saudi celebrity jihadi Abdullah al-Moheisini, was wounded just before Christmas (but survived), while Sheikh Osama al-Yatim, who ran the Dar al-Adl court system in the Houran, was killed in mid-December. The list could be made a lot longer.

It’s also worth noting that the political effect outside Syria has been far bigger than the military gains inside Syria. September 30 shook up conventional wisdom about the conflict and increased Putin’s influence across the board, for having yet again out-escalated the West and proven his commitment to Assad. It created some hard-to-win debates for John Kerry, added to an already growing European pessimism about the wisdom of backing Syrian rebels, and made it less likely that a no fly zone would be imposed in Syria by Obama or his successor. By focusing the minds of people in Moscow, Washington, and elsewhere, the Russian intervention has also helped bring about the Vienna meetings, the creation of the ISSG, and consequently also the upcoming Geneva III talks in January. The November 14 Vienna Communiqué (which Assad doesn’t like) is now overtaking the Geneva Communiqué of June 2012 (which Assad really hated). However you rate these things, they’re not nothing.

Most analysis of the Russian involvement has been so politicized as to be almost useless. Putin’s and Assad’s supporters have been quick to pronounce the operation a resounding success, while rebel backers dismiss it as a murderous fiasco. The safe bet is, as always, to look for the truth somewhere in between those extremes. My best guess is that Putin is probably worried over the Syrian Arab Army’s underwhelming achievements and increasingly concerned over what he has gotten himself into. Nevertheless, Assad is definitely in a stronger position than he was half a year ago and can still hope for a bigger dividend in 2016. One also has to consider the alternatives: the Syrian army would no doubt have been much worse off now if the intervention had not happened, and that would have undercut Russia’s influence as well.

Finally, one must note the risks involved in raising the stakes. If the Geneva III talks falter and Assad fails to achieve a decisive breakthrough in 2016, then what? Russia can hardly pull back, now that Assad has grown dependent on its support, not without losing face and seeing its investments frittered away. And what then, Mr. Putin: will you just keep going with no end in sight, or will you escalate even further? In other words, Russia is now at risk of getting stuck in an intractable conflict without an exit strategy and without clear political gain. It would be like Saudi Arabia in Yemen, but on a much bigger scale. If Putin ends up sending ground troops into battle, the risks and costs involved would rise considerably—but even that might not be enough to bring about a Kremlin-friendly conclusion to the Syrian mess.

Some of the less responsible actors on the pro-rebel side (you know who you are) might find this scenario to be in their interest. By exposing himself to injury in Syria while simultaneously continuing to provoke Western and Sunni Arab nations in Ukraine, Iran, and elsewhere, Putin has effectively offered them the choice of a full-blown proxy war. Once he seems to have tied his personal prestige firmly enough to Assad’s fate, they just need to abandon any lingering hopes they might have for stability in Syria and start kicking at the pillars that still keep the state standing, thereby turning Syria into Putin’s own Afghanistan. It would be very bad news for the Russians, but it would be a catastrophe for Syrians.

Barring a military breakthrough, much could depend on the outcome of the otherwise uninspiring Geneva III talks in January. The behavior of Russia and the Assad government will be watched closely by Western states. If Putin acts constructively and demonstrates real leverage over his ally, or meaningful agreements between Syrians seem to be within reach, then so far so good. But if it turns out that Putin refuses to fulfill his side of the deal, which is to deliver Assad’s approval of a transition plan, or if Assad simply ignores Moscow’s advice, then what good is the Russian presence in Syria to Arabs, Americans, and Europeans? We would be back in a purely military contest. The ramped-up Russian investment in Assad’s regime would then look less like a unilateral readjustment of Syria’s balance of power and more like a target of opportunity.

The post The Ten Most Important Developments in Syria in 2015 appeared first on Syria Comment.

Click the above map to download a full-size image

by Matthew Barber

Yazda is a Yazidi humanitarian and advocacy organization founded after the attempted genocide of the Yazidis by IS on Aug. 3, 2014. Beginning this past fall, I took a one-year leave of absence from my PhD program at the University of Chicago to serve as Executive Director for Yazda during this period of urgent need. The accompanying responsibilities have unfortunately kept me away from Syria Comment of late.

One of Yazda’s projects is to document the crimes of genocide that were committed against the Yazidi people. Our genocide documentation project focuses on examining physical evidence of mass graves (bones, clothing, grave mounds) while gathering survivor testimonies to corroborate the physical evidence that we find.

Bones and skull fragments of Yazidis killed by IS near Sinjar City. The civilians that were massacred at this site were attempting to flee to safety when they were rounded up by jihadists and brought to this site in trucks. Evidence of clothing found by Yazda suggests that men, women, and children were executed at this site. Photo: Yazda

Yazda is now issuing a full report on the mass graves in Sinjar, which is available on the Yazda website. VICE News has just published the full report here, and Human Rights Watch and Yazda have released a joint press statement on the urgency of protecting and performing forensic analyses of the mass graves.

The full report is also available for download here, and can be read in the PDF viewer below.

The post Report on Mass Graves of Yazidis in Sinjar appeared first on Syria Comment.

By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

Graphic dedicated to al-Khal’s ‘martyrdom’.

The figure of al-Khal (a nickname meaning ‘The Uncle’)- also known by his real name Muhammad al-Baridi (Abu Ali al-Baridi)- presents one of the more interesting stories behind leaders of the various Syrian rebel groups. As one of the founders and the leader of Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk (Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade) from its inception in around summer 2012 until his death in November 2015, al-Khal gained notoriety as his brigade moved from a Free Syrian Army [FSA] brand group that was even part of the Southern Front coalition in 2014 to an overtly pro-Islamic State [IS] orientation in the aftermath of clashes with Jabhat al-Nusra at the end of that year, as Syria’s al-Qa’ida affiliate had accused Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk of having secret links with IS.

I have already traced out the history of Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk as a group in considerable detail, but what of the life of al-Khal himself? So far there is little biographical detail available on him. This post hopes to rectify that deficiency, drawing in part on testimony from Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk circles. At the same time, one must be aware of the need for source criticism when it comes to particular details, as will be seen later. For purposes of clarity, it will help to read the aforementioned historical account of Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk as a group.

Muhammad al-Baridi was born in 1970 in the village of Jamlah in Hawdh/Wadi al-Yarmouk (the Yarmouk Basin/Yarmouk Valley), an area in the corner of southwest Deraa province bordering the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. So close are Jamlah and nearby localities in the Yarmouk Basin to the border that they are visible in the distance from the Israeli-controlled side.

Looking out from the Golan Heights towards Hawdh al-Yarmouk beyond the border fence (photo my own, taken from farmland near the Israeli settlement of Haspin).

As al-Khal’s family name suggests, he was born into the Baridi family/clan that is local to the Yarmouk Valley. The name is of importance because the Baridis are prominent landowners in the area- they are also the main founders of Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk. Indeed, this dynamic seems to be key as to explaining the group’s staying power and grip over Hawdh al-Yarmouk until now, despite the casualties inflicted on account of the war with Jabhat al-Nusra and the southern Jaysh al-Fatah coalition it leads. Like so many other rebel groups, the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade originated as a very local start-up.

In keeping with the status of the Baridis, al-Khal’s father was a renowned wealthy landowner in the area working in the realm of agriculture, and his son followed in his father’s footsteps from the beginning of his working life. He then moved into selling produce in the Deraa markets while not abandoning agricultural work. Likely on account of the family wealth, al-Khal had access to a relatively good education, and was even able to study Arabic language for a time in Damascus University, though he does not appear to have graduated with a degree.

Of particular interest is whether al-Khal had already begun delving into Islamist and jihadi thought prior to the outbreak of the Syrian revolution. Here, one should perhaps exercise some caution as there may be polemical interests in projecting the adoption of radical ideology onto an earlier stage of al-Khal’s life, despite the fact that his brigade was clearly aligned with FSA-brand forces in the south for two years or so and did not begin to implement substantial Islamic-style governance on the ground in the form of a ‘reform’ (islah) program imitating aspects of IS administration until the turn of the New Year in 2015. From Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk circles, a recurring talking point now is that the brigade’s orientation was ‘Islamic’ from the outset, and linked to this narrative is a claim that al-Khal had always espoused an Islamist/Salafi manhaj.

All accounts agree that al-Khal was eventually imprisoned by the regime and released. The timeline of imprisonment and nature of the offences are a matter of some dispute. An opposition activist and critic of al-Khal quoted by The National claims that he was imprisoned on account of thefts of antiquities from archaeological sites, while a rebel commander cited by the same paper says it was on account of extremist tendencies. A person from Hawdh al-Yarmouk who called himself Asad al-Baridi told me that he had been imprisoned by the regime twice before the revolution- each time for less than a year. The exact time of his release and the reasons for imprisonment were not specified by this source, though he did claim that al-Khal had desired the implementation of Islamic law before the revolution. Another Baridi who is in Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk and was close to al-Khal told me that al-Khal was imprisoned because “he was interested in extremist thought” and had been released after the beginning of the revolution as part of the “second amnesty” issued by the regime for a number of political prisoners over some months in 2011. Many of those released detainees were Islamists and jihadis held in the notorious Sednaya prison, who went on to found prominent rebel groups like Ahrar al-Sham (Hassan Aboud) and Jaysh al-Islam (Zahran Alloush). On this reading it seems likely that al-Khal was among that contingent of Islamists released from Sednaya.

In any case, there is no evidence that al-Khal was a jihadi veteran of prior conflicts, unlike many Syrian Islamists and jihadis who most recently distinguished themselves as combatants in the insurgency against the U.S. occupation of Iraq. According to the Baridi who was close to al-Khal, “He wanted to go to Iraq but could not because the Syrian mukhabarat caught up with him.” If so, that would fall under the double game the regime played with Islamists and the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq via Syria, whereby active facilitation existed but also crackdowns took place from time to time- for example, as Charles Lister notes, while 2005 saw a decrease in the foreign fighter flow to Iraq, 2006-7 saw a re-expansion of that flow (The Syrian Jihad- p. 39).

Contrasting with al-Khal’s lack of prior military experience is the figure of Abu Obeida Qahtan, who is the current amir of Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk. According to the Baridi who was close to al-Khal, he was also one of the founders of Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk. A Palestinian Syrian from the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, Abu Obeida Qahtan most notably fought in the Afghan jihad alongside Osama bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam against the Soviet invasion. He may also have had a role in the subsequent jihads in Chechnya and Iraq. I have not found corroboration of a notion that Abu Obeida Qahtan was in Jama’at Bayt al-Maqdis al-Islamiya, a jihadi group in the south suspected of links to IS partly on account of its flag resembling that of IS. Though this group is often thought to be Palestinian because of the ‘Bayt al-Maqdis’ (referring to Jerusalem) in its name, it primarily consists of locals from Deraa and Quneitra with some muhajireen from Jordan and not Palestinians, according to a member of the group I spoke with. This member also denied that there is allegiance to IS.

Abu Obeida Qahtan (left) with al-Khal (right). The image first appears to have emerged in 2014. The figure on the left has been misidentified as Abu Muhammad al-Masalama, about whom more below.

Abu Obeida Qahtan’s presence and status in the brigade are rather exceptional in nature, because the group has drawn its manpower almost entirely from the wider Hawran area in southern Syria. While the majority of Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk fighters come from the Yarmouk Valley, the group has also absorbed remnants of the Quneitra province jihadi coalition Jaysh al-Jihad, which was accused by rebels of having links with IS and consequently dismantled by mid-2015, even as Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk expressed solidarity with Jaysh al-Jihad.

As for foreign fighters who mostly attempted to come in via Jordan, al-Khal “would reject the muhajireen and send them to the north”- as per the testimony of the Baridi who was close to al-Khal. The only case of an actual foreigner in Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk appears to be an Israeli Arab who paraglided into Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk territory in October 2015, less than a month prior to al-Khal’s death. According to the same Baridi source, there was prior agreement from al-Khal for this Israeli Arab to join the group, and he remains alive and within its ranks today.

It should be noted in this context that another jihadi group in Deraa province- Harakat al-Muthanna al-Islamiya (“The Islamic Muthanna Movement”), which recently clashed with a number of Southern Front groups that accused it of running secret prisons to detain rivals, has a similar policy of rejecting muhajireen. The group, founded as Katibat al-Muthanna bin Haritha Qahir al-Faras by a former Sednaya detainee in 2012 (Abu Ayyub al-Masalama, who was killed in March 2013), has this policy in order to build popular support in Deraa, according to a member I spoke with. As can be seen, a ‘Syrian-only’ membership policy does not necessarily tell against radical tendencies. Harakat al-Muthanna al-Islamiya has rejected participation in the war on Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk, despite some local clashes back in mid-summer 2014.

How does one piece together al-Khal’s life and the evolution of Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk over time? If al-Khal was indeed a radical all along and if Abu Obeida Qahtan was among the founders of the group, it suggests that the FSA-branding, including the co-signing with dozens of southern groups of an affirmation for a civil democratic state in mid-2014, was in fact an exercise in sweet-talk and deception practised over a considerable period of time, likely in order to maintain foreign support via the Military Operations Command (MOC) room in Amman that is jointly backed by Western and Gulf states as well as Jordan, responsible for oversight of support for southern factions deemed acceptably ‘moderate’.

By 2013, it would appear that there were already suspicions on the part of Jordanian intelligence about al-Khal, who had apparently received treatment in Jordan for wounds, but MOC support was not halted.  If The National account is right in terms of the timeline of MOC support for Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk, then the first actual suspension of MOC support amid concern about the group’s direction and conduct in mid-2014 was soon followed by the first signs of a shift in the outward display of orientation, most notably as a new, more Islamic-looking emblem was adopted. Here, it should be added that The National has things slightly wrong: the new emblem adopted at that time (summer 2014) did not use an IS flag but a more generic white/black flag associated with jihad (see my history of the group).

While The National reports allegations of influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and a Brotherhood-linked Syrian cleric called Sheikh Muhammad Sorour Zain al-Abidain that increased over time, it should be noted that this narrative, which implies an adoption by al-Khal of more radical ideas over the course of the revolution rather than adhering to Islamist ideology from the outset, is not corroborated by Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk sources. It is possible that the Muslim Brotherhood-influence narrative derives from long-standing concerns Saudi Arabia and the UAE in particular have had about the Muslim Brotherhood, although the former’s stance has softened slightly since the beginning of King Salman’s reign in January 2015.

One can perhaps point to another jihadi figure- Sheikh Ahmad Kasab al-Masalama (Abu Muhammad al-Masalama)- as having a role in the shift in public display of Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk’s orientation. From Harasta in the Damascus area, Masalama was reportedly part of the ‘Fighting Vanguard‘ before going to join the Afghan jihad, eventually returning to Syria some time in 2012 to play a role in the insurgency in the south. He was apparently appointed a Shari’i judge in Jabhat al-Nusra but by some point in 2014 had left the group and had some involvement as a Shari’i official or advisor in Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk, reputedly being a close friend of al-Khal. Step News Agency even describes them as associates in the same jihadi trend before the revolution. Masalama was assassinated in November 2014.

Purported photo of Abu Muhammad al-Masalama.

Since the clashes with Jabhat al-Nusra in December 2014, the pro-IS orientation of Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk has been openly on display and the Yarmouk Valley has been under a state of siege as part of the war between Jabhat al-Nusra/southern Jaysh al-Fatah and Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk, which has cost both sides heavily and has in fact played a significant role in the diminishing of Jabhat al-Nusra’s power in the south. For Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk, the biggest loss has been the assassination of al-Khal and his deputy Abu Abdullah al-Ja’ouni, also a native of the Yarmouk Valley, in an operation in Jamlah in November 2015.

While Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk’s administration and media output have been imitating IS in many recognisable respects, the group continues to deny allegiance and/or having links with IS and does not quite take the same approach of speedy and forceful implementation of Shari’a. In a denial of links posted on 31 December 2015, Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk even referred to IS as “jama’at al-dawla al-islamiya” (“Islamic State group”)- a designation also used by IS’ jihadi rivals like Jabhat al-Nusra and regarded by IS as an insult for not according legitimacy to its statehood claim.

Ideologically, therefore, the position is quite incoherent, for IS demands allegiance and subsuming all group identities under its state framework- mere words of support are not enough. Contrast the case of Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk with Jama’at Ansar Bait al-Maqdis (now IS’ Sinai Province). When the latter denied a prematurely released statement pledging allegiance to IS, it did not attempt to deny IS the status of statehood on its official media channels.

In addition, it remains the case as I reported back in October 2015 that the niqab is not compulsory in Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk territory. This contrasts with IS territory where the niqab is imposed almost immediately after the conquest of any new territory. Back when IS was just ISIS, the niqab imposition in Raqqa came within days of ISIS’ consolidation of control of the city in mid to late January 2014.

It is possible that IS is playing an elaborate long game, in that denial of links are encouraged because it is not strategically useful to declare a Wilayat Deraa for now. Indeed, considering the proximity of the territory to Israel-controlled territory, it may be the case that there is concern that an official IS announcement will lead to airstrikes of some sort on Hawdh al-Yarmouk, which is not currently subjected to any bombing raids, whether from the regime, Russia or the coalition against IS.

In total, al-Khal sired six daughters and two sons. Of the two sons, he did not see one of them as his spouse gave birth to this son two months after his death.

The post The Life of al-Khal: First Leader of Liwa Shuhada’ al-Yarmouk appeared first on Syria Comment.

By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

Original emblem of Liwa Usud al-Hussein.

The province of Latakia has seen a variety of militias operate in its territory in the bid to drive out rebel forces entirely from the coastal front, including the Muqawama Suriya, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party’s Nusur al-Zawba’a, and Suqur al-Sahara’. Foreign Shi’a militias have also participated in Latakia battles, the most notable recent case being the Iraqi group Liwa Assad Allah al-Ghalib, which, according to one of its members I have spoken with, has some Syrian members and has personnel playing an advisory role in Suqur al-Sahara’. The links between Liwa Assad Allah al-Ghalib and Suqur al-Sahara’ are borne out in recent social media output by the former, as per below as an example:

From the Latakia front: note the Liwa Assad Allah al-Ghalib flags and the Suqur al-Sahara’ arm-patches.

Unlike the formations mentioned above, Liwa Usud al-Hussein (The Lions of Hussein Brigade) is a much newer militia based in Latakia, having been formed approximately 7 months ago (i.e. around late June-early July 2015), according to a media representative for the group. The formation of Liwa Usud al-Hussein thus came soon after the creation of Coastal Shield, a local militia affiliated with the Syrian army’s Republican Guard that reflected a regime strategy at the time of both dealing with manpower shortages exacerbated by conscription avoidance and focusing on defending areas deemed strategically vital.

However, unlike Coastal Shield, Liwa Usud al-Hussein does not appear to claim affiliation with the Syrian army. The leader of the brigade- originally from Qardaha– is one Hussein Tawfiq al-Assad, undoubtedly part of the larger al-Assad family that is in Qardaha. One can understand the name of Hussein in the brigade’s name in two ways: not only can it refer to the leader of the group, but also to Imam Hussein. Indeed, in an early video posted by Liwa Usud al-Hussein showing the group’s presence in the Homs desert area near Palmyra, the accompanying soundtrack is the song “Salam Allah ‘Ala Sawtak Habibi Ya Hussein” (God’s peace be upon your voice, my beloved Hussein”). These data point to the Alawite background of the militia (for more on the status of Imam Hussein in Alawite theology, see this book by Yaron Friedman). This observation should not come as a surprise. Another militia in Latakia province, the Katibat al-Jabal, affiliated with the National Defence Forces and primarily based on the Nabi Yunis summit, has also made its Alawite affinities clear.

The main operations publicly claimed to date have been participation in the fighting in the Homs desert area near Palmyra against the Islamic State in July 2015, combat in the Sahl al-Ghab in the late summer of 2015, the offensive to take Marj al-Sultan airbase in the Damascus area towards the end of 2015, and most recently the new offensives in north Latakia province that have gone decisively against the rebels, who have suffered high attrition rates partly on account of the intense Russian airstrikes. Specifically in the most recent Latakia initiatives, Liwa Usud al-Hussein took part in the capture of Rabi’a, rather than the rebel stronghold of Salma. Over the course of all these campaigns, Liwa Usud al-Hussein has publicly claimed 3 ‘martyrs’, two of whom were claimed to have been killed in the operations near Palmyra, and one in the Sahl al-Ghab battles.

However, it should be noted that discrepancies exist in the data for the two supposedly killed fighting for Liwa Usud al-Hussein near Palmyra: Nader Saleh Douba, originally from the village of al-Boudi to the southeast of Qardaha, and Rami Aboud Muhammad, originally from Bashnana in Tartous province. Rami is agreed by multiple sources to have been killed in the Aqrab area in Hama governorate, while Nader is variously said to have been killed either in north Homs or Jobar in Damascus. In fact, the media representative for Liwa Usud al-Hussein affirmed to me that only two ‘martyrs’ for the group are confirmed since the founding of the brigade, though names were not specified.

Militia commander Hussein al-Assad claimed to be posing in Rabi’a (Latakia) following its capture from rebel forces.

Screenshot from a video advertising the group’s participation in operations near Palmyra, set to the soundtrack of “Salam Allah ‘Ala Sawtak Habibi Ya Hussein.”

Screenshot from a video showing Liwa Usud al-Hussein fighters posing over the corpse of a dead Islamic State fighter apparently in the T4 airbase area in the Homs desert. Note the distinct Liwa Usud al-Hussein arm-patches on two of the fighters (centre and right). For the soundtrack, see this video.

From a video posted by Liwa Usud al-Hussein, advertising a convoy as heading off to fight in the Palmyra area. Close-up of a car with the group’s logo.

From the same video as the previous photo: Liwa Usud al-Hussein arm-patch.

As of now, the Liwa Usud al-Hussein media representative asserted to me that the brigade has undergone a reformation and reconstitution, now using the name “Quwat Humat Souriya- Usud al-Hussein” (Guardians of Syria Forces- Lions of Hussein). The precise reasons for this development were not made clear.

The new emblem of Liwa Usud al-Hussein under the name of Quwat Humat Souriya- Usud al-Hussein. On bottom, a familiar slogan: “Watan, Sharf, Ikhlas” (Homeland, Honour, Sincerity).

Like many other pro-Assad militias such as Liwa Khaybar, the number of ‘martyrs’ claimed by Liwa Usud al-Hussein suggests a very minor role in the overall conflict, but the group provides another interesting case study of militias on the regime side of the conflict.

The post Liwa Usud al-Hussein: A New Pro-Assad Militia in Latakia appeared first on Syria Comment.

President al-Assad’s First Speech – An Insider’s Account
by Ehsani
For Syria Comment – 19 April 2016

During a recent event at the Council on Foreign Relations, three prominent western Syria analysts met to discuss “the leadership style, psychology, personality, and policies” of President Bashar al-Assad. The moderator started by asking the participants to analyze the President through covering his first speech to the nation on March 30, 2011. One member on the panel, David Lesch, recounted how a confidant of the President who claimed to have seen one draft about an hour before the speech that included concessions and announcements of reforms.  When the President spoke to the Parliament, however, this person was shocked to see that the President read from a different and more hardline version. The implication here is that had the President stuck to the more dovish draft, the Syrian crisis may have turned out differently or even been averted. The conclusion analysts draw from this account is that the President’s decision to embrace regime hawks and reject reforms and use force marked a seminal or “fateful moment” in the crisis.

The only problem with this account is that it is inaccurate. Multiple drafts of the speech did not exist. The Syrian leadership is not in the habit of providing multiple drafts of Presidential speeches. The President did indeed confer with his advisors before addressing the nation, but his final choice was to embrace the advice of regime doves and not regime hawks. If he had followed the advice of his hawks, he would not have given a speech at all.

The President’s more hawkish advisors insisted that any attempt to offer reforms or concessions would be dismissed as too little, too late. Demonstrators would only be encouraged and set the country on the slippery slope to chaos. Hawks viewed the crisis as a matter of life and death for the leadership and the regime. They reminded the president that numerous terrorist and jihadi cells had been penetrated and closed down over the previous years. Any collapse in state security would lead to the quick mobilization of jihadists who were lying in wait for an opportunity to mobilize. Westernized liberals were few and would be quickly swept aside, they insisted. The hawks warned against giving a speech.

Instead of speaking to the nation, this group argued that any hesitation on the part of the President or protracted discussion of reforms would fall short of popular demands, which were unrealizable and becoming more extreme by the day. Instead, the regime hard liners pressed the President to send tanks into the streets. The state must show no mercy, they insisted. It must adopt a shoot to kill policy to avoid any sign of hesitancy. Otherwise, all would be lost. Gentleness would only encourage demonstrators to come out in ever greater numbers. This was the advice of the hard liners; the President did not follow it.

The less hawkish advisors pleaded with the President to speak to the nation. They wanted him to hint at the possibility of rescinding the emergency laws and article 8 of the constitution, the article that establishes the Baath Party as the ruling party. They argued that these concessions would show that the leadership understood the gravity of the situation. By meeting the demonstrators’ demands part way and establish the good will of the president, some of his advisors insisted, the demonstrators would be mollified. They would stop coming out at the call of the organizers. Those demanding regime-change would be isolated and soon defeated.

As the President considered the advice of his contending advisors, the leaders of Qatar were becoming increasingly emboldened. They were playing a leading role in the Libya uprising. Al-Jazeera’s coverage of Tahrir Square was also key to events unfolding in Egypt. The Emir was convinced that Qatar could play a decisive role in shaping Syria’s revolt too. As early as March 6, 2011, Al Jazeera TV reported that Assad was sending pilots to Libya. The evidence is that one had been shot down fighting in support of Gaddafi. The constant repetition of this news sent shock waves through the Syrian populace. Turkey too, got into the act. As the events in Daraa unfolded, Erdogan reached out to Damascus with a suggestion for solving the crisis. He counseled Assad to include the Moslem Brothers in the political process. The Emir of Qatar jumped in behind Erdogan with a promise that Al Jazeera would temper its media coverage of the events in Syria if Damascus embraced the Turkish recommendations. Assad’s rejection of this advice was swift and predictable. He and his advisers interpreted the Qatari and Turkish involvement to be part of a developing plan to sweep away the regimes of the Arab World. He called it a “foreign conspiracy” in his speech. Just minutes after he descended from the podium, the most popular social media site at the time, a Facebook page curated by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, wrote “Is this the speech we were promised? I swear to God, it’s scandalous that somebody like this rules us. To the streets shabab [youth] of Syria!”

In the end, Assad’s speech was a classic case of expectations running ahead of reality. The fact that it was made at all should have been interpreted that the President did not side with Syria’s hawks. Ironically, what happened instead was that as soon as the speech was over, President al-Assad was forever seen as the ultimate hawk himself.

The post “President al-Assad’s First Speech – An Insider’s Account,” by Ehsani appeared first on Syria Comment.

By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

Emblem of The Leopards of Homs. The Arabic reads: “Fuhud Homs: Fawj al-Maham al-Khasa” (The Leopards of Homs: Special Operations Regiment). See older emblems of the militia here.

The Homs area has seen the creation and growth of multiple militias on the regime side over the course of the Syrian civil war, including Liwa Khaybar (The Khaybar Brigade) and Quwat al-Ridha (The Ridha Forces, part of Syrian Hezbollah). The Leopards of Homs (hereafter: Fuhud Homs) is another such formation.  According to the militia’s media office, the formation dates back to 2013 in its first iteration, but was established with its current affiliation in 2015. In terms of Fuhud Homs’ relations with other pro-Assad militias, it should be noted that the leader of the formation is one Shadi Jum’a, a close associate of Abu Ja’afar (aka The Scorpion), who, as will be recalled, is the leader of Liwa Khaybar and one of the founders of the National Defence Forces (NDF) in Homs. The link between the two men is apparent from a post written by The Scorpion in late December 2015, referring to the bomb attacks that had most recently taken place in the city of Homs at that time:

“My brothers…heroes…I implore those who bore arms with me against the terrorists from the first of the events [‘events’- a pro-regime term for the civil war]: my brother Muhammad al-Ali, my brother Shadi Jum’a, my brother Muhannad [typo?- Muhammad] al-Hajji, all my brothers in the National Defence in Homs, the family of Ghanim al-Sayis, the resisters, and I refrain from mentioning the rest of the names: we must do something for our people in Homs, our children, women and brothers are being killed every day. Others besides us will not protect our people, we do not want rebellion, and we will not direct our arms against our state that we have protected with our people, but we will not barter, and we only want to protect our areas.

The Scorpion.”

The Scorpion himself clarifies to me that there is a distinction between the Fuhud Homs of Shadi Jum’a and the Fuhud Forces [aka Fuhud Groups] contingent of Suheil al-Hassan’s well-known Tiger Forces militia. The latter’s leader- Muhammad al-Hajji, was killed last month fighting the Islamic State (IS) in the vicinity of Palmyra, and was the brother of the group’s founder and prior leader Ali al-Hajji, who was killed in fighting in the Sahl al-Ghab in August 2015. The brothers were from the Talkalakh area of Homs.

In contrast with the Fuhud Forces, Shadi Jum’a was originally working with The Scorpion and the Homs NDF circles (which is presumably what the Fuhud Homs media office means by the militia’s original iteration in 2013). By May 2014, Shadi Jum’a was already identified as leader of a militia contingent in an account of a prominent incident of infighting that took place between pro-regime militias in the city of Homs. In 2015, he established Fuhud Homs in its present iteration of affiliation with prominent regime businessman Rami Makhlouf’s al-Bustan Association. Thus the Fuhud Homs media office denies an NDF affiliation in the current formation (contrary to an al-Quds al-Arabi report that mentions Fuhud Homs).

It should further be recalled that the al-Bustan Association officially has other militias under its umbrella, most notably the Dir’ al-Watan Forces led by the Iraqi Shi’i militia commander Hayder al-Jiburi, which partly constitutes a project of providing cover for Liwa Dhu al-Fiqar under the supposed framework of the Syrian state in order to counter criticism of Iraqi Shi’i militia intervention on behalf of the Assad regime. On its own media page, Fuhud Homs mentions the al-Bustan Association affiliation in one post:

“And from Fuhud Homs- Special Operations Regiment (al-Bustan Association)- one of the popular defence formations- we pledge to God, the homeland and the leader of the homeland to complete the path of victory behind him, and shoulder to shoulder with our Syrian Arab Army, until victory, rebuilding and returning with Syria more beautiful than what it was under the protection of its leadership.

Soldiers of Assad, Fuhud Homs, Guardians of the Den.”

In its current iteration, Fuhud Homs has advertised operations on two main fronts, though unlike other pro-Assad militias there appears to be a lack of distinct insignia for fighters on the ground. The first main front comprises engagements against IS in the Homs desert, with the ongoing fighting involving the strategic asset of al-Maher gas field. Operations in the Homs desert have also involved securing the Jazal oil field area as well as combat on the Qaryatayn and Palmyra fronts. The other major operations front for Fuhud Homs is participation in the ongoing siege of the rebel-held Damascus suburb town of Darayya, during which Fuhud Homs has claimed more than one ‘martyr’ (fallen fighter). One such ‘martyr’ was Hayder al-Nasir, who was reportedly from Bayt al-Tawil street in the Wadi al-Dhahab neighbourhood of Homs city and was killed in December 2015 by sniper fire as he tried to help a wounded companion. More recently on the Darayya front, Fuhud Homs claimed a ‘martyr’ called Tamam al-Ali, who was reportedly from the Karm al-Zaytoun neighbourhood of Homs city and was killed in late April 2016.

Fuhud Homs also claimed a number of ‘martyrs’ in May 2015 as Palmyra fell to IS. A table below gives their names and reported origins. The majority of these ‘martyrs’ appear to come from predominantly Alawite areas. One should also note that other sources beyond Fuhud Homs giving the names of these ‘martyrs’ do not necessarily agree on group affiliation. For example one of the pages cited attributes some of these ‘martyrs’ to the NDF. This may be a product of overlap in affiliation or simple error. There are also some discrepancies in origins that may be a result of conflation with place of residence.

In short, the case of Fuhud Homs presents an interesting insight into the evolution of the pro-Assad militia networks in the Homs area. The militias will likely compete among each other for influence in the Assad regime rump state as they will probably continue to grow in power, partly because they present a better financial alternative for recruits than the regular Syrian Arab Army, which faces an ongoing crisis with the declining value of the Syrian pound.

The post The Leopards of Homs: A Pro-Assad Militia appeared first on Syria Comment.

A Day in The Life of The Jungle: Syrians Camped out in Calais
by Tam Hussein – @tamhussein
For Syria Comment, May

Apart from the odd father attending to the needs of their families, most Syrians sleep in late in the Jungle in Calais. They are wrapped up inside their tarpaulin and plywood hovels resembling one of those Hoovervilles from Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Sometimes new arrivals, exhausted, just curl up and sleep on the dusty path, not caring that in this makeshift camp rats are oblivious to men. In fact, this is the very reason why they call it the Jungle; for here men live like animals. The Junglists though, whether Syrian or not, don’t sleep in because they are idle. They have been up all night trying; trying with an indomitable will to reach the white cliffs of England.

The Pump in the background, motorway to port- Author

England though doesn’t want the Syrians or any other Junglist. Westminster has invested France with vast funds to put up fencing as white as the cliffs of Dover. These fences tear apart Calais’ green expanse and resemble the Israeli security measures in the Occupied Territories. These are patrolled night and day by the police, gendarme and the hated CRS, the riot police. The CRS have the role of Roman centurions on a frontier outpost, desperately trying to keep the barbarians out. As the sun sets, you see them putting on their shin guards, shields and helmets at the petrol stop where the English stock up on some cheap plonk. Usually there are eight CRS vans, each carrying twelve men. There are other vans concealed in the shrubbery, ready to throw their spotlights at opportunistic Junglists, so the riot police can move in with harsh batons and pepper spray.

The powers that be have taken many measures to prevent the men from going to England. They have advised that the lorries with no cargo leave their carriages open during the night, so that the Junglist knows that there will be nothing to protect him from the pepper spray once it’s opened. The trucks heading towards the Calais port follow a strict procedure. Once they reach junction E16, they are inspected by the police and then they are instructed to launch themselves towards the ferry port so they are not intercepted by the Junglists. This enclosed stretch of motorway runs right alongside the camp and you can see the trucks hurtle down towards the port as if taunting the men.
As a further precaution, the authorities have created a buffer zone along the fenced motorway. Now the Junglist will have to make that hundred and fifty meter run towards the fencing to get at the trucks.

The buffer zone and the wall- Author

Volunteer training with residents of the Jungle- Author

***

There is always a police presence in and around the camp. But it is in the evening that the CRS makes their presence felt because, under the cover of darkness, the Junglists try to make it to England. In the evening, if the men have managed somehow to evade the police, they cut the fencing and wait for one of those trucks. When they see one truck hurtling towards them, they jump in front of the truck hoping that it will stop. Many lives are lost in this way, especially the children, because they are harder to spot and tend to work in packs. Other times the Junglists throw something in the path of the truck. Whatever the methods, the objective is the same: create a Dugar- a traffic jam of lorries.

When the cry for Dugar is heard, distinct whistling noises spread across the camp and the Junglists start to move in the direction of the Dugar. They have half an hour to try to get through the gap in the fencing and clamber into the trucks that pile up before the police arrive. It used to be two days before they came but now they are here within half an hour. The police have little choice but to fire rubber bullets at close range because they are outnumbered and most men will have knives as standard issue; how else are they going to cut the fencing? Sometimes the hot tear gas canister gets thrown back by an Afghan wearing gloves and the police get to taste its acrid smell. Most men fail and laugh about it afterwards, showing their bruises; it’s gallows humour, the same humour you find in war torn Syria- a bitter dark sort formed in the hearts of cynical men.

Empty Trucks in Calais- CRS were hidden in the shrubbery-Author

More recently the authorities have cut the camp down to size. The camp used to be one kilometre by half a kilometre, but the authorities have bulldozed two thousand Hoovervilles which promptly moved to the southern precinct. They then destroyed the southern precinct so that in eight weeks the population in the northern precinct increased fourfold. But it is not all bad news: the buffer zone now serves as a great place where Afghans can bowl googlies and be struck for six. They can shout ‘no ball’ or ‘Howzat’ as if they were playing at Lord’s cricket ground to their hearts’ content. Others, like the Eritreans and the Syrians, don’t quite understand cricket, and you hear them making comments as to why you need to keep your arm straight when bowling. They stick to the simplicity of football.

When one of the Syrians try a ‘muhawala’- an attempt to cross the English Channel- it is as if the man is going off to the war front. I met Ammar cutting onions at a soup kitchen. He is a pensive quiet man, thinning prematurely at the top. He smokes rolling tobacco sitting on the roof of the soup kitchen. Men say he should be on suicide watch or on anti-depressants. It is hard to tell whether this is the case. Ammar is from Qusayr, Syria. He escaped after his city fell, his family is scattered all over the world. His mother is in Egypt, and three siblings in Lebanon, Sweden and the UK. He says he doesn’t care for any country and will return to Syria, “better to die there in dignity”. But despite this, he is still going to try to get to England.

The fenced motorway to the port and the camp. Author

Ammar in the soup kitchen- Author

Ammar serves dinner to the Junglists who form an orderly queue at seven o’clock. And then wearing his crocs, with a bag donated by a French girl, he bids farewell and off he goes into the night. He is convinced that he will make it to England tonight. Perhaps we will never see him on this earth again. He’s jumped trains, clambered onto trucks, by hook and crook tried it all and failed. And yet tonight he is convinced he will make it. Everyone thinks they will be the one. There is another, Ali, sitting in front of a shop. He is visiting the Jungle. He made made the journey from Afghanistan through Italy, stayed there long enough in Naples for him to speak Italian. He too, ripping up a naan, says he’s been trying. He once made it to England but was sent back. But he is going to try again, “Fanculo tutto il mondo” he says apologising for his swearing, “only England will do. Germany, France, Italy is (sic) racist, they treat us like animals.” And then there is fourteen year old Hani, from Aleppo whose parents were killed by the Syrian regime, he too tries every night. He too has tried to get on the Eurostar which, if it catches you, doesn’t even stop. Apart from a slight bump, no one onboard will know that a child died on their journey into St. Pancras International.

Evening in the Jungle, Calais- Author

It seems impossible to pass through the fencing, the walls, the buffer zones and tunnels, but they do. There is something quietly quixotic about them as they try night after night. They embody the indignity of the ‘have nots’ against the ‘haves’, of human folly and yet at the same time hope. Has England become an obsession or does it contain some hidden street paved with gold? In the UK a refugee will receive five pound twenty a day, he will rely on food banks and suffer hardship but he is safe and that is worth its price in gold. After all, these people have journeyed from Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and many other countries escaping brutal dictators and war. The English channel will not thwart them. In fact, during the night, the Syrian corner of the camp is lit up by a twelve foot flame seen by all. Initial fears that the shanties are ablaze are dispelled by the sound of whooping and singing. One of their brothers have made it to London. How? God knows, but the story is a testament to human resilience.

If Ammar makes it he has to convince the UK authorities that he has arrived with out knowing that he has been transiting through other European countries. More than that, he hopes that he hasn’t been snapped up by one of the men working for the British intelligence services. Junglists are aware that many people at the camp work for the intelligence services because friends who have made it, have seen them at Dover police station fraternising with the officers. In truth, the security services have no choice. The Jungle is a security concern, especially in the wake of Paris and Brussels.

For Ammar, though, there are easier ways. He can seek asylum in France and then be put in Camp Salaam with its the pristine white containers and warm showers. But Camp Salaam feels like prison. They are kept there till their application is processed. Those that apply seem to be from the Francophone world so France is the most logical destination to seek asylum. In any case, they probably do not have any finger prints any where else in Europe. If they do, the Dublin Agreement III requires that the host country send them back to the first European country of entry. They will be deported from that camp and find themselves in Serbia or Greece. This is what the Junglists fear the most; being sent back. These refugees prefer the freedom outside of Camp Salaam, but the freedom of the Jungle is fused with the ever pervasive smell of human excrement and rank green water that gather in pools where brown rats have pool parties.

***

The Prophecy of Micah- Author

Even though there is no capo in the camp, somehow things just fall into place. There is an anarchic sort of order here. One would expect the Junglists coming from such different cultures to be at each others’ throats. But they behave very much like the prophecy of Micah, in the Old Testament, whose message is displayed in the camp for everyone to see:

“They shall all sit under their own vine and the fig tree and no one shall make them afraid.”

Each community rests with their own. Each area is loosely identifiable. The Kurdish area has its flag fluttering red, white and green with the sun in the middle. The Afghans with black, red and green, the Sudanese more so for their practice of playing dominoes at all times of the day and burning incense.

The Syrians have no flag, neither the flag of Assad, nor the flag of the revolution flutters here. Most are barely men, sons of farmers who joined the uprising in their teens. It is hard not to love their generous spirit. They continuously fill your cup with coffee and tea. Many of them, as Umm Sulaiman says, hail from “Der’aa al-manquba”- “The city of Dera’a that is riddled with holes”. It is the same city where the Syrian uprising began.

And yet, after five years, the revolution, at least from the Jungle, is hard to discern. In April 2013, the former Syrian Brotherhood Spokesman Zuheir Salem warned: “If Assad stays, you will see Europe flooded with fifteen million Syrian refugees.” This is coming to pass. But Syrians do not unquestioningly apportion all the blame on the regime or its barrel bombs for the failure of the revolution. The rebels have had five years to cobble together a credible opposition and they have failed miserably. Syrians can’t quite figure out why the revolution has failed. Some of the refugees say, without providing a shred of proof, that DAESH or ISIS is the creation of Shi’ite Iran with its head quarters in London. Others blame America and others blame themselves. Abu Umar from Idlib, pulls on his cigarette, sitting in his tidy hut and says: “Is there any government in the world that isn’t oppressive now? Is it not the case that my cousin took the bribe, my brother tortured prisoners, my neighbour did such and such? We are given rulers that we deserve as the Quran says.” Abu Umar believes that Syria’s solution can only be solved once Syrians achieve inner piety.

The men from Dera’a celebrating- Author

But though they have no common flag, there are still strong kinship ties. Umm Sulayman, for instance, has no one. She looks like one of those Okies from 1930s America. Her children, one six year old boy and one two year old girl, play barefoot in the sand. Her husband was killed by the Assad regime and now she relies on her countrymen and the Jungle to support her. There are men like Jamal, an engineer from Newcastle, who ensures that her camper has enough gas, that they are fed and that her two children are looked after. Like the Okies who dreamt of going to California, she hopes to join her family in England. But in truth; there is no possibility of that. The lawyers can’t help her, the Dublin Agreement III again is the problem. If she arrives in the UK her application for asylum will fail. She has to convince the immigration officers that she did not stop in any other country. If her story is not airtight the immigration officers in Lunar house, Croydon, will put holes in it.

In the camp, religion does play a part in ordering the lives of the Junglists. One greeting of salaam, one prayer to protect their family breaks down barriers and suspicion. There is one church and seven mosques. Masjid al-Mouhajer is the one the Syrians go to. The central mosque is the Umar mosque, a tarpaulin structure, set up in order to unify and give a sense of solidarity amongst the Junglists. Umar mosque was the brain child of a Syrian, Abu Omar, Jamal and other imams who came together and encouraged the men to set up a mosque for the sake of fraternity. It is this mosque that helps to diffuse the tensions that flare up in the camp periodically. The mosque is led by Imam Katibullah, a Pashtu with piercing grey eyes who speaks Arabic, walks the camp in his black shawl, panjabi and Pakhool, and gives pastoral care to all and sundry and seems loved by the camp.

At evening prayer, it is as if all the ills suffered by the Muslim world gather; there stands its past glories and its present misery and its future hopes, all united behind the Afghan Imam, Katibullah. Watch the men pray and raise their hands to their Maker and you see that some pray for paradise and some, dare one say it, pray to England, and some pray as if tonight will be their last day on Earth. And sometimes it really is their last day.

Whilst the politicians in Westminster wrangle over what is to be done, the people of England show the same generous spirit that accepted refugees in the past, whether Hugenot Protestant, Jew, Pole or East African. This is acknowledged by the Junglists. One guesstimate puts it that ninety percent of the volunteers are from Britain. They donate disused caravans that go to the most vulnerable. There are makeshift medical clinics offering primary care, youth clubs, legal advice and other services, all funded by these volunteers. Names like Sophie, Claire, Iona are mentioned with intense reverence and affection and, though some of these volunteers do not believe in saints or God for that matter, they are trusted like saints and many children are given to their care. But there is also a sense that whilst these men and women give to the refugees, they too seem to gain something. It is hard to tell as to exactly what that is, but as Jamal says: “they cannot go back to their societies and live normally after the Jungle.” Whilst some volunteers come to experience the anarchic freedom, the hospitality of the men with nothing, perhaps even to savour the cannabis, you get the sense that they too maybe searching for something.

There are also those like Jamal who are clear as to why they do it. Him and his wife and a handful of Malaysian volunteers feed a thousand men a day and run it purely on the good will of those across the English Channel who donate food and goods. He sold everything to set up a soup kitchen and is also the camp’s handyman. Why give up everything, I ask? He replies: “My father used to read a Hadith of the Prophet at bed time, which stayed with me: ‘no one of you really believes if you go to bed with a full stomach and your brother’s stomach is empty’”. And so Jamal, his wife and a bunch of volunteers serve food to the camp every evening. But it is not enough; most newborns in the camp are still undernourished.

That is not to say that there is not ugliness. The camp is etched with the pain and desperation of its inhabitants. One Junglist, an Iraqi from Salahdin, who looks like a cross between a guitarist from Nirvana and an army major, complete with blond beard and bob tail, chops onions and serves the poor and yet he goes to bed seeing visions of both his brothers having their throats slit in front of his very eyes. Abu Uday, a Damascene, has the picture of his six and three year old in Lebanon hanging on his wall, as a permanent reminder of his duty towards them. Two days ago six boys were found in a Hooverville in great distress. They had been raped. Children disappear in the camp. Jamal tells of a story where a mother abandoned her six month old infant and it was looked after by the camp; moved from family to family. A phone call came, and the voice claimed to be the newborn’s family, Jamal rushed to the hospital where he was told to go with the child. But on the way, they stopped at a cafe and he was asked to hand the baby over to some men; he realised they were people smugglers and pulled out. There was a notorious Kurdish smuggler known as Hajji, he was hated in the camp. Before making it to England Hajji had already spent considerable time in an Italian prison smuggling people to Italy from Libya and had set up shop in the Jungle. It is the presence of these undesirables that means that the camp has ears and is rife with intelligence services who do not know who these men are and what their motives are.

Night: Going to England- Author

War has no doubt changed the character of these people. Jamal recalls a scene described as if it was from the battle of Agincourt, where the Afghans squared up to Sudanese and battled each other with flaming projectiles, sticks and knifes. Sixty men were injured, ten were hurt critically. The fighting occurred right in between the mosque and the kitchen, the latter being used for first aid. None of the Afghans knew why they were fighting; it was merely in solidarity with their compatriots and the Sudanese likewise. It turned out that it was a dispute over a bicycle: an Afghan had not paid the ten euros owed. And so the Sudanese came to collect and a medieval battle started. The Afghans went to aid their man and the Sudanese theirs. Hajji fired two shots in the air, only the playing of Quranic verses on the loud speaker from Masjid Umar calmed the situation down, and the next day, battered and bruised, the same men were hugging each other and asking each other for forgiveness. As Jamal explains, when you have witnessed twenty years of war it corrupts you. It becomes instinctive to fight, that’s why the French police are puzzled as to why the Afghans just react by fighting and throwing stones when there is no need to. They have seen nothing but war.

Author

The jungle has the good, the bad and the ugly. And no doubt politicians will continue to build bigger walls that cost millions to keep them out. There is a sign in the Jungle asking the question: “Is me majnoun [mad] I am thinking about the world. I hope that we can be treated equally.” But the Jungle is not unique, there are more Jungles being built all over the world. The same phenomenon can be seen in Buenos Aries, Santa Fe and Rio De Janeiro. In Lima, poor Chileans scale the 10 km wall to glance at the Haves, they are all Junglists. All over the world walls are being built to keep out the needy, the destitute and the poor. At some point those walls will fall, and if England is not careful, perhaps Micah’s Prophecy may come true in London, just as it did for Jerusalem. As for the Syrians they will keep on coming, English Channel or no English Channel, if this conflict is not resolved.

Tam Hussein is an a ward winning investigative journalist and writer published by BBC, C4, ITV, Guardian, Huffington Post, New Statesman etc.

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By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

Emblem of the Local Defence Forces. On top: “Homeland, Honour, Sincerity.” Below: “Syrian Arabic Republic. The army and armed forces- Local Defence Forces.”

Besides the well-known National Defence Forces (NDF) that were set up in 2012 with oversight from Iran to act as a counter-insurgency force and auxiliary militia network for the Syrian army, there exists a similarly named but distinct set of militias specific to the Aleppo area known as the Local Defence Forces (Quwat al-Difa’ al-Mahalli- LDF). In brief, the LDF consists of a variety of local militias such as Katibat al-Nayrab al-Maham al-Khasa (The Nayrab Battalion- Special Operations), Liwa al-Baqir (The Baqir Brigade), Fawj al-Safira (The Safira Regiment) and Fawj Nubl wa al-Zahara’ (The Nubl and Zahara’ Regiment). These names mostly refer to areas and towns in the vicinity of Aleppo city, but Liwa al-Baqir is named after the fifth Shi’i imam Muhammad al-Baqir.

A representative for Katibat al-Nayrab affirmed to me that the LDF totals 50,000 fighters (an obvious exaggeration), set up in 2012 by Iran as an auxiliary force for the Syrian army in the Aleppo area. Unsurprisingly, the LDF is linked with Hezbollah as well, though it is Liwa al-Baqir that advertises this connection more than the other LDF formations: something reinforced by the fact that the Lebanese singer Ali Barakat, most well known for his songs for Hezbollah, put out a song dedicated to Liwa al-Baqir. Liwa al-Baqir also appears to be tied in particular to the al-Bekara clan in Aleppo that has gained notoriety for its support for the regime, especially as it is predominantly Sunni (the evidence may suggest a degree of Shi’ification as well in relation to Liwa al-Baqir).

“Liwa al-Imam al-Baqir: al-Bekara clan.” Note the portrait of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on the left and Bashar al-Assad on the right. Also note one of the portraits featuring the Hezbollah and Syrian flags.

“The mujahideen of Liwa al-Baqir from the base of operations: God protect you, our mujahideen”- note the Hezbollah armpatch.

Social media graphic for Liwa al-Baqir, featuring the familiar moniker of “The Islamic Resistance” (al-muqawama al-islamiya).

Liwa al-Baqir posters. Note the central one: “Men of the Resistance.” Includes Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene’i, Assad and Nasrallah.

Describing itself as “the first auxiliary [/reserve]” for the Syrian army, Liwa al-Baqir seems to be the most prominent LDF formation. For example, most recently the militia’s social media have advertised heavy involvement in fighting against the Islamic State (IS) focused around the village of Kafr Saghir and fighting against Jabhat al-Nusra and other rebel forces in south Aleppo countryside. Thus, on 20 March 2016, Liwa al-Baqir claimed at least 15 ‘martyrs’ (fallen fighters) in fighting on the Kafr Saghir front to the north-east of Aleppo city, followed by a claim of 5 more ‘martyrs’ two days later. In April, Liwa al-Baqir media mention coordination with Hezbollah in fighting in the south Aleppo countryside, focusing initially on the village of al-Eis. These south Aleppo operations have been advertised as being in coordination not only with Hezbollah (e.g. see here) but also the Iraqi Shi’i militia Harakat al-Nujaba’. The accounts of these operations include this short story:

“We, the men of Liwa al-Baqir, were in the company of the men of Hezbollah when they arrested dozens of the pigs of Nusra whom we wanted to kill but then one of the mujahideen reminded us saying: ‘Oh youth, remember the words of Imam Ali- peace be upon him- who says: ‘And don’t kill those who surrender but rather grant them food and grant them protection.”

Prior to these engagements, Liwa al-Baqir claimed participation in the operations leading to the breaking of the rebel sieges of the Shi’i villages of Nubl and Zahara’ to the north of Aleppo city, as well as operations in south Aleppo countryside as part of the series of Russia-Iran backed offensives that began in October of last year to allow the regime to regain the initiative against the rebels.

Unlike a number of pro-Assad militias whose total numbers of ‘martyrs’ since inception normally do not amount to more than a few or several dozen, Liwa al-Baqir claimed 246 ‘martyrs’ as of 21 March 2016. This claim to a large number of ‘martyrs’ is corroborated to a certain extent by the displays of posters of these ‘martyrs’, samples of which appear below.

Dedicated to ‘martyr’ Muhammad Hussein Raslan, Top-right inscription: “Liwa al-Imam al-Baqir: Local Defence Forces.” Note the faint Hezbollah imagery in the background.

Some more ‘martyrs’ of Liwa al-Baqir, though here the term used is ‘Fawj al-Imam Baqir’ (no real difference in meaning).

Large Liwa al-Baqir mural, likely dedicated to ‘martyrs’ in the militia or linked to it.

Just as the Syrian Social Nationalist Party has used its militia presence in Syria to push for political influence in the form of candidates for the recent Syrian parliamentary elections, so too did Liwa al-Baqir throw its weight behind an ostensibly independent candidate called Omar Hussein al-Hassan.

“Vote for the independent candidate for membership of the People’s Council. Aleppo countryside (group A). Omar Hussein al-Hassan. Offering from: al-Bekara clan, Liwa al-Baqir. The homeland will remain on high by our steadfastness.”

The candidate in question is notable for having the same surname as the leader of Liwa al-Baqir: Khalid al-Hassan, who also goes by the name of Baqir. Khalid is linked to the Syrian state apparatus through the State Ministry for the Affairs of National Reconciliation, as per a post below from January 2016:

“Syrian Arab Republic
State Ministry for the Affairs of National Reconciliation
Document no. 845

The leader of Liwa al-Baqir Khalid al-Hassan (Baqir)…and the distinguished members- members of the Committee of Reconciliation, National Accord and Social Coordination- are operating in the framework of the project of national reconciliation in Aleppo province. We request aid within the systems and laws and in cooperation with Mr. Governor of Aleppo in making their mission succeed. To connect with us in the Liwa al-Baqir centre in Tarkan [a village in the Safira district].”

In this context, it should be noted that Liwa al-Baqir was also involved in a prominent conciliation event at the end of 2015 involving two major families- Abu Ra’s and Berri (the latter also notorious for its support for the regime)- including an event involving military and security officials as well as ‘ulama’ in Aleppo.

Khalid al-Hassan

Interestingly, in March 2016 Liwa al-Baqir claimed the ‘martyrdom’ of Khalid’s brother. No specific details were offered as to the circumstances surrounding his death, though one page for Liwa al-Baqir seemed to present it as a ‘martyrdom’ jointly claimed with Hezbollah. According to the Katibat al-Nayrab representative, he was actually assassinated in Lebanon.

The other LDF formations are less remarkable. For example, Fawj al-Safira, as its name suggests, operates in the Safira area of Aleppo, also renowned as a bastion of regime support. Fawj al-Safira, in repelling IS attacks in the Safira area, has notably coordinated not only with the Syrian army but also the local Safira branch of the Muqawama Suriya, a militia primarily based in Latakia whose founder Ali Kayali has been declared by the Muqawama Suriya to have been ‘disappeared’ (mughayyab) in a possible cover-up of his death since his suspected killing in late March 2016.

LDF forces have had a role in fighting to the south of Aleppo city as IS has repeatedly harassed regime control of the supply line to Aleppo city via Khanaser. Among items captured by IS in an assault in mid-April were LDF ID cards as shown in this photo.

Instead of giving a chronological list of engagements by the LDF, it remains to note that on a wider level the LDF has a ‘political direction’ division that puts out newsletters, featuring political and military developments as well as excerpts from media outlets and political analysis. For example, issue no. 81 that was recently put out opens with commemorations for the deceased Hezbollah commander Mustafa Badreddine (aka Dhu al-Fiqar), who was central to organizing Hezbollah’s efforts in Syria. The political analysis section also gives a summary of Badreddine’s life and accomplishments.

In comparison with many other pro-Assad militias, the LDF clearly amounts to much more than a seemingly ‘exotic’ name and brand. On the contrary, the LDF has been important for organizing local pro-Assad support networks in Aleppo that transcend the sectarian divide to a degree. In part these networks explain the regime’s staying power in Aleppo, rather than just foreign manpower influx in the form of Iranian personnel and Shi’i militias. At the same time, one should not forget the importance of Iran and Hezbollah in the organization and advising of local militia support networks- an analysis that clearly applies to the LDF.

—————–
Appendix update (24 May 2016): An account of the origins of Liwa al-Baqir is offered by the pro-opposition site alSouria.net in an article from January 2016. According to this account, Liwa al-Baqir was set up as a distinct brand and formation by the LDF in 2015, initially working under Harakat al-Nujaba’, which was responsible for the Shi’ification and arming of its fighters. This same report affirms that Liwa al-Baqir now operates separately from Harakat al-Nujaba’.

The LDF more generally, though having roots in and ties to predominantly Sunni ‘shabiha’ clan networks, is portrayed in this article as having come under the increasing influence of the foreign Shi’i militias that have come to the Aleppo area. There is likely something to this, for as I noted in the main article, the evidence from Liwa al-Baqir seems to suggest at least some Shi’ification among al-Bekara clan members. In any case the LDF was set up in the first place by Iran, so it is hardly surprising if Shi’i militias tied to Iran (which have made a prominent mark in Aleppo since 2013) have sought to influence the LDF even further in orientation.

The bulk of the article from alSouria.net is translated by me below:

“Aleppo has seen since the beginning of the protests in it formations affiliated with the LDF formation led by the Berri family a great part of which is known for its support for the regime and its participation in repressing demonstrations, but the feared status and importance of this formation has retreated with the beginning of the arrival of foreign militias to the regime’s areas in Aleppo, and the Shi’a militias have managed to include the LDF through Shi’ification of its fighters.

The alSourianet correspondent in Aleppo, Muhammad al-Shafi’i, points out that the LDF formed Liwa al-Baqir last year, with its base in the village of Tarkan in south Aleppo countryside, clarifying that the brigade worked within the militia formation of the Iraqi Harakat al-Nujaba’, which uses the al-Assad academy as a base for its military operations.

And special sources mention to alSouria.net that Liwa al-Baqir currently works separately and independently from Harakat al-Nujaba’ to regain authority over Aleppo, and has portrayed itself as an auxiliary for the forces of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. According to the same sources the brigade’s numbers are around 2000 fighters, who have obtained their weapons previously from Harakat al-Nujaba’, in addition to their receiving salaries of 25,000 Syrian pounds [per month].

The Iraqi militia supervised the formation of this brigade after the Shi’ification of its members and the establishment of special camps for them. They were trained in assault methods and were deployed in the recent south Aleppo battles, and Liwa al-Baqir is led by “Khalid al-Hassan al-Aloush al-Baqir” and with protection from people in the Berri family. And the sources mention to alSouria.net that the number of those from the brigade killed in the recent battles of south Aleppo countryside reached 50 members, all of whom are from the ‘Shabiha,’ while the number of those killed from the brigade since its formation until the beginning of this year reaches up to 300 killed.

The brigade participates in frontline duty operations in the villages of south Aleppo countryside controlled by the regime and its militias since two months ago, in addition to the presence of military checkpoints of the brigade inside Aleppo. In addition Liwa al-Baqir has special training camps in the villages of Tel Shaghib, Issan, Ain Issan and Tarkan in south Aleppo countryside.”

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India and the Syrian Conflict
by Amb. Niraj Srivastava
For Syria Comment, May 26, 2016

It was reported in the Indian media that on May 20 the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) released a new 22-minute Arabic language documentary online featuring purported Indian Jihadi fighters in its ranks. The video included interviews with five Indian Jihadis known to have joined the ISIS since 2014. In one of the interviews, Fahad Tanvir Sheikh, an Indian student from Thane, says that he will return to India to “avenge the Babri Masjid, and the killings of Muslims in Kashmir, Gujarat, and in Muzaffarnagar.”

Al Masdar News has also reported that in a video released on May 20, ISIS “showed off their large Indian force operating against Syrian government forces in east Homs countryside,” and called on Indians to leave their country and join the Jihad in Syria against the “infidels.” The agency, however, stated that it was not clear how many Indians were fighting with Islamic State forces in Syria.

The above developments have brought the ISIS, and the ongoing conflict in Syria, uncomfortably close to India. So far, the Syrian conflict had been seen in India as an event taking place in a distant land. But the release of the above video suggests that the ISIS is perhaps planning to draw more Indian nationals into the Syrian imbroglio, as well as expand its operations in this country. This cannot be good news for India, which may have to track the activities of ISIS more carefully, both here as well as in Syria.

India’s position on Syria, as on Libya, has been that it is for the people of Syria to decide who should govern them. The destiny of Syria should be decided by Syrians. India had abstained on the vote on Libya in the UN Security Council in March 2011, when it was a non-permanent member of the Security Council.

The Feb. 27 partial cease-fire in Syria and the resumption of peace talks in Geneva between the opposition and the Assad government had raised hopes of finding a political solution to the bloodbath in the country, which has so far resulted in the deaths of nearly half a million people and displacement of almost half of Syria’s pre-war population of about 23 million. However, developments in April and May 2016 belied any such hopes, pointing, instead, to further complications.

First, the Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee (HNC), representing the opposition groups in Syria, walked out of the Geneva talks on April 18, ostensibly due to cease-fire violations by the Assad regime. It had also failed to reach an agreement over the formation of a transitional governing body before elections are held in Syria to form a new government. The HNC did not want President Assad to be a part of any such body while the regime insisted that Assad’s role in it was not up for discussion in Geneva.

Second, fighting flared up in Syria around the same time, particularly in Aleppo. Russian and Syrian aircraft bombed the rebel-held areas in the east while the Nusra Front directed artillery fire at western Aleppo. Some of the bombs and shells hit hospitals on both sides, resulting in the deaths of several doctors, patients, and innocent civilians. Fighting also broke out in parts of Idlib, Homs, and Hama. It had continued for almost two weeks before a fragile truce was brokered by the US and Russia on May 4. By that time, nearly 300 people had been killed, most of them civilians.

Third, it is also clear that the two sides used the two-month truce to strengthen their military capabilities as well as their positions on the ground. More sophisticated military hardware continued to flow to the Russian and Syrian forces, whose ranks were also augmented by paramilitary fighters from Iraq, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon. On the other hand, the rebels received TOW anti-tank missiles and possibly shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles (MANPADS), which were probably used to shoot down two Syrian air force aircraft in March and April.

It is evident that the Syrian and Russian militaries launched a determined assault in April on Aleppo and the other areas to regain territory held by the rebels, but did not fully succeed. On the other hand, it is also clear that the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and their allies have not given up their goal of “regime change.” In defiance of their stance, the Syrian government held Parliamentary elections in April in areas controlled by it. The elections were won handsomely by the ruling Baath Party. Both sides are still pursuing a military solution to the conflict, although talks might continue in Geneva to find a political settlement, which would be more durable.

Another significant development has been the deployment of more US “boots on the ground” in Syria, contrary to earlier US statements. On April 25, President Obama announced the deployment of 250 troops, including Special Forces, in addition to the 50 deployed in Nov. 2015. The stated objective of the deployment is to fight ISIS in Syria. But the troops could also be used to target other groups, including the Syrian military.

Significantly, the US, Britain and France recently turned down a Russian proposal to the UN Security Council to designate the Saudi and Turkey-backed groups Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham, which have links with ISIS and Al Qaida, as terrorist groups. On May 3, Secretary Kerry also warned Assad of the consequences of a “new US approach” if he does not accept a political transition by Aug. 1, 2016, without specifying what that “new approach” would be.

Meanwhile, as mentioned above, there is no softening of the positions of the other leading players including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel, all of whom appear intent on regime change in Syria. They will also benefit if Syria breaks up. Netanyahu, in fact, held a meeting of his cabinet on the Golan Heights on April 17 during which he declared that Israel will never give the Golan Heights back to Syria. Turkey has regularly called for setting up “safe zones” or “no-fly zones” in Syria, which it could easily annex if Syria disintegrates.

On May 17, the 20-member International Support Group for Syria (ISSG) met in Vienna under the Co-Chairmanship of the US and Russia. The Group agreed to strengthen the cessation of hostilities, facilitate full humanitarian access to relief agencies in Syria, and ensure progress towards a peaceful political transition by Aug. 1, 2016, under UN Security Council Resolution 2254. The political transition will be overseen by a transitional governing body formed by mutual consent of the main parties concerned.

The actual implementation of the above recommendations may be problematic, due to the reasons cited above. Fighting continues to rage in some parts of Syria. Humanitarian access has improved, but more needs to be done. The most difficult part may be the constitution of the transitional governing body. As mentioned above, the HNC does not want President Assad to have any role in it, which is entirely unacceptable to the regime. It is not clear how this deadlock can be overcome. Significantly, no date has yet been set for the resumption of the Geneva talks.

As things stand, the situation in Syria remains fluid and uncertain. Though Russian and Syrian aircraft continue to bomb ISIS and Al Nusra strongholds around Aleppo and other strategic areas, there seems to be a stalemate on the ground. All the players are keeping all their options open—including the military one—which makes it difficult to predict future developments in that country. But one thing appears certain—the conflict in Syria is not going to end anytime soon. It is likely to continue beyond the US presidential elections in Nov. 2016. India will have to ensure that its nationals do not get sucked into the Syrian conflict and that ISIS is not allowed to expand its footprint in this country.

Niraj Srivastava is a retired Indian diplomat. He was India’s ambassador to Denmark and Uganda, and has spent more than ten years in Arab countries including Syria, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. He has also taught undergraduate students at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. His other postings include the United States and Canada. He is currently an independent international affairs consultant based in New Delhi, India. The views expressed are personal.

The post “India and the Syrian Conflict,” by Niraj Srivastava appeared first on Syria Comment.

The Case of Mirsad Bectašević and Amer al-Hasani
by Tam Hussein @tamhussein
For Syria Comment, June 14, 2016

As a result of Syria’s bloody conflict Europe is at a turning point. The threat of terrorism, the fear of lone wolf attacks, of independent cells operating with in Europe has changed the political landscape. Europe is wrestling with a liberal conundrum. But whilst policy makers and intelligence services must be vigilant to the threat of terrorism it must also be aware of the nuances  when dealing with returnees, foreign fighters and indeed Syrian refugees. Tarring everyone with the same brush can have disastrous consequences.  At the expense of greater security Europe must not loose its soul: that is the Rule of Law.  The following case of Mirsad Bectašević and Amer al-Hasani illustrates these points perfectly.

In late January 2016, Amer al-Hasani, 20, decided to travel to Greece with his friend Mirsad Bectašević, 29. They had met at the local mosque in a Gothenburg suburb in Sweden. Amer, a devout Muslim, had been involved in Islamic proselytisation and charity work there. The two had travelled to Copenhagen from Gothenburg crossing over from the magnificent Øresund bridge that links Southern Sweden’s Malmö to the Danish capital, Copenhagen. From Copenhagen’s Kastrup airport they boarded a flight to Athens. On arrival, Amer called his mother to let her know that he was well. They spent several days galavanting in Athens. Nothing of note happened except, that Bectašević bought two Bear Grylls machetes at a bargain price from an Airsoft store. According to him, he asked the lady if it was legal to carry such knives and she confirmed it. Then they travelled to Salonika, spending two days there, and on to Thrace to the sleepy fishing town, Alexandropoulis, close to the Turkish border.

Amer claims that they wanted to visit the surrounding villages from the town, and so they went to the bus station to buy two tickets to Peplos, a small village even closer to the border. It seemed like a straightforward affair. But the employee, got suspicious and made a phone call. According to Bectašević it was an instance of racial profiling pure and simple. After all they weren’t Swedes of the blond and blue eyed variety; they were swarthy types, of pure Invandrar- immigrant – stock that grew up in Sweden’s förort, the satellite conurbations around Stockholm or Gothenburg which is Sweden’s equivalent of ghetto if Sweden ever had one. But instead of boarding the bus, several policemen on motorcycles pulled up and gruffly took them away for questioning.

The press couldn’t help but jump on the arrest whether that be Sweden’s tabloid paper Aftonbladet or its broadsheet equivalent Svenska Dag Bladet. It made for great copy. After all, it’s not everyday you bag Mirsad Bectašević, the man who once plotted to blow up Western targets in the European mainland.

Moreover, these men were arrested around the same time as three Iraqi Kurds carrying British passports. The latter were caught with 200 000 rounds of ammunition trying to cross Greece’s porous border. The media also claimed that their arrest was intelligence led, apparently they had been under surveillance for several days as they made their way to Alexandropoulis and had intended to cross over to Turkey and then onto Syria as many foreign fighters do. In fact, I knew that SÄPO, Swedish intelligence, was keeping tabs on Bectašević when I met him in May, 2015.

Amer al-Hasani

The Interrogation

After their arrest the two men were immediately separated. On the face of it, the prosecution had a relatively a simple case. To convict all you had to do was to prove that Bectašević the more experienced of the two, recruited the young and impressionable man in Gothenburg and then convinced him to go to Syria to join ISIS. But if the allegations of Amer, his brother, Mohammed, Bectašević and others who knew them are true, there seems to be grave problems from the very outset. One should add, that a request for comment from the Greek authorities have not been forth coming.

Bektašević was offered legal representation, one of the best according to him. He was interrogated by the police for forty eight hours, he was no doubt asked, where he was going. His response was that of a man used to interrogation, “I am exercising my right to travel”. Peplos is awfully close to the Turkish border isn’t it? He replies “even if we were going to Turkey we didn’t do anything illegal.”

The interrogators didn’t come up with much. Perhaps the interrogators took it as a given, perhaps it wasn’t from their line of inquiry but according to Bectašević they didn’t focus on why he had black police boots, a 5.11 tactical vest, one weapon sling he claimed to have forgot from his last visit to Syria in 2015. He says, “I had ‘ordinary stuff like T-shirts and jeans. Muslim clothes when praying. They took that as ‘evidence’”. The Greek interrogators focused more on his level of devotion and practice rather than his connections to ISIS or Syria.

Initially, he was charged with trying to supply a terror organisation with weapons. Now, it wasn’t 200 000 rounds of ammunition he was accused of supplying but the Bear Grylls machetes. One presumes that this unspecified terror organisation can’t get hold of such precious hardware anywhere else.

However, as to who he was affiliated to was unclear. At Bectašević’s hearing there seemed to be much confusion as to precisely what organisation he belonged to. The Greek prosecutor had even asked him, but the accused denied any affiliation. Bectašević only found out that he was accused of belonging to ISIS a month later. Some of these lawyers, he complained, didn’t even realise that ISIL and ISIS was the same organisation. Simply put the Greeks were not literate as to the various factions operating in Syria. After several months of languishing in Korydallous High Security prison, Bektašević claims he still hasn’t seen the evidence against him so that he can prepare his defence. The Swedish embassy have been in touch with the Greek authorities in March, 2016 however the results of that meeting still remain to be seen.

Of course, all of this might just be the Greek authorities knowing based on intel, that here they have a convicted terrorist, perhaps one that intends to commit future acts of terror, but they simply don’t have the requisite laws to deal with the likes of him. And so they throw anything at him to keep him locked up. The case of Mirsad Bectašević then, is the epitome of the liberal dilemma that the Greeks and indeed many Western countries are having to face up to. What does one do with the likes of Bectaševič and others like him, who may be working to undermine the security of the West or may not? And as such his case has important lessons for all European countries.

The case of Amer has not been treated in the same manner- that is he has not been given even a semblance of procedural justice. Is that because he is a Yemeni political refugee and not a Swedish passport holder? Does procedural justice not apply to the likes of him? His brother, Mohammed, 21, told me that in the first week of his arrest, intelligence officers beat him smashing his face against the table and tearing at his hair. They asked him why he was in Greece and where he was going as I did over the phone. He must have repeated the same thing he said to me, “I am here on holiday.” They said he had to admit that he was part of ISIS and belonged to a cell in Eastern Europe that was planning to launch an attack in the West. They were going to get that out of him no matter what. Greece, they said, is a democracy, when Amer, retorted that they were breaking their own principles, they laughed and replied that people think Greece is a democracy but it’s not. He had to admit he belonged to ISIS or else. But Amer did not admit it.

According to his brother, they brought in a girl who tried to seduce him, just like they do in interrogations in Egypt, whilst all the time they were hoping to film him perform a sex act. The brother believed that the security services could use the film to black mail him with it. But Amer is devout, and he repelled her advances. Next one man threatened him with anal rape if he did not testify against Bectašević. All the time, he could not get access to his legal counsel, apparently they replied only after a month. More recently Bectašević told me that Amer was being forced “to sign some papers in Greece [sic] it was around five…eight people there and they forced him to sign some papers. He didn’t even understand what it was.”

This was also confirmed by his brother who said that they have been appealing to the Swedish embassy for assistance. The embassy replied that the matter is out of their hands there has however, been some contact between the embassy and Amer in prison. Amer has told me that now the Greek authorities are applying psychological pressure on him in Volos young offenders prison. He feels that he is in limbo. His brother is worried sick about his health as he suffers from a childhood throat condition that requires an operation.

The Crux

Admittedly, the case of these two men are not as straight forward as it seems. The Greek authorities are dealing with a crippling economic situation, with the movement of people escaping Syria on a biblical scale, and so the rights of two men, one having a previous conviction for terrorism don’t really figure on its list of priorities. Arguably, Islamist terrorism is something that the Greek judiciary doesn’t have to deal with much. Yet, overlooking the case of these men could have an immense impact; for Bectašević is no small figure in Jihadi circles and is looked up to by those inclined to Salafi-Jihadism in Gothenburg. He, after all, has impeccable credentials in this regard.

Some inconsistencies of the testimonies and the difficulty of this author to verify their accounts aside, the whole case hinges on three points. The first, is the figure of Bectašević himself and his previous convictions. Secondly, his relationship with Syria and thirdly, the fractious politics of Syria’s Islamist rebels.

Prima Facie evidence

On the face of it, Bektašević is a man who holds views that are antithetical to Western ideals. He is an out and out Islamist of the radical variety, there is no shadow of a doubt in that. As one analyst noted, his twitter handle had a picture of Ayman al-Zawahiri. That started at a young age. The Swedish national from Serbia’s Sanjaki community, the minority Muslim community, became devout following his father’s death in 1994. He moved to Gothenburg, Kungälv where he spent his formative years. During the 80s and 90s Sweden was a popular destination for the Post-Yugoslav nations. A combination of factors, faith, the various Islamic ideological currents at the time, the legacy of conflict in Bosnia, as well as the invasion of Iraq in 2003 made him adopt a radical interpretation of his faith. There are also some allegations that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, for instance the fact that he met Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, but these allegations have been rubbished by Bectašević, as he told me: “I always made travels with my own passport and they [authorities] know I never was in the Middle East back then.”

Nevertheless, his radical politics resulted in prison. He was convicted for his part in a terrorist plot in Sarajevo on 19th October, 2005 alongside others. In May, 2015 Bectašević told me that he had his Damascus moment whilst being interrogated by an FBI officer. He had told the FBI officer that Democracy was his religion and had been relying on Sh. Abu Mohammed al-Maqdisi’s teachings. The officer dismissed the assertion, replying that it was just politics. The response threw him off balance, he had been so reliant on Maqdisi’s authority that he didn’t see the absurdity of the argument. He decided, from then on, to never blindly follow what other people had said and would find out for himself. Damascus moment or not, in January 2007, he received fifteen years for plotting to attack all those nations that were involved in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. He spent the last period in Sweden in isolation. The sentence was the longest for terrorism in Swedish history. And it was also one of the biggest plots that was foiled in main land Europe especially after the Madrid bombings in 2004.

Perhaps more importantly for us in the age of social media, Bectašević’s online activity heralded in the era of Cyber-Jihad. Using his avatar Maximus he was in contact with Salafi-Jihadis all over the world, more specifically with Jihadi forums such as at-Tibyan, the forum for the dissemination of Jihadi texts in the English speaking world. It was also through this internet forum that he came in contact with Younes Tsouli, a Moroccan man from an elite family, known by his avatar Irhabi 007. According to a source who knew him in prison, Tsouli who arrived in the UK on 9/11, became radicalised after the failure of the anti-war rallies in the UK to stop the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Tsouli’s IT skills had been immensely important in disseminating AQIM propaganda to the wider world. It was through Bectašević’s avatar that was uncovered after his arrest that led to Tsouli and his associates being raided in West London. For the Greek authorities then, it seems tempting to just throw the keys away based on Bectašević’s past. He does fit the profile of an ISIS supporter

Younes Tsouli

Moreover, there are other pieces of evidence. One being Bectašević’s previous connection to Syria. After his release in 2011, Swedish media reported that Bektašević was convicted of firearm’s violations linked to Gothenburg’s criminal underworld and spent a further spell in prison. Swedish media linked him to Muhammed Jouma, considered to be an al-Shabaab middle man. Bectašević though maintains that he met Jouma a few times in the local mosque in Gothenburg and that the former just sits at home idly, the only connection being that he wanted to use Jouma’s address for correspondence. He didn’t like the media intrusion on his mother’s home and so he regularly changed his correspondence address.

Bektašević did get involved with criminality due to a shortage of funds. He kept his prayers up in secret and adopted the name Micke. But the criminal underworld and his rise in it didn’t sit well with his conscience, in the end and after his arrest for arms possession he decided to leave it.

Then, Swedish media reported that he was fighting in Syria. Bektašević has revealed that the Arab Spring and the events in Syria had a profound impact on him. He believes alongside many other Muslims in the Ummah, a pan-Islamic concept of fraternity based on faith. Tyrants were falling left right and centre in the Muslim heartlands and it grabbed the imagination of the world let alone Islamists like him. He felt that he had a duty of care towards Syrians and so he wanted to go to Syria to help in whatever way he could. Syria plays an important role in the end of time narratives in Islamic tradition, no less in the Salafi-Jihadi discourse. Abu Musab al-Suri for instance, mentioned Syria as one of the key territories that would be crucial to the revival of the Muslim Ummah.

Mirsad Bectaševič in Syria

In the end it was a dream that pushed him towards Syria. Dreams do play an important role in Islamic eschatology and though Bektašević didn’t give it too much importance the dream came to pass. He got a passport, the Turks let him through and he boarded an eighteen hour bus to Hatay and crossed over to Syria.

Photographs emerged from his Facebook page of him in Taftanaz where he donned military fatigues and carried arms. I posed this question to him recently and his response was the following:

“The picture with hat and came [camouflage] dress is worn was in Atmah [sic]. So no fighting place. The other one with Kalash was from Taftanaz [Idlib] at home of one friend. So not a fighting place. It is not illegal to carry arms. I was there to assist ordinary people from giving food to protecting hospitals. Prior to arriving to Syria, Atmah there was a car bomb placed outside the hospital in Atmah. After that incident they needed some to guard.

It is easy to equate anyone who was in Syria in 2013 to be fighting with ISIS but as any specialist in foreign fighters will tell you this is simply not the case. Amarnath Amarsingam a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism says:

“So, what is clear from my interviews with some fighters is that 2013 was a time of flux. Many fighters at the time switched allegiances from ISIS to Jabhat al-Nusra shortly after Aymenn al-Zawahiri’s letter became public – around June 2013. Many fighters at the time were unclear about whether the Zawahiri letter was real and whether it was to be believed. Zawahiri was talking about, in essence, respecting the border between Iraq and Syria. Many fighters believed that Zawahiri would never say this. It was a time when many fighters moved back and forth, shifted allegiances and so on. So, it’s not accurate to say all muhajireen were with ISIS in 2013. In fact, I spoke with several fighters who switched precisely during this period when they saw ISIS’s excessive takfirism. As one fighter told me, when he saw ISIS members turning against other mujahideen, he took that as God’s guidance – a message from God about which group was on the right path and which group wasn’t.”

What is important to realise in 2013 then, is that the groups and factions had not fully crystallised in the way they have now. There were and still are, small battalions that may subscribe to Islamist ideology but are independent of any proscribed battalions. In fact, Amer al-Deghayes, who insists that he is part of such a battalion, says he met Bectašević in April 2013 in Kassab, Northern Syria, and likened him to a freelancer. He states that Bectašević was in fact against ISIS adding “he disagreed with them ever since I met him in April 2013.”

Moreover, in a statement obtained from Sawarim as-Sham a battalion affiliated to Failāq as-Shām or the Sham Legion, a moderate Islamist front, states that Bectašević entered the freed territories to render humanitarian aid and “was not with any organisation designated as a terrorist”. Abu Ahmed Khaled an official with a charity Jami’ya Nūr al-Insāniya, also told me that he was doing aid work in the border areas and was a “a friend of the Syrian people”.

Letter from Sham Legion

In any case whatever Bectašević was up to in Syria which could have been a mixture of aid work and fighting, he returned to Sweden and in May, 2015 we met. He had agreed to meet me because he was aware of my work on Syria. We met in a coffee shop close to T-Centralen, Stockholm. We spent a good couple of hours drinking coffee while he told me off-record his life story. We were in discussions over writing a book and possibly a documentary. This is something that many radicals, jihadists and Islamic pentitos tend to do; writing books is a lucrative venture. I was not allowed to divulge any of the details of the conversation because- that would break one of the principal tenets of journalism- protecting your source and confidentiality. However recently, I do not quite know how, he contacted me from Korydallous High Security prison and gave me permission to divulge the details of this meeting. I informed him that what his allegiances and mindset are presently I do not know, but I could certainly reveal the details of what I saw when I met him. Over the following weeks I managed to contact Amer al-Hasani, family members and friends to verify the story. And I felt that I had an ethical duty to reveal it, not as an advocate for Bectašević or Amer, but rather to expose wrong doing and to highlight the difficult challenges that men such as Bectaševic and his ilk present to the West.

The crucial point that the case rests on is this: does Bectašević belong to ISIS? Bektašević denies this as he told me:

“They accused me of being in this organisation because I have my address in Sweden, with one guy who left the country to Syria to join ISIS. After one month, I rent (sic) myself into this address where he lived in. But he didn’t live there, man. He rent it out. He’s married with three kids, he lived in a totally other place. So they claim I am with this organisation because I have an address with this guy.”

The man he is referring to is Mikael Skråmo, also known as Abu Ibrahim al-Sweidi. Mr. Skråmo converted to Islam in 2005, studied Islam and Arabic. According to Per Godmundson, a blogger for Svenska Dagbladet, Skråmo became a radical preacher and an open supporter of Anwar Awlaki, an al-Qaeda ideologue and US citizen killed by a US drone. That then is the link. Ahmed Abbassi, a childhood friend from Kungälv says that he would regularly list his address in various flats even though he was always living with his mother because he wanted to avoid press intrusion.

Bektašević further told me speaking against Islamic State:

“There are so many reasons why I am against this group. Foremost is religiously. This group is known for blowing up Muslims in mosques. They are fighting other Muslims. They are fighting people they should not fight. They are not protecting borders which they should protect. In fact they are attacking…already freed areas that the Muslims have freed from the Tyrants and still they are continuing this things and this is one of the reasons. Secondly, I am against them attacking other countries Europe or whichever country it can be in Europe. I am against it. This is not what I am for or what I stand for.”

A similar view was held by Amer too. Recently Abbasi says that Bectašević has dissuaded several young girls from joining ISIS and that if he had an opportunity he would fight them harder than he would fight Assad.

Mikael Skråmo

At the time of my meeting with him in 2015, Bectašević was vehemently against ISIS and was jousting with ISIS fanboys and tweeps on social media. Further, this author can confirm that at the time that we met he held a similar position to what he has told me recently; that is he considered ISIS to be little more than ‘highway men’ or Khawarij, a heretical sect in Islam famous for extremism and banditry.

Of course, there are limitations, Bectašević can be dissimulating. It doesn’t exclude the fact that his thoughts may have evolved into that of an ISIS supporter, neither does it exclude the possibility that the two men were planning to go to Syria. But even if we assume that none of the allegations the men make are true, that he and indeed Amer are ISIS supporters, it should not exclude them from receiving a fair trial and recourse to due legal process which clearly has not occurred in Greece. The Greek authorities have not responded to requests for comment and may quite understandably, go with its natural instinct which is to bury this case, to do a Trump and throw the keys away. After all many Muslim countries such as Egypt lock up men for lesser crimes than that of Bectašević’, but Egypt of course never prided itself on the Rule of Law. In fact, Rule of Law is something most people admire about the West, even hardened Islamists. And it is adherence to this idea that should be the driving force in dealing with foreign fighters, returnees, and terrorists.

The situation you don’t want to be in is the place where Amer’s mother cries every night pleading to God for justice. For that ancient refrain is not what Democracy is meant to provoke. God is not meant to give justice in Democracy. In fact, the whole point of a liberal democracy is that the Rule of Law is meant to be above God and such pleas for God’s justice should be redundant. It is after all, Lady Justice the personification of the Greek deity Lady Themis that stands as the symbol of justice not Jesus, God or any other religious symbol from the West’ rich Christo-Judeaic heritage. The Rule of Law is so basic that Locke, Rawls and Aristides N. Hatzis from the philosophy department at the University of Athens, says:

“In a liberal democracy there is a personal domain protected by negative rights. This domain should be shielded not only from an authoritarian government but also from a democratic majority (Danford, 2000, pp. 159-172). This domain should be under the protection of the rule of law and its most powerful institutional weapon:” The constitution. Let’s call this the liberal principle.”

In some way, many like the al-Hasani family, being political refugees from an illustrious tribe in Southern Yemen, believe in it even more so than Westerners do. An indignant Mohamed al-Hasani mentioned that Greece was a signatory to European Convention of Human Rights. He expected that they would respect Article 3 – the right to be free of inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and of course Article 6, the right to a fair trial. And yet, if the allegations are true, the Greek judicial system has failed in this regard. It is worth noting that it is this that ISIS uses to lambast the West; it does not even uphold its own fundamental values; why else does ISIS dress up its victims in the orange jumpsuits that they wore in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? And so it proposes that the Rule of Law is hypocritically applied in the West.

Moreover, al-Hasani and especially Bektašević’s treatment does have consequences. The way he is treated will confirm a narrative that there is one rule for Muslims and another rule for the rest. Otherwise those who incline towards this narrative will probably echo Bektašević’s feelings:

“I am in a situation where nobody cares if I’m guilty or not. People who know me and my position against DAESH are quiet and I am here for nothing facing a sentence in a screwed up UFO land…
I have never supported the so called IS, contrary I have been against their actions. I don’t hide that I support the Syrian Jihad but in Syria you have good groups who put themselves under the Shariah not like IS who act like they are above the Shariah. If I would receive a conviction for being part of IS it would not be a conviction based on proofs rather it would be a political one.”

What is clear is that justice and fairness is key. If the Greeks vis-a-vis the West does not want to fuel a grievance narrative that many Muslim demagogues utilise to rail against the West, judicial process is crucial this after all is what Europe is about.

The Greeks and indeed all European countries must not overlook the various factions and groups that exist with in Syria’s rebel milieu and its dynamic in a constantly changing environment. This case will show whether the Greek authorities can manage to be just, fair and respectful of all the values and principles that it subscribes to. If they fail, the level of Bektašević’s celebrity in Jihadi circles will increase and might become a propaganda tool for those who say that the West does not have the ability to be just.

On a final note, the treatment of Amer al-Hasani, whose political ideas are yet unformed and if true, is shocking. It shows us what happens when we throw away the legal rule book, one becomes exactly like those tyrants that Salafi-Jihadis have been speaking against for three decades, one becomes as despotic as Sisi’s Egypt or Assad’s Syria. Perhaps the saddest most surprising thing about the post 9/11 world is the sheer fragility of Western ideals. Perversely in the name of protecting those values it holds so dear it has discarded them so quickly. It poses the question how is it that so few terrorists could shake the faith of so many men so easily?

The post Dealing with Syria’s Foreign Fighters: A Liberal Conundrum appeared first on Syria Comment.

I have just published a new paper on the war against the so-called Islamic State over at The Century Foundation, arguing that the group is now clearly losing the war on the ground in Syria and Iraq. But the tide may turn, depending on what happens in the Syrian Civil War, among the rival Kurdish factions in northern Iraq, and with the increasingly tense situation in Baghdad. The introduction is below and you’ll find the full thing here. — Aron Lund

The Sunni extremist group known as Islamic State (IS, also known by an earlier acronym, ISIS) is taking a terrible beating. In the past few days, it has lost territory in both Syria and Iraq. Syrian Kurds have attacked it east of Aleppo and north of Raqqa City, while it is battling Sunni Arab rivals north of Aleppo. The Syrian army of President Bashar al-Assad is pressing into the Raqqa Governorate and taking ground in the deserts east of Palmyra. In Iraq, other Kurdish groups have struck east of Mosul, while an alliance of Shia militias and the Iraqi army is moving into its stronghold in Fallujah. Further afield, the jihadis are being purged from the Libyan city of Sirte.

Islamic State’s self-styled caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is nowhere to be seen or heard as his fighters face attacks on all fronts. According to the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition, the jihadi group has now lost half of the area it controlled in Iraq at its peak in late 2014 and a fifth of its territory in Syria. Revenues from oil and other assets are reportedly down by a third and a U.S. government official recently claimed the coalition has “cut off entirely their revenue that’s coming from the outside.” The coalition also says that the total number of Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria has dropped from a peak of around 31,000 in December 2014 to between 19,000 and 25,000 today, and the influx of foreign jihadis has allegedly been reduced by three-quarters.

Islamic State has not scored a major victory on the battlefield in more than a year, and its ability to govern efficiently is withering. People with their ear to the ground in Islamic State’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa speak of frail governance and worsening repression, since the group can no longer afford to buy civil peace. If popular discontent continues to grow, a weakening Islamic State could face internal dissent and tribal uprisings.

Still, the decline of Islamic State is certainly not irreversible and its enemies could be in for rough surprises ahead. In some areas, the forces confronting Islamic State are even more dysfunctional than the group itself, held together only by foreign influence and the fact that they face a common enemy. Now, with Islamic State’s influence finally receding, that brittle unity is being tested. Syria has long been torn asunder by civil war and regional rivalries, while Iraq suffers from a worsening political paralysis. Islamic State is weaker than at any point since it conquered Mosul two years ago, but thanks to the chronic disorder among its enemies, it may still be able to regroup and reclaim the initiative.

For more, read the full report.

The post “Why the Islamic State Is Losing, and Why It Still Hopes to Win” appeared first on Syria Comment.

What the Rebel Loss of Aleppo will mean for Syria?
Four Analysts respond – Joshua Landis, Nicholas Heras, Aron Lund and Ammar Abdulhamid

Aleppo Reenforces Regime Claims to Be Able to Retake Most of Syria

By Joshua Landis – Director, Center for Middle East Studies, Univsity of Oklahoma

The encirclement of Eastern Aleppo by the Syrian military and its allies is a major blow to the opposition. It reenforces regime aspirations that it can manage, if not entirely destroy the insurgency over the course of the next five years. It signifies four important developments that have been brewing for some time.

First, this major regime advance was made possible by Russia’s direct entry into the war. Russia transformed the balance of power in Syria by taking the side of the Assad regime last October. What is more, it resulted in a retreat of the United States and its allies. President Obama stated on the day Russia entered the war, that the United States would not fight a proxy war with Russia for Syria. That simple statement signaled the collapse of Western, Saudi and Turkish escalation in Syria on behalf of the Sunni militias. The logic of escalation was simple. It was to weaken Assad and force him to cut a deal with the Sunni militias. It was hoped that a political solution could lead to a Sunni rebel ascendancy in Syria. Regime advances put paid to opposition hopes that their allies would help drive Assad from Syria.

Second, Turkey is in chaos. All indications are that Erdogan, once he consolidates his power in Ankara and completes his purges of the Turkish security forces, judiciary and universities, will de-escalate in Syria. Turkey must stop its economic downward spiral. To do so, it must stop its wars. To rebuild tourism and foreign investment and consolidate support among Turkey’s middle classes, Erdogan must fight extremism. Prime Minister insists that Turkey will repair relations with Russia.  Erdogan can no longer afford to provide covert support to most of Aleppo’s rebel forces, including al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra and other Salafi-Jihadist groups such as Ahrar al-Sham. This is why Nusra leader, Joulani, recently announced that he was officially cutting ties with al-Qaida central. He doesn’t want to get bombed.

Third, the US and Western countries have prioritized their fight against ISIS and extremism over their efforts to arm rebel militias.  In both US presidential conventions, not one word about removing Assad from power was heard. The West’s enthusiasm for arming “moderate” militias has cooled because so much of those arms ended up in the hands of Nusra and the Salafists. Obama’s recent efforts to formulate a common strategy with Russia to fight ISIS and Nusra has sent a clear signal to the entire region that stability, not regime-change, are paramount for both. This is good news for Assad and bad for the rebels.

Forth, the reconquest of Aleppo fits into the larger regime strategy by consolidating its grip on what has been called “Useful Syria.” More than half of Syria’s population lives in its four great cities: Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo. The regime is intent on retaking these four cities for they are the heart of the nation, certainly the urban nation. It should be remembered that Syria is a country of deep divisions, not only between religious communities but also between the classes and between urban and rural society. The upper and middle classes live in the cities. By restricting the rebellion to the poorer countryside and tribal regions, Damascus will have scored a moral and strategic victory. It will be able to turn rich against poor and city against village.

Syria’s rebels have grown progressively weaker over the last year. Russia’s entry into Syria was key to this shift. But other trends also contributed. Jihadist bombings in the West, Turkey and Saudi Arabia eroded support for arming rebels. The refugee problem in Europe, also undermined the desire to escalate in Syria. Iraq’s destruction of its Sunni rebellion weakened Syria’s rebels. The rise of ISIS and Nusra to paramountcy in Syria, undercut those arguing for arming rebels. For all of these reasons, the future looks dark for the rebel cause. Assad’s encirclement of Aleppo is an important chapter in Syria’s ongoing struggle.

Nicholas A. Heras
Bacevich Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), who helped author the center’s new report on combatting ISIS and dealing with Syria.

The Loss of Aleppo – A Pyrrhic Victory
By Ammar Abdulhamid – He was a fellow at Brookings and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He was the first Syrian to testify to congress against what he viewed as crimes by the Syrian president.

The post “What the Rebel Loss of Aleppo Will Mean for Syria,” by Landis, Heras, Lund & Abdulhamid appeared first on Syria Comment.

Who is to blame for Syria’s nightmare?
By Ehsani2
For Syria Comment, July 31

Once the popular demonstrations of the Arab spring brought down the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt, many Syrians assumed that they could bring down President Assad just as quickly. Early in 2011, most expected him to last no more than a few months. Five and a half years later, Assad remains president.  In the 20th century, more than 30 leaders have ruled for over 30 years. Only 3 of them stepped down voluntarily. Ninety per cent clung to power until the bitter end. Instead of viewing the events in Egypt and Tunisia as a statistical anomaly, Syrians viewed them as the new norm. But as Syrians came to understand that Assad would not leave power voluntarily, they took up arms, hoping that force would succeed where peaceful demonstrations could not. Here too, most opposition members over-estimated their strength and underestimated the resources of the regime. In particular, they failed to understand the damage that the Iraq war had done to America’s appetite for a new adventure in the Middle East.

The White House

President Obama was elected twice by running on an anti-war platform. He promised to bring US troops home from both Afghanistan and Iraq. Military involvement in Syria went against his instincts. Allies like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey had other ideas. Almost immediately after the start of the events in Daraa, they pushed the White House to take a strong stand. Washington resisted for nearly 5 months.  This resistance ended on August 18 of 2011, when President Obama made a statement calling for the President of Syria to “step aside”.  The statement did not say “step down”.  The careful and deliberate debate over every word in the White House amounted to little however once the statement was made. Washington wanted Saddam gone and he was. Ditto for Gaddafi. The consensus in the Middle East has always been that the U.S. controls the region. Because the president of the United States announced that it was time for Assad to go, many believed it meant Assad’s end. Advisors inside the White House, however, were aware of the President’s deep reluctance to act. More importantly, Obama’s reluctance was driven by his belief that the United States has little strategic interest in Syria and his awareness that both Iran and Russia do. They view Syria as an important strategic asset worth fighting for. They would outbid any U.S. escalation. Obama saw Syria as a perilous adventure that the United States would not win. It took years for Assad’s enemies to understand Obama. Perhaps they can be excused to some extent by the president’s confusing statements about Assad and U.S. goals, but on the whole, anyone aware of how minimally important Syria has been to Washington compared to Moscow should not have been confused for long.

President Assad and the Syrian State

There is no denying that six years of fighting have taken a huge toll on the Syrian state. Yes, it has lost a massive amount of real estate. It has also suffered devastating losses in manpower. Syria lies in ruins. While the word “win” is vastly inappropriate here, the Syrian state can claim to have won if it defined wining by the simple fact of its survival. There is no question that this survival was accomplished because the state decided to use every asset at its disposal, often shocking the world with its brutality. Western and Syrian government perceptions this struggle have always been diametrically opposed. Western observers saw a state dropping barrel bombs on its own civilian centers; the Syrian government saw itself as the protector of the country. It was fighting jihadists, terrorists, and and traitors who were conspiring with foreign governments to topple it. Damascus’ survival has been secured by allies that never wavered. This commitment culminated with the stunning decision of Russia to become a direct military combatant in the conflict.  Shockingly, early calls for Assad to step aside did not stop after the Russian entry. The new logic seemed to be that Moscow would pressure Assad to leave as part of its diplomatic rapprochement with the U.S. During a recent interview, Assad was asked if Putin had discussed the issue of transition with him. He flatly denied that such a discussion ever took place. Moscow and Damascus have largely identical views on the conflict and how to resolve it. Asking Assad to step down is not part of this calculus. Russian diplomats may claim that they are not wedded to Assad in the course of public and private conversations, but they do not bring this topic up with him.

The Syrian opposition

The Syrian opposition has long argued that it followed non-violent principals early in the uprising. The eventual recourse to arms was made in order to protect civilian lives and honor (aarad) from state brutality. Government loyalists counter that the uprising was armed almost from the beginning. What is indisputable is that between June 4th and 6th, nearly 120 Syrian soldiers and security troops were killed and had their bodies mutilated and thrown in a river around the town of Jisr-al-Shugour. Opposition activists claimed at the time that the dead soldiers were shot by their own superiors as they tried to defect. This was incorrect. According to informed western sources, electronic interception of opposition communication from that day clearly revealed that opposition fighters took responsibility for the murder of the soldiers. The same western source recalls how his capital expected a massive and blistering response from Assad against the city. Instead, they were surprised to see a far more modest attack as military vehicles and tanks took positions on the outskirts of the city in an effort to find the perpetrators of this crime against the soldiers.

In response to the apparent increased militarization of the opposition early in the conflict, I wrote an article for Syria Comment in February of 2012, titled “The Syrian opposition must find a different way”.  Here is the conclusion:

What is needed is a smart and innovative strategy that helps spare lives but convinces Syria’s leaders that the old ways of doing business are over. Popular efforts must be spent in writing a new constitution, a bill of rights to calm minority fears, and an economic plan to reassure the business community and workers alike. The standard of living of most Syrians is appalling, so is the education level and health care system. The opposition must channel their energies towards such topics rather than the senseless call to arm the rebels in what is clearly a suicide mission.

Sadly, under the pretext of protecting lives and honor, the opposition instead opened its arms to anyone willing to join the fight. Salafists, jihadists, and Al Qaeda and its affiliates were invited into the country in order to fight the regime and balance the unequal power equation.  Alarmed by these trends, I spoke with a leading member the Syrian National Coalition. My concerns were invariably dismissed. I was assured that these fighters and extremist groups were transitory. Once the regime fall, I was told, they would leave Syria or move on.

To be fair, referring to the “opposition” as if it were one movement is misleading. The opposition is best viewed as a spectrum. ISIL and Nusra aresituated on its right while activists, such as Haytham Manaa and groups like his, are situated on its left.  The groups on the left had a nuanced solution to the crisis which was largely built on the notion that Assad could stay but on condition that his powers be limited. They wanted him to give up control over the many Syrian intelligence agencies. While the left emphasized non-violent principles, they overestimated their power to influence thinking in Damascus. For the right on the opposition spectrum, Assad’s immediate departure was the overriding demand. Sadly, the U.S. and other western governments threw their weight behind these groups which have by now come to occupy the middle of the rainbow.

The Syrian coalition and military commanders, such as Colonel Abdul Jabaar al-Aqidi, were the principal allies of the west. Pictures of the Colonel standing with foreign jihadists who belonged to the Islamic State during the capture of Kuweiris air base and subsequently standing with Ambassador Robert Ford became iconic of Washington’s confused strategy in Syria. Many accused Washington of indirectly supporting the same jihadists that it sought to destroy. This doomed policy was a result of conflicting goals. The West and its regional allies wanted stability and regime-change at the same time. They wanted to support a Sunni ascendancy in Syria without undermining secularism. On the ground, however, the extreme right side of the opposition spectrum kept moving left and swallowing all others in its path. To date, the main elements of the opposition blame President Obama for the Syrian crisis. They propose a variety of policy alternatives, such as bombing Damascus, destroying the Syrian air force, establishing no-fly-zones, and increasing money, arms, and training for the opposition. These critics are now placing their bets on Hillary Clinton, who promises to be more hawkish than Obama. They hope that she will tilt U.S. foreign policy more decisively in the direction of regime-change. Her campaign advisors suggest that Hillary may indeed move in this direction. But any escalation by Washington is only likely to produce an even stronger escalation by Moscow. Hillary’s campaign promises are likely to be moderated once she is president.

The Syrian opposition members who bet that Assad would be quickly deposed in 2011 are now largely spectators. Their country lies in ruins. Their goal of bringing down the state (Isqat al-nizam) looks as far as ever from being achieved. And Salafists control the fighting on the ground. Like all conflicts that turn armed and violent, the most militant and extreme end up elbowing the more moderate aside. Burhan Ghalioun and Haytham Manaa have been replaced by Caliph Baghdadi and Mohammed al-Jolani. Rebels have been replaced by mujahedin. Without a single exception, every armed group today is committed to ruling by sharia law. This is why Assad and his supporters will refuse to give up and continue fighting. Syrians, unfortunately, have a long fight in front of them. Miscalculation has led to Syria’s ruin.

The post “Who is to blame for Syria’s nightmare?” By Ehsani2 appeared first on Syria Comment.

By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

Emblem of Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya, with the militia’s name itself inscribed on the bottom. On top: “Military Intelligence Branch” (indicating the affiliation of the group). In the centre is the emblem of the Syrian Arab Republic, as well as the Syrian and Ba’ath Party flags.

The regime’s dependency on foreign and native militias to deal with manpower shortage issues and the decline of the regular army is well known. An immediate problem that arises with this phenomenon is a potential breakdown in order and control as militias take power on the ground into their own hands. A mechanism to try to minimize this problem is to have militias operate under some framework of the Syrian state. For example, some militias like the Homs-based Kata’ib al-Jabalawi (Jabalawi Battalions) and Leopards of Homs are affiliated with the al-Bustan Association of regime businessman Rami Makhlouf, who is also Bashar al-Assad’s cousin.

Another option is to turn to the state’s multiple intelligence agencies that can support and oversee militias. A prominent case-in-point is the Tiger Forces led by Suheil al-Hassan. Widely perceived to be an elite Syrian army unit, the Tiger Forces is actually a militia affiliated with the Air Intelligence (al-Mukhabarat al-Jawiya), which is unsurprising given Suheil al-Hassan’s own career that began in air defence and then moved to Air Intelligence. Indeed, as Aron Lund notes, Suheil al-Hassan “does not seem to control a huge force, instead relying on local troops and a smaller entourage of personal loyalists from varied backgrounds.”

Unlike the Tiger Forces, Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya (“The Desert Commandos Regiment”) that is the subject of this profile is not affiliated with the Air Intelligence, but rather the Military Intelligence Branch (Shu’abat al-Mukhabarat al-Askariya). The group should also not be confused with the similar-sounding Fawj Maghawir al-Bahr (“Navy Seals/Navy Commandos Regiment”), which is closely linked to Suqur al-Sahara’ (“The Desert Falcons”)- something illustrated by joint participation in a number of recent operations. Indeed, the leader of Fawj Maghawir al-Bahr is one Aymenn Jaber, who is the brother of Suqur al-Sahara’ leader Muhammad Jaber. It should also be noted that both groups were set up and provided training by the same person: Staff Brigadier Mohsen Sa’id Hussein, who was originally from the village of al-Sisiniya in Tartous governorate and killed in November 2014 in fighting around al-Sha’er field in Homs governorate. He notably played a military commander role in operations to push back the jihadist-led Latakia offensive in spring 2014, and in leading Suqur al-Sahara’ operations in the Homs desert he gained the nickname “Lion of the Desert.” He is also credited with the idea of setting up the Coastal Shield militia as well as being the reputed fonder of the Lions of the East (aka Tribal Army) militia composed of pro-regime Sha’itat tribesmen and other local recruits in Deir az-Zor province.

Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya appears to have at least one affiliate brand (namely, a brigade named for Sayyida Zainab). The militia is a more recent formation than Suqur al-Sahara’ and Fawj Maghawir al-Bahr. According to a representative for the group interviewed in late July 2016, Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya was set up 9 months ago: that is, dating back from July 2016, which would put the beginnings of the militia in the autumn of 2015. The same representative affirmed that the group’s most notable engagements so far include fighting in the Homs desert (e.g. Palmyra and Sha’er field) and the Aleppo battles. The former entails battles against the Islamic State, the latter battles against the rebels. Evidence for these engagements can be found in the open source realm. For example, earlier this month, a local ‘martyr’ from Aleppo  was claimed to have been in the group’s ranks and killed fighting in the Mashru’ 1070 area to the southwest of the city as regime forces and allies tried to prevent the rebels from breaking the siege of eastern Aleppo. In a similar vein, see here for a sample post on fighting in the Sha’er area involving Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya.

Iyad Muhammad Aqil, from al-Marana in Tartous governorate. Reported in late April 2016 to have been killed fighting for Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya in Palmyra area.

Like other pro-Assad Syrian militias and Iraqi Shi’a militias, Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya has advertised recruitment through social media- in particular Facebook- by putting up posts offering connection for recruitment principally via phone numbers, though direct messaging of the Facebook pages can also be available as an avenue for inquiry. In fact, recruitment advertisement for Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya was reiterated as recently as 27 August 2016, offering a monthly salary of $200. Besides the monetary incentive, the militia also promises taswiyat al-wada’ (“sorting out of affairs”). This reflects a wider trend of pro-Assad militias’ attempts to compensate for manpower shortages caused by draft avoidance, particularly in offering an amnesty of some kind for draft-dodgers who sign up. As part of a recruitment expansion campaign, a page for the militia reported in early July 2016 that Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya’s leader had ordered for the opening of offices in all the governorates for the purpose of recruitment.

A Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya office, reportedly located in the village of al-Aqrabiya in Homs governorate near the border with Lebanon, where a significant Shi’i population exists.

Closer view of one of the posters on the door, featuring the group’s emblem and its alternative moniker (Kata’ib al-Sheikh Suleiman al-Shwakh), about which more below.

Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya poster: “We have pledged allegiance to you [in reference to Bashar al-Assad]. Long live the Syrian Arab Army.”

Another Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya poster, with Hafez al-Assad on the left and Bashar al-Assad on the right. On left: “Peace on your soul.” On right: “We are the descendants of your father.”

In addition to recruitment offices, Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya has also claimed to open offices dealing with the affairs of “martyrs and wounded” (killed and wounded): that is, to provide care for the wounded and the relatives of those killed in fighting. This is a common administrative feature adopted by many armed factions including rebels and the Islamic State.

“Office to track the wounded and martyrs”- an office run by Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya, reportedly in al-Adawiya in Homs city.

Of particular interest is the leader of Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya, a man called Suleiman al-Shwakh (aka Abu Ali), from whose name derives another moniker for the militia: Kata’ib al-Sheikh Suleiman al-Shwakh (“Sheikh Suleiman al-Shwakh Battalions”), which appears in photos above from the group’s office in al-Aqrabiya. Suleiman al-Shwakh is originally from Raqqa (as he himself confirmed to me in conversations this month), and he says that he still has some relatives living under the rule of the Islamic State there, but thinks most of the people in Raqqa are with Bashar al-Assad. This latter assertion is questionable, but it is certainly true that regime loyalists have existed in Raqqa during the course of the Syrian civil war, and appear to have made their presence known even after the city came under Islamic State rule by 2014. Suleiman al-Shwakh adds that he undertook army service, and traces Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya’s founding slightly further back to a year ago.

For Suleiman al-Shwakh’s role in the operations to retake Palmyra and some of the countryside villages from the Islamic State, the Russians bestowed an award on him. According to Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya, the award was bestowed per direction from the military command in Moscow and presented by a Russian general overseeing Syrian forces operating in Palmyra.

Suleiman al-Shwakh (right) being presented with his award.

So far, Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya remains a relatively minor formation in terms of casualty numbers: Suleiman al-Shwakh claimed to me that the group has 25 ‘martyrs.’ However, the militia is an interesting case study of militias operating under the framework of the state’s intelligence agencies. While this mechanism appears to give a greater degree of control for the regime over militias and thus give the impression of more law and order on the regime side as opposed to the rebels, it is certainly possible for the various intelligence agencies to use their militia affiliates to compete with each other for influence and power in the regime rump state.

The post Fawj Maghawir al-Badiya: A Military Intelligence Branch Militia appeared first on Syria Comment.

The Druze in the Syrian Conflict
By Talal El Atrache* @TalalElAtrache
For Syria Comment – Sept 5, 2016

Five years after the beginning of the Syrian conflict, the Druze show no signs of joining the rebellion. Even calls made by the Saudi-financed opposition, asking the Druze to rise up against the Syrian army, have fallen on deaf ears. Israel’s two-fold psychological campaign – consisting of supporting the Golan’s jihadists on one hand, and positioning itself as the only potential protector of the Druze against these very same jihadists on the other hand – has also failed. Instead, the Druze have  consistently joined forces with government troops. Each time the Druze region has been attacked by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), al-Nusra Front or the Islamic State (IS), its inhabitants have relied on the Syrian military to help defend it.

In the Province of Swaida, nobody seems to have forgotten the fate of the “Sultan el-Atrache Brigade.” Members of this small Druze unit that joined the FSA were brutally tortured by al-Nusra. Founded in December 2011 by six Druze defectors in Deraa, the faction provided military support to Deraa’s FSA Islamists including “Fajr al-Islam Battalion” during its attempt to invade Swaida in January 2013. But on Jan. 11, 2014, the group was forced to announce its dissolution. Two of its founding members, Khaled Rizk and Bassel Trad, along with a third lesser know member, Raef Nasser, were abducted, tortured and sentenced to death by al-Nusra for their religious affiliation. FSA mediators succeeded in freeing the fighters who were later expelled to Jordan. But the popularity of the fundamentalist trend among the rebels in the so-called “liberated areas” gave the Druze real pause. Those Druze who were critical of the government and eager for national reform quickly learned that there was no room for them among the rebel groups. Abused by the Islamists, disdained by the Gulf States, and limited by their own lack of money and weapons, Druze willing to join rebel militias were few.  And even then, they joined the rebel cause only during the early phase of the uprising, when idealism ran high and Syrian unity seemed possible.

A few months after the dissolution of the Sultan el-Atrache Brigade, Deraa’s Bedouin stormed Deir Dama village in Swaida province in cooperation with Al-Nusra jihadists, killing several civilians on Aug. 16, 2014. Druze paramilitary fighters and Syrian army members counter-attacked and recaptured the village the following day. This jihadist invasion prompted civilians to acquire weapons.

Exacerbating sectarian tensions even more, Deraa’s rebels carried out a series of abductions for ransom in Swaida’s villages, where thousands of refugees from Deraa had been welcomed. Scores of hostages were beheaded. The rebels also blamed the Druze for repelling their attacks against Swaida’s villages. Rather than seeing it as an act of self-defense, the radical group, as well as the Syrian National Council (SNC), condemned what they considered an aggression. This rhetoric has been ongoing since December 2012, when dozens of jihadists from Deraa attacked a Syrian army checkpoint at the entrance of the village of Mjeimar in Swaida. The villagers intervened to rescue the soldiers and repelled the jihadists. Al-Nusra retaliated by kidnapping Jamal Ezzedine, one of Swaida’s most respected dignitaries, as well as 16 civilians from the village of Thaaleh. They were all beheaded. In a video broadcast by al-Nusra, the Salafists blamed the Druze for “attacking the jihadists.”

The dismantling of the tiny Druze brigade and the abduction of civilians are far from isolated acts. In the “liberated areas,” the US-backed jihadists and their Nusra allies carried out the religious and ethnic cleansing of non-Sunni Arab populations. For the first time in two thousand years, minorities no longer dwell in much of the area.

Last year, in the jihadist-held Province of Idleb, 25,000 Druze were forced to convert to a puritanical form of Islam modeled on Wahhabism. They had to destroy their shrines and to adopt a Salafi dress code and lifestyle, despite the fact that the region’s Druze had adopted a stance of positive neutrality toward the Islamists. As a result, more than half of the Druze in Idleb have abandoned their villages. In March 2016, their lands were confiscated under the fallacious pretext that the owners were fighting alongside government forces. Druze-owned properties were given to Turkmen jihadist settlers armed by Ankara. When the local population resisted the first confiscations on June 11, 2015, 20 Druzes were massacred by a Tunisian jihadist. The killing was condemned by al-Nusra, but the group’s objection was seen as a cosmetic move, similar to its recent rebranding and its pretended detachment from al-Qaeda.

Meanwhile in Mount Hermon, the Druze took a completely opposite stance by fighting alongside the Syrian army. They succeeded in repelling the jihadist attacks, except in the village of Mughr al-Mir, which was taken by both the FSA and al-Nusra in December 2014. The population of Mughr al-Mir sought refuge in government-held areas.

Jaramana and Sahnaya, two strategic Christian-Druze suburbs of Damascus located in the Ghouta area, also sided with the state army and welcomed hundreds of thousands of refugees from Eastern and Western Ghouta. These two suburbs played a crucial role in preventing the siege that the Saudi-financed militias Liwa al-Islam (renamed Jaish al-Islam) and Ahfad al-Rassoul planned to carry out in the Syrian capital in 2012-2013.

The Battle of Thaaleh: A turning point

In June 2015, the MOC (Military Operation Center), an operational center that gathers US, Saudi, Qatari and Jordanian intelligence in Amman, set up a vast offensive against governmental areas in the southern provinces of Qunaitra, Deraa and Swaida. The operation was aimed at cutting off the city of Deraa from Damascus, installing a rebel footstep in Swaida and in Mount Hermon, and imposing a “security zone” in the south. All three objectives failed simultaneously. In Mount Hermon, the MOC-backed jihadists encountered a stubborn Druze resistance in the villages of Hadar and Erna. On June 10, the FSA jihadist groups launched a major attack against the military airport of Thaaleh, located in the Province of Swaida. The importance of the military base relies on its proximity to Swaida city. The attack prompted an unprecedented mobilization of Druze paramilitary units and even civilians, who rushed to the airport to support the army. The fighting that lasted for four days and four nights ended with the aggressor’s defeat. This battle represented a turning point. It discouraged the jihadists from further attacking Swaida’s villages. It also reflected the distrust between the Druze and the Islamist rebels, and showed the support that the state army maintains in Swaida and in Mount Hermon.

As Swaida’s western borders with Deraa became a de facto military frontline between a pluralistic Syria and a theocratic enclave, another threat came from Swaida’s eastern provincial borders. In this sparsely populated desert called Bir Qassab, a few Bedouin villages sit adjacent to the Druze Mountains. Since 2012, their semi-sedentary tribes, which had until then coexisted in harmony with the Druze, have made a living by smuggling weapons from Jordan to the Ghouta in the suburbs of Damascus. They have traded arms to al-Nusra and Jaish al-Islam. But in October 2014, a conflict of interest encouraged hundreds of members of the al-Hassan tribe to join the Islamic State. After pledging allegiance to the self-proclaimed caliph Abu Baker al-Baghdadi, they launched a series of attacks and attempts to invade the Druze villages of Haqef and Shaqqa, but were constantly repelled by the Druze paramilitary troops and the Syrian air force.

The threat of the Islamic State became more acute when Bedouins from the rocky Leja area facing Swaida’s northwest villages, joined the caliphate. The Islamic State attempted to open a military resupply corridor between the Leja in the West and the eastern desert. This route would eventually have cut Swaida’s only highway to Damascus and isolated the province from the rest of Syria. The Druze would have been in a terrible situation. This led the army to reinforce its presence along the highway and to strengthen the defenses of Khulkhuleh’s military airport, located in the same area.

Recent battles in Swaida’s villages of Deir Dama, Dhibin, Thaaleh, Mjeimar, Haqef, Shaqqa and Sawara, as well as in Mount Hermon’s villages and in the capital’s suburbs of Jaramana and Sahnaya reflect the prevailing mood among the Druze. Faced with a jihadist onslaught, hundreds of Druze fighters and civilians rushed to support the Syrian army and to repel the FSA’s Islamist and Salafist rebels from their villages and neighborhoods. These successes have boosted the position of the state army and the Druze paramilitary forces, thus accelerating the acquisition of weapons by civilians.

The concept of citizenship in opposition-held areas

In practice, Fatah Al-Sham (ex-Nusra Front), Syria’s most powerful opposition group (apart from the Islamic State, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Kurdish YPG) does not tolerate “apostates.” Its leader Abu Mohammad Al-Jawlani made it clear in an interview for al-Jazeera on Dec. 12, 2015. “As for the Druze, we approach them with Dawah (proselytism),” said the Deraa native leader. “We sent them many preachers who taught them the Aqeedah (Islamic fundamentals) and told them about the mistakes they had made. We noticed that they refrained from these mistakes.” For al-Jawlani, a good Druze is a Wahhabi convert. In this regard, the Muslim Brotherhood pursue a softer strategy by reaching out to non-Sunni populations with Dawah, proselytism, and through the construction of Saudi-financed mosques in their areas.

Radical as it may seem, al-Jawlani’s approach is more “tolerant” than the fatwa (religious decree) issued by Ibn Taymiya against the Druze. The 14th century cleric, known as “Sheikh Al-Islam” in the Islamic world, is the ultimate reference for the Salafists and most US-backed moderate jihadists. In his fatwa against the Druze, he said: “Their women are to be enslaved, and their fortunes are to be taken away. They are apostate heretics and their repentance is not accepted. They are to be killed wherever they are found.” For Ibn Taymya, a good Druze is a dead Druze – or a slave.

In the neo-Salafist conscious, this religious decree might not be applied literally. But it justifies Fatah al-Sham’s confiscation of Druze lands in Idleb. It also explains why the Islamic State singled out and killed 4 Druze cement workers out of 300 mostly Sunni workers they had abducted in the city of Dumayr, near Damascus, in April 2016. In December 2013, Jaish al-Islam, another “moderate” militia that was recently invited to the peace talks at Geneva 3, stormed the city of Adra, north of Damascus. The US-vetted group beheaded and burned alive – in ovens – dozens of Druze, Ismailis and Alawites, out of thousands of mostly Sunni civilians, who later fled to government-held areas. The religious debate that followed the massacre was whether Islam allows burning people alive. Many Salafi clerics argued that Islam prohibits these practices. But it’s “all right” to behead heretics.

Meanwhile, opposition members in exile and some Western think-tanks are striving to either justify the jihadist behaviours in Syria, or to present them as secular and moderate factions. Al-Jazeera even instructed its journalists last year to depict al-Nusra as a moderate group. Regime-change specialists have argued that President Assad is a magnet for jihadists in Syria, and that Syria has become a safe haven for terrorists travelling to US-liberated Iraq, US-liberated Afghanistan, US-liberated Libya, Europe, America, and the entire planet. They conclude that the US must “liberate” Syria as well, in order to free the world from the jihadist threat.

Swaida’s Syrian identity

In the busy streets of Swaida, life goes on despite the conflict that has claimed more than 300,000 lives. Before the war, the province was home to 400,000 people, mostly Druze originally from Mount Hermon, Mount Lebanon, Idleb and Aleppo, who lived in harmony with a Christian community that traces its origins to the Ghassanids. Since the conflict broke out, nearly 200,000 Sunnis from rebel-held areas have sought refuge here, overwhelming municipal services but strengthening the cultural diversity of this semi-mountainous province. The population and various local non-governmental organizations have mobilized to provide assistance on everything from medical care, to food and shelter.

Swaida, with its religious melting-pot, liberal environment and tolerant, inclusive society, seems like the antidote for the Saudi-inspired Salafist culture of the “liberated” areas. It is the antithesis of the US-backed sectarian and misogynist rebellion that has imposed Sharia courts everywhere. Laid back, friendly and welcoming, the Province of Swaida has succeeded, until now, in preserving its Syrian identity. Places of worship like Ain Al-Zaman’s Druze shrine, Saint Paul’s Orthodox church, and Swaida’s central mosque, serve a variety of faiths. Restaurants, cafés, or even Rayyan, the famous nationwide wine and arak brand, offer alternatives for the secular majority. The human losses endured by the province in the conflict, the threats posed by the nearby jihadists, as well as the poverty that has resulted from the war and the Western sanctions, didn’t affect the morale of Swaida’s population. The damascene suburbs of Jaramana and Sahnaya followed a similar path by opening their doors to more than 400,000 internally displaced Syrians.

The picture is not all roses, and not everyone is especially fond of the Syrian government and the corrupt local administration. Like elsewhere in Syria, public opinion has become increasingly polarized since 2011. Nevertheless, this rift remains tame, and without much turmoil. There seems to be a near-consensus that the Islamic revolution taking place in Syria is by no means an acceptable option, but rather an existential threat to Syria’s social fabric and very existence.

This threat has been exacerbated by the Saudi-sponsored identity crisis in the Near East and Riyadh’s efforts to replace the relatively tolerant Levantine Islam by Wahhabism. The rhetoric of the Saudi-financed Syrian National Coalition centered on tribal and sectarian identities, is widely seen as a form of segregation. The opposition’s media outlets frequently refer to Syrians in Swaida, Mount Hermon and Jaramana not as part of the Syrian majority, but as a “Druze minority.” Their concept of citizenship is based on religious stratification in which sectarian identities supersede the Syrian identity. This leads to the widespread belief that the religion of the so-called “majority” should be institutionalized in the law. A sectarian “democracy” generates segregation, discrimination, social injustice, and prompts disintegration of the social fabric, all the way to community ghettoization.

The Islamist notion of democracy is based on sectarian majority rule. Their support for the implementation of a civil state as an alternative to secularism, is based on a wordplay that leads to “civil state with Islamic reference.” Sharia law is considered to be the foundation of the civil state, which is a return back to square one.

The Islamists, like the Israelis in the occupied Golan Heights, have always tried to redefine the Druze identity as a minority or a distinct group, negating the Druze’s century-old combat for full integration within a united, secular Syrian state-nation and society. Both Israelis and the Muslim Brotherhood have strategies that consist of reshaping Syria’s identity and re-tribalizing its society, in order to impose the hegemony of the biggest tribe, namely the Zionist and the Brotherhood communities, respectively.

In Israel, the Druze are encouraged to perpetually prove their allegiance to Zionism. In the Brotherhood circles, the Druze are required to perpetually prove their adherence to Islam. In both cases, they remain second class citizens. As fervent proselytizers, the Muslim Brotherhood and its fellow Salafists’ ultimate objective is to convert the Druze and other “modern-age Kharijites.” Zionist ideologues have adopted a softer approach. They have tried to proselytize the Druze by pretending they belong to one of the “ten lost tribes of Israel.” A century ago, French colonialists came out with a better story. They claimed that the Druze were originally French, and that their name derived from a Frank count by the name of “de Dreux.”

The situation gets worse for women in general. The Brotherhood’s concept of democracy relies to some extent on a misogynistic approach that was born out of a vicious interpretation of allegorical scriptures in the Quran. As a result, the patriarchal system that is based on this interpretation segregates women and limits their role in society. Women are required to follow a strict dress code. They cannot be appointed as judges, rulers or heads of state. Under the Penal Law, a woman is worth half a man. The Law of Personal Status, including marriage, divorce, matrimonial guardianship, inheritance, and nationality, discriminates against women. The unprecedented Saudi-Wahhabi influence has undermined the Syrian opposition and traditional Islam in the Levant. It is also blocking all attempts by Islamic reformists to establish a progressive interpretation of the Quran.

The identity crisis promoted by Saudi Arabia in Syria as well as its anti-Shia and anti-everything rhetoric has contributed to Washington and Tel-Aviv’s struggle against the “Axis of Resistance.” By depicting the countries and movements opposed to Israel as a “Shia Crescent” and as a threat to the Sunni world, Washington and Riyadh have succeeded in diverting the focus from the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights and in the West Bank, to Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. The misguided and perilous instrumentalization of jihadist organizations is reminiscent of the role assigned to Osama Bin Laden’s Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s. But this time, the US-backed Saudi, Qatari and Turkish strategies in Syria might prove to be exponentially more disastrous. In the wake of this foolish adventure, religious minorities have nearly disappeared in the so-called “liberated areas” in Syria.

On the other hand, independent, secular and well known opposition groups such the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change or even Qameh (Arabic anachronym for Value, Citizenship, Rights), led by the prominent opponent Haytham Manna, have been boycotted by the Western “friends of Syria” and their Gulf allies, and excluded from the political process in Geneva.

Many Druze believe that by feeding this war in the name of democracy, Western governments aim at establishing a new “Sykes-Picot” plan and dismantling Syria into sectarian and tribal statelets. The majority of – if not all – Druze favor secularism as the only option that would reunite Syrians and guarantee their rights. The legacy of the Syrian Revolution against the French mandate, that they initiated and led in the 1920s, is strongly present in their collective memory. This cultural heritage, combined with their national awareness, has rooted the Syrian identity in their personalities.

Between secularism and esotericism

Swaida and Idlib offer two conflicting perspectives for the Druze. While Swaida enjoys a semi-secular system that still leaves room for concern, Idlib’s Druze are struggling to survive in a fundamentalist environment, thus resorting to esotericism by concealing their social and religious identity.

The Druze have historically concealed their beliefs from non-Druze following the massacres that took place in Antioch and Aleppo during the years between 1024 to 1031. Known as the Mihna or trial by the Druze, this period remains emblazoned in the collective memory of the community. Mass killings were designed to wipe out the community. Those who survived went underground and sought refuge in the Syrian coastal mountains, including the Shouf Mountains, Keserwan and Mount Hermon. The Druze succeeded in breaking their isolation and earned recognition from the Mamelukes because of the fierce resistance they put up against the Frankish or Crusader rule in Syria (1099 – 1291). They provided first line contingents to Saladin in the battle of Hittine in 1187. But shortly after the defeat of the Franks, the Mamelukes turned on their former Druze allies. Ibn Taymiya’s incitement against schismatic Muslims led to heavy massacres of Druze, Shi’a and Alawites in the Keserwan. The fatwas and the massacres sent shockwaves through the Druze community, who perceived these acts as treason. The short-lived unity that Druze had enjoyed with the central state came to a swift end. Unfortunately, mutual suspicion between Druze and Sunnis have been hard to quell ever since. The politically-motivated Ottoman campaigns against the Druze led to new massacres in 1585, but failed to subjugate them. They triggered a wave of revolts against the Sublime Porte throughout the 17th and 18th centuries that led to an agreement establishing the autonomy of the Druze in Mount Lebanon.

In Swaida, the Druze fiercely defended their autonomy against the Ottoman armies throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. When the caliphate collapsed, the Druze voluntarily abandoned their autonomy for the sake of a secular Syrian state, and led the Syrian Revolution against the French army in 1925-27. They are considered among the main founding fathers of modern Syria.

The history of the Levant and the discriminatory ideologies embraced by the Syrian opposition militias explain the position of the Druze in the current war. Druze suspicion of the US-backed “moderates” was well placed. Most rebel militias embraced some variant of Islamist ideology, which dismisses the Druze religion as apostasy or some sort of false creed. Almost all of them have ended up allying with or working along side Al Qaida in Syria that now calls itself Fatah Al Sham. As moderate as they claim to be, the sectarian militias that have emerged since 2011 failed to develop a respectful partnership with the Syrian population, let alone preserving the Syrian identity. The freedom of religion and worship that Syrians had enjoy were abolished in “liberated” zones. Religious minorities were driven from their homes and women harshly repressed. The concept of secularism was rejected by the majority of the opposition. The Druze distrust these militias and their political affiliates. In the current circumstances, they seem determined to support the Syrian state’s institutions, including the army, having contributed to their creation in the 20th century.

Swaida’s secular opposition vs. the rebels

When the protest movement started in 2011, many Druze professionals, activists and opponents took to the streets peacefully and voiced their support for the uprising. However, these remained a minority. Contrary to the protests elsewhere in Syria that organized in Mosques and places of worship, Swaida’s protesters gathered in public squares and in the streets, in order to mark their secular, national and non-sectarian orientation.

But with the internationalization, the militarization and the islamization of the crisis, many opponents viewed the conflict as a struggle for power and turned against the jihadists. Fewer Druze dissidents voiced their support for the Islamist militias. Most of those who did were either expatriates, Facebook activists, or employees on the Gulf sheikhdoms’ payroll. They claimed that rebel attacks against the Druze were either individual mistakes or a plot from the government to scare minorities and to provoke tensions between the Druze and the freedom-loving rebels. For them, the chaos and sectarian cleansings that took place in so-called Free Iraq, Free Libya, Free Afghanistan, in Lebanon during the civil war and in the “liberated” areas in Syria, should not worry the Syrian population in case of a regime change. Even though some of them argue that Deraa and Qunaitra are safe for the Druze, they strictly remain in government-held areas in Syria, and do not dare crossing over to the “liberated areas” – a behavior which casts doubt over their claims.
However, the general mood among the Druze is that the government does not need to discredit the opposition or to scare the minorities because the opposition is already doing a good job in this regard.

Tensions with the local administration

The jihadist attacks, combined with an unprecedented economic crisis, led the Druze to enroll in pro-government paramilitary troops assigned to protect Swaida. But like in any war, the weakening of the central state and the rise of local militias have resulted in a dramatic increase in corruption and some degree of contained “outlawness.” Popular discontent has reached unprecedented levels with unjustified shortages of gasoline and fuel supplies, and the smuggling of weapons, oil and even refugees between Swaida’s pro-IS Bedouins and a handful of corrupt Druze fighters. Impoverished by the crisis, some Druze believed to have some sort of immunity, made a living by smuggling weapons from and to Deraa, which provoked outrage among local communities. In the last few months, rogue elements carried out abductions and assassinations against civilians, sparking protests in Swaida. People took to the streets, asking the government to impose the death penalty in order to put an end to chaos in the province.

On the other hand, some issues occasionally cause divisions between civilians and government agencies or officials. The main one is related to thousands of army defectors who hide from the military police. Localized clashes take place sporadically between the military police and defectors’ relatives, who intervene in order to free a conscript. As a result, the government and the Druze dignitaries reached a compromise, allowing the defectors to do their military service within the Province of Swaida. The deal managed to bring relative calm to the situation but it didn’t resolve the issue. The relative success of the paramilitary forces has led many Druze to demand that conscription be abolished and replaced by a professional army.

These issues were raised last year by Sheikh Wahid Balous, a Druze cleric that reached notoriety by contributing to the liberation of Deir Dama in August 2014. The weakening of the State created a vacuum that needed to be filled by a political or social entity. This is where Sheikh Balous succeeded. His popularity stemmed from the fact that he was able to mobilize parts of the province’s public opinion by offering his protection to Druze defectors. He also echoed the population’s grievances about corruption, the fuel crisis, and the need for defensive weapons against the jihadist threat. He alternated between cooperation with the Syrian army and defiance of security forces. His ambiguous relations with the Syrian government, with the opposition, and with the Druze in Israel raised questions about his political agenda. At times, he seemed to be in favor of some sort of autonomy in Swaida. He was killed in a bomb explosion on Sep. 4, 2015. Both the government and the opposition accused each other of assassinating him. In the wake of his murder, a press release issued by an undisclosed source demanded administrative autonomy in Swaida. The communiqué was short-lived, but idea hasn’t entirely dissipated.

Israel and the third option

Aside from the old loyalist vs. opposition rift, a third option advocating Druze autonomy has recently emerged in Swaida, even though supporters of such an alternative remain a minority. The weakening of the central government in Damascus, the emergence of an overwhelmingly fundamentalist Saudi-backed opposition in Syria, coupled with the identity crisis prevailing in opposition circles, and an aggressive media campaign pretending that the Syrian government has abandoned the Druze to their fate, have all triggered an isolationist sentiment that remains confined to a minority within the Druze community.

Aside from the opposition’s thoughtless propaganda, the Druze autonomist drive has been discreetly promoted by Israel and countries of the so-called “Friends of Syria” group, which appears to be indifferent to the possibility of seeing Syria, Iraq, Libya and Palestine imploding or disappearing from the world map.

Until June 2015, Israeli hospitals had been treating wounded fighters from al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front (Haaretz, “Israel halts Medical treatment for members of Syria’s Nusra Front, Jul. 20, 2015). According to the Israeli media, more than 2000 jihadists were admitted to Haifa, Safad and Nahariya’s hospitals. The Israeli army has supplied Salafist militias with ammunition, military equipment and communication devices. It also engaged in signal jamming and communication disruption against the Syrian army during jihadist offensives, like in Tal al-Hara, captured by al-Nusra on Oct. 7, 2014. Israel even downed a Syrian military aircraft on Sept. 23, 2014, during combats between the state army and al-Nusra.

Since 2012, Israel has been actively supporting the same jihadists that have attacked Druze villages in Mount Hermon and in Swaida. On the other hand, Tel Aviv has launched a fierce psychological campaign aimed at pushing the Druze to seek protection from Israel against these very same jihadists. But on the ground, Israel has repressed and jailed Druze activists who oppose Israel’s support to jihadists.

On June 22, 2015, a Druze crowd attacked an Israeli military ambulance that was rescuing two jihadists, killing one of them. As a result, Tel Aviv arrested 9 Druze from Majdal Shams. Two of them were sentenced to jail. When the “Southern Front” attacked Swaida and Mount Hermon, dozens of Druze activists stormed Israeli hospitals that were harboring Syrian jihadists.

Earlier in February 2015, Israel arrested activist Sudki al-Makt, a former Druze prisoner from the occupied Golan Heights. Al-Makt had spent 27 years in Israeli jails for engaging in military resistance against the occupation. He was released in 2012. In April 2015, he was indicted in martial court after he posted on Facebook a video showing Israeli soldiers rescuing Syrian jihadists on the Syrian-Israeli ceasefire line.

On Aug. 31, 2015, Israel’s Supreme Court sentenced former Kenesset MP Said Naffaa, a Druze lawyer from Galilee, to 18 months of prison for organizing a visit to Swaida, Jaramana, and Damascus with 250 Druze Sheikhs from Mount Carmel and Galilee.

In spite of that, Tel Aviv is posing as the sole protector of the Druze. It has been trying to reach out to the Druze in Mount Hermon and in Swaida through Galilee’s Druze dignitaries and activists that are closely related to the Israeli government, like spiritual leader Muwafak Tarif, Druze members of Netanyahu’s government, and other activists. Their intention is to build bridges with Syrian Druze dignitaries and influential personalities.

Such efforts were accompanied by “Druze conventions” and meetings in Jordan, Spain and Turkey, and were designed to convince the Druze to follow the Kurdish path and fight for autonomy with the military support of Jordan, Israel, and the United States. Western governments have been testing the waters recently. In July, British diplomats met in Turkey with Druze activists and expats from Swaida, Mount Lebanon and Galilee. They also met in Lebanon with pro-Syrian Druze dignitaries. The Britons suggested to set up a Druze military force similar to the 2007 “Iraq Surge”, in order to fight along with the American coalition against the Islamic State. The proposal, that leads inevitably to provincial autonomy, followed by secession, wasn’t welcomed by the Druze, albeit with some exceptions.

Since 1948, Tel Aviv has been reiterating its interest in dismantling Syria and creating a Druze buffer state from Mount Hermon to Swaida, thereby ensuring Israel’s northern border protection in the long run. In a replay of Southern Lebanon’s scenario between 1978 and 2000, Tel Aviv’s objective seems to be the establishment of a Druze puppet state, led by a Druze version of Antoine Lahad, willing to split Swaida from its Syrian motherland, to fight for Israel in the long run and to link the Druze fate to Israel’s existential crisis.

The old dream of General Yigal Allon has resurfaced. During the Six Day War in 1967, Allon tried to convince Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to extend military operations and invade the Province of Sweida. “I dreamed of a Druze Republic,” he wrote in his memoirs. “A Republic that would extend from Southern Syria, including the Golan Heights, and would act as a buffer state between us, Syria, and Jordan.”

One of the tell-tale signs of Israel’s growing interest in a Druze statelet is the request made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the Chief of Staff of US Army General Martin Dempsey in June 2015, which consists of providing military support for Syria’s Druze, and particularly for Mount Hermon and Swaida.

Alexander Bligh, a former adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and current Director of the Middle East Research Center at Ariel University Center, published an article on June 10, 2015 on Israeli channel i24news’ website, entitled: “Israel must help the Druze in Syria create an independent state.” Bligh advocates that “the State of Israel must decide a bold and absolutely essential step: to save the Druze community in Syria […]. The Druze have the opportunity and the responsibility to establish their own entity that would ensure their survival in a hostile environment […]. The Druze could experience their moment of glory by creating their own sovereign national entity in the Middle East.”

Conclusion

The overwhelming majority of the Druze have sided with the government’s army for existential and identity reasons. They see themselves as the protectors of Syria’s southern borders, as well as the first line of defense of the Syrian capital Damascus, both in Swaida, in Jaramana, and in Sahnaya. The Druze played a crucial role in sparing the city of Damascus from the same bloody fate as Aleppo after the fall of Jarablus, Menbej, and Al Bab in 2012.

In the army, the Druze have lost approximately 3000 military men. Most have been killed in Aleppo, Homs, Idleb, Raqqa, and in the Damascus suburbs. While the desertion rate is high, Druze conscripts can be found on most fronts in Syria. Many Druze officers in the Syrian army distinguished themselves during the war. This is the case of Major General Issam Zahreddine, a commander in the Republican Guard that has led the Syrian army in the besieged city of Deir Ezzor since 2013. Fighting alone, and without any foreign assistance (at least until Russian’s aerial intervention in September 2015), Zahreddine’s troops have succeeded in blocking all attempts by the Islamic State to invade Deir Ezzor, home to 300,000 Syrians.

In the medium term, the Druze face three double-sided threats:

1- The sectarian nature of the Syrian opposition and the presence of jihadist organizations on Swaida’s western and eastern borders compel the Druze to constantly mobilize a defensive paramilitary force in coordination with the Syrian army. The downside of this approach is the abuses of power by a limited number of militiamen who engage in activities such as smuggling.

2- The influx of refugees fleeing both rebel-held areas and the Islamic State adds pressure to overwhelmed municipal services and raises fears of possible rebel infiltration, much as took place in Raqqa and Idlib before the ultimate jihadist takeover in both cities.

3- Israel’s policy vis-à-vis its jihadist allies and the Druze poses a real threat to Syria’s survival as a unitary state and to its national identity.

All these threats have been contained by the Russian intervention in Syria. Moscow has stabilized most fronts while giving considerable leverage to the Syrian army on the ground. The Russian aerial coverage, as well as the coverage of the Syrian Air Force, enhanced as it has been by recently acquired jets, provide a military shield to Swaida and to other government controlled areas that are home to 14 million Syrians, half of which are internally displaced Syrians who have fled from opposition-held areas.

The protest movement that started in 2011 has quickly been muted and transformed into a struggle for power that has nothing to do with democracy anymore. The Druze consider themselves to be Syrians. They perceive their religion as a sub-national identity, not as a nationality in its own right. They are an essential part of the Syrian identity. This is a legacy of Sultan Pasha al-Atrash’s pioneering role as leader of the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925-1927. The majority of Druze refuse to be cut off from the rest of Syria for economic, cultural, and identity reasons. A Druze statelet isn’t sustainable and would be destined to become a puppet enclave to either the Hashemite Kingdom or Israel, both of which don’t offer better prospects for the Druze than Syria. While the Druze public opinion on the war is polarized, many still want to believe in a settlement that would preserve what’s left of Syria, or one that would restore the status quo antebellum.

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*Talal El Atrache is a Syrian journalist and writer. He worked for many years at Agence France Presse (AFP), and as a correspondent at Radio France Internationale. He has also been a freelance journalist at l’Humanité newspaper, TV5 and BFM TV (French channels). In 2007, he was awarded the Lorenzo Natali Media Prize by the European Commission. He is the co-author, with Richard Labévière, of “Quand la Syrie s’éveillera” (When Syria Awakes), published in 2010 by “Editions Perrin” (Paris).  

All photos were taken by Talal.

The post The Druze in the Syrian Conflict – By Talal El Atrache appeared first on Syria Comment.

The nature of the Syrian conflict, now in its fifth year, has become overtly sectarian and ideological. Undoubtedly the foreign fighters who continue to trickle in are coloured by this. There is also enough evidence to suggest that the presence of informal recruiters, usually through friendship networks, play an influential role in the choices they make. There seems to be a confluence of humanitarian, political and ideological factors that has led to a situation that looks and feels apocalyptic. However, what has often been ignored is the unique position that Syria occupies within Islamic tradition.

Themes of Worship, Jihad and Sham are entwined in the poster.

Keeping our focus on Sunni foreign fighters, Syria has attracted foreign fighters in a way that no other conflict has. Burma or Central African Republic certainly have not attracted Muslim foreign fighters. Not even the lands of Afghanistan or Yemen or Iraq for that matter, have drawn so many men and materiél in from all corners of the Muslim world. Admittedly, their remoteness is certainly one of the inhibitors. Syria after all is easy to get to. But now with Turkey tightening its border and Europe being more vigilant and punitive, they still seems to trickle through. If it was simply Salafi-Jihadi ideology that galvanised men, then many of these ideological fighters would flock to the aforementioned countries; but they do not. They are choosing to travel to Syria. Whilst William McCants has tried to explain the Islamic apocalyptic narrative that ISIS has to an English speaking audience, it does not deal with the role of Syria within the Muslim sacral imagination. Rather Syria or Sham- by Sham I mean modern day Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, parts of Turkey and parts of Iraq- is the meeting point not only for geopolitics, a terrible humanitarian crisis, but also for Jihad within in the Sunni tradition.

Map of greater Syria or Sham.

Arguably, Sham has become a destination for rootless Muslims already struggling with their place in Europe. Sham has become the land that transcends arbitrary borders and where they can belong. The powerful image of ISIS bulldozing the border between Iraq and Syria has demonstrated how transient the lines drawn in the sand by Sykes and Picot truly are. The name Islamic State has, despite its association with cruelty and terror, introduced an idea within the Muslim world that perhaps it is possible to have some sort of state ruled by Islamic law. It has also reignited the idea of Sham and offered up new questions. If an Islamic state should come to being what should it look like and how should it behave? The answers to these questions will undoubtedly lead to further tumult in the Middle East and Europe, long after ISIS or AQ or any other organisation which calls for it has faded away.

Certain parts of the Muslim world such as Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem and Syria have sacral importance in the Muslim imagination. These places entwine the eschatological traditions involving the past with the prophetic predictions made of the future. It is for no reason that ISIS calls its magazine Dabiq, the place where Muslims will have their final victory in the Islamic tradition. It is redolent with significance. The Syrian conflict cannot just be interpreted through the cold lens of geopolitics, for Syria is indivisible to faith by virtue of their sacral associations. To ignore this aspect will result in ill-conceived policy decisions that will last decades.

The very symbolism of Sham itself and what it promises, the return of the Shariah, has meant that foreign fighters can now attach themselves to a land which not only is intrinsically linked to their faith, but supersedes the Westphalian nation state. Their Hijra, their Jihad, their Ribat- all of it is blessed, as Sunni tradition seems to suggest. This is accompanied with a vision of an end game. Unlike CAR, Burma and others- Sham has an end game: victory for the believers. Admittedly, Afghanistan does too in the sense that there are prophetic traditions suggesting that the Black banners of Islam will come from Khorasan, modern day Afghanistan. But it does not have the potency of Syria. Syria is the place where, according to tradition, the caliphate will revive, where prophets walked, and where it shall all end in the Muslim imagination. Syria then, as a land, is bigger than nationalism and yet paradoxically has many affinities. Thomas Hegghammer in The Rise of Muslim Foreign Fighters: Islam and the Globalization of Jihad, is on to something when he says:

“Transnational militancy is obviously ideology driven, but the ideology in question—extreme pan-Islamism—arguably has more in common with nationalisms than with utopian religious constructions.”

Syria gives the rootless Western Muslim an identity, a purpose and also a glorious end game in a way that no other land will. Faith is intrinsic to the land . And so Turkey might close their borders but foreign fighters will continue to enter.

Jihadi ideologues like the late Abu Mus’ab al-Suri identified it as a crucial geopolitical chess piece in the Muslim world, but Syria isn’t just relevant to Jihadists. Syria’s importance exists within several axes: Islam’s martial tradition, within the prophetic past, within its historical past, and the future eschatological tradition. Salafi-Jihadis don’t own this tradition. Up to recent times the Syrian government boosted its tourism industry by encouraging the concept of Siyaha, that is Muslim spiritual travel to its sacred places. It is similar to the way Christian pilgrims travel to holy sites such as Santiago de Compostela in Spain or Lourdes in France.

To illustrate this point more clearly let us take a text that does not come from the Salafi-Jihadi tradition. The Excellence of Syro-Palestine -al-Sham- And its People by Gibreel F. Haddad, a sufi scholar, and a follower of the late Sheikh Nazim Haqqani of the Naqshbandi order and a vehement opponent of the Salafis. This text follows a common literary genre within Islamic scholarly tradition; that of collecting forty canonical sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. But here Haddad has focused on the virtues of Syria. This is not novel. Nasir al-Din Albani for instance, one of the scholars that Salafis follow, has also edited a text on the virtues of Greater Syria. Haddad’s text, it should be noted, was written in 2002, several years before the Syrian uprising.

The author draws on nine books of the canonical sayings of the Prophet in order to establish Syria’s paramountcy in the Muslim imagination. He draws on the Prophetic canonical collections of Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, al-Nasa’i and ibn Majah. He draws on the Musnads of Ahmad and al-Darimi as well as extracting traditions from ibn Hibban, ibn Khuzayma and al-Hakim. Moreover Haddad relies on the giants of Sunni Islamic tradition such as al-Nawawi, ibn Hajar and al-Suyuti, as well as on great Quranic exegetes such as al-Qurtubi, al-Bayhaqi and al-Tabari. He goes to great lengths to frame his work within the Sunni intellectual tradition. In other words this work is not just for Sufis but also for the orthodox, but also for those with no Sufic inclinations.

Moreover Haddad points out his connection to the likes of Muhammad al-Yaqoubi in order to firmly ground his work within Sunni scholarship. To emphasise this point, he has a foreword written by some prominent religious scholars of Sham such as Shaykh Adib Kallas, one of the leading jurisprudents of Damascus, Salah al-Din al-Fakhri, the administrative director of Dar al-Fatawa in Lebanon and finally it is endorsed by ‘Abd al-Razzaq Turkmani on behalf of the Sufi sheikh Sayyidi ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Shaghuri.

These names are relevant to demonstrate that traditions around Sham are cultivated and are not just for those living in the rarified stratosphere of Islamic scholarship. The very existence of these traditions within Islam will draw foreign fighters to Syria despite the hardship that they may encounter. This author interviewed one foreign fighter who recounts how he met a battalion of Chechens who had left the fight against the Russians in their homeland, in order to fight in Syria due to the latter’s importance in the Islamic world. It demonstrates clearly that Syria is not owned by the Salafi-Jihadis, nor does it have more significance to them than to the rest of the Muslim world. But just like the Zengids and the Ayoubids during the Crusades, who utilised the symbolism of Jerusalem to propagate Jihad, so too has similar symbolism been used by the Salafi-Jihadi groups to encourage men to fight and come to Syria. Jerusalem after all is part of Sham.

Syria, according to Haddad, is mentioned ten times in the Quran and there are numerous hadiths that recount its virtues. The Prophet is said to have prayed for the land and it is considered blessed. Accordingly, God has put angels in charge of guarding Sham and the Prophet Muhammad has prayed for the country. It is cited by Syrians as proof that their country has a manifest destiny. Syrians know and often cite the hadith that says if goodness ends in Sham there will be no goodness in the world. Now it is doubtful that most foreign fighters know all of these traditions, but most at some point will be schooled by those already in Syria about its importance[5]. And Syrians will certainly make you aware of its significance in the religious landscape as this author has experienced.

The Land of Faith

The land then, according to Haddad, is intrinsically linked to Islamic tradition. Al-Tabarani narrates a hadith by one of the Prophet’s Companions, Salama ibn Nufayl, that the Prophet said: “The heartland of the abode of Islam is Sham”. Another saying of the Prophet:

“[Sham] is the quintessence of the lands of Allah. There do the quintessence of his servants go for protection. Therefore whoever departs from Syro-Palestine earns [His] wrath, and whoever enters it from somewhere earns His mercy…” [ see G.F. Haddad]

Thus blessing and the land are intimately connected in a way that other territories of the Muslim world are not, apart from Medina and Mecca.

The land, according to one prophetic tradition, is said to house seventeen thousand graves of prophets alone. Makhul, one of the earliest Islamic scholars, relates that there were five hundred prophets buried in Damascus alone. Some of these prophets visited locations in Syria. The Prophet Muhammed visited Bosra, Adam visited mount Qasyoun, Eve went to Ghouta, Seth went to the Bekaa valley in Lebanon, Lot passed by Barzeh in Damascus, John the Baptist was buried in the Umayyad mosque, Job in the Hawran, and Jesus and Mary sought refuge in al-Rabwa and so on.

A propaganda poster referring to a hadith of the Prophet that mentions  Dabiq in Syria

Thus blessing and the land are intimately connected in a way that other territories of the Muslim world are not, apart from Medina and Mecca.The land in between Damascus and Homs is known as the land of the thousand martyrs on account of the numerous anonymous Companions of the Prophet said to have died there whilst fighting the Byzantine empire. The land was visited by the Companions of the Prophet and early Muslims. It is well known that Hussein’s head, the grandson of the Prophet, is in the Umayyad Mosque, Khaled bin al-Walid, Islam’s greatest general is buried in Homs. Bilal, the Muezzin of the Prophet, is buried in Damascus. It is also said that both Abu Ubaydah, the conqueror of Damascus, Shurahbil bin Hasana, the famous warrior commander, are also buried close to Bab Sharqi in the Old City and so on. Numerous scholars have passed through Syria including the great ascetic and scholar al-Ghazali. Ibn Taymiyyah, the father of the Salafis, is buried in Damascus University grounds, as are Sunni Islam’s great heroes, such as Salah al-Din and Nur al-Din Zengi. One needs only to flick through the voluminous collection of the History of Damascus by the medieval scholar Ibn Asakir to realise that the who’s who of the Islamic world all gathered in Damascus.

Moreover, Syria is mentioned by several companions including the grandson of the Prophet Ali, and Ibn Masu’d as the land of the Abdals, a group of forty awliya or saints, through whom people are given sustenance and victory. And it is these men and women who will aid the awaited Mehdi, the messianic figure who will restore the land on the methodology of Prophethood in the Final Days. Syria is also the place where Jesus will descend and slay the anti-Christ. In fact, the environs of Ghouta, which Jaysh al-Islam currently control, is the rallying place on the day of Armageddon and it is believed to be the land of Resurrection. In fact, in Ghouta’s history, Muslim communities fleeing persecution have settled specifically there to fulfil this prophecy.

Sh. Muheysini referring to tradition on Syria- he doesn’t need to explain it to the audience- it is understood.

As a Companion of the Prophet, Abu Darda, narrates:

“The Prophet said: The rallying place of the Muslims on the day of Armageddon is in al-Ghouta, next to a city called Damascus which is among the best cities in al-Sham” [see G.F Haddad

Syria’s role in Jihad and Hijra

Syria is also tied to Jihad and Ribat, Ribat here means guarding and fortifying front lines. There is a mass transmitted (mutawatir) hadith which says:

“a part of my community will remain in firm adherence to the Divine command, unharmed by those who betray or desert or oppose them, until the coming of the order of Allah, while they are victorious over all people…they are the people of al-Sham” [see G. F Haddad]

The Prophet has described the outer borders of Sham as permanent frontiers. Who ever takes up residence there is a Mujahid, a fighter in the service of God. It suggests that those travelling to fight in Syria then, will be rewarded. As the Prophet has said:

“Now has fighting come! There will not cease to be a group in my Community that will remain victorious over all people. Allah will cause the hearts of some to go astray and those [the former] will fight them and receive from them His sustenance until His command comes to pass…Lo! Truly, the heartland of the believers is al-Sham! Immense good will remain tied to the forelocks of horses [i.e. Jihad] until the Day of Rising!” [see G.F. Haddad]

Another hadith related by Abu Hurayrah:

“A part of my Community will not cease to fight at the gates of Damascus and its surroundings, and at the gates of Bayt al-Maqdis [Jerusalem] and its surroundings. The betrayal or desertion of whoever deserts them will not harm them the least. They will remain victorious, standing for the truth, until the Final Hour rises.” [see G.F Haddad]

There are also traditions which suggest that Syria is the place of Hijra- or emigration. For instance the Prophet advises people: if Fitna, [usually translated as civil strife] increases one should head to Syria. And this injunction is something that Muslims have done since Islam’s inception, whether that be the Kurds settling in Rukn ed-Din during the time of the Crusades or the Hanabila settling in Salihiyeh district in Damascus or the Circassian community escaping the push of the Russian empire.

There are two points here that feed the Jihadi’s call: that of Jihad and that of emigration. In the modern context, some Salafi-Jihadis interpret fitna- to mean shirk, associating partners with God, meaning that when shirk proliferates in the land then Sham is the place to head to. And since Shirk, in the puritanical vision of Salafi-Jihadis, has proliferated then it is best for people to emigrate to Sham. There is a Prophetic tradition mentioned in Haddad’s text which says:

“The Hour will not rise before the best of the people of Iraq first go to Sham and the worst of the people of Sham first go to Iraq. The Prophet said: “You must go to Sham!” [see G.f. Haddad]

This is why one Western Muslim woman was told by a foreign fighter to go against the fifth pillar of Islam the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and make Hijra to Sham instead, because Shirk has even entered the holy city.
The Shami confluence

Whilst Haddad’s book does not negate Sham as a land of Jihad and Hijra, arguably, what he aims at are three things. Firstly to connect Syria’s paramountcy to the old tradition of Siyaha-that is spiritual travel. Secondly, to warn against the Najd vis-a-vis modern day Saudi Arabia- Haddad is indirectly criticising Salafism since the movement began there with Muhammad Abdul Wahab in the 18th century. Thirdly, he wants to raise the status of Syrian religious scholars over the Saudi scholars whose influence Haddad views in a negative light. Jihad, Ribat and Hijra, whilst important, are mentioned in the book as something that will come to pass. There is no indication that the reader has to act on it. But one should also remember that Sufis did act upon these injunctions in the past. Sufis played a major role in both the counter crusades of Salah al-Din and Nur al-Din as well as in the Ottoman armies. This author met graduates of Abu Noor University, established by the Damascene Sufi and Grand Mufti Ahmed Kuftaro, in the ranks of Syrian rebels. It is also worth noting that the Sufi militant group the Naqshbandi Army or JRTN and ISIS were allies once in Iraq.

What the Salafi-Jihadis and other Islamist battalions do with Sham is to connect the status of Sham to the martial tradition. This arguably is not an illegitimate thing to do as there is historical precedence, the Crusades being a good example. Carole Hillenbrand in The Crusades: an Islamic Perspective, points out that during the Crusades there was a close correlation between the rise of works extolling the virtues of Jerusalem and the works extolling Jihad.

A famous hadith mentioning Jihad used to encourage men to Jihad

Salafi-Jihadis may be very different from classically conceived Jihad but they believe that they are continuing in the footsteps of an old tradition which goes all the way back to the earliest days of the Prophet. Whilst it is noteworthy that Jihad occupied a very small part of the Prophet’s life, the first books written about his life was about his battles. From there a whole literary genre called maghazi developed. Moreover, there are historical compendiums such as Futuh al-Buldan of al-Baladhuri, one of the earliest surviving texts on how Islam conquered the classical world with offensive jihad. Apart from the jurisprudence dealing with the legal issues surrounding the concept of religious warfare, there are plenty of works written on the battles of the Companions, as well as books dealing with the concept of Futuwwa, martial and spiritual chivalry, and of course there are biographies of famous warriors such as ibn Shaddad’s Life of Salah al-Din and Abu Shama’s book on Nur al-Din Zengi and Salah al-Din. A recent example being a biography on Khaled bin al-Walid by Lieutenant General of the Pakistani army A. I. Akram. One should also not forget the numerous examples of Ummayyad to Ottoman poetry extolling Jihad and the love for martyrdom. In fact, even Ataturk, the secular founder of modern Turkey, was not averse to calling himself a Ghazi, a Mujahid, and neither was the Pan-Arab Baathist dictator Saddam Hussein. We should also remember that the statue of Salah al-Din in Damascus was unveiled by Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, in 1993. Thus the elegiac poetry surrounding Abu Muhammad al-Adnani’s death, the nasheeds that emerge from many Jihadi factions, as well as the names chosen by the various battalions situate themselves in this tradition. To illustrate, look at the numerous eulogies that are emerging on al-Adnani: they reach back and touch the past. Below is an extract of Abu Shama’s eulogy of Nur al-Din, one could easily mistake it for a eulogy of Abu Muhammad al-Adnani.

“He displayed religious orthodoxy in Aleppo and changed the innovation (bid’a) which they had in the call to prayer and he tamed the heretics there and built there religious colleges, established endowments and dispensed justice… in war he was steadfast in going forward, good at shooting, hard in striking…he would run the risk of martyrdom…he often studied religious books” [Hillenbrand]

Thus what the Salafi-Jihadi and other Islamist battalions do is to attach the traditions around Sham to Jihad in the same way that Salah al-Din and Zengi did with regards to fighting the Frankish Crusaders in the Levant.

Things that are attractive to young foreign fighters

What analysts and journalist must grasp is that many Muslims, even non-devout ones, are well aware of the glorious deeds of their predecessors. They name their sons Hamza, Khaled, Seifullah for this reason and are, however vaguely, aware of the sacred geography that countries like Syria occupy. Sham then, in the imagination of the prospective foreign fighter represents something that resembles to use St Agustines phrase, a kingdom of God. The very land is blessed, full of faith and the place where the history of Islam unfolded and the End of Time will be played out. It is an exciting and seductive prospect for an adventurous young man with a bellicose temperament. This, combined with the international community seemingly unwilling to stand up for Sunni Muslims being killed by barrel bombs in their thousands, means that all the ingredients are there to make the conflict thoroughly apocalyptic.

This article has sought to demonstrate that the very raw material used by Sufis to encourage spiritual peregrinations can equally be used by the various rebel factions to encourage their men to fight as well as to support. For they tap into a pre-existent martial tradition. Of course, it doesn’t exclude the role of identity politics in the seventies in the Middle East having an impact on the Muslim diaspora in the West. Nor does it exclude other reasons why young Muslim men go to Syria. But certainly grasping this idea as to what role Sham plays in the Muslim imagination makes it easier to understand why young, often rootless Muslim men continue to travel to fight in Syria despite the difficulties they face. For this reason it may be argued that foreign fighters will continue to go to Syria even if JFS, IS and other Islamist rebel groups fade away. Resolving the conflict will certainly reduce this trickle further.

The post The Virtues of Sham: The Place of Syria in the Muslim Sacral Imagination appeared first on Syria Comment.

By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

Banner of Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain. On top: “The Syrian Resistance” (al-muqawama al-suriya). On bottom: Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain (“The Imam Zain al-Abidain Brigade”).

In analysis of militiafication on the Assad regime side, one of the most understudied fronts is that of Deir az-Zor province in eastern Syria, as the regime maintains an outpost in parts of Deir az-Zor city, the military airport and some of the surrounding areas, with no supply routes by land in existence. Despite the regime’s rather precarious situation, the Islamic State (IS) has not yet completely wiped out the regime presence in the way that it took the regime’s isolated bases in Raqqa province by storm in the summer of 2014.

Though reporting commonly just refers to the Syrian army in Deir az-Zor province, there exist a number of supporting militias. The latest of these militias to have been set up on this front is Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain, named for the fourth Shi’i imam. For context, it should be noted that there are a number of militias on the regime side that have adopted the moniker of Zain al-Abidain. For example, there is another Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain that has most notably fought on the Ithiriya front as advertised in late 2015. According to someone who was in the Republican Guard and then joined this Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain, the group was formed around 2-3 years ago. A notable leading figure in this Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain is one Zaher Hasan al-Asad, who is particularly interesting because he is also a member of Mihrac Ural’s group known as The Syrian Resistance (al-muqawama al-suriya), which should not be confused with the Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain of Deir al-Zor that is the main subject of this piece and also bears the moniker of “The Syrian Resistance.” Hasan Zaher al-Asad’s affiliation with Ural’s group was confirmed by a source in the latter last month, who also mentioned that a squadron from Hasan Zaher al-Asad’s Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain was in Aleppo.

The Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain of Zaher Hasan al-Asad. The top of the emblem reads: “The Resistance Support Forces.”

Zaher Hasan al-Asad. Note his insignia from Mihrac Ural’s Muqawama Suriya.

Zaher Hasan al-Asad with his Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain members, posing in front of a banner that reads: “God’s peace be upon you oh Hussein.” The reference is to Imam Hussein, a key figure in Shi’i Islam. For similar sloganeering, see here.

Indeed, the leader of Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain in Deir az-Zor- a petroleum engineer  by occupation who is originally from Deir az-Zor and goes by the name of Abo Abod- told me that the name of Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain exists among formations in various parts of Syria, including Ithiriya (likely referring to the presence of Zaher Hasan al-Asad’s group), Palmyra and Quneitra. He mentioned this fact in response to a query as to why this name was chosen for the group. He added that there were connections “with all the formations.”

More specifically on his own group in Deir az-Zor, he mentioned that it has been operating for four months (i.e. first set up in May-June 2016). Officially describing his group as independent, he affirmed that it was one of the supporting militias for the regime in Deir az-Zor. By his account, other militias that have participated in fighting on the Deir az-Zor front, according to Abo Abod, have included:

-The National Defence Forces.
– The Lions of the Eternal Leader: a militia whose name refers to Hafez al-Assad: affiliated with the Military Intelligence (al-Amn al-Askari: cf. here) and led by al-Hajj Azra’il, originally from the Shi’i village of Nubl in north Aleppo.
– The Lions of the Euphrates: affiliated with the Amn al-Dawla (“State Security”) intelligence agency.
– The Lions of the East: a tribal militia mainly drawing on Sha’itat tribesmen, who work closely with the Republican Guard and Issam Zahr al-Din, a Druze general in the Republican Guard who plays a leading role on the Deir az-Zor front, having recently returned to the front after a visit to the Quneitra frontlines that currently involve a rebel offensive that has pushed towards the area of the Druze village of Hadr, prompting a large Druze mobilization to defend the area. Together, under Zahr al-Din, members of the Republican Guard and members of the Lions of the East constitute the Majmu’at Nafidh Assad Allah (“Nafidh Assad Allah Group,” referring to a nickname for Zahr al-Din).
– The Ba’ath Brigades.
– al-Hashd al-Sha’abi: “Popular Mobilization”- undoubtedly taking its name from Iraq’s militia phenomenon that goes under this moniker- but not related, rather affiliated with the Syrian regime’s military commander for Deir az-Zor city.
– Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

This list of auxiliary forces more or less correlates with that compiled by the anti-IS and anti-regime group Deir az-Zor is Being Slaughtered Silently (DZBSS). Most notably, DZBSS correctly points out in addition the role of the Palestinian militia Quwat al-Jalil (“The Galilee Forces”), which actually claims the bulk of its ‘martyrs’ from fighting in Deir az-Zor. Despite some occasional claims that have surfaced on social media, little reliable evidence points to the presence of Iraqi Shi’i factions on the Deir az-Zor front, something denied by Abo Abod. It should also be noted that Abo Abod clarified that the Lions of the Euphrates militia has been dissolved by the Amn al-Dawla, with fighters distributed to other formations. According to him, al-Hashd al-Sha’abi has also been dissolved.

As might be expected, Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain in Deir az-Zor primarily draws on local people from Deir az-Zor as recruits, though Abo Abod was keen to emphasize as wide a manpower base as possible in terms of origins, claiming fighters from Albukamal (in eastern Deir az-Zor on the border with Iraq), Raqqa, Hasakah, Qamishli Damascus and Deraa. He put the monthly salary per fighter at $200, which he said was partly used to support civilians in Deir az-Zor. Concomitant with the wide range of origins, Abo Abod was also keen to put forth a cross-sectarian image for his group. “Do you know that I have Christian youth in the brigade?” he asked rhetorically in a bid to impress me. He added that “some of them are from al-Deir [Deir az-Zor] and some have come down with me from al-Sham [Damascus].”

Photo of Abo Abod

The photo of Abo Abod above, with the “Labbayk ya Hussein” (“At your service, oh Hussein”) insignia, may raise the question as to whether he is Shi’i himself. To this question, he gave a rather interesting response: “I belong to all sects. I wage war on all who wage war on the Shi’a. I serve [/revere] the Al Bayt [Prophet Muhammad’s family] and my lineage is Husseini.” He then elaborated: “Do you know that Deir az-Zor is Shi’i in character? The black abaya, the al-Abbas bread, Allah wa Ali, all of them are from the customs of the people of al-Deir.”

These kinds of remarks touch on an issue I raised in my previous article profiling Liwa Sayf al-Haq Assad Allah al-Ghalib, a militia affiliated with the Republican Guard and based in Sayyida Zainab in Damascus. That is, whether or not there is formal conversion to Shi’i Islam, many pro-regime militias have displayed increasing affinities with Shi’i Islam and associated slogans and symbols, undoubtedly influenced by the extensive intervention of Iran and client Shi’i militias in Syria. Indeed, as Abo Abod told me, “The youth I have- Sunni before Shi’i- have adopted Labbayk ya Hussein, out of love and desire. We in the brigade deal with each other as one family and one house. Muhammad is our Prophet, Ali is our lord, Hussein is our leader….All demanded it [the slogans/symbols]. They said: ‘Hussein, Ali, Zainab and Fatima- peace be upon them- are our lords.'”

Photo of a person bearing the Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain flag.

So far, Abo Abod only claims 5 ‘martyrs’ for his formation, a recent example being one Nasim Muhammad al-Hamid, killed in fighting to retake Tel Baruq near the 137th brigade base. In the recent U.S. airstrikes in Deir az-Zor that erroneously targeted regime positions, there were no reported or confirmed deaths for the ranks of Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain.

Analytically, it could be as my friend Tobias Schneider suggests to me that Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain is a project analogous to Hezbollah’s Saraya al-Muqawama (“The Resistance Brigades”) project in Lebanon that is designed to outreach to non-Shi’i constituencies. Though Abo Abod said his group is independent, such a claim should probably be taken as formal distancing. In any case, the study of this militia in Deir az-Zor offers useful insight into regime dependency on auxiliary fighting forces even out on this front, and how apparent cross-sectarianism can still contribute to antagonistic sectarian dichotomies.

The post Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain: Building a ‘Resistance’ in Eastern Syria appeared first on Syria Comment.

Remember Syria’s Adib Shishakli
Christopher Solomon – @Solomon_Chris
For Syria Comment Sept 27, 2016

Nearly 52 years ago, a Syrian political leader hiding in exile was killed in the heart of Brazil. As Syria watchers continue to monitor and understand the country’s grinding civil war, the era of the former Syrian political figure Adib Al-Shishakli could yield some clues.

The flag of the Syrian opposition factions bares the green, white, and black tricolor with three red stars. The very same flag once flew over Syria from its independence until the late 1950’s, a turbulent era marked by political intrigue, military coups, early experiments with democracy, and authoritarian rule. At the center of this era was a powerful political figure now barely remembered both outside of Syria, Adib Al-Shishakli.

As policy makers in capitals across the Western World grapple with Syria’s endless violence, Shishakli’s legacy and the lessons from his time are worth remembering today. Shishakli’s rule over Syria, geopolitical trends, his relationship with the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), and his ensuing ouster yield some clues on what we might expect as the civil war prepares to enter its sixth year.

Coups, Stability, and Authoritarian Rule

Hailing from Hama, Shishakli was a Syrian Kurd who served in the Arab armies that took part in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. His exploits on the front lines earned him a following among Syria’s officer corps. Though Shishakli was not known to be an ideologically driven figure, he entertained many of the nascent political activists at the officer’s club in Damascus. Shishakli was largely known for his close association with Antoun Saadeh’s SSNP, also sometimes referred to as the Parti Populaire Syrien (PPS). In addition, his participation in nationalist inspired actions against the French, such as the take over and occupation of the Hama citadel in 1944, only added to his reputation as a man of action.

Syria’s politically turbulent years in the wake of independence saw the reigns of leadership held by prominent nationalist personalities, such as Shukri Quwatli, and subsequent power squabbles between his National Bloc and the pro-Iraqi Aleppo-based People’s Party, with plenty of political intrigue from the SSNP and its primary competitor, the student dominated Baath movement. The country was soon rocked by a series of coups that turned the country into a pariah state.

Shishakli came to power in 1950 with the third military coup which brought about a short period of stability. Shishakli had aided General Husni Ziam in Syria’s first coup by leading an army division. However, it was Shishakli’s rule which marked the first time the military would fully enter political life in an Arab country, establishing a trend that would acquaint regional armies with the taste of high office.

For some, the period of military rule had benefits. The Shishakli regime cracked down on crime, enforced strict control of Syria’s porous borders, and work to build the army into a modern force. Shishakli also harnessed the power of the radio and was well known throughout the region even before Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser for his oratory and zeal that reverberated through the airwaves. He was the first post-independence Arab leader to cultivate a cult of personality with his pictures appearing in every shop window and established a government ministry of information and propaganda.

His spies and security agents were posted throughout the country to monitor any potential anti-Shishakli activity. All political parties were banned, especially religious parties. Long before Egypt’s deadly cat and mouse game with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), Shishakli barred the Islamic Socialist Front (Syria’s early incarnation of the MB) from participation in politics. Maarouf al-Dawalibi of the MB, was close to the Aleppo’s People Party and was removed as the Minister of Economy after Shishakli’s coup.

Upon returning from Egypt, Shishakli was greeted at the airport by the pro-Baath army officer, Adnan al-Malki with demands for political reform. Shishakli had Malki compile a list of everyone involved in the confrontation and threw them in prison.

Despite the crackdown, there are those who recall Shishakli’s era, or have studied it, that speak fondly of him, remembering the avant garde laws that were enacted during his time. The Damascus International Fair of 1954 was one of Shishakli’s development projects to raise the country’s international profile, along with the Port of Latakia. The first woman to run for office was schoolteacher Thuraya al-Hafez, who sat in Shishakli’s 1953 Parliament. Even after his overthrow, Syrians were for years in awe of his rule.

The Assad regime maintains the aura of stability, modernity, and progressive attitude towards women over the territories it controls. Despite being part of Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance, Assad’s regime still embraces secularism to generate support from Syria’s religious minorities and those who wish to keep Sunni Islamists from dominating the public sphere.

Regional and geopolitical trends

“Syria is the current official name for that country which lies within the artificial frontiers drawn up by imperialism.” The famous quote from Shishakli from 1953 still holds a measure of truth.

Syria’s borders have constantly been subjected to bouts of internal secessionism or tested by neighboring states. Historical examples include the Golan Heights, Hatay, and most recently, Rojova. Analysts often speak of creating an Alawite state. Just as internal political and ethnic rivalries fostered instability, so did the region’s geopolitics, which during Shishakli’s time was primarily a contest of dominance between Iraq and its British-backed Hashemite rulers, and the Egyptian-Saudi alliance. For the West, Syria was viewed through the prism of the Cold War and the battle against Communism. France continued to vie for influence in its former colonial dominion in order to check the British.

Aside from his coup and military rule, Shishakli was known for preserving Syria’s independence and sovereignty during a period of heightened Western influence in the region. He shunned military aid from the Eisenhower Administration and but also kept Syria from falling into the Soviet Bloc. The Fertile Crescent Project (sometimes referred to as the Baghdad Pact) was the primary driver of the region’s geopolitical trends during his time. The British sphere of influence extended over Iraq and though there was a desire to erase the artificial borders, the potential threat of Western interference led the nationalist forces inside Syria to keep prospects of a union between Damascus and Baghdad at bay.

Syrians are fiercely protective against potential foreign interference, real or perceived. For Assad, the role of safe guarding Syria’s independence from foreign influence remains a primary factor in resisting the negotiations in Geneva and the notion of a political transition. Assad’s recent anti-Western comments outside Daraya mosque further demonstrates this resistance. The heavily reliance on Russia and Iran is regarded by Assad’s supporters as a genuine friendship and it is not yet known how their increased influence will impact Syria for the remaining duration of the war.

Shishakli as president, 1953

Shishakli was able to court Egypt and Saudi Arabia and allowed France to maintain a level of nominal influence inside of the country. Just as Assad has leveraged Russia and Iran, Shishakli knew how to utilize the region’s players to keep Syria neutral during the Cold War and safeguard its independence. Iraq was a key instrument in fomenting internal dissent and organizing the forces that ultimately united against him.

It is easy to see how Syria’s central government historically wrestled with control over various regions. Towards the end of his rule, Homs was the key center of anti-Shishakli activity. However, he perceived the Druze as a threat to his regime. Shishakli was perhaps most notorious for his efforts to curtail the tribal-based power of the Druze located in southern Syria. The Druze never forgave him for the shelling and military assault on Jabal Druze (Druze Mountain) and many Druze officers in the Syrian army later formed the backbone of the coalition (supported by the Iraqi government) that conspired against him.

Today, regional agitation plays out in all parts of Syria. Aleppo remains the central stronghold for anti-Assad Arab rebel activity. In addition, the Baath Party’s years of brutal Arabization policies towards the Kurds in northeastern Syria present a similar case. The Kurds and the Assad loyalists have frequently clashed in the city of Hasakah. A central component of the Islamic State’s strategy to recruit Sunnis and hijack anti-Assad sentiment of the Syrian rebellion was the border destroying ideology of its so-called caliphate.

Whether consolidating power over Syria from Damascus or Raqqa, figurehead leaders have relied on a strategy of projecting the image of strength and an absolutist position to maintain the state’s sovereignty over the country. As it was difficult to enforce during Shishakli’s time, it is overwhelmingly obvious for Assad. If Syria is to remain united, the same will hold true for whoever follows him.

Shishakli, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and the Arab Liberation Movement

Antoun Saadeh and SSNP members

Secular and progressive, the SSNP enjoyed the height of its popularity during Shishakli’s Syria. It wasn’t until after Shishakli’s overthrow that the SSNP’s political fortunes took a turn for the worse. Lebanon acted as a hideout for political exiles, such as the Baath Party ideologue Michael Aflaq, who returned to Syria to enact revenge on the SSNP after Shishakli’s downfall.  After the 1955 assassination of the widely popular Baath Party member and army Deputy Chief of Staff Malki, the SSNP was blacklisted and effectively driven underground by the rising Baath.

Shishakli entertained the SSNP during the first year of his rule. However, he eventually abstained from fully embracing the party’s central tenant of Pan-Syrianism in favor of the more vastly popular Pan-Arabism. He founded his own party, the Arab Liberation Movement (ALM) to cultivate this trend.

While there are no ideological ties between the SSNP and ALM, there is a strong influence of the first over the latter in terms of party structure, salute, hierarchy of power, etc. The ALM worked to embrace pan-Arabism whereas the SSNP emphasized its concoction of nationalism, mythicism and pan-Syrianism. Both of these parties, along with the Baath and Communist Party, were progressive in nature, allowing women and Syrians regardless of sect to join.

As for the Arab Liberation Movement, it has disappeared completely. In 1954, President Hashem al-Atasi, picking up the pieces after Shishakli’s departure, choose not ban the former dictator’s party, and even allowed the ALM secretary Maamoun al-Kuzbari to run for parliament (and obtain a seat). The ALM eventually died out with the start of the Syrian-Egyptian Union.

Women members of the ALM in 1953

The ALM was ultimately unable to survive without Shishakli. A few hidden reminders of the ALM remain in plain sight. There is a major square in Damascus, when entering the Christian sectors, called “Sahet al-Tahrir” which was actually named after the Arab Liberation Movement (Freedom or Liberation in Arabic is Tahrir, noted in the name of the party, Haraket al-Tahrir al-Arabi).

Al-Kuzbari (who later became Prime Minister) was allowed to be buried in Damascus when he died in 1998 and was given a semi-official funeral. As of 2016, his picture hangs in the main hall of Syrian Parliament to honor his role as the speaker of Parliament during the Shishakli era.

ALM rally in 1953. The sign reads the party’s name, Haraket al-Tahrir al-Arabi.

The SSNP suffered both persecution and a popular decline in Lebanon and Syria until the late 1960s, when many of the SSNP leaders were freed from Lebanese prisons and began to rebuild the party during the 70s and 80s. It was during the Lebanese Civil War, that the party tentatively tested a friendship with Hafez al-Assad. This friendship later paid off. The SSNP has not only survived but has seen a resurgence during the Syrian Civil War.

The Baath have always held a distain for Shishakli, regarding him as a foreign stooge. There are no references to Shishakli in the SSNP’s party literature, since it would antagonize Syrian Druze and the Baathists, the latter are their political allies and who the SSNP are backing in the civil war.

SSNP leader Issam al-Mahayri in Parliament (right with glasses).

The SSNP’s older generation still speaks very fondly of Shishakli, but always in private. “Party President Issam al-Mahayri stepped down in late 2015 and was a good friend of Shishakli. When giving a four-part interview to the semi-official Al-Dunia TV channel in 2010, al-Mahayri spoke positively of Shishakli and his words were aired on state TV uncensored,” said Sami Moubayed, the founder of the Damascus History Foundation.

The SSNP’s leadership is proud of the fact that he and his brother Salah were early members of the party, along with Akram al-Hawrani, who later became a key member of the Baath Party. However, Shishakli was never instrumental as an ideological figure in the party and his influence is more nostalgic than anything else. Shishakli is thus still celebrated by the SSNP as a VIP member without ideological the inspiration.

Despite this, should the Assad regime win, the SSNP may play a greater role in post-war Syria as a vehicle for fostering a renewed notion of national unity. With so much harm coming from Syria’s Arab neighbors, the Baath’s concept of pan-Arabism might truly be dead. If the SSNP increases their political influence, Shishakli could perhaps become rehabilitated in the public discourse.

Shishakli’s downfall in 1954 and his legacy in Syria

Shishakli began to scale back the role of the military in Syria’s political scene in an effort to legitimize his rule. Many well-connected officers who suddenly felt detached and disenfranchised turned to Shishakli’s political enemies. With the help of Iraq, factions of the army were able to present a united front to subsequently oust him from Damascus. Once the Baath came to power, they worked to erase his existence from Syria’s collective memory. For many years, the ruling party worked to erase him from Syrian history. In private, he is still regarded and respected as a prominent and transformative Syrian leader.

“There is no mention of Shishakli in school books, at any level, and he is never mentioned on Syrian TV with the one exception of a television series called Hammam Al Qishani produced during the 1990s, where a Syrian actor, Ussama Roumani, played his role. Only one book was published in Syria about Shishakli since his resignation in 1954, and it was a mediocre one that failed to do him any justice,” explained Moubayed.

In Damascus, there is not a single monument or a plaque bearing his name. Even the official history of the Presidential Palace that Shishakli constructed at the tip of Abu Rummaneh Boulevard (now office of Vice-President Najah al-Attar) is obscured. The palace is usually associated with Nasser, who addressed Syria from its balcony in 1958 to herald in the country’s ill-fated union with Egypt.

Shishakli never returned to the presidency in Syria after leaving office in February 1954. Though there are two examples of when Shishakli had planned to return to power. First, it was revealed that immediately after his departure he tried to reroute the plane to Beirut when his supporters urged him to return. This effort, however, was stymied by the U.S. State Department and his plane was denied a landing permit at the Beirut International Airport.

Shishakli pictured in exile in Brazil a few days before his assassination.

The second event was a few years later when the SSNP facilitated several rounds of secret meetings in Beirut with Shishakli, his brother Salah, and a group of coup-plotters. However, Shishakli, a military man through and through, knew that the plot did not have the support of the Syrian army and decided against participating. Should Assad eventually decide to seek exile in Russia, it is possible that following years of political turbulence and terrorism, he could orchestrate his own return to power. To enact such a maneuver would be dependent on the level of support both in and outside of Syria.

The elections that followed Shishakli’s four years of dictatorship brought about the short-lived union with Egypt, a union that’s end brought about years of political squabbles. This was compounded by the breakdown of the army, which became factionalized and rudderless without Shishakli. An array of officers organized and formed their own secret networks of political patrons. An alliance of mutual interests between Aflaq’s Baath Party and the Syrian Communists ushered in a new era of authoritarian rule that led to the Neo-Baathist coup of 1966 and ultimately the Assad family’s current dynasty.

When considering Shishakli and his time, it is important to recall that when confronted with the news of rebellion, he could have resorted to the use of force (he did, after all, still control loyal factions of the military including heavy armor divisions) but abdicated in favor of self-imposed exile and avoided certain civil war. It is possible he knew that Syria, with its fragile political foundations and regional rivalries, would be at risk for long term turmoil. This very fear that Shishakli sought to avoid continues to play out in full earnest today.

For Syrians who remember him, Shishakli was a divisive leader, either regarded as transformative and progressive or despised as a dictator. His eventual assassination in Ceres, Brazil, coupled with the many years of rule by the Baath helped to cement the shroud over the memories of his existence. As the Syrian independence flag once again flutters in a period of uncertainty, it recalls the history of Shishakli and Syria’s forgotten past.

• Christopher Solomon is an analyst with Global Risk Insights. Chris traveled to Lebanon and Syria in 2004 with the CONNECT program at the University of Balamand. He earned his MA from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) at the University of Pittsburgh. He also interned at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC.

The post “Remember Syria’s Adib Shishakli,” by Christopher Solomon appeared first on Syria Comment.

By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

Emblem of Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar, featuring Syria as the main part of the emblem and the group’s name beneath it.

The predominantly Druze province of Suwayda’ in southern Syria has a variety of militia factions, some of which lean more third-way and reformist from within (most notably the Rijal al-Karama movement) and others of a more Assad regime loyalist orientation. Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar (“Guardians of the Abode Battalions,” whose name references the Syrian national anthem Humat al-Diyar) represents one of the latter factions. It is led by Nazih Jerbo’ (Abu Hussein), who is a relative of Sheikh Yusuf Jerbo’, one of the three Mashayakh al-‘Aql representing the highest religious authorities among the Druze in Syria. On account of the Mashayakh al-‘Aql’s links with the regime, Sheikh Yusuf Jerbo’, who succeeded Nazih’s father Hussein on the latter’s death in December 2012, is firmly on the regime’s side and indeed has played an important role in the building of Dir’ al-Watan, a pro-regime formation in Suwayda’ province that was set up more recently than Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar. According to Samir al-Shabali, who led a Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar contingent in the Suwayda’ village of Ariqa but is now in the Kata’ib al-Ba’ath (“Ba’ath Brigades”), Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar’s origins date much further back to 2012.

Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar Ariqa contingent placard, featuring Bashar al-Assad’s portrait. Photo from June 2014.

Photo featuring members of Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar with the group’s logo on their jackets. The post says: “Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar: groups of lions of Suwayda’ spread in all regions of the province to protect it from any emergency to which Suwayda’ might be exposed during the past two days.” Indeed, according to the media director for Rijal al-Karama, Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar has been around for a long time and has “many people” in its ranks, though he adds that the National Defence Forces in Suwayda’ province is bigger than Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar. One member of Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar claimed that the formation has 2000 fighters.

Considering Nazih Jerbo’s relation with Sheikh Yusuf Jerbo’, it is unsurprising that Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar also reflects a regime loyalist position. This stance is made very clear in the group’s social media output. For example, in August 2015, Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar advertised a visit to its base from the Arab Unity Party “to affirm shared positions in protecting the mountain [Jabal al-Arab/Druze: Suwayda’].” For context, note that the Arab Unity Party (Hizb al-Tawhid al-Arabi) is a Lebanese party primarily supported by Druze opposed to Walid Jumblatt, who has come out against Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian civil war. The leader of the Arab Unity Party- Wiam Wahhab- has played a notable role over the past few years in organizing efforts in Suwayda’ province in defence of the regime. Indeed, the group even has a militia fighting in Syria- under the monikers of Katibat Ammar bin Yasir and the “Arab Tawhidi Resistance”- that has claimed ‘martyrs’ in fighting in northern Suwayda’ in summer 2014 (though note the particular individuals named were also presented as ‘martyrs’ of the Popular Committees) and more recently in the Druze area of Hadr in Quneitra province in November 2016. The reference to Ammar bin Yasir- one of the companions of the Prophet- is a reflection of Ammar bin Yasir’s importance in the Druze faith, while Tawhidi can refer to the “Unity” part of Wiam Wahhab’s party, as well as the fact that Druze call themselves Muwahhideen (“monotheists”: like Tawhid, based on the same derivative form of Arabic root w-h-d). The “Resistance” aspect clearly references the notion of the regional “resistance” axis supporting the regime.

Photo from the post concerning the visit of the Arab Unity Party to Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar’s base. Note the portrait of Bashar al-Assad in the background.

Besides the meeting with the Arab Unity Party itself, Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar has participated in events convened by other factions supporting the regime in Suwayda’, such as the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, which has an important base of support in Suwayda’ province and opened a new base in Ariqa in July 2015, an event that was also attended by the National Defence Forces, Ba’ath Brigades and a local faction known as the Ammar bin Yasir group, an obvious reference in this case to the shrine in Ariqa for Ammar bin Yasir. According to Samir al-Shabali, this Ammar bin Yasir group is independent and relies on arming from local people. Therefore it should not be confused with the Arab Unity Party’s Katibat Ammar bin Yasir that is fighting in Syria.

Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar has engaged in other forms of local outreach such as through  hosting local sheikhs for meetings, who have visited both the group’s base and the house of Nazih Jerbo’. These meetings, advertised in June and August 2015 respectively, partly reflected the same and familiar rhetorical stances, such as standing united against threats from “terrorism” and/or the “enemies of the homeland,” while warning against fitna (“strife”). The concept of fitna is a common talking point within discourse in Suwayda’ province, referring most notably to the dangers posed by internal partisan rivalries that can distract from threats that the province is facing from outside forces such as the rebels to the west in Deraa province and the Islamic State to the northeast. This is particularly relevant in the case of the competition for influence between Rijal al-Karama and the loyalist factions in Suwayda’ province.

Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar’s activities on the ground, as promoted by the militia itself, primarily concern maintaining internal security in Suwayda’ province including inside Suwayda’ city alongside popular committee militias that are also aligned with the regime. The main military engagement that appears to have been claimed by the militia outside Suwayda’ province thus far came amid the mobilization of Syrian Druze to defend the village of Hadr  after the rebels launched a new offensive in the area in September 2016.

Though the maintenance of internal security has included battles within Suwayda’ province such as one in May 2015 that was fought in the Haqaf area in eastern Suwayda’ province in coordination with multiple factions (including Rijal al-Karama) against the Islamic State, Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar mainly seems to focus on confiscating smuggled goods, such as medicines, drugs and oil. Portraying itself as a group upholding the state and the nation, Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar says that the medicines and oil in particular are bound for areas like Deraa under rebel control, and thus the smugglers are bartering with people’s lives and the nation’s existence for the sake of profiteering. In the case of smuggled medicines, in May 2015 the group claimed that its leader directed sending confiscated medicines to the health directorate in Suwayda’ by the agreement of Atef al-Nadaf, the provincial governor at the time. These medicines were then to be distributed to the various health centres in the province in order to help the children and sick.

However, like many militias in the Syrian civil war, Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar faces accusations of criminal behaviour and acting outside the rule of law. For example, the anti-regime leaning Arab Druze Identity Movement, also known as The Identity Movement in Jabal al-Arab, wrote in May 2016 that one of the members of Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar killed a person from the village of al-Dur following a driving incident, but has been able to find safe refuge thanks to his affiliation with the militia. This event, the group adds, follows on from one last year in which the militia killed someone from the Murshid family. The latter incident involved the killing of a university student called Murad Sanad Murshid as armed men who had set up a checkpoint opened fire on his car. The exact identity of the perpetrators appears to be disputed. One account from the time of the incident in July 2015 says that the perpetrators were from the Kata’ib al-Ba’ath, though adds that the deceased’s family initially thought Nazih Jerbo’s men were responsible and accordingly attacked his home. It was partly in this context that the meeting with local sheikhs advertised in August 2015 by Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar came about, whereby sheikhs from the deceased person’s village of Haran came to the house of Nazih Jerbo’. In a similar vein, the meeting advertised by the militia in June 2015 partly referred to another controversy in which Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar was accused of arresting, torturing and killing a few people from the Bedouin minority on the grounds of bombarding Suwayda’ city. Again, as with the July 2015 incident, the identity of the perpetrators is disputed, with some accounts holding that it was actually al-Amn al-Askari (The Military Security: i.e. Military Intelligence) that carried out these acts and then accused Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar, which denied any wrongdoing.

Even so, Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar is accused of being one of the leading groups relied on by the regional al-Amn al-Askari head Wafiq Nasir for kidnapping operations in Suwayda’ province, a lucrative business said to be worth more than 850,000,000 Syrian pounds in the province in terms of ransoms paid. Also, despite the anti-smuggling image of the group, allegations also exist of certain members’ involvement in profiteering through setting up checkpoints to allow smugglers to pass (e.g. here) or similar involvement in smuggling operations deemed detrimental to the security of the province (cf. here).

In any case, this overview of Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar illustrates that the influence and size of the loyalist factions in Suwayda’ province should not be underestimated, despite the growth of Rijal al-Karama. Indeed, third-way leaning groups cannot afford full-blown open confrontation with the loyalist groups as it would simply prove too costly, and ultimately the priority must be to defend Suwayda’ province from external attack. As the media director for Rijal al-Karama put it, “In the event of an external attack on the Jabal, all factions unite.”

The post Kata’ib Humat al-Diyar: A Prominent Loyalist Militia in Suwayda’ appeared first on Syria Comment.

Is Assad the Author of ISIS?  Did Iran Blow Up Assef Shawkat?
By Ehsani2
5 December 2016
For Syria Comment

Roy Gutman, Journalist The Daily Beast

In a three-part series, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Roy Gutman relies on a number of Syrian opposition members to make the central claim that “the Syrian regime’s collusion with the terrorists of the so-called Islamic State goes back a decade.” This is not the first time that Assad has been accused of complicity in the horrors of ISIS. But the claims have renewed urgency because the Syrian opposition is worried that Donald Trump’s anti ISIS strategy will come at the expense of U.S. support for the Syrian opposition. They worry that Washington will “shift policy in the Syria conflict from one of support for the moderate opposition to collaboration with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.”

Credibility of the Sources:

The article is based on testimonies from what Mr. Gutman refers to as political activists, defectors, Islamists from Hama province, former State officials and diplomats (asking for political asylum in the U.S), and former head of the Syrian Opposition coalition.

Bassam Barabandi, a former employee of the now closed Syrian Embassy in Washington, DC.

One key source whose name seems to appear often throughout the article is Bassam Barabandi. Mr. Barabandi is a 41 year-old ex-diplomat who worked at the Syrian Embassy in Washington. He defected to the opposition after he used his position as a consular officer to issue Syrian passports to a number of opposition figures whose travel documents had expired. Back in 2014, he wrote an article for the Atlanic Council, entitiled “Inside Assad’s Playbook: Time and Terror with Tyler Jess Thompson who is a director at United for a Free Syria.  This was an early attempt to link President Assad to Islamist terror groups. Had Mr. Gutman known anything about Syria, he would have been more suspicious of Mr. Barabandi based on a preposterous single claim he makes in the article. Supposedly, during a visit from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, Mr. Barabandi remembers being huddled with Deputy Vice President Mohammad Nasif and “taking notes, monitoring interactions, disrupting conversations and altering room dynamics.”  Mr. Barabandi quickly concludes that “no detail is too small for the Assad regime to overlook. There is always a plan, opportunities are never missed, and there are no accidents: the rise of ISIS is no exception to this rule.” Barabandi’s story about sitting in the Four Season’s Hotel with Syria’s Deputy Vice President is unbelievable for several reasons. The most obvious is that Nassif, an elderly man and top security chieftain would not be hanging out with Barabandi, a young 30 something civil servant who had yet to take up a post of any consequence. Moreover, Nassif would certainly not explain to him the inner-most secrets of the regime, nor demonstrate to him how the secret service operates behind one-way mirrors to manipulate foreign dignitaries. This account is absurd.

When reading this article, one is reminded of Frontline’s Martin Smith when he confronted Ahmad Chalabi in Baghdad following the U.S invasion. Smith challenged Chalabi to provide the evidence of that he had promised existed to prove the existence of chemical weapons and Saddam’s links to Al-Qaida. Chalabi simply looked at Martin Smith with consummate distain and brushed off his nagging with the suggestion that such details were no longer important. He simply stated, “We are in Baghdad now.” For Chalabi, any number of fabrications were well worth the result. Saddam was destroyed and America had returned Iraq’s opposition to Baghdad where they could hope to take power. Chalabi’s smug dismissal of Martin Smith was well warranted because the date was 2003, before the Iraq insurgency had been able to organize, before al-Qaida had spread from one end of Iraq to the other, and before hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis had been killed and millions more driven from their country.

The sources of Mr. Gutman’s articles read like mini versions of Iraq’s Ahmad Chalabi connections. They are advocates for the rebel cause, who will say whatever they believe will convince the United States to invade Syria and depose Assad. They see no problem in stretching the truth if it can lead to foreign military action. After all, they have concluded that only U.S. military action can remove Assad and bring victory to the opposition. Mr. Gutman meets most of his opposition contacts at a coffee shop in Istanbul; they spent hours offering him spectacular details on how the government bombed its own capital, assassinated its highest government security officials, and trained lethal Islamists to run terror organizations that have killed thousands of his best soldiers. All of this in order to convince the world that ISIS and al-Qaida are not products of the Sunni opposition but rather the Frankensteins of Assad’s invention. “Kill Assad,” they seem to be saying, “and you will kill the jihadists and win the war on terror.” This is all too good to be true, of course. They insist that Assad’s war against jihadists is fake. Faithful to his sources, Roy Gutman argues that President Assad is not only in cahoots with ISIS, but that he “built ISIS.”

BU

Gutman relates that one opposition source explained that President Bashar al-Assad himself issued an order to remove roadblocks in Damascus so that a car bomber, claiming to be Nusra, could have easy access to a Damascus neighborhood, set off his huge explosion and make it look like the capital was being attacked by jihadists. This explosion was a false flag operation, Gutman argues, masterminded by Assad himself in order to deceive the world into believing that jihadists were a menace when they were not. Never mind that James Clapper, the director of U.S. National Intelligence, told Congress in mid-February that the explosions “had all the earmarks of an al Qaeda-like attack and so we believe al Qaeda in Iraq is extending its reach into Syria.” Never mind that Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani, the head of al-Qaida’s surrogate in Syria, the al-Nusra terrorist group, claimed responsibility for the explosion. Gutman insists that his source is telling the truth and everyone else, including the intelligence services of the United States are deceived by Assad propaganda. Why would U.S. news services publish these assertions? They make no sense. They reek of conspiracy theory, are transparently self-serving, and defy logic.

Assassination of Assef Shawkat, the President’s Brother-in-Law, 18 July 2012

Mr. Gutman’s sources are convinced that Iran, Syria’s closest ally, ordered the killing of Assad’s top security team. Not only do they speculate on who was behind the Damascus explosions, but they also attempt to deconstruct one of the most spectacular bombings that struck the inner circle of the Syrian leadership. On 18 July 2012 Assad’s Crisis Management Group was meeting at the heavily guarded National Security building in Rawda Square in central Damascus. Those killed included top members of Assad’s Crisis Group: Defense Minister Gen. Dawoud Rajha, his deputy, Assaf Shawkat, who was Assad’s brother-in-law, Major General Hisham Ikhtiyar, a top national security adviser to the president, and Gen. Hassan Turkmani, a former defense minister.

Gutman explains that Syrian Interior Minister Shaar placed a brief case against the wall in the room in order to blow up the security group. None of this makes sense, of course. Mr. Shaar stayed in the building, rather than escape. He blew himself up, severely injuring himself in the blast. He spent almost 40 days at Chami hospital in intensive care.

Ali Mamlouk, head of the Syrian intelligence apparatus

If this is not crazy enough, Mr. Gutman offers an even more preposterous story to explain why Iran would blow up its ally’s leading security chieftains. Gutman, once again quoting sources “within Assad’s entourage” insists that Iran killed Shawkat, the President’s relative, in order to place their own man, Ali Mamlouk, as the head of intelligence. All of this is preposterous. It includes stories about Assad’s mother and brother, who are part of this great plot. They are intimately involved in this family intrigue. How could Gutman’s low level defectors possibly know the details of this Assad family saga? The simple answer, of course, is they couldn’t. Gutman repeatedly expresses outrage and consternation at the perfidy and incompetence of the CIA for not debriefing his Syrian opposition contacts to find out the deepest secrets of the Assad regime that he has found out. The Daily Beast, which publishes Gutman’s revelations, shares his outrage. Little wonder that so many Americans are having a hard time figuring out how to evaluate the “post-truth” age, when their news organs feed them such pablum. How in the world could Iran, Assad and Hizbollah be winning this regional war against Turkey, the Gulf States, Israel and a large array of Sunni rebel militias if Iran were blowing up the leadership of its closest ally? Certainly, it is comforting to believe that one’s enemies are incompetent, malevolent killers, but could they really have maintained a thirty-five year alliance if they were busy killing off family members and security chieftains of each other? These sorts of explanations for what is happening in Syria beggar belief. Such conspiracy theories are attractive in the absence of facts. Here is what I can reconstruct from a few sources who in a position to know.

The Real Perpetrators of the Bombing of the Assad’s Crisis Group　

The only truth that Mr. Gutman’s sources told was that no one was “allowed to get close” to the investigation after the bombing. As we will see below, this would become an important factor in confirming the identity of the real perpetrators of the bombing.

The crisis group regularly assembled at the office of the National Security inside the Qiyade Qutriye (Central Command building) and not at Turkmani’s office as Mr. Gutman’s article posits. Nearly 3 months before the July 18^th bombing, an insider placed Mercury Cyanide inside the lentil soup that was offered to members of the crisis group. The poison almost killed Interior Minister Shaar and Turkmani. Asef Shawkat declined the soup dish and was not harmed. Following the incident, a decision was made to heighten security by regularly changing the meeting location. The offices of Hisham Ihtiyar and the Defense Minister became alternative venues for the meeting.

Nearly 7 months after the bombing, European diplomats, the identity of whom I have been asked not to disclose, called a meeting between a Syrian official and an opposition figure who insisted that he had been behind the assassination of Assef Shawkat. The reason that the European diplomats called for the meeting was to pressure President Assad and his generals to resign. They believed that the success of the opposition figure in assassinating so many top government officials would intimidate Assad and convince him to leave Syria. The opposition figure asked the Syrian official with whom he was meeting to relay to President Assad and his men that the opposition could assassinate him as surely as it has assassinated Assef Shawkat and the other principals of the regime.

In order to establish his credibility, the opposition figure explained in great detail how and where the bomb had been planted in the National Security building in Rawda. His details matched the evidence that was being uncovered by the regime investigation of the bombing and convinced its officials that the opposition figure was not bluffing. He knew that the bombs were placed in a suspended or drop ceiling that had been installed in the National Security room years earlier. A total of 5 explosives were placed inside the drop ceiling. One of the five did not explode. Such details were impossible for anyone outside the inner circle in Damascus to verify. It was clear that the opposition figure knew what he was talking about. The Syrian official quickly concluded that the opposition member, a Damascene

Syrian Defence Minister General Daoud Rajha

financier, had been involved in the bombing that killed the President’s brother-in-law. He went on to explain how Saudi Arabian officials had promised him a large sum of money that he later collected once the bombing had been successfully carried out. This was further confirmed when he described how he was able to recruit an Armenian officer who worked at Major General Hisham Ikhtiyar’s office to smuggle the explosives inside the building and use the adjacent office from which he was able to insert the bombs into the ceiling and have them placed into Mr. Ikhtiyar’s office, directly above the table around which the group convened. Fifteen minutes before the explosion, the Armenian officer left the building, claiming that he had to empty the garbage. He never returned. He had placed a timer in his office that triggered the explosion. He has never been seen again. His reward was $2 million out of the total of $7 million that was paid to the group. In 2012, barely a year into the Syrian crisis, the idea that the Syrian state might be the next government to fall in the Arab Spring was gaining momentum. With the probability of state collapse on the rise, it made sense for an Armenian officer and others like him to accept a $2 million payment in the hope starting a new life overseas.

Recall that officials from a European capital witnessed the meeting in which the Syrian financier explained to Syrian officials how he had executed the assassination of Asef Shawkat. They can confirm this entire account. Contrary to the speculations of Mr. Gutman’s sources, Iran was not involved in the bombing. The regime was not turning on itself. Assad’s closest ally was not assassinating Assad family members in order to gain control over Syria.

Iraq and the Jihadi Nexus:

Almost immediately after 9/11, Assad authorized his intelligence services to share many of their files on the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and Europe. Late in 2002, Syrian intelligence helped disrupt an attack by al-Qaida on the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. Assad then also agreed to house suspected terrorists for the CIA in Syrian prisons.  This developing collaboration between Damascus and Washington based on having al-Qaida as a common enemy was soon to go cold after Assad begun to publicly oppose the Iraq war.  George W. Bush soon responded by linking Syria to   an ‘axis of evil’ containing Iraq, Iran and North Korea.  With the Iraq invasion gathering force, both the Syrian leadership and their Islamist enemies started to plan for the possibility that Damascus could be next after Iraq. The Syrian Islamist militants started to move to the north east of the country ahead of the American invasion of Iraq. They planned to fill the void should the Syrian state become the next target of the U.S. The Syrian state was becoming equally convinced of the American plans towards Syria. It was the head of one of the Intelligence agencies who soon saw an opportunity in infiltrating those Islamists moving to the border and then organizing them to move into Iraq rather than wait for the Americans to cross into Syria.  This plan meant that those who cross into Iraq to fight are known to Syrian intelligence when they cross back into Syria. It was through this system that Syrian prisons saw a nearly 10 fold increase in jihadist ranks. These hardened fighters were to spread their ideology throughout an overcrowded and largely mismanaged Syrian prison system infecting the minds of many none jihadist Syrians in the process.

Flirting With the Islamists:

Since fighting an earlier war with the Moslem Brotherhood in the early 1980’s, Syrian jails have been home to many Islamists. Syrian security agencies have traditionally trumped the Syrian justice system when it comes to the final say on the length of stay of those arrested. Often, when the justice system sentenced a person, the security services had the authority to ignore the end of the sentence by invoking “national security” concerns. This meant that many of those in prison were there beyond their legal stay. Scores of families never got to see their loved ones even after their original legal sentences were over.

Zahran Alloush, Leader of opposition militia, the Islamic Army. See this article about his ideology and beliefs

As the events in Daraa unfolded, the President invited key figures from the town to see what can be done to calm the demonstrations. One such figure was cleric Sayasneh. One of the consistent demands of such meetings was the release of prisoners. It was no different when Douma joined the uprising. Foreign Embassies were also pushing the Syrian State to release what it called political prisoners. People like Zahran Alloush were sentenced to seven years in prison when he was arrested with a group of 40 people on the charge of promoting Wahhabi ideology and gun possession.  They had not killed anyone or even fired a shot. Yet, they were sent to prisons like Sednaya and kept there beyond the end of their sentence on the whim of one of the security agencies.  It was in this context when the residents of Douma demanded the release of prisoners from their districts. The Syrian leadership was under intense pressure to calm the crisis. The people of Douma promised to do their job at calming their own streets if some of those prisoners were released.  Zahran and many others like him were released under this rationale. This is not too dissimilar to the way the American prisons in Iraq worked. Zarqawi, Baghdadi and Golani were all released from those prisons either when their terms ended or when the local populations demanded their release. Just like in Syrian prisons, the prisoners in American jails were also indoctrinated with jihadist ideology. Syria erred by releasing Alloush and Abboud who would go on to form Jeish al Islam and Ahrar just like the U.S. erred when it released Baghdadi who would go on to form ISIS.

The Aleppo Central Prison:

One of the longest standoffs between the Syrian Army and armed groups was at the Aleppo prison complex.  Nearly 3,000 inmates and 500 Syrian police and soldiers were trapped inside the prison for close to 3 years by armed militias that regularly shelled it. Like so many similar regime-opposition standoffs, intense negotiations were regularly attempted between the two sides. Mr. Fedaa Majzoub, an Australian citizen, was the point man in the negotiations between the two sides. One of the key demands of al-Nusra and Ahrar al Sham, the two militias that led the seige of the Aleppo prison, was the release of 80 jihadist comrades that were amongst the 3000 inmates. Had Damascus been following a strategy of releasing jihadists from Al Qaeda and the like onto Syrian streets to change the image of the uprising as suggested by the sources of Mr. Gutman’s article, there was never a better opportunity to do so by Assad. Instead of yielding to the demands of the negotiator to release the 80 jihadists, the Syrian leadership chose instead to defend the complex for resulting in a standoff that lasted nearly three years.

Almost since the start of the Syrian crisis, the debate on the timing of the radicalization of the conflict still rages on.  Supporters of the Syrian opposition refer to articles like Mr. Gutman’s to portray a peaceful uprising that Damascus desperately tried to radicalize through all means possible. Such sinister attempts were thought to include colluding with terrorists and releasing from their jails as well as bombing its own capital to prove a point. Loyalists and leadership insiders, on the other hand, believe that the uprising was radicalized very early on after the initial events were quickly hijacked by Islamists who had sat waiting for decades for this moment to start. Based on extensive personal conversations with ex White House officials, there seems to be a consensus that the defining moment of this debate was the incident that occurred at the town of Jisr al –Shugour in June of 2011. This is when 120 soldiers were killed between 3 and 6 June. Opposition activists say it was one part of the army firing on another for refusing to kill protesters. Thousands of miles away in Washington, American officials were already eavesdropping on Syrian opposition and others. On Friday June 3^rd, White House officials knew that those soldiers were shot and killed by the opposition as the latter used various communication devices to boast about the incident. One particular official became convinced that the response of Damascus will be swift and devastating. He therefore decided to be at his desk over the weekend to monitor the situation. The weekend passed with no such response by Damascus. By Monday, officials at the White House were pleasantly surprised. Their worst fears of a harsh crackdown were never materialized. Over the coming weeks and months those early thoughts turned to be wishful thinking as Syria soon descended into its black tunnel.

[End]

Joshua Landis and Roy Gutman debate the notion that Assad helped create ISIS and planned false flag operations to bomb Damascus on “NPR’s To The Point”

The post Is Assad the Author of ISIS? Did Iran Blow Up Assef Shawkat? And Other Tall Tales – By Ehsani2 appeared first on Syria Comment.