Israel’s Summer is not quite over

Posted on August 30, 2013 by jonathanspyer

Tablet, 29/8

The late summer quiet in Israel is no longer reassuring. The apparently imminent US attack on Syria has people on edge. There is a late rush to renew gas masks. The comments by a junior Syrian minister threatening an attack on Israel if Syria is struck have been well noted. Khalaf al-Maftah may be only a lowly deputy information minister. But there was also the Iranian, Hossein Sheikholeslam, who said that the ‘Zionist regime’ would be the ‘first victim’ of any attack on Syria.

People here notice things like that. They don’t necessarily dismiss them. A friend of mine is convinced that a limited call-up of reserves has already taken place. The evidence? There were ‘too many soldiers’ on the train heading north from Tel Aviv on Sunday morning. So it goes.

The quiet of the last two years always seemed like something of an anomaly. With the region ablaze around them, Israelis have spent the last period basking in a rare and welcome normality. There have been the usual political scandals, an economy ticking along, a glorious summer. Now, the feeling is that all this may be drawing to an end.

Israeli broadcasts have done their best, understandably, to downplay any possibility of Israel being drawn into the circle of fire following a US attack on Syria. But the key point to bear in mind is that the likelihood of an attack on Israel will probably be directly in proportion to the severity of a strike by the US and its allies on Syria. The greater the depth and dimension of the US attack, the more likely that the Syrians or one or another of their proxies will respond against Israel.

According to available evidence, it appears that any upcoming US strike will be limited in scope, and designed to demonstrate to the Syrian leader that further use of chemical weapons will bring with it a cost that he is likely to prefer not to bear. If the US strikes, from its destroyers or submarines in the Mediterranean, or from the air, at a selected list of Syrian military and government targets, this will not remove Assad’s chemical weapons capability. The American calculus — and hope — in such an operation would be that it would remove Assad’s will to further employ these means in his war against his own people.

Because the US could employ such means at little immediate risk to American lives, they could be re-used, and perhaps ratcheted up in severity, should the dictator ‘re-offend’ on the issue of chemical weapons. Such a move, in a way, would be reminiscent of Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza earlier this year. It wasn’t meant to be decisive. It was meant to establish deterrence, and, importantly, to be repeatable.

It is not certain, of course, that this is the form that US action will take. But a move on this level would be in keeping with Obama’s more general policy of disengagement from the Middle East. The use of chemical weapons in Syria has almost certainly not changed his thinking in this regard. But as his preferred strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan shows, when he decides military force is required, this president prefers it to be focused, brief, and not to involve visible ground action.

If this is the form that US action against Syria takes, it means that it will have little implication for the balance of power between Assad and the rebels. Assad will not feel his regime is in imminent danger, and will think that he still may prove victorious in his war, or at least survive. In that case, retaliation against Israel would make little sense. Why engage in an action that would certainly bring about a massive retaliation, when victory against the far less formidable internal enemy may still be achieved?

Of course, if the US chooses to opt for a far bolder policy, involving intense and ongoing air and missile strikes, then the calculus must change. Such a decision would effectively mean US and NATO air power converting itself into the air wing of the Syrian rebellion, a la Libya, 2011. This would represent an attempt, which might well prove successful, to bring about a sea change in the direction of the war, making a rebel victory possible. Assad is likely to prove at his most dangerous when he is most desperate. It would be as he nears the point of defeat that the possibility of his carrying out or supporting a strike on Israel would be most high. As of now, this point does not look imminent. A limited US and allied strike would not make it so.

Which means that the odd situation in which we here in Israel manage to live normal, productive and pleasant lives even as a raging storm goes on all around us, may have a while to run yet. The end of the summer may not quite yet be upon us.

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Al-Qaeda battles Kurds in Syria

Posted on August 21, 2013 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post, 16/8.

Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq, threatened this week to send forces into northern Syria, to defend beleaguered Kurds there. In the statement, issued on August 10, the Kurdish leader said that he had instructed his representatives to enter Syria in order to investigate media claims that the ‘terrorists of al-Qaeda are attacking the civilian population and slaughtering innocent Kurdish women and children.”

If the reports are true, the statement continued, then ‘Iraq’s Kurdistan region will make use of all of its capabilities to defend women and children and innocent citizens.”

No details were offered as to the form the intervention would take. But Barzani’s statement indicates the growing gravity of the situation in north east Syria.

Since July 17th, the al-Qaida linked jihadis of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra organizations have been engaged in a series of attacks on outlying areas of Kurdish population and control. Their intention, ultimately, appears to be to secure a contiguous corridor under their rule stretching from the oil-rich Deir ez-Zor area in eastern Syria through Raqqa province to the border with Turkey. Demographic and geographical realities mean that such a corridor would inevitably run through an area of Kurdish population.

The existence of small Kurdish enclaves within their desired area is an obvious irritant from the jihadis’ point of view. They are thus seeking to isolate and over-run all such points of Kurdish control. This is not yet a generalized challenge to the Kurdish controlled area in the north east. Rather, it is an attempt at localized ethnic cleansing of a type familiar from other conflicts.

Kurdish and humanitarian concerns currently center on the towns of Tel Aran and Tel Hassel, 30 km west of the city of Aleppo. These Kurdish towns, with a joint population of around 40,000, were attacked and occupied by ISIS and al-Nusra forces on July 29th. Kurdish sources report that between 30-40 civilians have been killed by the jihadis, and hundreds more wounded. Around 250 civilians from Tel Aran, meanwhile, have been captured by the jihadis and are currently in captivity.

The Kurdish fighters of the YPG (People’s Protection Units) militia, are committed to the defense of these pockets of Kurdish population, which are situated to the west of the main autonomous zone in the north east of the country. The YPG is controlled by the PYD, the PKK-linked Syrian Kurdish movement which dominates the Kurdish controlled areas.

But the battle is not solely between al-Qaeda and the Kurds. Non-jihadi rebels have joined forces with the former, giving the situation the increasing appearance of an ethnic clash between Arabs and Kurds. Elements of both the Tawhid and Farouk Brigades, associated with the ‘mainstream’ rebels of the western-supported Supreme Military Council, have also joined forces against the YPG.

The Arab rebels want to preserve the territorial unity of Syria, and suspect the Kurds of separatist ambitions. The jihadis within rebel ranks want an Islamic emirate in northern Syria. The Kurds, for their part, deny separatist ambitions. But they have sought since the start of the civil war in Syria to maintain control of their own areas, supporting neither regime nor rebels. It appears that this approach is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

The Arab rebels also suspect the YPG of collaboration with the forces of the Assad regime. Following the recent capture by the rebels of the strategic Minigh air base outside Aleppo city, 200 members of the fleeing regime garrison sought and were granted sanctuary in an area controlled by the YPG. From the point of view of the Arab rebels, this confirmed Kurdish links to the regime. Kurdish officials, meanwhile, say that they will offer safe passage to forces of either side (while privately admitting that the events following the Miigh capture would have been better avoided.)

So far, the military results have been mixed. The YPG fighters are better trained and organized than those of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra. But the Kurdish areas are cut off from one another. The Kurds succeeded in driving the jihadis out of the contested Ras-al Ain (Sere Kaniyeh) area on the Turkish border. Tel Abyad, further west, remains contested. The fighting continues.

There are also, inevitably, a jumble of outside powers engaged in this situation. The PYD accuses Turkey of aiding the jihadis. They maintain that al-Qaeda fighters were permitted to enter from Turkey. There have also been claims of Turkish artillery support for the jihadis in the Tel Abyad battles.

Russian and Iranian senior officials and media, meanwhile, have issued statements in recent days expressing support for the Kurds. In a strange coda to the events on the ground, both the Iranian Press TV and the Russia Today government channel have noted an Iranian TV report alleging that al-Qaeda forces massacred 450 Kurdish civilians in Tel Abyad. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov expressed his ‘shock’ at the revelations.

But senior Kurdish officials say that no such massacre took place.

PYD leader Salah Muslim visited Iran in recent days. He later told reporters that the Iranian regime has agreed to the Kurdish self government project in northern Syria.

Amid all the various competing forces, there is one that is conspicuously absent.

US State Department Deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf in a statement to reporters this week urged KRG President Massoud Barzani to reconsider his plans to intervene in Syria if it transpires that al-Qaeda is indeed carrying out massacres against the Kurdish population there.

So at a time when it has become clear to all regional players that the borders separating Syria from Iraq and Lebanon are today mainly a fiction, the United States apparently considers that maintaining this fiction is more important than the fight against al-Qaeda. No-one would expect that the US itself would take up this fight in Syria. But Washington seems to want to prevent anyone else from doing so either. The inhabitants of Tel Hassel and Tel Aran, meanwhile, remain under siege

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Meet the New Mubarak

Posted on August 8, 2013 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post, 2/8/13

For many Egyptian supporters of the July 3 coup against the Muslim Brotherhood-led government, coup leader General Abd al-Fatah al-Sisi is a figure of veneration. Posters bearing the general’s visage alongside that of Gamal Abd al-Nasser have appeared all over Cairo. Nasser, of course, initiated the officers’ regime which held sway in Egypt from 1952 until the downfall of Hosni Mubarak in early 2011. He also, in 1954, presided over the bloody repression of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Sisi, for those who venerate him, is seen as the inheritor of Nasser’s mantle. For the crowds that he summoned to Tahrir Square in his televised address on July 24th, he is, like his predecessor, a patriotic officer who stepped in to save the day at a moment of supreme national crisis.

No one in Egypt venerates Nasser’s two successors, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. But if the Sisi-Nasser comparison makes sense, it must also be the case that the putschist general is their inheritor too. And it is so. The July 3 coup is a victory for the Egyptian counter revolution. It establishes, at least for now, the status quo pre-2011.

It is important not to be taken in by the crowds in Tahrir Square pledged to Sisi’s defense. These were summoned by the general in a maneuver familiar to other times and places. Nasser, too, knew how to call intoxicated masses of followers onto the streets of Cairo when necessary – usually to ecstatically demand some item of policy which the president had already decided to carry out. So it is with General Sisi.

In Sisi’s case, the crowds in the square are needed to make the coup look like something else. This is not only or mainly for regional or local consumption. In the old days, Arab officers would cloak their rule in slogans exhorting socialism or the Arab nation. Today, democracy and representation are the watchwords. Sisi understands that his patrons in the west, on whom the Egyptian military relies, are upset and frightened by the army’s move.

For he and his followers, this reaction represents the very height of naivete. As far as they are concerned, the July 3 act saved Egypt from the establishment of a Muslim Brotherhood-led autocracy presiding over chaos and probably famine.

A US decision to delay the delivery of four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt indicates a growing American discomfort and concern regarding the de facto military rulers of Egypt. At the same time, the US has not yet openly stated the obvious fact that the ousting of Morsy constituted a coup, since this would require a cessation of US aid in toto, which would plunge Egypt into chaos.

Similarly, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton’s insistence on visiting deposed and incarcerated former President Mohammed Morsy was meant to signal the EU’s disapproval of the military’s tactics.

The military has indicated that it does not want to rule the country, and has laid down a road map intended to bring about new presidential elections within nine months. But even if new elections take place as scheduled, the coup of July 3rd has irrevocably changed the political landscape that emerged since 2011 in Egypt. It indicates that whoever wins elections, the army is the force that will ultimately decide the direction of the country, stepping in to adjust the situation as and when it sees fit, while leaving the mundane tasks of daily administration to the politicians.

This was not what the Muslim Brotherhood had in mind when they entered the elections. It is also not a reality they intend to accept. As a result, Egypt remains poised on a knife edge.

The Muslim Brotherhood has not accepted the verdict of July 3rd. The movement is reverting back to the role of an insurrectionary opposition movement. Brotherhood demonstrators remain ensconced in the Rabia al-Adawiya mosque, in the Nasr City area of Cairo. Hundreds have already died in violent clashes with the security forces.

There are rumors that guns and explosive devices are being hoarded at Rabia, in the event that the army attempts a violent dispersal of the protestors. The Brotherhood’s demands remain rock-solid: the reinstatement of Morsy and the reimposition of the Islamist constitution that he and his colleagues brought into being.

Violence against soldiers and police in the Sinai area is on the increase. There are reports of the growing presence of Salafi Islamists among the demonstrators at Rabia. Brotherhood preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi has called for a jihad against the new regime in Egypt.

Yet Sisi apparently seeks to avoid a frontal confrontation with the Brotherhood. For the moment, he has what he wants – power, popular legitimacy, and the Muslim Brothers outside of the tent. From his point of view, it is their move. If they seriously intend to convert themselves into an insurgent army – which would be outside of the traditions of the movement in Egypt – then they are inviting an Algerian type situation for Egypt.

Such a scenario would be catastrophic for all Egyptians. But it would almost certainly result in the defeat and destruction of the Muslim Brothers.

And if, as seems more likely, they want to carry on political protests, with the more extreme elements engaging in sporadic acts of violence, then Sisi will seek to contain them, and wait them out, countering their gatherings with mass public demonstrations in his support.

The point to be borne in mind is that there remain two forces of note in Egypt: the army and the Muslim Brothers. Everything else is a decoration. And as of now, the army is winning. This is good for the west, though the west apparently does not see it that way.

In the meantime, the new Nasser/Sadat/Mubarak, supported and financed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, is in control of Egypt. His reign will not bring democracy, nor prosperity to that blighted country. It will, however, prevent the nightmare of an Islamist regime on the Nile – by whatever means the general finds appropriate.

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The Resurgence of the Regimes in the Arab World

Posted on July 19, 2013 by jonathanspyer

PJ Media, 19/7:

The toppling of the Muslim Brotherhood power in Egypt by the army is an event of historic importance. It is important chiefly because it represents an enormous setback in a process which only a few months ago looked inexorable and unstoppable. That process was the replacement of the military-republic regimes in the Arab world by new regimes based on Sunni Islamism, with franchises of the Muslim Brotherhood most prominent among them.

The setback suffered by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was preceded by an earlier rallying of one of their chief enemies. In the course of this year, the Assad regime in Syria succeeded in reversing rebel gains and ending the threat to Damascus.

Since then, Assad’s forces, assisted by Hizballah and advised by Iran, have been turning the Sunni Islamist rebels back in the west of the country. They have consolidated the area of regime control in the west, the capital, and the communication links between them. The regime is now in the process of brutally crushing remaining rebel-held areas in the city of Homs.

The regimes that have fallen as a result of the “Arab Spring” agitation have so far been of a single type: namely, the nationalist-military regime type patented by Colonel Gamal Abd el-Nasir and his friends in Egypt in 1952. In Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya, regimes of this type fell in the course of 2011-12. The Syrian version held on because of its alliance with Iran (in contrast to all others on the list, who were either aligned with the U.S. or isolated and friendless).

Syria’s membership in a regional bloc which understands the importance of standing by friends and clients was the key factor in enabling Assad to escape the fate of his fellow nationalist dictators. Two other superannuated representatives of Arab nationalism also managed to stay in business: Algeria and the West Bank Palestinian Authority. There were clear reasons in each case. Algeria had dealt with an early version of the Arab Spring, when the military intervened to crush the Islamist FIS movement in 1991, after the latter achieved victory in elections.

In the case of the nationalist Fatah-controlled PA, survival was assured because of the presence of a military force capable of crushing any Islamist attempt to seize power. That military force, with the irony that history favors, is the armed force of the state which Fatah came into being to destroy. It is the Israel Defense Forces.

But despite these exceptions, the general direction of events looked clear — namely, the onward march of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Not any more. In Egypt, faced with impending anarchy, the old regime acted. The Muslim Brothers were removed. Notably, among the first to congratulate General Abd al-Fatah al-Sisi were President Bashar Assad of Syria and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Both understood very well the significance of the Brotherhood’s eclipse in Egypt for their own battles with its local representatives.

So is the return of military domination in Egypt a return to “secular” nationalist Arab governance?

Not so fast.

First of all, the latest developments suggest the Muslim Brotherhood has chosen not to accept the verdict of the generals. Instead, the movement now appears to be trying to incite rebellion. Its Freedom and Justice party has called for “an uprising by the great people of Egypt against those trying to steal their revolution with tanks.”

Dozens people have already been killed.

So the stage seems set for an ongoing, bloody showdown between the ancien regime and the Brotherhood — as in Syria, but with the difference that in the Egyptian case, neither of the sides is aligned with Iran. This is an intra-Sunni conflict.

Secondly, the Egyptian resurgent regime side is itself not “secular” in any western sense. General al-Sisi is a devoutly observant Muslim. Among his main supporters is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which regards its own monarchical absolutism as the correct form of Islamic governance, and hates and fears the Muslim Brothers. The Saudis were also among the first to congratulate the putschist Egyptian officers, as was the United Arab Emirates.

The Saudis have emerged as the key opponents of the Brotherhood in the region. In this, their approach is in direct contrast to that adopted by neighboring Qatar, which is the main backer of the MB. The Egyptian generals will be relying on Saudi largesse to stave off economic catastrophe in the months ahead. Qatari generosity will be a casualty of the coup.

So the generals’ coup in Egypt has proven conclusively that the old, nationalist regimes are not finished yet. The Muslim Brotherhood, in Syria and now in Egypt, has been faced down. The fight is not over in either country.

But the fight is over power, not over ideology or methods of governance. The Muslim Brotherhood, General al-Sisi, the Syrian rebels, Bashar Assad, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar may be at loggerheads but they have the following in common: none of them are democrats and none of them are interested in democracy.

The issue for the west, therefore, should be which of these forces are interested in pragmatic alignment with the west, and which wish to oppose it. On this basis, the west should determine its attitude toward the various players in the roiling Middle East.

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Wars within Wars in northern Syria

Posted on July 19, 2013 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post, 19/7:

A senior figure in the Free Syrian Army this week said that al Qaeda in Syria were preparing to declare an ‘Islamic state’ in rebel-held northern Syria. This announcement came in the course of a frenetic period of activity for the jihadi rebels of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Syria (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra organizations.

Jihadi activity is leading to the emergence of new and complicated lines of conflict in northern Syria, both within rebel controlled areas and beyond them.

In the last weeks, jihadi rebels in Syria have assassinated a number of commanders of the Free Syrian Army. These included a member of the western-backed Supreme Military Council, Kamal Hammami, and FSA battalion commander Fadi el-Qash, together with one of his brothers. The FSA holds ISIS commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi responsible for the killings and is demanding his arrest.

The jihadis also clashed this week with Kurdish fighters in the area of Ras al-ain/Sere Kaniyeh on the border with Syria. These clashes began after Jabhat al-Nusra fighters attacked a convoy guarded by female fighters of the Kurdish YPG militia. The YPG’s response has led to the near expulsion of the jihadis from the Kurdish majority town.

Tensions between the jihadis and other armed elements in northern Syria are now at an unprecedented peak. There are also indications of wider discontent with jihadi activities among the civilian population in the rebel controlled north. The jihadis have a reputation for non-corruption and a murderous commitment to the fight against government forces. Despite these aspects, it appears that the rigidity and oppressiveness of their version of Islamic rule is provoking a backlash.

In Raqqa, the largest town under rebel control, demonstrations and protests have taken place against the attempts by Jabhat al-Nusra and the more locally oriented Salafis of Ahrar al-Sham to impose their version of Islamic rule. Youthful inhabitants of Raqqa, including many who were activists against the Assad regime and who welcomed the expulsion of the regime from Raqqa are now engaged in the protests against the new jihadi rulers of the town.

Amid the deteriorating relations between the FSA and the jihadis, there are those who claim that at least some elements of the jihadis are in contact with the regime, and that their Syrian fighters include those who in the past fought with pro-Assad militias.

Accusations of this type should not simply be dismissed as the usual Middle Eastern ‘conspiracy theories.’ Certainly, it is the case that in the pre-2011 period, the Assad regime was expert in manipulating and directing the energies of Sunni jihadis for its own ends.

Damascus airport, famously, became a hub for jihadis seeking to reach Iraq to take part in the fighting against US forces. The Assad regime also created a puppet Islamist group in Lebanon, the Fatah al-Islam group, to further its aim of destabilizing that country after Syrian troops were expelled in 2005. So it is quite possible that the regime is in contact with and possibly directing some elements among the jihadis engaged in Syria. The jihadis serve the regime’s narrative that it is engaged in fighting against mainly foreign terrorists, and thus help to discredit Assad’s opponents.

But at the same time, it would be equally mistaken to assume that this is the whole story. ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra are not puppet organizations. They remain, demonstrably, among the most fierce of the regime’s opponents.

The veracity of the statements by the un-named FSA commander concerning the imminent declaration of statehood by then jihadis also remains unconfirmed.

Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a UK based researcher who monitors jihadi statements and activity in Syria for the Jihadology website, said that he had found ‘nothing on ISIS pages to corroborate the idea of a planned declaration for a northern state in Syria after Ramadan,” as asserted by the FSA official.

Tamimi, however, did not rule out the possibility that ISIS could be planning such a move, given its ‘expansion’ in northern Syria and its rule in certain areas.

It is possible that the release of these claims forms part of a prelude to retaliatory action by FSA elements in Syria against the jihadis. Certainly, sources close to the rebels confirm that they view such a clash to be an eventual inevitability.

It should also be noted that ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra are themselves involved in a lengthy feud of their own over who is the authentic representative of al-Qaeda in Syria.

So in northern Syria, in addition to the war between the Assad regime and the rebellion, there are at least three additional, discernible conflicts taking place.

The al-Qaeda supporting jihadis are fighting the Kurdish defense organization.

The jihadis are also engaging in the killing of other rebel leaders. And anti-jihadi oppositionists are organizing against them in areas which they control.

And lastly, the jihadis are also in dispute with one another, though not (yet) violently.

It is also possible, given the Assad regime’s track record and its interests, that some among the jihadi ranks are linked to the regime.

So in addition to metastasizing beyond its borders, the Syrian civil war is also giving birth to a variety of new conflicts within Syria itself. It is wars within wars – and no end in sight. The main victims of all this, of course, are the people of Syria.

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Lebanon shaken by car bomb in Dahiyeh

Posted on July 12, 2013 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post, 12/7.

A car bomb exploded on Tuesday of this week in the Bir al-Abed neighborhood of south Beirut. At least 53 people were wounded. There were no fatalities. The bomb left a crater 2 meters deep. Bir al-Abed is situated in the heart of the Dahiyeh section of the city – home to the headquarters of Hizballah and the place of residence of many of its most senior cadres.

A little known Syrian rebel group, the ‘Brigade 313 Special Forces’ has claimed responsibility for the bombing on its Facebook page. The statement cited Hizballah’s involvement in Syria as its motive.

The credibility of this claim of responsibility remains subject to doubt. But few in Lebanon doubt that the bombing formed part of the overflow of sectarian strife taking place because of Hizballah’s entry into the Syrian civil war on behalf of the Assad regime.

The Bir al-Abed car bombing is the latest in a chain of recent events which are gradually raising the sectarian temperature in Lebanon to boiling point. While global and regional media attention focuses on events in Egypt, the Lebanese are witnessing an ominous deterioration toward possible renewed conflict. In contrast to previous episodes of civil strife in the country, this time around, Lebanon’s Christians are an irrelevance. The emerging conflict is between Sunni and Shia.

In late June, the Lebanese army fought a pitched battle in Abra, near the southern Lebanese port of Sidon, against supporters of the Sunni Salafi cleric Ahmed al-Assir. Assir emerged in the last two years as the most prominent and outspoken Sunni critic of Hizballah’s de facto domination of Lebanon.

The battles began after followers of Assir ambushed an army checkpoint. This event triggered what looked like a pre-planned assault on Assir’s infrastructure in Abra. 18 soldiers and at least 29 of Assir’s gunmen were killed in the subsequent two day battle. It ended with the storming of Assir’s headquarters on June 24th. The firebrand Sunni cleric has not been seen since. A warrant has been issued for his arrest.

The fighting in the Sidon area, however, was not only between Assir’s followers and the Lebanese Armed Forces. Western reporters on the scene noted the arrival of Hizballah fighters to the city, and their participation on the side of the army and against Assir.

These Hizballah elements included both regular Hizballah fighters and members of the movement’s auxiliary ‘Saraya al-Muqawama’ (Resistance Brigades). The latter is a less well trained body consisting of non-Shia Lebanese who support Hizballah.

The role of Hizballah in the Sidon events has been denied by spokesmen of the movement, and downplayed by Lebanese officials who prefer to deny the emergent sectarian strife in the country.

It has been well noted, however, in the Sunni Islamist circles from which Assir himself emerged. Large protests were held in the first days of July, in areas associated with the Salafi Islamist trend with which Assir was associated. Shots were fired in the air in the northern city of Tripoli. The Tariq Jdeideh neighborhood of Beirut, long associated with Sunni radicalism, also witnessed a large gathering.

These areas witnessed raucous celebrations following the car bomb in Bir el-Abed. In Tripoli, Salafi activists gave out sweets to passers-by, to celebrate the bombing, in a manner reminiscent of Hizballah and Hamas’s practice..

It is not yet definitively clear whether this bombing was initiated by Lebanese Sunni Islamists, or their counterparts in Syria, the ‘Brigade 313’s’ statement notwithstanding. The latter remains by far the most likely option. The Syrian rebels have made clear that they regard Hizballah targets within Lebanon as fair game, because of the Lebanese Shia movement’s intensive involvement in the Syrian conflict.

Indeed, the Dahiyeh area has already been targeted. In May, two rockets were fired on the Shiyah district in the area. Syrian rebels have also struck on a number of occasions at the Shia border town of Hermel, in retaliation for Hizballah’s own cross border activity.

But the distinction between Syrian or Lebanese elements in this context is anyway largely meaningless. If Syrian rebels did indeed carry out the Bir al-Abed attack, it means that elements among them now have both the will and the ability to physically infiltrate a car laden with explosives into Hizballah’s most security rich and well-guarded environment. This could in any case almost certainly only be achieved with the help of local allies.

And if by any chance this bombing or other acts of violence do turn out to be the result of local initiatives – the rising Sunni Islamist anger and confidence in Lebanon is in any case a direct result of the Sunni rebellion in Syria.

Either way, what this bombing means is that in the last month, the Syrian civil war finally arrived, conclusively, in the heart of Lebanon.

Responses to the attack were instructive. Former Prime Minister Sa’ad al-Hariri described it as an ‘attempt by the Israeli enemy to push Lebanon to strife by organizing terror attacks.’

Such statements should be seen in the context of a widespread dread among non-Salafi and non-Hizballah Lebanese at the prospect of renewed civil strife, of which the bombing may be a harbinger.

Blaming the all-purpose scapegoat Israel is a way of avoiding the evident reality of increasing sectarian tensions. The Lebanese are supposed to unite against the imaginary threat of Israeli car bombings in Beirut. But Hariri’s statement reflects the helplessness of the March 14 coalition of which he is a part.

The civilian politics of March 14 have long proved irrelevant against the guns of Hizballah. Lebanon is in a state of political paralysis. There is much anger in the Lebanese Sunni population, also among supporters of March 14, at the recent Abra events.

The bombing in Bir el-Abed suggests a different approach to dealing with the deadlock.

Given the political impasse, the obvious immovability of Hizballah by any means other than force, and the example of the Syrian rebellion, this approach is likely to become increasingly in evidence in the period ahead.

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Power and the Arab Revolutions – some thoughts on the latest events in Egypt

Posted on July 3, 2013 by jonathanspyer

The latest events in Egypt confirm one of the salient patterns that have governed the upheavals in the Arab world of the last years. This is the troubling but unmistakable fact that despite all the chatter about peoples’ power, democracy, civil society and the rest of it, when it comes to the real, grown-up exercise of political power in the countries in question, there remain only two contenders: the forces of political Islam, and the armed forces of the ancien regime.

That this is so seems empirically irrefutable – from Algeria to Gaza, via Syria and Egypt – the forces that when the talking is done go out to do battle with one another for the crown are the Islamists and the armed men of the regime (the latter usually organized under the banner of a secular, authoritarian nationalism.)

What is currently taking place in Egypt is a military coup in all but name. The army – the force through which Mubarak, Sadat and Nasir governed – is mobilizing to end the one year rule of the Muslim Brotherhood. It remains to be seen whether Mohammed Morsi and his comrades will yield to this mobilization, or attempt to resist it.

If they attempt the latter, Egypt will stand before a situation analogous to that of Algeria in 1991, when the regime’s military sought to annul the election victory of the Islamist FIS movement. The result was a bloody civil war which in retrospect may be seen as the precursor of what is now taking place in Syria, and what may now lie ahead in Egypt.

If, on the other hand, the Brotherhood choose to acquiesce to the demands of the military, then President Morsi’s remark that this will represent the reversal of the 2011 revolution is entirely correct. What will transpire will be military rule, presumably with a few civilian figureheads placed on the mast to enable the west to pretend that it is something else.

In 2010, I wrote a book called ‘The Transforming Fire’ which contains the following sentence; “In the Middle East, it is the regimes or the Islamists; there is no third way.” I undertake the somewhat vulgar act of quoting myself not in order to demonstrate what a very clever boy indeed I’ve been, but rather to indicate that this basic fact of the presence of two serious contenders for power in the main countries of the Arabic speaking world has been obvious and apparent before the events of 2011, which are usually (though inaccurately) held to mark the advent of the historic processes currently being witnessed in the Middle East.

To paraphrase George Orwell’s poor Winston Smith, however, I understand how, but I do not quite understand why. After all, the throngs of young people that we have witnessed in recent days in the streets of Egypt are not a mirage. No more were the young civil society activists who began the uprising in Syria, or the sophisticated liberals and reformers in Egypt. What are the factors which time and time again prevent the emergence of a muscular, representative, civilian and secular politics in the Arab world?

A politics of this type, which can combine the readiness for the use of force with a commitment to the open society seems to me to be the foundation stone for workable democracy.

In my own country, Israel, it very clearly exists. The primordial call of Jewish identity is the bedrock on which the democratic structure stands and is defensible and defended. Take away the former, and the latter would soon fall too.

Now the willingness to use force in order to defend rests at root always on something ‘irrational’, ie deeper than profit-loss, self-interested thinking. It must by necessity do so, since by engagement in such activity, the individual increases the possibility of his or her own early extinction. The ‘trick’ for making the open society work and be defensible seems to me the ability to combine or harmonize this deeper, non-rational layer of human motivation with the entirely rational commitment to institutions, structures, checks, balances and so on.

In the highly populated countries of the Arab world, glaringly, this has never been achieved. The liberal reformers are quite unable to command the kind of potent loyalties by which movements sustain themselves and win. Today, in Egypt, it is not they who are the real political and military actors. The required levels of commitment exist, solely, in the hands of Islamists on the one hand, and authoritarian nationalists on the other.

For as long as this remains the case, secure, rights based societies are likely to remain elusive in the Arabic-speaking world. But is the reason why it is the case, ultimately, because of powerful, pervasive ideas and practices in these societies which militate against the development of the kind of movements and institutions which could form the basis for a defendable civil society? It may well be. An unreformed, power-oriented religion that commands the deep loyalty of masses of people, and a stress on community security over individual rights would be the most notable factors here. And if it is so, it means that the anger of the populations at mis-managed societies will continue to be mis-directed, and that much remaining strife almost certainly lies ahead.

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Qatari Power – and Irresponsibility – set to continue under new Emir

Posted on June 29, 2013 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post, 29/6.

An event of a type exotically rare in the contemporary Arab world took place this week: namely, a bloodless transfer of power. The ruling, ailing Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamid bin-Khalifa al-Thani chose to step down. Power was transferred to his 33 year old son, Tamim bin-Hamid al-Thani.

Rumors of the imminent abdication had been rife among Gulf-watchers for some months. Few had expected that it would come so soon. The young and inexperienced Tamim is ascending to power at a time of historic upheaval in the region, in which the tiny Emirate of Qatar is playing a central role.

Emir Hamad took power from his own father in a bloodless coup in 1995. Over the last 18 years, he shrewdly parlayed the tiny emirate’s vast gas wealth into a position of central diplomatic influence in the region.

The Qatari emir noted earlier than others the dynamic potential of two emergent forces – satellite media and Sunni Islamism. He placed his bets on them. The decision has proved prescient. Indeed, it has brought hitherto unimaginable levels of power and influence for the tiny emirate.

Founded in 1996, the Doha-based satellite channel al-Jazeera emerged as the key opinion-forming force in Arabic media. Its cocktail of populist anti-western and anti-Israeli sentiment, and its willingness to criticize existing Arab regimes (with the exception of Qatar itself, of course) won it the hearts and minds of millions in the Arabic-speaking world.

Doha’s relations with the Muslim Brothers are of older vintage. Qatar’s patronage of the Brotherhood dates back to the 1960s. Like the Saudis, the Qataris offered refuge to Brotherhood activists fleeing the persecution of Gamal Abd-el Nasir’s regime in Egypt.

In the case of the Saudis, the relationship went sour when Brotherhood ideas began to infect and radicalize significant sections among the Saudis’ own population.

Qatar has never had to worry about domestic radicalization. Of its population of 1.9 million, around 1.7 million are non-citizens. These are mainly guest workers from the Indian sub-continent, without political rights and often kept in horrific conditions. Qatar’s 200,000 citizens are an immensely privileged group. The emirate is the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. This tiny citizenry is the beneficiary of the wealth, with the highest income per capita of any state in the world.

A revolutionary Islamism seeking to turn them against the ruling Al-Thani family thus has little hope of making headway. Qatar, unlike Saudi Arabia, can patronize the Brotherhood without fear.

The result has been a successful partnership. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, most influential of the Brotherhood’s preachers, made his home in Doha. Al-Jazeera provided the platform for al-Qaradawi’s hugely popular and influential broadcasts, in which he issued fatwas and commented on regional politics.

Media influence and populist appeals went hand in hand with Qatari financial generosity – in Lebanon, among the Palestinians, in Sudan. All this translated into political influence – see Qatar’s hosting, for example, of talks between Fatah and Hamas, and of warring Lebanese factions in 2008.

The rise of Sunni Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East over the last decade (and in accelerated form in the last two years) has carried Qatar to a position of unprecedented influence. The little emirate is now in the big leagues. This has brought with it new problems and dilemmas.

Qatar stands somewhere close to center stage in all the main flashpoints of the region at the present time. It is the main financial backer of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Doha stands to replace Iran as the main backer of Hamas, who themselves represent the most dynamic element in Palestinian politics. Qatar has close relations with the Erdogan government in Turkey and with the Nahda government in Tunisia – both Muslim Brotherhood influenced movements.

Qatar is also a central backer of the armed rebellion in Syria. Qatari money finances many of the most active fighting units among the rebels. In particular, Doha (in cooperation with the Turks) backs rebels units of a Muslim Brotherhood type orientation, such as Aleppo’s Tawhid Brigade.

Qatar’s gains have raised the ire of two far more substantial regional players – Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Iranians, with whom Qatar shares a massive natural gas field, are furious at Qatari support for the rebellion against their client regime in Damascus.

The Saudis are no less incensed at what they see as Qatar’s irresponsible support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which Riyadh regards as the main threat to itself and other conservative Gulf monarchies. Saudi Arabia’s rivalry with Qatar is of long standing, but the growing influence of Qatar has intensified it.

Qatar’s alliance with the anti-western Muslim Brotherhood is made yet more complex by its dependence on the US for protection against the Iranian threat. The Americans maintain their largest air base in the region at al-Udeid, west of the Qatari capital.

This combination of circumstances will now be the responsibility of 33 year old Tamim al-Thani. Are there any indications offering guidance as to how he will respond to them?

First of all, any hopes that the new Emir might promote a less pro-Islamist approach appear unlikely to be realized. Informed sources suggest that Tamim is if anything yet more pro-Brotherhood than his father. The strategic alliance between Doha and the Brothers that has so incensed the Saudis is likely to continue.

Secondly, the smooth nature of the transition suggests that the break with the old system of power is unlikely to be complete. While influential current prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani will be replaced, the former Emir is likely to have a continued role in policymaking. Tamim’s accession does not represent the victory of a new branch of the Thani family, or a new outlook. It is about the existing establishment ensuring its future.

So the bottom line is that more of the same is the most likely outlook for Qatar. More support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Syria, Gaza and beyond, more selective promotion of reform abroad while maintaining a system of near-slave labor at home, more tweaking the nose of Iran while nestling beneath the protective umbrella of the US Air Force, and more competition with Saudi Arabia.

Francois Voltaire wrote that ‘with great power comes great responsibility.’ Qatar’s regional stances suggest that if great power comes with limitless wealth and western indulgence, then the responsibility can be happily ignored – at least for a time.

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Plagiarized?

Posted on June 9, 2013 by jonathanspyer

A BBC-Watch site accuses a BBC journalist of cribbing from one of my articles:

http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2013/05/10/curious/

Yesterday I praised Paul Danahar for his realistic and reasoned analysis of the situation in Syria and compared it favourably against the efforts of Mark Mardell whose reports seem coloured by his admiration for Obama.

But I was looking at this which was published on the 3rd of May on ‘Jonathan Spyer’ (A well known blog that analyses the Middle East):

Is Assad Winning?

What is striking about it is just how similar it is to Danahar’s report…or rather how similar Danahar’s is to this one….as Danahar’s came out on the 9th. The similarity is even more striking when you compare Danahar’s radio report which is almost word for word, or idea for idea, the same….Danahar on 5Live Drive (18:36)

Facts on the ground of course are the same for everyone but how they interpret them is something else…especially for BBC journo’s who often have their own view of the world….could Danahar really have come up with this himself..or has he taken a ‘shortcut’ and borrowed a few thoughts on the Syrian situation?

Talk of ‘vacuums’ being filled, fragmented forces and command and control, Assad supported by Iran and Russia knowing he will survive because the West still refuses to take action and the picking off of a divided enemy one by one….and of course that possibly very telling concept, the ‘big idea’ of the piece…that if Assad hasn’t lost he has won:

Spyer: ‘So Assad isn’t winning, despite the new bullishness of his supporters. But right now, he isn’t losing either.’

Danahar: ‘Now, by hanging on this long, the regime in Damascus increasingly thinks that by not losing it is winning.’

Could just be coincidence…as I said, the facts are the same for everyone….but its a very close fit.

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Hizballah enters the Syrian Abyss

Posted on June 2, 2013 by jonathanspyer

Two Grad rockets were fired this week at the south Beirut suburb of Shiyah. This district borders the Dahiyeh – the stronghold in the city which houses the main offices of Hizballah. The decision to strike so close to Hizballah’s nerve center is a dramatic escalation by the Syrian rebels of their simmering conflict with the Lebanese Shia militia.

The official leadership of the Free Syrian Army repudiated earlier claims of responsibility for the rocket fire issued in its name. But the official leadership of the FSA do not in fact command the mainly Sunni Islamist men who do the actual fighting in Syria for the rebellion. So their statements are of only secondary importance.

What is happening is that Hizballah’s long standing but increasingly overt engagement in the war in Syria is now being paid back in kind by the rebels.

Some of Hizballah’s best fighters have for the last ten days been spearheading a relentless regime advance into the city of Qusayr. They are now two thirds of the way into the city, pushing northwards. The going has been tougher than expected. The rebels have fought for every inch of ground. But the Lebanese Shia fighters, backed up by regime artillery and air power, are moving forward.

The fighting in Qusayr does not represent the opening of a new front. Rather, it is the most intensive manifestation of a long active sector of the war, in which Hizballah and regime forces battle rebels in the poorly demarcated border zone between Syria and Lebanon. This reporter wrote as far back as October last year that ‘whatever the tactical details – the FSA and Hizballah are already at war.’

But Hizballah for a long time preferred to blur its own role in the fighting. It claimed that the Shia fighters on the ground were local Syrian villagers, who had requested assistance and advice from Hizballah. No longer. A week into the fight for Qusayr, Hassan Nasrallah issued a ringing declaration promising victory to his followers.

It has evidently occurred to elements among the Syrian rebels that if Hizballah can interfere in their dispute, they can return the compliment.

Hizballah dominance has been apparent in Lebanon ever since the Shia brushed aside Sa’ad Hariri’s feeble challenge to its authority in May, 2008.

The movement’s ascendancy has never been accepted by all. But neither the urbane followers of Hariri, nor the divided and declining Christians, nor the ever pragmatic and few in number Druze, were able to pose any kind of a challenge.

It was long clear that if a challenge were to come, it could come from one quarter only – that of the Islamists among the Lebanese Sunni population. For a long period, though, a challenge from that quarter too seemed unlikely. Lebanon’s Sunnis do not have a long tradition of militancy. Hizballah’s Iran-supplied weaponry and expertise seemed to conclude the argument. Sunni radical preachers such as Sidon’s Ahmed al-Assir were half comical figures. No one is laughing now.

The Syrian civil war has altered the power calculus in Lebanon. The Salafi Islamists of Lebanon have noted the emergence of an insurgency dominated by their ideological compatriots in Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham. The Syrian rebels, meanwhile, as they battle Hizballah’s forces in Homs province and the Damascus area, observe that their enemies have a backyard in which they are vulnerable.

The Lebanese Sunni Islamist and the Syrian rebels have therefore now begun to strike Hizballah in its underbelly – Lebanon itself.

The Grads in south Beirut were only the most graphic demonstration of the opening of a new front in Lebanon. In the northern city of Tripoli, the long smoldering conflict between pro-rebel Islamist militants in the city’s Bab al-Tabaneh neighborhood and the pro-Assad Alawites of the Jebel Mohsen district once again broke out into the open.

Over 30 people died and more than 200 have been wounded as the Sunni Islamists, thought to include Jabhat al-Nusra members, descended on the rival neighborhood. Their act came only days after the opening of the assault on Qusayr City.

There are fears that if and when Qusayr falls to the regime, the Islamists in Tripoli will seek to exact their vengeance on the people of Jabal Mohsen.

Which means that Tripoli has now in effect become an outlying sector in the Syrian civil war.

There have been further rocket attacks by rebels across the Syrian border on the Hizballah supporting Hermel area. And rebels have issued a number of blood-curdling threats against Hizballah. In one video, commanders and fighters of Aleppo’s Tawhid Brigade threatened to ‘target the locations’ of Hizballah everwhere, in response to the party’s engagement in Syria.

The Tawhid commander further warned that unless the Beirut government restrained Hezbollah, the rebels ‘will have to move the battle to Lebanon,’ and said that ‘“Our developed rockets will then target Beirut’s southern suburb and beyond… and I will give directions to the revolutionary in Syria to attack the gangs of Hezbollah in all Shiite village.”

Another group of rebels in Qusayr accused senior Hizballah commander Mustafa Badreddine of leading Hizballah forces in the city and vowed to kill him. They referred to party leader Hassan Nasarallah as ‘Hassan Nasr a-Shaytan’ (Hassan victory of Satan.)

In Sidon, too, followers of Ahmed al-Assir fought with Hizballah supporting members of the so-called ‘Resistance Brigades.’ Shotes were fired outside of the Bilal Ibn Rabah Mosque, where Assir is the Imam.

What all this adds up to is that the sectarian balance of power in Lebanon is ripe for shifting as a result of the emergence of the Sunni insurgency in Syria. Hizballah chose or was instructed by its Iranian patron to go all in to help save their ally in Damascus. As a result, Lebanon is now being drawn inexorably closer to the flames of the Syrian civil war. The explosions in the Shiyah district may well be remembered as the decisive opening shots to renewed civil strife in Lebanon.

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