Wars Within Wars

Posted on May 16, 2014 by jonathanspyer

Weekly Standard, 16/5

With Syrian presidential elections scheduled for June, the incumbent and shoo-in for reelection, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, is campaigning on the promise that 2014 will be the year in which military operations in Syria end. However, the situation in northern Syria, exemplified by the conflict in the canton of Kobani, an area stretching from the Turkish border to south of Kobani city, and from Tell Abyad in the east to Jarabulus in the west, casts doubt on Assad’s optimism.

Kobani is under Kurdish control, but cuts into a larger section of territory controlled by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a jihadist organization. ISIS aims to hold a clear, contiguous area stretching from Syria’s border with Turkey into western Iraq, where it controls territory in the provinces of Ninewah and Anbar. The existence of the Kurdish canton of Kobani interferes with this plan, and since March ISIS has launched daily attacks against positions held by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) at the edges of the enclave. The Kobani situation offers a window into the Syrian conflict, a fragmented reality where in large parts of the country the regime is little more than a memory, and well-organized rival militias representing starkly different political projects are clashing. Last month, I traveled to the Kobani enclave, entering from the Turkish border with Kurdish smugglers. The road was short but perilous—a sprint toward the border fence in the dark and a rapid, fumbling climb over it. 

Kobani was the first of three cantons established by the Kurdish Democratic Union party (PYD) since the Assad regime withdrew from much of northern Syria in the summer of 2012. There are two other such enclaves: the much larger Jazeera canton to the east, which stretches from the town of Ras al-Ain to the border with Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, and the smaller area around the city of Afrin further west. In all three of these areas, the PYD has set up a Kurdish-dominated autonomous administration. The intention of the Kurds is to consolidate their independent government and eventually to unite the three cantons. 

In the meantime, however, the stark reality of siege conditions in the Kobani canton was immediately apparent to me. The main electricity supply had been cut off, with only intermittent power from hastily rigged-up generators. The water supply, too, had been interrupted, and the local Kurdish authorities were busy digging wells in the hope of reaching natural springs located deep underground. 

Yet for all this, life in the city functions in a way closely resembling normality. The two hospitals in the city lack medical equipment and medicines, but they are open. “We are improvising, we are innovating, and we are not dying,” a doctor told me at Ayn al-Arab hospital
in Kobani city. The school system is functioning, too, and in northern Syria at present these are no small achievements. 

The Kurdish enclaves are almost certainly the most peaceful and best-governed areas in Syria. However, the Kurds are aware of the precariousness of their achievement. Ali, a member of the Kurdish Asayish paramilitary police, told me that “Assad doesn’t want to open another front now. But if he finishes with the radical groups, then he’ll come for us, inevitably.” In the meantime, as one PYD official said, “We take a third line, neither with the regime nor with the Free Syrian Army. We hope in the future to unite all the cantons. We accept a role for the Arabs, so we don’t see a problem with this. And right now, we have one goal—keeping out ISIS.” 

The PYD’s “democratic autonomy” project in northern Syria put it on a collision course with ISIS, which is trying to lay the basis for an Islamic state run according to its own floridly brutal interpretation of sharia law. The resulting conflict then is not simply about territory, or who will rule northern Syria; it is also about how this land will be ruled. 

Mahmoud Musa, a Syrian political analyst and a refugee from the town of Jisr al-Shughur, told me that “there are three serious and well-organized forces in Syria today—the Assad regime, ISIS, and the Kurds.” The last two regard themselves as at war with the regime. In reality, the rival mini-states they have carved out of a fragmented Syria are mainly in conflict with each other. 

 ISIS has emerged as one of the strangest and cruelest of the many political-military movements now active in Syria. I spoke with a young Kurdish man named Perwer who had spent a week in ISIS captivity. He was arrested at the Jarabulus border crossing, while returning to Syria from Istanbul. First detained by members of another Islamist unit, the Tawhid Brigade, he was then handed over to ISIS and kept for five days in one of the movement’s jails in Jarabulus town, just west of the Kobani enclave. 

Perwer related that a Kurdish man who had been caught raising the YPG flag in a village near the border with the Kurdish enclave was tortured to death. He also noted that among his fellow prisoners were Arab residents of Jarabulus held for drinking wine. They too were tortured. The Kurdish prisoners were regularly insulted and called apostates by the ISIS guards, who came from a variety of countries. Copies of the Koran were handed out to the Kurdish detainees, and the days in their crowded cell were broken up by prayer sessions, in which ISIS would seek to instruct their Muslim captives in what they regard as the correct method of Muslim prayer. 

ISIS’s mini-state reaches from the edges of Kobani to deep inside western Iraq. I visited the frontlines on the eastern edge of the Kobani enclave, where the positions of the YPG and ISIS push up against each other. In Tell Abyad, the two sides are camped in abandoned villages, where the ruined landscape has a slightly lunar quality. Eyewitnesses told me that ISIS forced the villagers to leave when the fighting began. Young fighters of the YPG moved carefully around their positions in the abandoned village, ever mindful of the presence of ISIS snipers. In places, the two sides are less than 500 meters apart. ISIS favors mortar fire by night and sniping by day. This has taken a toll on the male and female fighters of the YPG. Around 80 of them have died since the fighting erupted in March. Many more ISIS men, however, have been killed in their wild and uncoordinated attacks. 

In Jarabulus on the western side, the frontline villages are still inhabited. Some of the local Arab clans are backing ISIS. A sort of de facto mini-transfer of populations has taken place in the area, largely, though not solely, along ethnic lines. I met a couple of Sunni Arabs among the ranks of the YPG fighters. There are also Kurdish volunteers among the ISIS men, including some commanders. They hail mainly from the villages of Iraqi Kurdistan, in particular from the Halabja area. Yet these details aside, it is clear the main dynamic of the conflict in this area is ethnic and sectarian, with Kurds faced off against Sunni Arab Islamists. The attitude of the YPG fighters to their ISIS enemies combines a certain contempt for their military prowess, with a sort of fascinated horror at their savage practices. 

“They outnumber us, often. But they lack tactics,” said Surkhwi, a female fighter and the commander of the Kurdish fighters in the village of Abduqli. “We think many of them take drugs before entering combat, and they attack randomly, haphazardly. They desecrate bodies of our fighters, cutting off heads, cutting off hands. They don’t respect the laws of war,” Surkhwi told me. “We also know that ISIS look at us women fighters as something not serious, because of their Islamic ideology. They think that if they are killed by a woman, they won’t go to paradise.” 

The YPG fighters themselves, meanwhile, are clearly experienced and well trained. While interviewing one YPG commander, Nohalat Kobani, I had the chance to witness his troops in action. The position in the village of Haj Ismail where we were conducting the interview came under attack from small arms fire as we were talking. I followed the YPG fighters as they raced to their positions to return fire. The coordination and discipline were impressive. The YPG blasted back at the ISIS position, 500 meters away, with rifles and a medium-caliber machine gun. After a while, the shooting from the other side stopped. Nohalat Kobani, a large, corpulent man and a veteran PYD activist, was amused and unperturbed by the incident. We recommenced our interview as soon as the shooting stopped. 

I met two ISIS fighters in an apartment in Kilis in the south of Turkey, two days after the skirmish at Haj Ismail. It was strange to be sipping tea and smoking with men whose comrades had been shooting at me a short time earlier. It was also fascinating to gain an insight into the appeal that ISIS has managed to exercise over some Syrians, and the way that the movement views the situation in northern Syria. 

Both men were Syrians. Abu Muhammad was clean-shaven and wearing a black tracksuit. Abu Nur sported a short beard. I remarked to my contact afterwards that I would never have taken them for Islamists. He told me that ISIS men customarily shave their beards and adopt western dress when entering Turkey from Syria, so as to avoid the attention of the Turkish security services and police. 

Abu Nur outlined his reasons for joining the organization. He had been a member of the Northern Storm militia, a notoriously corrupt non-Islamist militia group that had controlled the Bab al-Salameh border crossing from Turkey. The incident that had compelled him to leave Northern Storm and join ISIS, he said, was Senator John McCain’s visit to Bab al-Salameh in the spring of 2013. Abu Nur explained that he is suspicious of foreign governments using Syrians for their own ends, so when fighting began between ISIS and Northern Storm in his hometown of Azaz, he joined ISIS, which laid waste to his former colleagues in the subsequent weeks. He had stayed with ISIS, he told me, because it “imposes sharia, acts against criminals and robbers, and has no contact with any foreign government.” 

When I asked Abu Muhammad about ISIS’s practice of cutting off hands and heads as lawful punishments, he told me that “the media have exaggerated this. In certain areas they cut hands off, in others not,” he said. “We have tried our best to apply sharia law. Of course there have been some mistakes.” 

ISIS has recently carried out a strategic retreat in parts of northern Syria, which in some ways resembles the earlier redeployment by the regime. In January of this year, under pressure from other rebel brigades, ISIS began to withdraw its fighters from Idleb and much of Aleppo provinces, concentrating them in its Raqqa stronghold and further east. Abu Mohammed explained the reasons for ISIS’s redeployment. “If there are powers against me, I have to retreat and protect my back. And perhaps in the future I will return again.”

ISIS rules over large swaths of western Iraq’s Anbar and Ninewah provinces, where its fighters are engaged in an insurgency against the government of Nuri al-Maliki, who has been employing sectarian tactics against the Sunnis. So there is a strategic logic to ISIS contracting its forces and drawing down in northwest Syria. The problem for the Kurds is that the Kobani enclave falls within the area that ISIS still seeks to dominate. 

Abu Muhammad expressed the matter clearly: “The YPG wants to establish a Kurdish state. This is completely unacceptable. We want the caliphate, something old and new, from the time of Mohammed. The Europeans created false borders. We want to break these borders.”

Still, ISIS’s plan to destroy the Kobani canton is unlikely to succeed. The Kurdish administration and its militia are capable and well organized, and will continue to defend the enclave’s borders with weapons and supplies smuggled from across the Turkish border. There are veterans of the Kurdistan Workers’ party war against Turkey advising the PYD on both civil and military matters. They appear more than able to stave off ISIS, and to continue to develop the institutions of their autonomy. 

Bashar al-Assad may please himself with the farce of elections, but the wars within wars, competing worldviews, and irreconcilable projects, in northern Syria are testimony to the fact of the country’s fragmentation. They reflect also the rapid change still underway in the Middle East, as old ideas and regimes contract and fade, and new contenders for power make war among the ruins. 

 

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Palestinian Magical Thinking

Posted on May 10, 2014 by jonathanspyer

Palestinian Magical Thinking

PJMedia, April 30, 2014. 

So April 29th has arrived, and the nine month period allotted by the current US Administration for its effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute has come and gone.  Entirely predictably, it has failed, in its entirety. 

What can be learned from the failure? And what may be expected to happen now?

The failure of the talks was predictable first and foremost because of the irreconcilable positions of the sides.  This is not a matter of small details, as is sometimes maintained.  It isn’t that the Palestinians want 99% of the West Bank while Israel will offer only 98%. 

Palestinian nationalism in both its Fatah and Hamas variants rejects the possibility of accepting the permanence of Jewish statehood in any part of the area west of the Jordan River. 

For the Palestinian Authority, the 9 month period of negotiations came as an unwelcome interruption to a very different strategy to which it will now return.  This strategy consists of an attempt to place pressure on Israel through action in international forums to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state.  Presumably the intended result of this is to induce Israel eventually to make concessions in return for nothing. The struggle would then continue for further concessions. 

This strategy is unlikely to bear fruit, but its adoption follows a notable pattern in Palestinian politics – namely, the constant attempt to find an alternative to a negotiated peace based on compromise. 

At the root of Palestinian perceptions is a very notable strategic optimism. 

The Palestinians see themselves as part of the local majority Arabic-speaking Sunni Muslim culture.  From this point of view, the establishment of a non-Muslim sovereignty in Israel was not only an injustice, it was also an anomaly.  Israel, being an anomaly, is therefore bound eventually to be defeated and disappear.  So there is no need to reconcile to it, with all the humiliation therein. 

This core perception leads to the momentary embrace of all kinds of unlikely strategies, which are invested with tremendous hopes. 

This pattern has been around for a while. 

In the 1970s, in their first incarnation as an independent national movement, Palestinians believed that the long war strategy of the Palestinian terror organizations would serve to hollow out and destroy the hated Zionist entity, on the model of the FLN in Algeria. 

In 1990/91, almost forgotten now, Palestinians en masse embraced the empty promises of Saddam Hussein to ‘burn half of Israel.’  Arafat went to Baghdad to embrace the Iraqi dictator.

In 2000, after the short Oslo period, Palestinians looked to Hizballah and its ideology of resistance as the model for what they hoped would be a successful military and terror campaign against Israel. 

All these strategies failed.  All turned out to be based on illusion. 

In the meantime, the Jewish state went from strength to strength – absorbing millions of new immigrants, leaping ahead economically, diplomatically and militarily. 

The campaign to place pressure on Israel through activism on the international stage is the latest example of this Palestinian magical thinking.  It is likely to share the fate of its predecessors.  The noisy BDS movement  notwithstanding, Israel’s position on the global stage remains strong.

Its alliance with the US, despite the utter lack of warmth from the current Administration, remains strong at its core, reflected in cooperation on myriad levels, both military and economic. 

Israel is forging ahead in constructing positive relationships with the emergent powers of India and China.  It maintains very close and warm relations with Canada, Australia, Germany and other important western players.  None of this is under threat from the automatic majority the Palestinians enjoy at the UN because of the Arab and Muslim blocs of states. 

So Palestinian optimism that at last the model for defeating Israel has been found is hard to understand. But then  the faith placed in the previous approaches noted above also made little apparent sense. 

What we are in for now is a period in which the current chimera will need to be played out.  On the bright side, this means that a return to large-scale political violence is unlikely.  The Palestinians were defeated heavily in the 2000-4 period, and there is little energy for a return to war. 

The Palestinian elite and their children live comfortable and privileged lives in Ramallah and elsewhere in the region and beyond it.  Combining this with diplomatic and political activity can be pleasant and rewarding.  Combining it with military activity, by contrast, could be harmful and has already been proven not to work. 

So expect more furious and pathos-filled denunciations of Israeli crimes from various UN committees largely staffed by the representatives of sundry dictatorships. 

Expect Saeb Erekat and the others to come up with yet more inventive reasons as to why Islam and Arabic are ‘indigenous’ to Jerusalem while Judaism and Hebrew represent foreign implants.  And so on, and so forth.  

And at the end of all this, expect more failure, more bewilderment and a pause until the next alternative to a negotiated peace is stumbled upon.  This is the nature of the  magical thinking that lies at the core of Palestinian Arab politics. 

This politics, in its various manifestations, exists to reverse the verdict of the war of 1948. It has no other purpose. 

Its  credo was perfectly rendered in the words of the Moroccan scholar Abdallah Laroui, as quoted by Fouad Ajami: “On a certain day everything would be obliterated and instantaneously reconstructed and the new inhabitants would leave, as if by magic, the land they had despoiled; in this way will justice be dispensed to the victims, on that day when the presence of God shall again make itself felt.’ 

The language is elegant. The message is one of politicide and destruction. For as long as this credo remains at the root of Palestinian politics, peace between Israelis and Palestinians will remain unachievable. All else is mere detail. 

 

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Sisi wages ‘war by other means.’

Posted on May 10, 2014 by jonathanspyer

 

Since the coup of July 3, 2013, Egypt’s de facto ruler General Abd al Fattah al-Sisi has pursued a clear and uncompromising policy toward the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s Islamists. 

Sisi has blocked any return to politics for the Brotherhood, instead seeking to maneuver them into the area of open confrontation with the authorities.  He has dismissed any genuine distinction between the Brotherhood and the more extreme and openly insurgent jihadi currents.

In so doing, Sisi and his colleagues upturned what had slowly become conventional wisdom in the west and part of the region – namely, that the Muslim Brothers were a legitimate political organization, and that their rise was possibly benign, and anyway probably inevitable.    

So far, Sisi’s policy has been relatively successful. It has provoked a campaign of mass civil disobedience by the Brotherhood and its supporters, as its instigators probably knew it would.  The authorities in Cairo are also dealing with an ongoing problem of terrorism in northern Sinai. The jihadi groups sometimes manage to strike west of the Suez Canal. 

But in terms of power, none of this poses any threat to the continued rule of the general.   

In recent days in Egypt,  a series of developments have further reflected the stark and uncompromising nature of Egypt’s counter-revolution. 

On Monday, a court in the town of Minya passed death sentences against 683 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and the government of ousted President Mohamed Morsi.  Among the condemned were Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie.  Badie, as the most senior official of the Brotherhood in Egypt, was arguably the most powerful man in the country during the rule of the Brotherhood. 

He and 682 others were convicted on Monday of attacking a police station at Adawa on August 14, 2013, and killing a police officer, Mamdouh Kotb Mohamed Kotb, following the break up by the Egyptian authorities of the Brotherhood protest at the Rabaa Square in Cairo.

The verdicts must be ratified by Egypt’s grand mufti before they can be carried out.  June 21 has been set as the deadline for ratification.  It is likely that a large proportion of the death sentences will be commuted.  Of 529 death sentences handed down in March against supporters of the Brotherhood, 37 were this week confirmed. 

In addition, Egyptian authorities this week ordered the banning of the April 6 youth movement. Established in 2008, the group played a prominent role in the toppling of former President Hosni Mubarak in January, 2011. 

The Court for Urgent Matters confirmed the ban on the group’s activities, charging it with engaging in ‘espionage and defamation of the state.’  April 6 is set to appeal the ban. 

Presidential and parliamentary elections in Egypt are scheduled to take place in the coming months.  Sisi is likely to be elected president in polls set for May 26/27th.  Parliamentary elections will take place later in the year. The Tamarod movement, which supported the coup, has said that it will run as a party in the elections. 

Meanwhile, the Brotherhood’s campaign of civil disobedience continues to fizzle on. One man was killed in clashes between supporters of the movement and police at a funeral in the Nile Delta.  Brotherhood supports also tried to block a main highway in the greater Cairo area, leading to 12 arrests. 

Western countries are expressing concern at the draconian measures adopted by Sisi.  US Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Sub-Committee, has refused to sign off on military aid to Egypt, following the announcement if the 683 death sentences this week.  Germany summoned the Egyptian ambassador to Berlin to protest the sentences. 

Certainly, Sisi’s approach is paradigmatically different from the western response to the ‘Arab Spring’ unrest of 2011-12.  

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in his recent book of memoirs ‘Duty’ describes how President Obama over-rode the advice of his most senior national security officials when the unrest against Mubarak began. 

Concerned, Gates contends, not to appear on the ‘wrong side of history’, and influenced above all by NSS staffers Denis McDonough, John Brennan and Ben Rhodes, the president called Mubarak to demand his resignation.

This act made Mubarak’s fall inevitable. It also set the tone for what then became received wisdom on the inevitability and desirability of this fall, and set in motion the events that led to the Muslim Brotherhood’s subsequent triumph. 

Sisi and his colleagues, by contrast, have taken the view that with regard to the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, politics must mean the continuation of war by other means. 

This conclusion is shared by Sisi’s key regional backers – Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and by Israel.  It derives from the understanding that the Brotherhood itself, like other totalitarian movements, regards politics as a method of waging war by other means, and therefore any effective response to the movement must involve a similar approach. 

The new political dispensation set to emerge this year will not represent a shining example of democracy for the Arab world. It is likely to combine authoritarian and representative elements, and to be accompanied by a smouldering Islamist attempt at insurgency. 

It will, however, conclusively draw a line under the possibility of the emergence of a Sunni Iran on the Nile. For this, Sisi will continue to enjoy the quiet gratitude of opponents of Iran in Jerusalem, Riyadh, and elsewhere in the region. 

 

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The Peace Process is Dead. Let it lie down.

Posted on April 11, 2014 by jonathanspyer

 

PJMedia, 9/4. 

 The April 29th deadline has not yet been reached, but it may be said with confidence that the initiative by Secretary of State John Kerry to revive the ‘peace process’ between Israelis and Palestinians has already reached its final destination: failure. 

 The failure of this initiative was obvious from the beginning.  To everyone except, apparently, Kerry himself.  This reality lent an element of low farce to the entire proceedings. 

 By now, it should really be obvious to any serious observer that there is no chance that the Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process will produce a comprehensive peace between the two sides. 

 There are two core reasons for this.  One of them is of long-standing, the other is a development of the last decade. 

 The first reason is because the Fatah movement, headed by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, is simply not interested in exchanging its historic goal of reversing the verdict of 1948 for the establishment of a small Palestinian state in the West Bank. 

 This is the reason why it has refused every concrete proposal to end the conflict along these lines – from the Clinton proposals of 2000, via then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s plan in 2008, to the recent refusal by Abbas to declare that any agreement reached would mark an end to the conflict and to further Palestinian claims. 

 The volume of proof supporting this contention is now so enormous that it is truly astonishing that this point needs to be made.  But illusions die hard, apparently. 

 So once more with feeling.  The Fatah movement considers the acceptance of any sovereignty west of the Jordan river other than Arab Muslim sovereignty to be unimaginable.  It will therefore never sign an agreement that includes the acceptance of such sovereignty.  It will always find a reason not to do so, while for tactical reasons where necessary pretending that the problem is with the precise details of the agreement. 

 As to why Fatah cleaves to this position.  On the more superficial level, mainstream Palestinian nationalism considers that the ‘imposition’ of Jewish sovereignty over part of former British Mandate Palestine (not ‘historic Palestine’, an entity that never existed) constitutes a crime of such horror and magnitude that it can never be accepted. 

 On a deeper level, this unusual refusal to compromise with reality derives from the movement’s Islamic roots (the very name ‘Fatah’ derives from a Koranic term meaning ‘Islamic conquest), which make it unimaginable that land once possessed by Muslims or Arabs can be accepted as having passed to another sovereignty.  This process is experienced as particularly humiliating when the other sovereignty in question is that of a traditionally despised people, the Jews, rather than some mighty foreign empire. 

 Thus far, so obvious. 

 The second, newer development, however, deserves closer attention. 

 The Israeli-Palestinian peace process also has no chance of success because there is no authoritative Palestinian Arab partner to the talks.  Why not?

 The first and obvious reason for this is because there is no longer a single, authoritative Palestinian national leadership.   

 Yasir Arafat, founder of Fatah, achieved little for his people and bequeathed them even less.  One thing which he did both achieve and bequeath, however, was a single, united Palestinian national movement. 

 This achievement did not long survive him. 

 Arafat died in 2004.  In 2007, the Palestinian movement split in two, with control of the Gaza Strip passing to Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

 Today, Hamas constitutes the more vigorous and formidable element in Palestinian nationalism. It presides over a small, sovereign Palestinian area.  And of course, it opposes the negotiations and remains openly committed to the goal of destroying Israel.   

 There is no prospect of Palestinian re-unification in the foreseeable future (though Fatah spokesmen are forever proclaiming that it is just around the corner). 

 But there is a deeper and more historic aspect to this disunity. The division in Palestinian nationalism appears to be a return to the normal state of affairs, in which the Arab population of the area west and east of the Jordan River is divided into a variety of groups, with widely varying interests and agendas.   

 Palestinian identity, it turns out, like the neighboring Syrian and Iraqi and Lebanese identities, turns out to be a far more flimsy and contingent thing than its partisans and spokesmen have claimed. 

 The Israeli Arabs, though they continue to elect nationalist and Islamist representatives to the Knesset, react with horror to the prospect of exchanging their citizenship of the Jewish state for that of a putative Palestinian sovereignty. 

 This renders absurd the claim of membership in a broader Palestinian identity made by the elected leaders of these Israeli citizens.  

  There are today Palestinian Arab populations in three entities west of the Jordan River, each with their own interests, and own incompatible agendas. 

 In addition to this, of course, there is also a large majority Palestinian population in Jordan, which today mainly accepts the continued rule of the Hashemite monarchy. 

 So  the very nature of the Palestinian political culture developed by Arafat and his colleagues precludes the conclusion of an agreement based on partition. But even if it did not, there is no single ‘pen’ with the authority to sign such an agreement on behalf of the Palestinians. 

 Israel will and should continue to make clear to both the PA leadership and to Jordan that it is willing to reach a solution based on partition with appropriate security guarantees, or a long term interim accord if this proves impossible. 

 Neither outcome looks imminent, however.  Many Palestinians and the many western supporters of the Palestinian cause are convinced that the gradual international delegitimization of Israel is the key to final strategic victory over the Jewish state and the reversal of the verdict of 1948.  This is an illusion. But it will need to work itself through, like the illusions that preceded it. 

 When it has, sadly, it is likely to be replaced by a new illusion. Thus the reckoning with the reality of Jewish peoplehood and sovereignty will continue to be avoided, and the Palestinian politics of subsidized fantasy  will continue. 

 

 

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Assad’s boasts vs. Syrian reality

Posted on April 11, 2014 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post, 11/4. 

Syrian President Bashar Assad this week said that he expects that in the course of 2014, major military operations in Syria will end.  Following this, all that will remain will be the need to deal with the ongoing problem of ‘terrorists.’ 

 The bullish confidence of the Syrian leader followed  recent remarks by Hizballah General-Secretary Hassan Nasrallah, who said in a speech that the danger that the Syrian regime could fall has now been averted. 

 What do such statements reflect?  Is the Syrian regime now within realistic sight of a strategic victory in the brutal three year civil war against the rebellion that rose to challenge it?  Or has Assad effectively resigned himself to being the ruler of the around 40% of Syrian territory over which he currently presides?

 First of all, it is worth noting that the two statements, while each expressing optimism, appear to reflect different analytical positions.

 Assad is talking about continued progress toward a general defeat of the rebels. Nasrallah is doing what Nasrallah does best – namely, taking the existing difficult reality and painting it in the colors of victory.  Nasrallah’s position is thus more reflective of the actual situation.  Assad’s reflects hubris and over-confidence.    

 The Iran-led regional bloc has indeed scored an impressive achievement in Syria over the last year. This achievement was crowned with the recent fall of the town of Yabrud, which brought the regime’s re-conquest of the Qalamun mountains area close to completion. This will effectively seal the border of Lebanon from the rebels. 

 The achievement is largely the result of the major mobilization of Iranian and pro-Iranian regional assets that took place from early 2013, in response to the serious rebel advances of late 2012. 

 The Iranians understood that Assad’s problem was a shortage of loyal combat soldiers.  Under the direction of Qods Force commander Qassem Suleimani, a new, loyal, sectarian based force  – the National Defense Force – was created to fill this gap.  This, together with the greater number of Hizballah fighters deployed and the presence of Iraqi Shia volunteers helped to slow and halt rebel advances.  The regime has now completed a limited counter-attack.  

 This undoubted achievement does not, however, portend the imminent re-conquest of the entirety of Syria by the regime.   Rather, it serves to solidify and unite the main regime-controlled areas of the country – namely, the capital city of Damascus and its environs, and the western coastal area.  The latter is the ancestral heartland of the Assad family itself and of the Alawi sect from which it springs. 

 The regime has now established firm control along the highway linking Damascus and the coast.  The rebels, subsequent to the fall of Yabrud, launched a counter-attack against the northern border of the regime held enclave, in Latakia Province.  This attack has made minor progress, without in any way endangering the government controlled area. 

 But while the regime has demonstrably avoided collapse, the same problems that since mid-2012 prevented it from re-imposing effective control over the entirety of Syria remain. 

 First of all, it is worth noting that the rebellion too has not collapsed and shows no signs of doing so.  Despite its internecine struggles, and the absence of the kind of centralized, coordinated external aid that the regime enjoys, various rebel and jihadi elements remain firmly in control of the greater part of northern and eastern Syria, and also holds a section of Deraa Province in the south. 

 The Syrian Kurds, meanwhile, are maintaining their control over a large enclave in north east Syria, and two smaller areas further west.  These areas are held by the formidable YPG militia, which has shown itself willing and able to resist both government and rebel/jihadi forces when required. 

 The Kurds are currently engaged in a ferocious war-within-the-war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group.  The latter, most brutal of the jihadi militias in Syria, is trying to force its way into the Kurdish held Kobani (Ayn al-Arab) area in northern-central Syria.  So far, the YPG has repulsed the ISIS attacks. 

 Secondly, despite the establishment of the NDF and the presence of Hizballah and other militias, the regime still does not have the manpower to effectively control these areas, and it knows it.  It is for this reason that Assad has avoided making any major incursion into the rebel heartland since his strategic retreat from the north in the summer of 2012. 

 When Qusayr fell to Hizballah fighters last June, pro-regime mouthpieces began to crow that rebel-controlled eastern Aleppo would be next, and that the regime would then roll up the rebel-held zones in Idleb, Aleppo and Raqqa provinces. 

 But no such move was even attempted.  The regime preferred to exercise effective control of a smaller area of territory, while continuing to proclaim itself the legitimate ruler of all Syria. 

 Meanwhile, Bashar Assad’s domination of the skies over Syria has been effectively utilized to prevent the emergence of any properly-governed area in the rebel-controlled zones.  This has been achieved through the  brutal tactic of mass bombing of civilian areas, to cause maximum civilian death and destruction. 

 So in short, the recent regime achievements, though notable, do not represent the kind of game changing development which could presage an end to the long stalemate in the Syrian civil war, and the beginning of a general rout of the rebels and a final decision in the war in favor of the Assads. 

 Rather, they represent the consolidation by the regime of its area of control and the ending of any immediate danger to it. 

 These achievements should be placed against the recent rebel offensives into northern Latakia, and the presence of US-made BGM-71 Tow anti tank missiles on the southern Idleb battlefield, suggesting that the US may be in the process of increasing its provision of weaponry to the rebels in terms of both quality and quantity.   

 Assad is inclined to boasting, and the regime controlled parts of Syria are this year due to witness the farce of a ‘presidential election’ which will no doubt see the dictator returned to power by his grateful people with a huge majority. 

 The dictator has, nevertheless, managed to stave off the prospect of imminent defeat.  The result is not an imminent victory, but rather the de facto partition of Syria into ethnic and sectarian enclaves. 

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War Across the Borders

Posted on March 29, 2014 by jonathanspyer

PJmedia, 28/3

It has become a commonplace to claim that the unrest in the Arab world is challenging the state borders laid down in the Arab world following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918.

This claim, however, is only very partially valid. It holds true in a specific section of the Middle East, namely the contiguous land area stretching from Iran’s western borders to the Mediterranean Sea, and taking in the states currently known as Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

In this area, a single sectarian war is currently taking place. The nominal governments in Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut may claim to rule in the name of the Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese peoples. But the reality of power distribution in each of these areas shows something quite different.

In each of these areas, local, long suppressed differences between communities are combining with the region-wide cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia to produce conflict, discord and latent or open civil war.

In each case, sectarian forces are linking up with their fellow sect members (or co-ethnics, if that’s a word, in the case of the Kurds) in the neighboring “country” against local representatives of the rival sect.

Let’s take a look at the rival coalitions. These are not simply theoretical constructs. The cooperation between the relevant sides is largely overt, and has been extensively verified.

On one side, there are the Shia (and Alawi) allies of Iran. These are the Maliki government in Iraq, the Assad regime in Syria, and Hizballah, the Iranian proxy force which dominates Lebanon.

Both Hizballah and the Maliki government, at the behest of Iran, have played a vital role in the survival of Bashar Assad and his current resurgence.

Hizballah’s role is well-documented. The movement maintains around 5,000 fighters at any one time in Syria. They have just completed a spearhead role in a nearly year long campaign to drive the rebels from the area adjoining the Lebanese border. They are also deployed in Damascus.

Assad’s Achilles heel throughout has been the lack of committed fighters willing to engage on his behalf. Hizballah, working closely with Iran, has played a vital role in filling that gap.

In addition, Hizballah is working hard to suppress any Sunni thoughts of insurrection in Lebanon itself. Its forces cooperated with the Lebanese Army in crushing Sunni Islamists in Sidon in June, 2013. It also offers support to Alawi elements engaged in a long running mini-war with pro-Syrian rebel Sunnis in the city of Tripoli.

Maliki’s role on behalf of Assad is less well-reported but no less striking.

It is first of all worth remembering that the Iraqi prime minister spent from 1982-90 in exile in Iran, and his political roots and allegiances are, unambiguously, to Shia Islamism.

Regular overflights and ground convoys have used Iraqi territory since the start of the Syrian civil war to carry vital Iranian arms and supplies from Iran to Assad’s forces in Syria.

A western intelligence report obtained by Reuters in late 2012 confirmed this, noting that “planes are flying from Iran to Syria via Iraq on an almost daily basis, carrying IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) personnel and tens of tons of weapons to arm the Syrian security forces and militias fighting against the rebels.”

It also asserted that Iran was “continuing to assist the regime in Damascus by sending trucks overland via Iraq” to Syria.

In addition, Iraqi Shia volunteers from the Abu Fadl al-Abbas Brigades and other formations have helped to fill Bashar’s gap in available and committed infantry.

The Maliki government has made no effort to stop the flow of such fighters across the border – even as it engages in a U.S.-supported counter insurgency against Sunni jihadis in western Anbar province in Iraq.

So the Iran-led regional bloc is running a well-coordinated, well-documented single war in three countries.

The Sunni Arab side of the line is predictably more chaotic and disunited. On this side, too, there are discernible links, but no single, clear alliance.

Unlike among the pro-Iran bloc, only the most radical fringe of the Sunnis cross the borders to engage in combat. There is no Sunni equivalent to the Qods Force cadres active in Syria and Lebanon.

Among the Sunni radicals, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group now controls a single contiguous area stretching from eastern Syria to western Anbar province in Iraq, and taking in Fallujah city in Iraq.

Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian franchise of al-Qaeda, is now active also in Lebanon. It has on a number of occasions penetrated Hizballah’s security sanctum in the Dahiyeh neighborhood of south Beirut.

More broadly, Saudi Arabia is the patron of the Sunni interest in both Lebanon and Syria.

It is currently backing rebel forces in the south of Syria, and pro-Saudis dominate the Syrian National Coalition, which purports to be the political leadership of the rebellion.

It also supports and promotes the March 14th movement in Lebanon, and recently pledged $3 billion for the Lebanese Armed Forces – presumably in a bid to build a force that could balance Hizballah.

But both Qatar and Turkey also play an important role in backing the Syrian rebels, and have their own clients among the fighting groups.

Saudi and Turkish fear and distrust of radical Sunni Islamist fighting groups prevent the emergence of a clear “Sunni Islamist international” to rival the Shia international of Iran.

Still, it is undeniable that cooperation exists among the various Sunni forces in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

It’s just that it’s a complicated and sometimes chaotic criss-crossing of various rival interests and outlooks on the Sunni side, rather than a coherent single bloc.

And finally, of course, there is a single contiguous area of Kurdish control stretching from the Iraq-Iran border all the way to deep within Syria. This zone of control is divided between the Iraqi Kurds of the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Syrian Kurds of the rival, PKK-affiliated Democratic Union Party (PYD).

Once again, it is a contiguous area of control based on ethnic affiliation.

None of this means that the official borders of these three countries are going to officially disappear in the immediate future. The U.S. administration and others are committed to their survival, so they are likely to survive for now, in the semi-fictional and porous state in which they currently exist.

This, however, should not obscure the more crucial point that the entire area between the Iraq-Iran border and the Mediterranean Sea is currently the site of a single war, following a single dynamic, fought between protagonists defined by ethnic and sectarian loyalty.

 

 
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New Sunni Insurgency in Iraq

Posted on March 22, 2014 by jonathanspyer

Largely ignored by the global media, Iraq today stands on the brink of a renewed Sunni insurgency.  The emergent insurgency in Iraq is following the same sectarian pattern as the civil war in Syria and the growing violence in Lebanon. It also involves many of the same local and regional players.

The rising violence in Iraq is not, however, simply the result of a spillover from the Syrian war. It derives also from internal Iraqi dynamics. But these are themselves in significant ways comparable to the Syrian and Lebanese situations.

Over 9000 people were killed in fighting in Iraq in 2013.  This is not yet up to the levels of violence just prior to the surge, in the very worst days of the insurgency against U.S. forces and the sectarian bloodletting that accompanied it.  But it’s the highest since 2007.  This year, more than 2000 people have already lost their lives as a result of political violence in Iraq.

As of today, a coalition of Sunni insurgent groups control the city of Fallujah in Iraq’s Anbar province west of Baghdad.  The city of Ramadi  remains partially in insurgent hands, though its southern districts have been re-conquered by government forces in recent days.

Nor is the violence confined to Anbar province.  Rather, car bombings have become a near daily occurrence in Baghdad, and insurgent activity against Iraqi security forces and non-Sunni civilians is taking place in Nineveh, Mosul, Kirkuk and elsewhere in areas of high Sunni Arab population.

So who are these insurgents, and why have events in Iraq reached this crisis point?

As in Syria, a myriad of insurgent groups have emerged. But there are two main forces. These are ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) and the Naqshbandi Army.

ISIS emerged in Iraq in 2004, and for a time constituted the official franchise of al-Qaeda in the country.  Under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed by U.S. forces in 2005,  it became renowned for its brutal methods.

ISIS experienced a resurgence during the Syrian civil war, and today it controls much of Raqqa province in eastern Syria, including Raqqa city.

In February, 2014, ISIS was “expelled” from al-Qaeda because of its insanely brutal methods in northern Syria, which have included, for example, execution of civilians for smoking, and for swearing.

This movement is now an active force on the insurgent council that now governs Falluja.  Its fighters also rove freely in the vast deserts of western Anbar, making the desert highways unsafe for travelers and government forces.

The Naqshbandi Army is a very different, and somewhat bizarre group.  It is headed by Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, a former high official in Saddam Hussein’s regime.  Many of the Naqshbandi commanders and fighters are former officials or members of the Ba’ath party.

The Naqshbandis somewhat bizarrely combine their Ba’athist and pan-Arabist outlook with support for the Naqshabandi Sufi Muslim sect of Iraq, from which their name derives.

Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a UK based Iraqi researcher who has emerged as a leading analyst on the emergent Iraqi insurgency, cautions against dismissing the Naqshbandi outlook as a “total farce.”

Tamimi said in a recent interview that the Sufi orientation served to differentiate the Naqshbandi from the jihadi outlook of ISIS and other salafi groups. But he noted that the Ba’athist and Pan-Arab element is the dominant one, with the religious coloration perhaps an acknowledgement of the extent to which Iraqi society has become more religious in recent years.

In addition to these two groups, a variety of smaller militias are operating, including, notably, tribal forces previously associated with the “Sahwa” (Awakening) movement. This was the anti al-Qaeda trend whose emergence was a key element in the relative success of the U.S.-led surge in reducing violence after 2007.

So what lies behind the eruption of Sunni violence? I’ll explain on the next page.

The dawning insurgency is, on one level, the result of the increasingly sectarian  policies pursued by the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in recent years, which has gathered pace since the last withdrawal of U.S. forces in December of 2011.

Maliki has targeted senior Sunni politicians, forcing Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi into exile, and harassing Finance Minister Rafi al-Issawi.

The increasing marginalization felt by the Iraqi Sunni Arab minority birthed a large protest movement in mid-2013.

Maliki’s uncompromising tactics against the protest movement in turn paved the way for the re-igniting of insurgency in January and February of this year.

Elections are due to take place in Iraq in April.  Some observers suspect that Maliki’s hard line against the Sunnis is in part intended to solidify Shia support for his party.

But the emergent violence in Iraq should also be seen in broader terms.  For Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, the toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime and its replacement by a Shia-led government represented an existential disaster — the toppling of the Sunni domination which had pertained in the area since the birth of the modern Iraqi state, and for centuries preceding its emergence.

Maliki’s clumsy policies notwithstanding, a reaction against the new Shia dominance was probably inevitable.

The Sunni uprising against the Assad regime undoubtedly provided an impetus to Iraq’s Sunni Arab population, showing that resistance was possible, even if in the Syrian context Sunni Arabs form a majority of the population, while in Iraq they constitute between 15-20% of the population.

In this regard, the Maliki government’s active and vital support for the Assad regime should be factored into the equation as an additional factor fueling Sunni anger.

Maliki has made Iraqi airspace and highways available for the transport of vital Iranian weaponry to the Assads. He has also turned a blind eye to the flow of Iraqi Shia volunteers heading to Syria to engage on behalf of the regime.

ISIS, the main component of the emergent Iraqi insurgency, operates in a contiguous area crossing the porous border between Iraq and Syria.

So in addition to its internal dynamics and origins, the Iraqi situation also constitutes a single front in a broader sectarian war.

Iraq, a decade after the western invasion that toppled Saddam, stands on the brink of renewed sectarian conflict.  The U.S. response so far has been to relate to Maliki as the legitimate government of Iraq, and to supply limited aid (including several hundred Hellfire missiles) to his “counter-insurgency.”

This is a misreading of the picture.  Maliki, though elected,  is engaged in sectarian warfare no less than are his Sunni opponents.

The Iraqi situation is driven by sectarian realities, Iranian interference and the weakness of any unifying, state identity or structure. Thus the reality of Mid-Eastern dynamics, in 2014 and for the foreseeable future.

 

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Israel-Syria Border Escalation

Posted on March 22, 2014 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post, 21/3

 

This week’s events on the Israel-Syrian border are testimony to the extent to  which the effective disintegration of the Syrian state is producing a new  security reality in the North.

Once, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s  regime sought to conduct its business via Israel’s border with Lebanon. The  Syrians would seek to place pressure on Israel by supporting paramilitary  proxies in Lebanon, which would launch attacks on Israeli forces and  communities.

At the same time, the direct Syria-Israel line would be kept  silent, out of fear of Israeli retribution. The precise reversal of this  situation now appears to be the reality.

On the assumption of Hezbollah  responsibility for the attacks, which at present appears the most likely  explanation, the movement is using the Syria-Israel border as a site for attacks  on Israeli forces.

For both political and military reasons, meanwhile, it  prefers to keep the Israel-Lebanon frontier quiet. Hezbollah played a  major part in the notable military successes enjoyed by the regime recently –  culminating in the capture of the town of Yabrud this week. Yet the Shi’ite  Islamist movement is not currently in great shape.

It has suffered a  major loss to its standing in Lebanon, because of its involvement in the  fighting in Syria. Its attempt to portray itself as a pan-Islamic,  anti-Israel force rather than a sectarian Shi’ite militia is now severely  tarnished. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that 59 percent of  Lebanese now view the organization unfavorably.

Sunni Lebanese are  growing increasingly unwilling to accept Hezbollah’s de facto domination of  Lebanon. In Tripoli and in Sidon, support among young Sunnis for the Syrian  rebels and for Salafi jihadi politics is rapidly increasing. And there  are around a million new Sunnis in Lebanon – refugees from the fighting in  Syria, whose attitudes toward Assad’s Hezbollah allies can be guessed  at.

The growth of Sunni Islamist violence in Lebanon means that Hezbollah  can no longer guarantee the safety of its own Shi’ite community. A string of  bomb attacks in the movement’s Dahiye quarter in south Beirut has led to a  depletion of the area population. Some Shi’ite Lebanese now prefer the  relative security of their south Lebanon villages close to the Israeli border to  remaining in Beirut.

For all these reasons, Hezbollah is evidently keen  to avoid using Lebanese soil as the launchpad for renewed strikes on  Israel. In addition, Hezbollah’s Iranian patrons are also likely to  oppose any provocation emanating from south Lebanon. Tehran has invested  enormously in replenishing and increasing Hezbollah’s missile capabilities (to  100,000 projectiles, we are told) since the 2006 war. This capability is there  to serve Iran’s strategic aims; it is not to be placed at risk for tactical  purposes.

Nevertheless, Hezbollah had a clear motive for striking at  Israel – in response to ongoing Israeli moves to interdict the movement’s  attempts to transport sophisticated weapons systems from Syria to  Lebanon. The February 24 raid on Janta in the eastern Bekaa was  particularly likely to generate a response from the movement, because it took  place a few kilometers onto Lebanese soil. This is the most likely  explanation for the recent string of attacks.

Hezbollah’s apparent  attempts at retribution, however, are cautious to the extreme.

They are  taking place from Syrian soil, not Lebanese. And they are not accompanied by a  claim of responsibility. Indeed, the roadside bomb placed in the Har Dov area on  March 14 was accompanied by a false claim of responsibility, which some media  outlets unwittingly broadcast.

This claim, supposedly from the Sunni  jihadi Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) group, did not emanate from  or appear on any of the sites or accounts officially associated with that  organization, according to Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, who tracks the activities of  ISIS and other jihadi groups.

ISIS, in any case, has no history of  activity in south Lebanon, no presence in southern Syria, and probably would not  have the ability to avoid both Hezbollah and IDF surveillance in order to  operate in Har Dov.

Israel’s response to the additional explosive device  placed on the border on March 18, which injured four IDF soldiers, was of a  scale and magnitude without precedent since the beginning of the civil war in  Syria.

For the first time, major facilities of the Syrian Arab Army were  targeted. These included, according to the IDF’s statement, “a training  facility, military headquarters and artillery batteries.”

Clearly,  Israeli defense planners have concluded that forces on the opposite side were  attempting to change the rules of engagement. Israel’s response – in a  manner familiar on the Lebanese border in the past and in Gaza more recently –  is intended to raise the price of increased aggression to a level sufficient to  cause the other side to desist from further provocations, without leading to a  general deterioration into armed conflict.

For many years prior to 2006,  Israel’s border with Lebanon was managed in such a fashion – first against the  PLO, then from the early ’90s, against Hezbollah. Periodic provocations would  result in “rounds” of violence, which would be followed by tense periods of  subsequent silence. It appears likely that the border between Israel and  Syria is now set to take on these characteristics, after a long period in which  only the conventional armies of Israel and Syria faced one another across the  border, and paramilitary activity was outside the rules of the game.

This  is testimony to how much the balance of power in relations between elements of  the Iran-led regional bloc has changed. Hezbollah has played a central role in  aiding Assad’s recovery. It is now evidently able to demand a return of the  favor.

Israel, meanwhile, is facing a complex new reality in the North.  While the claim of ISIS responsibility this time was almost certainly false,  there are al-Qaida type elements among the Syrian rebels and their Lebanese  supporters who seek to reach the border and commence action against the Jewish  state. Fighting against these elements are the Shi’ite jihadis of  Hezbollah, and various other components of Iran’s regional bloc. The task  facing Israel at present is to neutralize or deter both of these warring forces,  while at the same time avoiding if possible being drawn into a direct, unlimited  conflict with either.

It remains to be seen whether this week’s response will be  sufficient to bring the current “round” to a conclusion, or whether Hezbollah  and Assad’s army will seek a further exchange of fire. At present, the  former looks most likely.

But with the Syrian state in ruins, al-Qaida-  associated jihadis trying to reach the border, and the power balance between  Assad and Hezbollah severely shifted, a new reality in the North has been  born. The Israel-Syria border is now an active conflict zone once more.

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Shifting Mideast Sands Reveal New Alliances

Posted on March 17, 2014 by jonathanspyer

 

A number of events in recent weeks cast light on the current intersecting lines of conflict in the Middle East. They reflect a region in flux, in which new bonds are being formed, and old ones torn asunder.

 

But amid the confusion, a new topography is emerging.

 

This was the month in which a long-existent split in the Sunni Arab world turned into a gaping fissure. On March 5th, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates announced that they were withdrawing their ambassadors from the Emirate of Qatar.

 

This decision was clearly a response to Qatar’s continued support and sponsorship of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. This movement is regarded as a subversive threat by the three Gulf states. They are worried by the Brotherhood’s capacity for internal subversion.

 

Qatar, by contrast, affords generous subsidies to its tiny citizen body, and has little to fear from potential internal unrest. It continues to support the Brotherhood and to domicile key leaders of the Egyptian branch of the movement. The latter is now engaged in an insurgency against the Egyptian authorities.

 

Saudi patience was at an end. The removal of the ambassadors reflects this.

 

On March 7th, Saudi Arabia made the additional move of declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. A Saudi researcher and former general, Dr. Anwar Eshki, was quoted on the Now Lebanon website as asserting that the decision was made with particular focus on the Egyptian Brotherhood, which is involved in “terrorist” activity.

 

In the same week, an Egyptian court banned all activities by the Hamas organization in Egypt, and referred to the movement as a “terrorist organization.”

 

The proximity of these announcements reflects the very close emergent alliance between Saudi Arabia and the de facto Sisi regime in Egypt, which is likely to become de jure following presidential elections later this year.

 

This alliance is the core component of an emergent dispensation in the Sunni Arab world which also includes UAE, Bahrain and Jordan, as well as the fragile West Bank Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas.

 

This alliance is set to emerge as the strongest element among the Sunni Arabs.

 

It is opposed both to the Iran-led, mainly Shia “resistance” bloc, and to what is left of the Qatar/Muslim Brotherhood alliance that just a short year ago was proclaiming itself the wave of the future in the Middle East.

 

The Hamas authority in Gaza has no buy into the new Saudi-Sisi bloc. Formerly aligned with Iran, it put its bets on the Qatar/Muslim Brotherhood axis.

 

But this putative bloc was fatally damaged by the Sisi coup in Egypt of July 3rd, 2013, and by the departure of the Muslim Brotherhood-related Nahda party in Tunisia.

 

Hamas appears to be trying to find its way back to the Iranians. Gaza’s “foreign minister” Mahmoud al Zahar and Iran’s parliament spokesman Ali Larijani both made statements this week suggesting that relations had returned to normal between Teheran and Hamas.

 

It is not clear what this actually means. But Iranian funding to Hamas in Gaza was slashed following the latter’s failure to offer support to the Iranian client regime in Damascus. It is unlikely that Iran has either forgotten or forgiven. Al-Zahar, in any case, is among those Hamas officials most closely supportive of Iran and his statements should not be taken as representing the movement as a whole.

 

This means that Hamas is probably stuck between Qatar and the Iranians, with the support of the former no longer worth what it once was, and the support of the latter available only in a truncated and reduced form.

 

The week’s events in Gaza, meanwhile, showcased the continued vigor of the Iran-led camp.

 

The most staunch supporter of Iran among the Palestinians, and now apparently the main beneficiary of Teheran’s largesse, is the Islamic Jihad movement. This is a purely paramilitary and terrorist group, with no pretensions to mass political leadership. As such, it is a less complicated prospect from Teheran’s point of view than Hamas.

 

The recent apprehending of the Klos-C arms ship by Israel, as it brought a consignment of weapons evidently intended for Islamic Jihad in Gaza, was the latest indication of Teheran’s willingness to offer practical backing to those it favors.

 

Islamic Jihad’s furious response to the Israeli apprehending of the craft, and to the killing in recent days of a number of its operatives by Israel, was certainly done with Iran’s blessing and probably at its instruction (along with tacit permission from the Hamas authorities in Gaza).

 

The interrupted route of the weapons intended for Gaza (from Syria to Iran, to Iraq, to Sudan and then to the Strip) and the subsequent rocket fire should remind us that the Iran-led Shia bloc remains a potent gathering, capable of coordinated, region-wide action.

 

So three power blocs currently dominate the Middle East — the Iran-led Shia group, a rival emergent Cairo-Riyadh axis leading a group of smaller Sunni states, and a smaller, much weaker Qatar-Muslim Brotherhood alliance. Their competition is set to dominate regional affairs in the period opening up.

 

Israel, of course, will be a charter member of none of these groups. But Jerusalem is a de facto ally of the Saudi-Egypt camp.

 

Egypt and Saudi Arabia, along with Israel, were in recent decades the main allies of the U.S. in the area. The former two countries are now in search of new friends, and have found each other. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have tried to lobby on Sisi’s behalf in Washington in recent weeks, though as yet with limited success.

 

The shifting sands of the Mid-Eastern strategic map are all the result of the perceived withdrawal of the U.S. from its role as a regional patron. This process is still underway and it’s too soon to draw any final conclusions regarding its results. But the current drawing together of Saudi Arabia and Sisi’s Egypt is surely among the most significant responses to it. It is likely to form the basis for the Sunni Arabs’ attempts to contain Iranian ambitions in the period ahead.

 

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Not Quiet on the Northern Front

Posted on March 14, 2014 by jonathanspyer

New York Daily News, 11/3.  (Co-authored with Benjamin Weinthal)

 

The disintegration of the Syrian state into warring enclaves is bringing with  it new challenges and threats for Israel. Alarm bells have now been sounded on  Israel’’ shared northern border with Syria.

“For the moment, they [Jihadis] are not fighting us, but we know their  ideology. . . . It could be that, in the coming months, we could find ourselves  dragged into confrontation with them,” said a top-level Israel Defense Forces  officer.

In addition to the Jihadi threat, the Iran-sponsored terrorist entity  Hezbollah remains Israel’s most potent security threat in the north. Just last  month, Israel reportedly struck a Syrian weapons convoy on its way to  Hezbollah.

Evidence is now beginning to emerge of the methods the Jewish state is  adopting to meet this new reality.

Since mid-2012, Syria has been effectively divided into three enclaves. The  first of these is the area controlled by the Bashar Assad regime, supported by  Iran, Hezbollah and Russia. The second is an area under the rule of a confusing  mass of rebel forces, mainly consisting of Sunni Islamist militias. The third,  in the far north-east, is an area controlled by Syria’s Kurds.

Israel’s new challenge derives from the second of these enclaves. Regarding  the first and the third, there is no confusion. Assad is an enemy, and his  Iranian backers constitute the most dangerous alliance currently threatening the  Jewish state. In February, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited an  Israeli field hospital treating wounded Syrians, placing the blame squarely on  the Mullah Regime: “All the children wounded, to say nothing of those killed,  were harmed as a result of Iran arming, financing, and training the Assad regime  in the mass slaughter it is perpetrating.”

The Kurds in the north, meanwhile, are generally favorably inclined towards  Israel and the feeling is mutual. This, however, has little practical  import.

The new security threat derives from the rebel-controlled zones, and in  particular those in southern Syria, close to the border with Israel. Three  powerful, Al-Qaeda-linked Salafi militias have emerged to a prominent position  in the rebellion. Two of them, Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq  and Syria) openly proclaim themselves to be franchises of the Al-Qaeda network.  The third, Ahrar al-Sham, is of similar Salafi jihadi outlook, but with less of  a clear connection with core Al-Qaeda leadership.

 

Major General Aviv Kochavi, head of IDF Military Intelligence, recently  estimated that up to 30,000 salafi jihadis were now fighting in Syria.

The main strength of the Al-Qaeda-linked and Salafi militias is in the north  and east of Syria, far from the border with Israel. ISIS controls a large swath  of eastern Syria and western Iraq. Nusra holds an area of the north.

The possession by Al-Qaeda-linked groups of a de facto sovereign area in  Syria is itself a matter of deep concern for Israel and the west. It enables the  jihadis to train and organize in the Levant in a way which has never been  possible before.

A recently apprehended jihadi cell in the West Bank was preparing to leave  for northern Syria to undergo training before striking at Israeli and U.S.  targets.

But the real nightmare scenario from Israel’s point of view would be if the  jihadis managed to take control of all or part of Syria’s border with Israel,  from where they could begin to carry out operations against Israelis.

Assad has ceded control of most of the border area of southern Syria facing  the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in the Six Day War of 1967. The border has  been largely quiet for nearly 40 years.

Assad’s main problem in fighting his war is a lack of manpower. He prefers,  therefore, only to hold those areas which are absolutely necessary, ceding less  vital stretches of territory.

ISIS has not yet reached southern Syria. Jabhat al Nusra is there, however,  controlling an area of Deraa province. Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has  appointed al Nusra as his chief fighting force in Syria. According to an Israeli  defense expert, al-Zawahri’s jihadist ideology seeks to first launch attacks  against Israel and then move onto the U.S. In sharp contrast, Osama Bin Laden’s  first target was the U.S.

Israel is not waiting for the jihadis to begin attacking it. Rather,  according to recent reports, the Jewish state has established channels of  communication with currently dominant non-jihadi rebel elements in the  south.

The care afforded wounded Syrians in Israeli hospitals has been widely  reported.

This assistance appears to form only part of a wider project, in which  Israel is quietly establishing lines of communication with non-Al-Qaeda rebels  along the border, with the intention that they should form a de facto barrier to  any attempt by the jihadis to create a presence there for the purpose of  attacking Israel.

It is obviously in the interests of non-Al-Qaeda rebels to prevent this,  since the last thing they need is for the jihadis to begin their own private war  against the Jews behind their backs — with all the potential for inevitable  Israeli retaliation that this would bring.

The links and communication with rebel elements in the south are unlikely to  lead to a broader Israeli involvement there.

Memories of the Lebanese quagmire, and the awareness that any open Israeli  embrace of this or that group of rebels would serve to instantly discredit them  are likely to keep the Israeli footprint in southern Syria exceedingly  light.

But what can be said with confidence is that Israel is quietly and carefully  establishing and managing the relationships necessary to keep a close eye on  developments, and to create a secure buffer zone against the jihadi threat.

 

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