Sunni Islamism Stirs in Lebanon

Posted on July 7, 2012 by jonathanspyer

As the civil war in Syria grinds on and assumes an increasingly sectarian character, echoes of the strife are being heard across the border in Lebanon.

The main beneficiary of the Arab uprisings of the last year has been Sunni Islamism. In Syria, Sunnis are playing an increasingly important role in the rebellion against President Bashar Assad. In Lebanon, too, individuals and movements of this type are emerging to prominence and issuing a challenge to the dominant political force in the country – Hezbollah. Sunni northern Lebanon, in particular the town of Tripoli, is a center both of Sunni Islamism and of support for the Syrian rebellion. The town has become a gathering point for foreign jihadi fighters on their way to fight the Assad regime.

The fate of Lebanon has always been acutely influenced by events in its larger neighbor, to the sorrow of many Lebanese. Currently, too, the Assad regime and Hezbollah are members of the same Iran-led regional bloc.

Lebanese Sunnis are aware of this alliance. Most have not happily acquiesced to the de facto Shi’a domination of Lebanon. They are aware also that Hezbollah is actively aiding Assad. Many are keen to play their own part in the unfolding battle, and to launch a Sunni resistance both to contest Hezbollah’s dominance of Lebanon and to support their fellow Sunnis against Assad’s local allies.

The problem for Lebanese Sunnis wishing to express and organize their discontent with Hezbollah has been a de facto vacuum of leadership in the community. The March 14 movement led by Saad Hariri sought to challenge Hezbollah in May,2008, and was quickly swept off the streets by the Shi’a militia. Saad Hariri has not been in Lebanon since last April.

Few Sunnis now see Hariri as a potential leader of the country. The March 14 strategy was to oppose Hezbollah’s guns with an appeal to international legality. Hezbollah contemptuously rolled over this approach.

As a result of this vacuum, and perhaps also in line with the mood of the times, the stirrings of Sunni discontent against the de facto domination of the country by Hezbollah are taking Islamist form. Sunni anger is currently coalescing around the figure of Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir, a Salafi cleric from the town of Sidon, in the south of the country. Assir, the Imam of the Bilal Ibn Rabah mosque in Sidon, has achieved prominence over the last year because of his outspoken statements in opposition to Hezbollah. In particular, the Salafi sheikh has focused on the independent military capacity maintained by the Shi’a movement.

On June 23, in an interview on Al- Jadeed TV in west Beirut, Assir appeared to offer a direct challenge to Hezbollah’s independent weapons capacity and to its domination of the country.

“Either we live as equal partners,” he said, “or else, I swear by God, O Hassan Nasrallah and Nabih Berri, I, Ahmad Assir, will shed every drop of my blood to prevent you from relaxing until balance is restored to Lebanon.”

Two days later, gunmen fired on the offices of Al-Jadeed TV.

Following this interview, Assir launched a permanent demonstration in Sidon (with echoes of the sitin launched by Hezbollah and its allies in Beirut in late 2006 against the then-government of Fuad Siniora.) He has vowed to maintain this protest until the issue of Hezbollah’s independent arms capacity is resolved.

Assir’s rise to prominence is built on a perception that he is stating openly what many Sunnis are saying privately.

Thus, in spite of the apparently quixotic aspect of a provincial Lebanese Sunni cleric making demands of a powerful Iran-backed militia, Hezbollah and its allies are taking the latest developments seriously.

The emergence of Assir as a spokesman for Sunni grievances is going hand-inhand with a broader rise in Sunni militancy elsewhere in Lebanon. There are reports of military training of Sunni Lebanese volunteers in the Bekaa Valley, before they cross the border into Syria to fight Assad’s forces. In the Sunni heartland of rural northern Lebanon, sentiment in favor of the Syrian rebels runs high, increased by close acquaintance with Sunni refugees who have fled Syria for Lebanon over the course of the last year.

It is, of course, impossible to predict whether the current Sunni ferment in Lebanon will take on the form of action against the de facto Shi’a domination of the country. Outside of the Salafi fringe, the Lebanese Sunnis lack a deep tradition of paramilitary activity.

Large numbers of more middle-class and Westernized Lebanese Sunnis distrust the Islamists. Hezbollah, meanwhile, is a daunting, well armed and brutal foe.

Still, it is worth remembering that in the Lebanese sectarian system, nothing is forever.

The various sects reach their uneasy modus vivendi based on the relative power balance between them at any given time. Until 2011, the Shi’a power of Hezbollah, armed, trained and financed by Iran, seemed to brook no possible rivals. The civil war in Syria brings with it the undermining of Iran’s local Arab state ally, which formed a vital partner for Hezbollah and its allies in their domination of Lebanon.

This for Sunnis makes feasible, or at least imaginable, a challenge to the current situation of Hezbollah/Shi’a domination. As a result of the Syrian civil war, the first stirrings of a Sunni attempt to once again “renegotiate” the sectarian balance of power in Lebanon are being felt.

This “re-negotiation,” if it happens, will be led by Sunnis. In Lebanon, however, they will face not a decrepit military-nationalist regime, but rather a powerful, mobilized, rival Shi’a Islamism. The Arab Spring, which should more accurately be called the Revolt of Sunni Islam, may be coming to Lebanon.

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Tensions between FSA rebels, Kurdish Separatists in Syria

Posted on June 29, 2012 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post, 29/6.

At a recent meeting in London, I asked a Syrian Kurd whose affiliations are close to the nationalist PKK why the Kurds of Syria remained on the sidelines in the uprising against Bashar Assad. The Kurds of Syria, who number around 10% of the population of Syria, have largely preferred to avoid active involvement in the civil war now taking place.

His reply was enlightening. “What uprising?” he said, “What’s going on in Syria is a fight between the Assad regime on the one hand, and the Turkish government and the Muslim Brotherhood on the other. The Kurds have no part in this, and we need to protect our own areas against both the Assad regime, and the possibility of Turkish intervention.”

This statement, it is now clear, was not merely idle speculation. The PKK and its Syrian affiliates are currently organizing to prevent the Syrian revolution and its armed elements from activity in Kurdish areas in the country. This is leading to tensions with the Free Syrian Army.

The FSA now controls significant territorial enclaves within Syria. One of the largest of these stretches from the Turkish border in northern Aleppo province, west of Aleppo city and down to the area north of Idleb city. East of Aleppo, however, is an area of largely Kurdish population.

In the large area of Syria’s north-east stretching from the triangular border area where Syria meets Turkey and Iraq, to the town of Efrin, east of Aleppo city, the FSA has found its activities hindered by the presence of an armed Kurdish element.

These armed Kurds are not a merely local initiative. According to a report by Mohammad Ballout at the respected Al Monitor website, 4-4,500 PKK fighters travelled over the last year from the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq, to northern Syria. Their presence, alongside mobilized local men, ensures the dominance in this majority Kurdish area of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is the PKK’s representative movement among the Kurds of Syria.

This force has no interest in allowing Kurdish areas to be used for the operations of an insurgency which they regard as Turkish-sponsored, and Sunni Arab in nature.

The Assad regime has been happy to take advantage of the opportunity to ensure quiet in the north-east. According to Ballout’s report, the regime released 640 PYD members from its jails in 2011. Most of these militants made their way to the north to take part in the securing of the Kurdish region.

The town of Efrin, east of Aleppo, offers a gateway into Syria’s second largest city. The Free Syrian Army identifies securing control of Aleppo as a strategic goal. But the presence of the PYD-controlled fighters, who maintain checkpoints along the road from Efrin to Aleppo, has prevented the FSA from achieving this objective. The Kurdish fighters also try to prevent the smuggling of Saudi, Turkish and Qatari arms for the rebels across the Turkish border into the area they control.

The Kurdish-controlled area in Syria’s north-west has been acknowledged by the FSA leadership to represent a significant challenge. General Mustafa al-Sheikh, FSA chief of staff, told a Turkish newspaper that “the Syrian regime is trying to use the Kurds. The PKK has been mobilized in Syria on orders of the regime. The Syrian regime is supporting the PKK now against the interests of Turkey.”
Colonel Riyad Asaad of the FSA, who like al-Sheikh is based in southern Turkey, concurred that PKK fighters were present in the Efrin region. “The PKK guerrillas,” Asaad said, “are hindering the movement of our armed forces in these regions.”

The PYD is not overtly pro-Assad. The party is an affiliate of the National Coordination Committee, an opposition coalition which opposes external intervention into Syria. This group is regarded by the FSA and the Syrian National Council as a stooge of the regime.

PYD representatives freely acknowledge their opposition to FSA activity in the Kurdish north-east. Hussein Kocher, a local representative of the PYD, noted that “some time ago units of the FSA wanted to enter the Efrin region but the Kurdish people did not allow them. Kurds have their own forces and do not need Arab forces or forces from other countries.”

The PYD is of course not the only element active among the Kurds of Syria’s north east. But even its rivals in the 11 party Kurdish National Council (KNC), who are close to the Kurdish Regional Government of northern Iraq, are sceptical regarding the pro-Turkish and Arab nature of the uprising. Following recent tensions, the two groups signed an agreement sponsored by the Iraqi Kurdish leadership to prevent intra-Kurdish tensions.

This agreement seals the de facto Kurdish control of a large swathe of Syria’s north-east, and the placing of this area off limits to the insurgency against the Assad regime for the foreseeable future.

Sentiment among the Kurds there is not pro-regime. Demonstrations calling for the downfall of Assad do take place. But the distrust of the Turkish-backed rebel forces runs broad and deep. The broad consensus against allowing FSA activity is strengthened by a determination to spare the Kurdish population from the brutal regime retribution meted out elsewhere in the country.

Syrian Kurdish scepticism toward the rebellion is well-based. The main strategic backer of the rebels is indeed Erdogan’s Turkey. The Turkish government remains opposed to Kurdish demands for greater autonomy. Erdogan has ensured a top-heavy representation for the Muslim Brotherhood in the Turkish-sponsored Syrian National Council.

But even non-Islamist elements in the SNC and the FSA look for the most part suspiciously like Arab nationalists, from the Kurdish point of view. The appointment of a Kurd, Abd al Baset Sieda, as the nominal head of the SNC is likely to prove insufficient to dispel this sense.

So the Kurdish strategy appears to be to seek to sit out the Syrian civil war. If the rebels win, the Kurds will then try to negotiate from a position of strength with the new regime, from their fastness in the north-east of the country. In the unlikely event of Assad prevailing, the Kurdish stance will mean that they will avoid the worst fury of the regime’s revenge.

Minority communities have not so far done well out of the Arab uprisings. The main victor in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia has been Sunni Islamism.

The Kurds of Syria differ from many other regional minorities in that they possess separatist defense structures of their own. In the context of the earthquake currently taking place in Syria and beyond it, it is not surprising that they prefer to place their trust only in themselves.

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Defections reflect doubts among Assad loyalists

Posted on June 26, 2012 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post, 26/06/2012

Analysis: Syrian rebels, having begun as an uprising against recognized authorities, are beginning to look more like a rival center of power in country.

The defection this week of a Syrian general, five other officers and 33 soldiers to Turkey represents the latest setback to the beleaguered regime of Bashar Assad in Damascus.

This brings the number of generals who have deserted Assad’s cause to 13 – in addition to thousands of rank-and-file soldiers and more junior officers.

Three Syrian pilots also defected to Jordan on Sunday.

These latest losses to the Syrian dictator are of course not decisive in themselves. But they add to the general picture in which the regime, while still defiant, is visibly running out of ideas.

It is doubling down on the only strategy available to it – increasing the pitch and the brutality of its attempt to crush the rebellion by force. This strategy is succeeding in creating an ever-larger body count. But it is showing no signs of stopping the rebellion. This in turn is leading toward growing disillusionment among the remaining loyal forces.

Reliable estimates now suggest that the Syrian rebels have around 40,000 fighters available to them. This is a significant force, though one still concentrated in particular areas of the country.

By comparison, the Muslim Brotherhood uprising that Assad’s father crushed in Hama in 1982 never had more than around 4,000 insurgents under its banner.

Assad officially controls an army of just over 200,000 men.

But only some of them are sufficiently trusted to be engaged against the rebellion.

The Syrian rebels, having begun as an uprising against the recognized authorities, are beginning to look more like a rival center of power in the country. The latest defections are evidence that this is becoming apparent to a growing number of Assad’s men.

Many aspects are coming together to create this impression.

First, the rebels are in de facto control of a growing swathe of Syrian territory. This is despite the determined and bloody counter-offensive that the regime launched in March, in an attempt to reconquer areas under rebel control.

The Assad regime still has the capability to conquer and control any specific point in Syria.

But it does not possess sufficient loyal forces to simultaneously occupy and control all areas of support for the insurgency.

Assad controls the cities and main highways throughout Syria. But in a large part of the north, his troops no longer venture far into the countryside.

The area between Aleppo and Idlib cities is now effectively under rebel control. A second “safe zone” stretching from the Turkish border down to the outskirts of Hama is in the hands of the rebellion. Smaller rebel-controlled zones in Deraa governate, north and south of Homs city and in the Zabadani area near Lebanon have also been carved out.

Second, the rebels are able to call on more sophisticated weaponry, which is making its way across the border from Turkey, financed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and coordinated with Turkish and possibly also US help.

These increased capabilities are making a difference. Improvised explosive devices are being used to harass Assad’s forces, and photographic evidence has emerged of destroyed tanks in the north of the country. The death toll among loyalist forces is growing.

Increasingly, Assad prefers to use artillery and attack helicopters rather than armor and infantry.

This is an indication of declining manpower and perhaps also reduced trust on the part of the regime in its own foot soldiers.

Third, the Assad regime’s downing of a Turkish F-4 fighter jet last week threatens to bring down retribution. The Turks have called for a meeting of NATO countries under article 4 of the NATO charter, set to take place this week.

The Assad regime will be waiting to see if the downing of the aircraft proves to be the factor that finally precipitates more determined and overt international action against it. Turkey has proven unwilling to act alone, however, so this will depend on the views of other member states that have displayed marked reluctance toward stronger measures.

In any case, fear of this possibility also forms a background to the growing jitters among larger numbers of Assad’s men and growing numbers of Assad’s troops. Thirty-nine such men, including a general, made their way with their families from northern Syria to Hatay province in Turkey this week as a result of these doubts. More are likely to follow.

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Syrian Rebels Gaining Ground

Posted on June 19, 2012 by jonathanspyer

As the UN Observer Mission in Syria ceases its activities, there are indications that the Syrian rebels are beginning to gain the upper hand against the Assad regime. The rebels have scored notable achievements against government forces in recent days. There are corresponding signs of growing demoralization among regime troops, and among those sections of the population still supporting Assad.

The advantage in the civil war in Syria has ebbed and flowed. The rebels began to establish ‘liberated zones’ in parts of the country from around last October. In late February, the regime launched a determined, bloody counter-attack to re-conquer these areas, and largely achieved this in time for the ‘ceasefire’ of April 10. With the ceasefire now in tatters, the indications are that the momentum of the insurgency has picked up again, and is now driving forward against the regime’s forces.

Once again, it is the central Syrian city of Homs which is the main focal point. Government forces were massing outside of the city over the weekend, apparently in preparation for a fresh assault. But as the troops assembled to re-take the urban center of Homs, it has become apparent that large swathes of the surrounding countryside are no longer under government control.

A reporter for Mcclatchy News, embedded with Free Syrian Army fighters in Homs governate, noted that the rebels have now expelled government troops from the towns of Rastan and Talbiseh, north of Homs city. The rebels are also battling for Qusayr, to the south of Homs. The FSA unit engaged in this area is the Farouq Brigade, one of the best organized of the free army formations.

An individual identified as a former captain of Assad’s army captured by the FSA expressed his surprise at the rebels’ strength. “We didn’t imagine they had these numbers and so much equipment,’ he told McClatchy.

Rebels also noted an increased use by regime forces of attack helicopters, in order to avoid the necessity of engaging rebels on the ground.

The Arabic Sharq al-Awsat newspaper is indicating a similar direction to events. The paper this week described a growing mood of ‘restlessness and fear’ among mid-level officers of Assad’s army.

It noted a conviction spreading among many of Assad’s officers that the rebels must prevail in the end, through sheer force of numbers. Officers quoted similarly expressed acknowledgement that the rebel forces were larger and more organized than they had expected. They dismissed the notion that the insurgents consisted merely of ‘gangs’, as regime propaganda maintains.

One officer said that “there is a new reality that we are feeling daily on the ground. But the regime refuses to recognize this.”

The spread of the violence into areas which regime supporters had considered firmly under Assad’s control is increasing the mood of despondency.

For a period, the Syrian capital Damascus managed to maintain an appearance of near-normality. No longer. In an under-reported but significant development, the rebels launched a series of coordinated attacks in and around the city last Friday.

The neighborhood of Kfar Soussa, a stronghold of anti-regime sentiment in Damascus, was the scene of heavy fighting. Large explosions were also heard in the Mazzah, Qudsiyeh and al-Qadam neighborhoods.

The town of Douma, in the Damascus suburbs, also witnessed clashes. Sources suggest that the eruption of the rebellion into urban Damascus for the first time has removed the last vestiges of normality to which pro-regime elements were clinging.

The fighting in the heart of Damascus, especially in Kafr Soussa, is seen by Damascenes as a major loss for the government. Many members of the city’s upper middle class have left for abroad. Damascus’s Old City is almost under curfew, with checkpoints at all points of entry and exit.

All these indications are at root the product of a significant increase in recent months in the abilities of the rebel forces. This improvement is almost certainly the result of greater quantities of Saudi and Qatari aid reaching the rebels, mostly across the border from Turkey. There have been some suggestions of US intelligence and special forces engaging in helping to direct this aid, though this has yet to be confirmed.

The battle is not over, nor is it yet decided. But it is the rebels who now have the initiative, and who are gaining ground.

The regime, meanwhile, appears to be following a dual strategy. While maintaining a fortress-like hold on the capital, and still seeking to re-conquer urban centers held by the rebels, the regime is also carving out an Alawi enclave in the north-west of the country. Non-Alawis are being expelled from the designated area. This area will form a safe zone and ‘baseline’ for the regime, Assad hopes, in the event of a long, protracted war.

It is not clear if this strategy will succeed. But the very fact that it is being adopted shows that the regime is seeking to reduce and consolidate its commitments, in the face of the widening rebel assault upon it. The Syrian civil war is entering a new phase.

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A loon claims that I am an ‘adviser’ to the ‘Free Syrian Terrorist Army’

Posted on June 17, 2012 by jonathanspyer

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Interview on ABC News

Posted on June 1, 2012 by jonathanspyer

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-31/20120531-worldiv-raw/4045298

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The Rise of Hamas-Gaza

Posted on May 16, 2012 by jonathanspyer

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement which controls the Gaza Strip, recently held internal elections. The polls were for the Gaza Political Bureau and Shura Council, often described as the movement’s parliament. Hamas holds its votes in secret, and tries to prevent the outside world from gaining knowledge of the movement’s internal political processes. However, it has become clear that the elections represented a significant victory for Hamas’s Gaza leadership. This came at the expense of the formerly Damascus-based external leadership group of Khaled Meshaal, which is now scattered across the region.

Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is now the head of the Gaza Political Bureau. This is the top movement position in the Strip. He is the first to hold this title since Abd al-Aziz Rantisi was killed by Israel in 2004.

The latest victory of the Gaza leaders may be a step on the road to their capture of the overall leadership of Hamas. This advance, in turn, may be traced back to two key elements.

First, the Gaza leaders possess power, a key element that their rivals lack. They hold real political and administrative power and control over the lives of the 1.7 million inhabitants of Gaza and of the 365 square kilometers in which they live. Second: the upheavals in the Arab world — and specifically the civil war in Syria — have served to severely weaken the formerly Damascus-based external leadership, depleting the value of the assets they held in the competition with the internal Gaza leaders.

The nature of the regime created by Hamas in Gaza, and its strength and durability, has received insufficient attention in the West. This may have a political root: Western governments feel the need to keep alive the fiction of the long-dead peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. One of the necessary components of this is pretending that the historic split between nationalists and Islamists among the Palestinians has not really happened, or that it is a temporary glitch that will soon be reconciled. This fiction is necessary for peace process believers, because it enables them to continue to treat the West Bank Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas as the sole representative of the Palestinians.

But fiction it is. An Islamist one-party quasi-state has been built in Gaza over the last half-decade. The prospects for this enclave and its importance in the period ahead have been immeasurably strengthened by the advances made by Hamas’ fellow Muslim Brotherhood branches in Egypt and elsewhere in the region.

Hamas has created a unique, Sunni Islamist form of authoritarian government in the Gaza Strip. It has successfully crushed all political opposition. It has created a security system in which a movement militia, the Qassam Brigades, exists alongside supposedly non-political security forces which are themselves answerable to Hamas-controlled ministries. It has imposed the will of the Hamas government on the formerly PA-controlled judiciary, and has simultaneously created a parallel system of Islamic courts.

The result of all this is that there is today no serious challenge to Hamas control of Gaza.

Against this center of real-world power, the external Hamas leadership faced the prospect of growing irrelevance in recent years. It was saved from this irrelevance because it controlled the foreign contacts — most importantly with Iran — that brought the donations vital to the survival of the Gaza enclave. This money in turn underwrote the existence of the Qassam Brigades, and hence made any challenge from Gaza to the external leadership unfeasible.
Then the “Arab Spring” came to Syria, home base of the external leadership. Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood franchise, faced a dilemma. The Iran-led regional alliance of which it was a part was crushing an uprising at least partially led by its fellow Muslim Brothers in Syria.

Hamas made its choice — in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood. As a result, Iranian donations have rapidly depleted. The external leadership has scattered in a number of directions from Damascus: Meshaal is in Qatar; Mousa Abu Marzook is in Cairo; Imad Alami has returned to Gaza. There are members as far afield as Istanbul and Khartoum.

The internal leadership, meanwhile, has increased revenues from the smuggling tunnels between Sinai and Gaza since the fall of Mubarak in Egypt. This is helping to make up for the decline in Iranian support.

Reports suggest that control of the movement’s budget and of the Qassam Brigades has now been removed from Meshaal, though he retains his formal position as the movement’s overall leader. The internal leadership also headed off an attempt by Meshaal to cobble together a “reconciliation” deal with the West Bank PA in February. Such a deal would have required Hamas to dismantle the structures of its government in Gaza.

Palestinian nationalism has traditionally favored words and gestures over concrete deeds. This is one of the sources for its historical failure to produce anything much tangible of note. Palestinian Islamism has a different approach: in line with the traditional strategy of the Muslim Brotherhood, it understands the importance of concrete, patient building on the ground.

This does not mean that Hamas in Gaza has lost sight or will lose sight of the maximalist ideological goals of the movement. It does mean, however, that the split in the Palestinian national movement should now finally be internalized as a long-term development. The more formidable, serious element of that movement is in control of Gaza. The Islamist one-party statelet in Gaza, in turn, is allied with the trend that is proving the major beneficiary of the Arab upheavals of 2011 — namely, Sunni Islamism.

If the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power in Egypt, Hamas-controlled Gaza may yet become a point of strategic importance as a friction point with Israel, which could lead to broader tensions.

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Syrian Kurdish dissident: ‘Break Syria into Pieces’

Posted on May 16, 2012 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post 16/05/2012

Sherkoh Abbas, a veteran Syrian Kurdish dissident, called on Israel this week to support the break-up of Syria into a series of federal structures based on the country’s various ethnicities.

Speaking from Washington, Abbas was also critical of US attempts to induce Syrian Kurds to join and work with the main opposition body, the Syrian National Council. Abbas, who heads the Washington- based Kurdistan National Assembly, said that dismantling Syria into ethnic enclaves with a federal administration would serve to “break the link” between Syria and the Iran-led “Shi’a crescent.”

Syrian Kurdish, Druse, Alawite and Sunni Arab federal areas, he suggested, would have no interest in aligning with Iran.

At the same time, a federalized Syria would avoid the possibility of a resurgent, Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Sunni Islamist Syria emerging as a new challenge to Israel and the West.

“We need to break Syria into pieces,” Abbas said.

The Syrian Kurdish dissident argued that a federal Syria, separated into four or five regions on an ethnic basis, would also serve as a natural “buffer” for Israel against both Sunni and Shi’ite Islamist forces.

Kurds are the largest ethnic minority population in Syria. They number more than 10 percent of the population, centered in the northeastern provinces of Hasakeh and Qamishli.

There is also a large, partly Arabized Kurdish population in the cities of Aleppo, Hama and Damascus.

Despite the Assad regime’s determined counter-attack in recent months, Abbas dismissed any possibility that the beleaguered dictator could survive in the long term.

“Whether it is one year, or even two, the regime is finished,” he said.

The KNA leader pointed to the recent bloody terror attacks in Damascus as an indication of President Bashar Assad’s desperation, arguing that these were the work of Sunni jihadis in the pay of of Assad.

“The regime is now unleashing its suicide groups,” he asserted.

His remarks came in response to a meeting at the US State Department last week between American officials and representatives of the Kurdish National Council, a Syrian Kurdish body. Robert Ford, who left his post as US ambassador to Syria earlier this year, and Fred Hof, the administration’s special coordinator on Syria, took part in the meeting. State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner described its purpose as part of “ongoing efforts… to help the Syrian opposition build a more cohesive opposition to Assad.”

Abbas, however, was more blunt in his description of the meeting’s purpose. It was held, he said, so that the US officials could tell the Kurdish representatives, “You should be part of the Syrian National Council.”

So far, only one Syrian Kurdish organization – the Future Movement of Fares Tammo – has elected to join the SNC.

Many Kurds distrust the SNC because of the strong presence of Muslim Brotherhood members in its leadership, and because of its close links to the government of Turkey.

SNC leader Burhan Ghalioun has rejected the existence of any region called “Kurdistan” within Syria. He has called on Syrian Kurds to abandon what he called the “useless illusion” of federalism.

Early Kurdish recruits to the council withdrew from it after failing to secure a commitment to change the name of a post-Assad Syria from the current Syrian Arab Republic to the plain “Syrian Republic.” The SNC has also made no commitment to Kurdish autonomy in a post-Assad Syria.

Radwan Ziadeh, a prominent Washington- based member of the SNC, said that the issue of the Syrian Kurds could only be settled after the fall of the Syrian regime, in the context of democracy.

Perhaps because of these positions, the Syrian Kurdish attitude toward the uprising has remained cautious. The Kurds have many deep grievances against the Assad regime: It deprived many of them of citizenship, it transferred Arab settlers into northern Syria to break Kurdish contiguity of population, and it suppressed Kurdish language and culture.

But the Syrian opposition as currently constituted seems to many Kurds to be insufficiently interested in remedying this situation. The Kurds are also divided among themselves. The KNC is dominated by the Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria, which has close links to the Kurdish Regional Government of Massoud Barzani in northern Iraq. The PKK-linked PYD, meanwhile, is, according to Abbas and others, now working in cooperation with the Assad regime.

PYD-linked sources argue that the current Syrian uprising is simply a battle between the regime and an alliance of the Turkish government and the Muslim Brotherhood. As such, they suggest, Syrian Kurds’ main interest is in protecting their own areas.

The bottom line, as Qubad Talabani, representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government to the US, put it in a recent speech, is that the “Syrian opposition is not talking about Kurdish issues, is not talking about the need to protect Kurdish rights or to have the Kurdish identity as part of any new Syria.” For as long as this remains the case, calls for federalism, for separation, and for breaking Syria “into pieces” are likely to grow stronger.

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The Transforming Fire: review by Joseph Morrison Skelly, 9/5

Posted on May 10, 2012 by jonathanspyer

The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel–Islamist Conflict
by Jonathan Spyer
(New York: Continuum, 2010), 227 pages
Reviewed by Joseph Morrison Skelly
Treasurer, Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa /
US Army Reserve
“People walked from tank to tank, shaking hands with friends,
wishing each other luck. I remember standing with my friend
Ariel Ronen and exchanging a few brief words before we boarded.
Blond Ariel, in civilian life the owner of a marketing business in
Petah Tikva, was a tank driver from platoon 2. Unlike me, he
had a practical, military bent to him, and was standing, watching
affairs with a worried furrow to his brow. ‘We aren’t ready for
this,’ he said, as we shook hands. I looked at him quizzically,
but he declined to elaborate, adding simply, ‘Not all of us will be
coming back.’ ‘We will,’ I reassured him, assuming the fatherconfessor role that I had awarded myself in the previous days. He didn’t reply.” (p. 13).

With this passage, and others like it, Jonathan Spyer recounts his experiences serving in the Lebanon War of 2006. A soldier in an Israeli armored reserve unit,
a columnist with The Jerusalem Post, and a research fellow in civilian life, Spyer
deftly interweaves his battlefield recollections with a sustained assessment of the
strategic challenges facing Israel. The result is an insightful, important, and at
times pensive volume, one that is part memoir and part sophisticated political
analysis. The main threats facing Israel today, Spyer asserts, are Islamist states
and organizations—enemies that not only loom on the horizon, such as Iran, but
ones such as Hamas and Hizbullah that lurk closer to home, raining down rockets
into the nation’s heartland. The Jewish State operates within a daunting strategic
environment. In confronting those challenges, Spyer rightly draws strength from
his comrades-in-arms in the Israeli Defense Forces, whose powerful and poignant
stories he sympathetically retells. Israel, too, can draw strength from their stoic
determination as it formulates and executes a national strategy for defeating the
Islamist threats arrayed against it.
In one of the early chapters of his book, Spyer contrasts the nature of Israel’s
current Islamist enemies with its previous opponents—secular Arab regimes and
organizations such as Egypt and the Palestinian Liberation Organization—and
traces the demise of the pan-Arab nationalism that animated these earlier foes. He
recalls the false hopes and hard realities of the Oslo era, a time when many Israelis erroneously concluded that the strategic forecast was improving. If the “collapse
of the Oslo process in 2000, and the four-year low-intensity conflict that followed,
put this assumption into question,” Spyer notes, the “events of 2006—the Hamas
election victory and then the Hizbullah war—all with nuclear-bound Iran lurking
in the background, conclusively buried it. It was clear that the rejection of Israel
had mutated again, and found a new form” (p. 7). With the demise of Israel’s secular
enemies, the threat to Israel did not cease, but morphed into new adversaries of
an Islamist bent. “The problem, as we have seen, was that the deeply felt Arab
rejection of Israel’s presence did not vanish with the fading of its Arab nationalist
carrier. Rather, it was inherited by the enemy and successor of Arab nationalism
within regional politics—the movements of radical Islam” (p. 74).
A vanguard in this transformation has been Hizbullah, which stalks Israel’s
northern border. This organization, which “seared itself into the consciousness
of a whole generation of Israelis who had served in the fighting units of the IDF
in the 1990s,” has been committed to “a stark, uncompromising ideology in which
support for the destruction of Israel formed a centerpiece. This was embedded in
a Shia Islamist worldview, which looked to the Iranian model of rule by clerics.
Optimists had supposed that much of the movement’s focus on this was a matter
of mere rhetoric” (p. 5), but events proved otherwise, especially following Israel’s
unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000. Hizbullah exploited
this retreat to its own strategic and tactical advantages, as the 2006 conflict
demonstrated.
While the nature of Israel’s enemies has altered over the past decade, so too has
Israeli society. In an important chapter in his book, Spyer perceptively delineates
how Israel is changing in response to the strategic threats arrayed against it—how
it is passing through a “transforming fire” of its own, in other words. He places
this transition in historical perspective:
… the European style Zionist ideologies which had shaped the country
and battled each other were being replaced by something new, more
amorphous, less recognizable, which was emerging from below, and from
outside the recognizable ideological divisions of the country. This new,
Israeli nationalism was at once more ethnic, more provincial, less European,
less clearly defined, less open than the country had previously seemed. It
was neither recognizably Ashkenazi, nor recognizably Sephardi, neither
rigorously secular nor strictly observant. The mass of Israelis could find
themselves somewhere within its broad and loosely defined borders (p. 80).
According to Spyer, “the version of Israeli national identity that holds the Israeli
center is entirely inseparable from Jewishness—even among its secular adherents.
Jewish Israel does not see itself as a new country. It is a self-consciously newold
one” (pp. 81–82). And this Israel, Spyer believes, is as determined to defend
itself against its enemies as were previous generations. It “has remained a far
more mobilized, committed society than it superficially may appear. Seventynine
percent of Israelis, when asked, said they would fight for their country.
This contrasts with just over 60 percent of Americans and just over 40 percent
of Britons. Israel scored first in a survey of citizens of twenty-six democratic
countries who were asked this question” (pp. 7–8).
Where does Spyer stand in relation to this process? He poignantly notes that
“I am neither an advocate, nor really an inhabitant, of the new Israeli-Jewish
identity which I have been trying to describe and encapsulate here.” At the time
he emigrated from London to Israel twenty years ago, he was attached to “an
ingrained and largely imaginary place that existed in our minds as a fertile, strong,
proud, and beautiful answer to the sufferings of the Jews in Europe, and to the
long humiliations of exile” (p. 89). But he has come to embrace the “real, breathing,
living country that gets up in the morning and works and argues and reconciles
and makes its loyalties, in its own language and in its own interests” (p. 91). Spyer
zeroes in on the key strategic question, that is, whether the country “the Jews
have built up in Israel over the last century will be sufficient to carry it through
the latest version of the rejection of its presence by the Arab and Muslim cultural
milieu that surrounds it” (p. 92).
Partly in search of an answer to this question, Spyer consistently returns to his
experiences in the IDF. He discusses what he learned about militant Palestinian
culture while serving as a guard at Mahaneh Ofer prison after his reserve unit was
mobilized in 2002. He often revisits the 2006 war in Lebanon. He deals with it on
several levels, revealing in each case his expertise borne of military experience
and intellectual analysis. He honestly assesses the campaign’s flaws; analyzes his
own unit’s controversial mission near the towns of el Khaim and Marjayoun in
southern Lebanon; distills professional advice for future conflicts; addresses the
hybrid mode of combat developed by Hizbullah and the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard Corps; and opens a window onto the tactical experiences of the battlefield.
He spares no one he deems responsible for the war’s shortcomings, and slings his
harshest arrows at “the smug intellectual consensus and the sense of superiority”
(p. 177) of the Israeli and foreign intelligentsia. This war, he writes, “is full of
lessons, which can only be located through a long and unsparing process of
reflection” (p. 165).
In retrospect, Israel’s battle with Hizbullah was at some level a proxy war with
its sponsor, Iran, the greatest threat now facing the nation. In this context Spyer
opens his book with a recollection from 2006 that is, in some ways, a metaphor for Israel writ large today. He talks of his unit on the eve of its operation into
Lebanon. They had assembled in an orchard just south of the Lebanese border.
They prepped their equipment, conducted their pre-combat inspections, tuned up
the engines of their tanks—and waited. “The company was positioned on a field
next to an avocado grove, on lands belonging to a border kibbutz,” Spyer writes.
“We had been waiting there for three days. Twice, the entry into Lebanon had
been postponed. We’d spent the days checking our equipment, eating sandwiches,
smoking cigarettes. Waiting. The routine of tense expectation and prolonged
activity was one you got used to” (p. 1).
Here Spyer captures the common experience of soldiering: periods of intense
preparation combined with anticipation, apprehension, impatience, and then a
calm resolve to complete the mission once the orders to move out arrive. In a sense,
this is a metaphor for Israel today, as it responds to the danger posed by Iran. It
is quietly preparing for all contingencies, making its case abroad, conducting the
nation’s business at home—and waiting. The flare may go up at any time. If it
does, one can hope that Israeli society has internalized the insights into Islamism
that Jonathan Spyer has spelled out in his book. Should that be the case, Israel
will successfully pass through the next transforming fire in its national history—
and in part will have Mr. Spyer to thank.

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The Killing Grounds of Idlib

Posted on May 6, 2012 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post, 4/5.

Human Rights Watch released this week a report that offers a devastating picture of the activities of the Syrian regime in suppressing the revolt underway against it.

The report also stands as an indictment of the impotency of Western and international policy vis a vis the regime.

The HRW document details the actions of the Syrian 76th Brigade, which forms part of the 4th Armored Division in the Idlib governate in northwest Syria, in the days leading up to the “cease-fire” that supposedly came on April 10th. It reveals a regime determined to crush dissent by all means deemed necessary in the time available to it. The picture that emerges is one of a country in the midst of a civil war, albeit one in which the two participant sides are grossly mismatched.

In February, the Assad regime began a sustained counter-attack against areas of support for the revolution against it. The brutal pacification of Homs was the first phase of this counter-revolution. The regime then turned its attention toward the rebellious Idlib province.

As United Nations Special Envoy Kofi Annan quibbled with the Assad regime over the precise terms of the cease-fire, the 76th Brigade moved from town to town in Idlib, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

The HRW report shows how 95 civilians died and hundreds were wounded in the period between March 22 and April 6, as Syrian armor and infantry swept methodically through the towns of Sarmin, Saraqeb, Taftanaz, Hazano and Kelly. These areas had hitherto been precariously controlled by disparate elements of the rebel Free Syrian Army and civilian opposition networks.

Of those killed, the report suggests that 35 were the victims of summary execution by the army or by the Alawi Shabiha paramilitaries who followed it into the towns.

The methods used by the regime forces were the same as those witnessed by the world in Homs. But because of the terrorizing of Western journalists who remained in Homs, no one was present in Idlib to convey the reality of what was happening in real time.

In line with the Homs precedent, the towns targeted were first softened up by sustained artillery fire.

Once this phase was completed, infantry and armor entered the area, accompanied by operatives of Syrian Military Intelligence and supported by helicopters.

In some areas, Free Syrian Army forces put up sustained and determined resistance. In others, the rebels conducted orderly, rapid retreats, aware of their inability to successfully hold back armor and artillery.

But in either case, the result was the same. The civilians of these restive Idlib towns were, after a short interlude, left alone and defenseless before the forces of the regime.

At this point, the process of summary executions, random arrests and terrorizing of civilians began.

The government assault was not characterized by blind rage. Rather, a methodical approach was adopted in which approximately three days were allocated for the pacification of each town. Sarmeen was the first to be targeted, beginning on March 22. Operations in Kelly, the last area to be reduced, were neatly completed by April 6. Taftanaz, the subject of the regime’s attention between April 2 and 4, was the main site of mass executions.

In the dry legalese of the HRW report, “The fighting in Idlib appeared to reach the level of an armed conflict under international law, given the intensity of the fighting and the level of organization on both sides. This would mean that international humanitarian law (the law of armed conflict) would apply in addition to human rights law.”

The report goes on to note that “Serious violations of international humanitarian law are classified as war crimes.”

As an example of the kind of activities unearthed, the execution of 19 members of a single family, the Ghazals of Taftanaz, on a single day, April 3, is described in detail.

According to an eyewitness report, at 3:30 p.m, 20 men in civilian clothes entered a house where the members of the Ghazal extended family had sought refuge from the shelling. The women and elderly were forced to go down to the basement. The men and boys were held upstairs for “questioning.” Female members of the family later reported hearing gunfire.

At 8:30, they ventured back above. They discovered 16 bodies of male members of their family who had been executed. Five of the corpses had been taken to a deserted shop next door and burned. An additional nine, with bullet wounds to the back and head, were in the house itself.

Three more members of the family, including 75- year-old Ghassan Ghazal, were executed by the roving killer squads of the regime in the hours that followed.

This is one representative story from the 76th Brigade’s pacification of Idlib.

In early February, I spent a week in what were then, with defiant hope, called the “liberated zones” of Idlib. My stay included two days in Sarmeen, one of the towns that witnessed the rampage of the 76th Brigade. I spoke to FSA fighters, civilian activists and ordinary residents of the town.

The mood at that time was one of infectious but entirely unwarranted optimism. The contrast between the determined self-belief of the FSA fighters and the obvious inadequacy of their AK-47s and RPG-7s in the face of regime armor, artillery and helicopters was obvious even then. The men I interviewed were the ones who later sought – and, of course, failed – to protect the people of Sarmeen from the assault. Some of them are now dead. The remainder are in the countryside of Idlib, trying to continue the war, or over the border in Turkey. The mood now is one of fury.

The failure of the West to adequately engage with the Syrian opposition, and to act to prevent the war crimes committed by the Assad regime in Idlib, has not meant the death of the uprising.

Rather, it is serving to turn the revolt against Assad’s rule into what the regime always said it was – namely, an increasingly Sunni Islamist cause.

By avoiding engagement, except though the pathetic offices of Kofi Annan and his UN observers, the West has effectively abdicated the field to three Sunni regional powers and Turkey is sponsoring the political opposition. Qatar and Saudi Arabia, through frontmen and in a chaotic and haphazard way, are seeking to aid the armed rebellion.

Unsurprisingly, the main beneficiaries of these states’ assistance are Sunni Islamist forces. Reports from Antakya on the Turkish border suggest that in addition to sectarianism, Saudi and Qatari efforts are characterized by incompetence.

Rival local militias from northern Syria have their representatives in this border town, all seeking to establish their own channel of weapons and money to their own particular fiefdom. It is a recipe for the deterioration of the rebel forces in Idlib into a series of armed sectarian gangs, rather than their consolidation into a united armed body.

This may suit the agenda of the Assad regime’s regional enemies. It is also a gift to the regime itself.

Assad has long portrayed the opposition to him as “armed, terrorist gangs.” The hands-off approach of the West is helping to make this characterization not entirely a fabrication. The end result will be to allow the members of the 76th Brigade and their comrades to continue the systematic slaughter of civilians in Syria.

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