Hamas Seeks a New Patron

Posted on January 12, 2012 by jonathanspyer

PJmedia, 12/1/12

The emergent winner of the Arab upheavals of 2011 is Sunni Islamism. This is reflected most centrally in the election results in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood and the more extreme Salafi trend have won a landslide victory. Arab Sunni Islamist regimes are set to emerge in the period ahead as factors in the regional contest for power.

The emergence of regimes of this type is bad news for the West, but it also represents a setback for the main enemies of the West in the Mideast — namely, Iran and its allies. The rise of Sunni Islamism has implications in the Palestinian arena.

Hamas is currently seeking to exit the Shia, Iran-led bloc in the direction of Sunni Islamist power. Meanwhile, Iran is focusing on its solid link with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement as an alternative to the dying alliance with Hamas.

Over the previous decade, Tehran had hoped to unite Islamist and anti-Western forces in the region behind its banner, and thus to emerge as the main challenger to the U.S. This ambition contained a fairly obvious flaw: the Iranians are Shia Muslims and non-Arabs. They were hoping to lead an area consisting overwhelmingly of Arabic-speaking Sunni Muslims. The rise of Arab Sunni Islamism to prominence and dominance in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and perhaps soon Syria casts a spotlight on this contradiction.

This has placed Hamas in a decidedly uncomfortable position from which it is now trying to extricate itself. Hamas is an outgrowth of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood. Yet over the last decade, it had also become a card-carrying member of the Iran-led regional bloc. The movement’s leadership was domiciled in Syria, the long-term Arab ally of Iran. Iran provided money, weaponry, and training for Hamas’ sovereign Gaza enclave.

But in recent months, Hamas has faced a situation in which its fellow Sunni Muslim brothers in Syria are engaged in an uprising against a non-Sunni regime under whose patronage the Hamas leadership lives. The regime is seeking to suppress this revolt using methods of utmost viciousness and brutality. At the same time, as Sunni Islamism rises to power elsewhere, a number of attractive potential alternative patrons for Hamas seem to be emerging.

So Hamas is now trying to quietly exit the Iranian camp for pastures new. Leadership cadres in Damascus have in recent months moved themselves and their families out of Syria to a variety of regional destinations. Only a small staff remains in the Syrian capital. Hamas in Gaza has staunchly refused to hold demonstrations in support of the beleaguered Assad regime. The furious Iranians have threatened to cut vital funding from the Gaza enclave, to no avail.

Meanwhile, the search has been on for a new home. Among the possible destinations are Qatar, Egypt, and Jordan. The latest reports in Arabic media, however, have pointed to Tunisia as the most likely destination. A Muslim Brotherhood-associated party is already in unambiguous control of the country, unlike in the other countries listed. On the other hand, Tunis is a long way from the area of Hamas’ main interest.

In the latest semi-surreal episode in Hamas’ return to the Sunni Arab mainstream, the movement has been asked to mediate between the Arab League and the Syrian regime. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has sent a message to Bashar Assad, “advising” Assad to comply with the Arab League Memorandum of Understanding that he signed on December 19 and has been ignoring ever since.

It is easy to imagine the apoplectic reaction in Tehran to Meshaal’s promotion of himself from junior client to mediator, however there is little the Iranians can do to stop Hamas. Hamas’ Fatah rivals also reacted scornfully, but there is little they can do about it, either. The rise of Sunni Islamism in the Arab world is a net loss for both Iran and Fatah. Hamas sees it, correctly, as a potential net gain for itself and is maneuvering to extract maximum benefit.

The Iranians do not entirely lack cards in the Palestinian arena. Unlike Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad remains firmly committed to its alliance with Tehran and Damascus. Islamic Jihad, which has built up a powerful independent military capacity in Gaza, is an important tool of policy for the Iranians. It can be used, when its masters wish, to disturb the quiet that Hamas currently prefers. This was seen in October 2011 when Islamic Jihad engaged in a unilateral escalation against Israel, firing Grad rockets at Ashkelon and other population centers.

Islamic Jihad notwithstanding, the slow exit of Hamas from the pro-Iranian bloc offers a clue as to the direction of regional politics in the aftermath of the 2011 changes. The move is toward increased sectarianism and the rise of Sunni Arab Islamism. This new gathering of forces is a natural opponent both of the West and of the Iran-led regional bloc which before 2011 was the main enemy of the U.S. and its allies in the Mideast.

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Arab Observer Farce

Posted on January 7, 2012 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post, 6/1

Since the beginning of last week, a team of observers from Arab
countries have been in Syria. Their task is to monitor Syrian
compliance with the Arab League Memorandum of Understanding signed by
the Assad regime on December 19th. The Memorandum requires the regime
to withdraw its forces and heavy weapons from populated areas, release
political prisoners, allow journalists and aid workers to enter the
country and commence dialogue with the opposition.

To comply sincerely with any of these requirements would spell suicide
for the Syrian regime. Assad is aware that to permanently concede the
monopoly of force in any area of Syria is to accept the inevitability
that an alternative political and military leadership will begin to
emerge there. He has no intention of allowing this. The observers
are therefore on a mission doomed in advance to failure.

Syrian acceptance of the MoU and the Arab observers is a transparent
effort to gain time. The regime hopes that during the period in which
the observers serve to reduce international pressure, the savage
violence of the Syrian army and Alawi irregulars can begin to turn
back the tide of protest. As a number of regional media outlets have
observed, the proper term for the Arab team now inside Syria should be
‘spectators’, rather than observers.

Assad signed the MoU, after months of prevarication, on the advice of
his Russian allies. Syria is reliant on the Russians for ensuring that
there is no action against them at the UN Security Council. The Arab
League Memorandum provides an agreeably toothless alternative to such
action. Once it is decided upon, it must be given ‘time to succeed’
(or fail), thus negating any possibility of further diplomatic action,
before the observers submit their report.

The performance of the observers in their first week in the field did
not disappoint, from the Syrian regime’s point of view. The
delegation is led by former Sudanese Intelligence Minister Mustafa
al-Dabi. Al-Dabi’s main qualification for this position is that he
himself narrowly avoided an arrest warrant, on charges related to his
suspected involvement in the genocide in Darfur.

Al-Dabi’s actions on the ground in Syria were a clumsy and obvious
charade. The Syrian Army removed its armor from the besieged city of
Homs for a day. Al-Dabi and his colleagues toured the city, initially
accompanied by an officer of the notorious 4th Armored Division.
Al-Dabi then reported that he had found nothing ‘frightening’ in Homs,
and that overall the impression he had gained was ‘reassuring.’

In the period since the observers entered Syria, 390 people have been
killed, including 30 children, according to the Local Coordination
Committees, which organize protests.

The obvious impotence and irrelevance of the observer force led to
calls for its withdrawal later in the week from the grandly-named
‘Arab parliament’. This Arab League-created advisory body, however,
has no power to insist or decide on anything.

In a press conference in Cairo, Egyptian Arab League Secretary-General
Nabil El-Araby sought to defend the role of the observers. This press
conference did little to build confidence in the mission.

The shooting and sniping in Syria, El-Araby declared, must end. He
added, however, that the problem in Syria is that it is so hard to
know who is shooting at who.

A close statistical analysis of the 6000 people killed in the course
of the Syrian uprising might disabuse Mr El-Araby of this impression.
It is the Syrian regime’s forces who are doing the shooting. Syrian
civilians are the ones being shot at. This was so prior to the
regime’s commitment to the MoU and the arrival of the observers. It
has remained the case subsequently.

The reasons behind the curious spectacle of Arab League non-activity
masquerading as activity vis a vis Syria are to be found in the realm
of intra-Arab diplomacy.

Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, which are centrally concerned with facing
down Iranian ambitions in the region, want to see the defeat of Assad
in the shortest possible time. They are keen to swiftly move on from
the Arab League level to the UN Security Council.

This has been reflected in a series of scathing editorials in Saudi
media outlets this week, criticizing the performance of the observers.
Influential columnist Tariq Al Homayed, for example, writing in Sharq
al-Awsat, said that the current performance of the observers
represents a ‘blatant attempt to save Assad.’ He called for Syria to
be given three days to comply with the provisions of the Arab
Memorandum. If this is not done, Al-Homayed recommended the transfer
of the Syrian ‘file’ to the UN Security Council, and the subsequent
imposition of a no-fly zone and buffer area.

Al-Homayed listed a number of regional states who he would like to see
involved in this effort – including Turkey, Morocco, Kuwait, UAE,
Libya and Qatar. He notes specifically that the Arab League as an
entity need not necessarily be involved.

Other Arab states, however, do not in any way adhere to this view.
Some, such as Lebanon and Iraq, are themselves allied with Syria and
Iran, and therefore share Assad’s interesting in stalling and
preventing any coherent action. Others, including Egypt, do not hold
to the Saudi sense of urgency regarding the need to deal a blow to
Iran and its regional assets. Rather, they are mainly concerned to
prevent the possibility of western intervention into Syria, at the
heart of the Arab world. The Arab League Memorandum of Understanding
and the subsequent dispatch of the observers reflect this agenda.

Until now, the net result of this has been the farcical performance of
the Arab observers, under the command of the redoubtable al-Dabi of
Darfur. Meanwhile, Assad is continuing to slaughter his civilian
population with abandon. Whatever the outcome of the crisis in Syria,
it can be said with certainty that the Arab League will not be the
instrument that brings the slaughter to an end.

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Rebels against the Pasdaran

Posted on December 28, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post Magazine, 23/12/11

In July, 2011, as the world focused on the bright hopes raised by the Arab Spring, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps launched a large-scale assault across the Iran-Iraq border. Their intention was to wipe out an armed challenge to the Islamist regime in Teheran. The target was PJAK (Party for a Free Life In Kurdistan), an Iranian Kurdish organization engaged in both political and military struggle against the regime. PJAK, closely aligned with the PKK, maintains bases in the southern Qandil mountain area, from where its fighters launched raids across the border into Iran. The intention of the Revolutionary Guards forces was to destroy this infrastructure. The operation would continue, an Iranian official told state television, ‘until all PJAK members were killed.’

The subsequent fighting was fierce, with heavy losses on both sides. For two months, the IRGC shelled the Qandil area. Hundreds of families were forced to leave their homes in the Choman and Qalat Diza districts, close to the border.

This conflict was almost entirely ignored by the international media, which was chasing the phantom of democracy across the Arab Middle East at the time.

The battle ended inconclusively. A ceasefire was restored on September 12th. Iranian official propaganda claimed to have captured three PJAK camps and to have destroyed PJAK’s military capability. The organization dismissed this, asserting that its fighters had defeated an Iranian attempt to seize the Qandil area.

Amid claim and counter-claim, a number of facts were clear. The Revolutionary Guards had crossed an international border in force. The Iraqi government had said nothing in protest. Civilians had been targeted and killed. The world had remained silent.

It is also clear that despite the claims of the Iranians to have destroyed PJAK, the organization has survived the assault. It is now reported to be engaged in the construction of new defensive positions close to the border.

Two months after the renewed ceasefire, I traveled to a European city to interview the leader of PJAK, Abdul Rahman Haji-Ahmadi. Haji-Ahmadi is officially a resident of Cologne, Germany. We did not meet in that city, however – the PJAK leader having departed it after indications that the Iranian regime were seeking to assassinate him there.

Concerns regarding security are not an idle conceit where opponents of the Iranian regime are concerned. The mullahs have a history of killing their exiled opponents. Kurdish activists have formed a particular target for its attentions. In September, 1992, three prominent Iranian Kurdish leaders, Sadegh Sharafkandi, Fattah Abdoli and Homayoun Ardalan, and their translator were shot dead in a restaurant in Berlin. A mixed Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah team in the employ of the Islamic Republic of Iran was responsible.

These killings form part of a longer story of resistance by Iranian Kurds to the regime of the mullahs. PJAK has been active since 2004. Iran’s 12 million Kurds, however, have stood against and been targeted by the Islamist regime since its inception. And,of course, the Kurdish fight for recognition and rights precedes the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

Haji-Ahmadi, however, was concerned with the here and now, as we began our conversation in a quiet side-room in the bustling offices of a Kurdish political organization. First and foremost, he wanted to communicate the little-documented reality of life for the inhabitants of Iranian Kurdistan.

The picture he painted was a grim, disturbing and unfamiliar one. Speaking in Kurdish, via an interpreter, Haji-Ahmadi described an impoverished, isolated region, in which the imprint of the Revolutionary Guards extends far beyond political repression. The IRGC controls key economic concerns in the area, giving the organization leverage over the inhabitants. Those wishing to improve their own lives and that of their families are required to collaborate with the organization. Economic dependence is supposed to produce political quiescence. It works, however, only partially – so the heavy hand of repression is also required.

The IRGC regularly executes impoverished Iranian Kurds seeking to make a living by smuggling across the Iran-Iraq border. The Corps’ enthusiasm for killing doesn’t stop with smugglers. Earlier this year, a wave of executions of incarcerated Kurdish activists took place. According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran: “Execution of Kurdish activists, without fair trials and following torture, increasingly appears as a systematic, politically motivated process.”

Haji-Ahmadi stressed that his movement sees itself as part of the larger Iranian opposition. He noted the generally dire situation for national minorities in Iran – listing Baluchis, Turks, Azeris and Arabs – and dismissed claims that the regime enjoys support among broad sections of the Iranian population: ‘There are 75 million people in Iran – and 70 million support the opposition,’ he told me. The problem, however, is organization. The opposition are ‘not united, not organized.’ And the ‘organizations of the Iranian opposition are outside Iran, and Iran itself is organized among them.’

Compounding the bleak situation facing the Iranian opposition, said Haji-Ahmadi, is what he considers to be the mistaken strategy employed by the international community regarding the country. The PJAK leader is critical of what he regards as the exclusive emphasis on the Iranian nuclear issue, at the expense of a focus on the broader crimes of the regime. ‘You cant’, he asserted, ‘turn the Iranian population against the regime with the nuclear issue.’ Instead, he recommends that the international focus on Iran concentrate on ‘human rights, minority rights and national rights.’

Later, our discussion turned to broader regional issues – Syria, Turkey, and Israel.

On Turkey’s current role as the US Administration’s preferred regional partner, Haji Ahmed was predictably scathing. ‘America,’ he noted, ‘cites Turkey as a model for regional democracy – Turkey, with its use of chemical weapons against Kurds and its napalm bombs and its internment of thousands of people. This is the model for democracy?’ He also dismisses claims by the Turkish government that the Kurds have been assisting the Syrian regime as ‘Turkish propaganda.’

He notes Israel’s (now discontinued) provision of drone aircraft to Turkey, and their replacement by US equipment. How, he asked, can Israel repair relations with the ‘AKP and its so-called ‘modern-Islamic’ approach. The AKP and Gulen groups, he suggested, are ‘apparently modern now – tomorrow, who knows?’

On Israel, the PJAK leader expressed his support for the ‘right of the Jewish People to have their own nation and their own country.’ ‘Our success,’ he added, ‘will be useful also for you.’ He dismissed, however, the oft-made claims by the Iranian state media of Israeli assistance to PJAK. ‘Anyone in Iran who is against theocracy,’ he says, ‘is immediately accused of being a US or Israeli agent.’

Given the recently emergent evidence of someone or other engaging in paramilitary operations deep inside Iran, it is of course impossible to draw any clear conclusions regarding possible links between armed opposition groups in Iran and Iran’s external enemies.

It is usual for Kurdish leaders to speak in warm and supportive terms about Israel, but the terms Haji-Ahmed used were ones I had never heard before. He stressed the similarity of the situation facing the Kurds and the Israelis. Both Kurds and Israeli Jews, he suggested, were ‘surrounded on all sides by states that are opposed to them.’ And ‘Persians, Arabs and Turks,’ will never be ‘friends’ to either people.

Such a comparison might appear tenuous, given the vastly differing levels of strength of these two peoples. Still, the Kurds today command a semi-sovereign enclave in northern Iraq. The rulers of the Kurdish Regional Government may have little common ground with the socialist PJAK and PKK. But on the national level, the activities of these organizations against the Iranian and Turkish regimes are made possible only because of the tacit tolerance afforded them by the Kurdish authorities. There is an underlying shared national hope.

The stakes are very high. With the US departed from Iraq, the Kurds find themselves at the center of a complex strategic game – and, as ever, surrounded by enemies. Iran to the east, Turkey to the north, a pro-Iranian regime in Baghdad to the south, and the beleaguered, Iran-aligned regime in Damascus to the west. They have few allies. Yet Haji-Ahmadi is not pessimistic.

He considers that in the long term, the Islamist regime in Iran is doomed. In the shorter term, if the Iranian Revolutionary Guards cross the border again – well, as he told me by way of conclusion, his movement will fight them once more. As in summer 2011.

With the Middle East currently in flux, the Iranian Kurds are poised between hope and trepidation. The concerns are detailed above and are well-justified. The hope is that the latest shift in the tectonic plates of the Middle East may finally result in the creation of a sovereign space for the people of Kurdistan. In the meantime, PJAK is rebuilding – in the Qandil mountains on the Iraq-Iran border, and in its offices on quiet side streets in European cities. Rebuilding and waiting.

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Syria: a word of caution

Posted on December 28, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Defense Minister Ehud Barak was reported as predicting that the regime of Bashar Assad would fall within weeks.

Certainly things are not going well for the Assad family dictatorship. The bloodletting continues as the Free Syrian Army and other insurgent groups continue to strike at government forces. Economic sanctions endorsed by the Arab League are to take effect December 27. The economy is expected to sharply contract in the year ahead, in the wake of EU sanctions already in place and the collapse of the tourism industry.

RELATED:
UN human rights chief: Syria death toll reaches 5,000

And yet, observers should be careful before confidently predicting the imminent fall of the house of Assad. They have being doing so since April, but the dictator is still there. Notwithstanding his recent absurd performance on ABC News, he may well be with us for some time to come. The factors that have kept him in place so far largely remain.

Firstly, the Assad regime is not friendless or isolated, despite the sanctions. Most importantly, its Iranian strategic partner is still there.

The mullahs stick by their allies. The Iranians have been providing material, advice and possibly also personnel to help Assad’s bloody fight against his own people since it began. This patronage has just been publicly reaffirmed and shows no sign of tailing off.

Russia and China are still there too. Their support is preventing any effective response to the bloodletting from coming through the UN Security Council.

Syria maintains its friends in the Arab world, too. The Maliki government in Iraq is developing as a close ally and trading partner.

In line with its orientation toward Iran, Baghdad voted against the Arab sanctions on Damascus. Hezbollah in Lebanon, of course, depends on Assad’s survival to maintain its strategic position. So Assad is not alone.

Secondly, the half-hearted Arab League “protocol” for resolving the issue is intended largely to prevent a more determined international response.

The Arabs do not want to see another Western military intervention into the heart of the Arab world. The League’s plan is intended to prevent this, by pretending to represent an alternative Arab road to reform in Syria. It is, meanwhile, bogged down in endless quibbling and prevarication over the issue of Arab observers in Syria.

Even if Assad were to agree to these, they would make no discernible difference. Leaving the Syrian issue in the hands of the Arab League means leaving Assad in power.

Thirdly, Assad’s security forces, despite the large number of desertions, remain structurally intact. In the Syrian Arab Army the dictator possesses large and effective instruments of suppression, including the four large security services and the amorphous and brutal gathering of Alawi gunmen known as the “Shabiha.”

By contrast, the opposition remains divided and unsure of its strategy. Its armed capacity, while determined, is vastly smaller and less powerful than that available to the dictator.

Political power, ultimately, derives from superior force.

The Syrian opposition lacks this, and hence possesses no mechanism for seizing power.

It also remains divided against itself, with the main political and armed wings disagreeing over tactics, and a number of smaller political groupings declining to accept the authority of the Syrian National Council.

So reports of Assad’s demise have been much exaggerated.

If things are left as they are, the prospect in Syria is for a bloody civil war, the outcome of which remains uncertain.

The move that could change this would be an internationally backed establishment of a buffer zone in northern Syria, and sponsorship and training for the opposition. This would provide ground and cover for the growth of a coherent political and military challenge to Assad. It does not look immediately imminent.

Short of this, despite the latest optimistic predictions, Assad will probably be around for a while yet.

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Iraq pays the entry fee to the Iran-led bloc

Posted on December 28, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post, 20/12/11

As the Assad regime in Syria fights for its life, it is important to remember that it still possesses a considerable number of assets. Perhaps most important among these is the fact that its regional allies have not abandoned it. As has been made clear in recent days, both the Iranian regime and its Lebanese client Hezbollah are sticking with their troubled Ba’ath colleague in Syria. But the list of President Bashar Assad’s friends does not end with these two.

A third local addition to the roster of influential players still backing Assad is the government of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq.

Maliki’s backing of Assad is of significance beyond merely the Syrian context. It is an indication that Shia-led Iraq is drawing closer to Iran.

This is taking place simultaneously with the gains made by Sunni Islamism in a variety of Arab countries as a result of the upheavals of 2011. The direction in which Maliki is moving Iraq reflects an emergent reality of sharpened sectarian divisions in the increasingly Islamized political landscape of the Middle East.

From the outset, the Maliki government refused to join in the growing chorus of international and regional Arab condemnation of Assad’s brutal methods. While the Saudis, Tunisians, Kuwaitis and Bahrainis rapidly withdrew their ambassadors from Damascus, the government of Iraq made do with expressions of mild hope that Assad would “quicken” the pace of reforms.

The position of the Iraqi government has remained constant. As the bloodshed in Syria increased and the Western world called for the isolation of the regime, Maliki entertained a high-profile delegation of Syrian officials and entrepreneurs.

Iraq abstained on the vote in the Arab League to suspend Syrian membership. Baghdad abstained in the same forum in late November on the vote to impose sanctions on Syria.

Iraq, together with Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon, has made clear that it does not consider itself obligated by the sanctions. There are fears that Iraqi and Lebanese cooperation with Syria to circumvent the restrictions will empty them of all content. Certainly, the Syrian regime is banking on this.

Iraq is Syria’s second-largest trading partner (after the EU). It accounts for fully 13 percent of Syria’s total trade – a value of $5.3 billion in 2010.

Maliki’s steadfast support for Assad is particularly striking because it is in stark contrast to the situation that existed until very recently. In 2009, Baghdad cut off relations with Syria. Maliki was furious at evidence that Assad had sponsored bombings in Baghdad. The Assad regime had also been a strong supporter of the Sunni insurgency against US forces in Iraq.

Now all this has changed. Maliki, who managed to form his second coalition after elections in 2010, is one of the few remaining Arab allies of the Syrian regime.

Why? The keys to understanding the Iraqi shift are the imminent departure of US forces from Iraq and the long political game that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been playing in both Iraq and Syria.

While the US and its allies were engaged in military activity in Iraq, the Iranians were pursuing an altogether more subtle strategy.

This involved the sponsorship of political movements and the amassing of political power and influence for use on the day after the US pulls out of Iraq.

Following elections, Maliki was only able to form his government – after months of wrangling – because the Iranian-backed movement of Moqtada al-Sadr chose eventually to back him.

This took place after Iran brokered a deal between Sadr and Maliki. Negotiations for the deal took place in Qom, in Iran.

Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s Qods Force, and Muhammad Kawtharani, a senior Lebanese Hezbollah member, were instrumental in brokering the agreement.

In other words, Maliki is able to rule because he is in coalition with an Iranian proxy.

There is an economic factor alongside the politics. Iranian firms have invested heavily in reconstruction projects in Iraq. In July, 2011, for example, a contract was signed for the construction of a 2,500-kilometer gas pipeline that will carry Iranian gas along the breadth of Iraq to Syria.

Add to these political and economic elements the seismic shock of the Arab upheavals of 2011, which are benefiting Sunni Islamist forces in country after country, and it becomes easier to understand Maliki’s interest in moving closer to the Shia regional alliance led by Iran.

Acquiring Iranian patronage involves helping out other clients. One favor deserves another.

Assad, a key member of the club, is in trouble. So, against all the odds, the Iraqis are getting on board with the task of trying to preserve his regime.

There has been much reporting in recent weeks of Hamas’s scramble to extricate itself from the Shia alliance led by Iran and to relocate itself with the currently embryonic Sunni Islamist bloc that looks like it will be the main legacy of the Arab Spring. Iraq appears to be traveling in the opposite direction, its motivation a mirror-image of that of Hamas.

Iraq is about to return to full sovereignty. As it does so, it is also about to present the region and the world with an entity of a type previously unknown in modernity – a Shia-majority Arab state under Shia rule. In a Middle East region in which Islamic politics is moving ever closer to center- stage, it is therefore not surprising that a Shia-ruled Iraq should choose to align itself with the regional bloc led by Iran. The Iranians skillfully prepared the pathway. The logic of events make Maliki more than willing to walk down it.

The assistance that Maliki’s Iraq is currently affording its beleaguered former arch-enemy in Damascus should be seen as a type of entry fee into the Iranled regional alliance. The Iraqi prime minister has evidently done his accounting and decided that the price is a fair one.

Whether the replacement of Saddam Hussein’s regime by a Shia-led Iraq now aligning with Iran was worth the loss of 4,478 US lives and an investment of $750b. is of course an entirely different calculation.

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Hizballah and the Arab Spring

Posted on December 28, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post, 6/12/11

Before the Arab upheavals of 2011, the Middle East was dominated by a cold war, pitting US-aligned regional states against a self-designated “Muqawama (resistance) Axis” of states and movements led by Iran. Both these blocs still exist. Both have been in different ways diminished by the ferment currently under way in the Arabic-speaking world.

The Iran-led Resistance Axis liked to portray itself as the representative of authentic local Muslim forces, arrayed against a corrupt and declining alliance of local collaborators aligned with the US and Israel. Contrary to its preferred script, however, various components of this bloc now find themselves under siege and threatened by forces unleashed by the Arab Spring.

This was not how it looked at the start. The first two casualties of the 2011 ferment were staunchly pro- Western Arab leaders – Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. The Iranian leadership at that point heralded the “Islamic Awakening” across the region. Syrian President Bashar Assad explained in a seminal interview with The Wall Street Journal on January 31 that Syria and its allies would remain untouched by the ferment because of their identification with the deeper desires of the peoples of the region; namely, opposing the West and supporting the Palestinians.

The Resistance Axis was looking forward to settling down and enjoying the sight of the rival bloc tearing itself apart. It hasn’t quite turned out like that.

The only Arab state member of the axis – the Assad regime in Syria – is currently fighting for its life. Far from remaining immune to the winds of change, the Syrian dictator is battling a growing Sunni-led insurgency. Syria is a vital component of Iranian regional strategy. The Iranians hoped, once the US left Iraq, to build an uninterrupted chain of supportive states from the Iranian border to the Mediterranean.

To keep this ambition alive, they need the Assad dictatorship in place.

The Iranians are consequently busy at work aiding Assad’s repression. Representatives of both the Qods Force of the Revolutionary Guard, and domestic Iranian law enforcement agencies have been identified in Syria, helping to suppress the uprising. Sophisticated eavesdropping equipment has been provided. Eyewitnesses have reported the presence of Iranian snipers among the forces suppressing demonstrations.

Syrian opposition sources are currently claiming that Iran-aligned Shia militiamen from the Sadrist movement in Iraq and the Lebanese Hezbollah are also taking part in the repression.

But while this assistance has helped keep Assad in power, it is also making Iran and its allies increasingly hated throughout the Sunni Arab world. This is visible in Assad’s growing diplomatic isolation. From the Iranian point of view, the disappearance of its resistance image in the eyes of masses of Sunni Arabs is no less important. The Resistance Axis currently appears to be energetically and brutally resisting the will of an Arab people.

The consequent public statements from Tehran encouraging reform and even reaching out to the opposition are transparent exercises in PR. Tehran is with Assad to the end.

The most significant fallout of this process so far is the attempt by Hamas to extricate itself from the Iran-led bloc.

Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It has found itself in recent months facing a situation wherein its hosts and sponsors – Syria and Iran – are jointly engaged in a bloody crackdown against a rebellion in Syria at least partly led by its fellow Muslim Brothers. This is an untenable state of affairs for the Palestinian Islamist group. Hamas was always the Sunni odd-man-out in an alliance led by a Shia state and consisting overwhelmingly of Shia forces. Now it wants out.

Hamas is consequently attempting to re-align itself. The movement’s natural new sponsors would be a Muslim-Brotherhood dominated Egypt. This is also its preferred choice, as shown by the Egypt-sponsored reconciliation process and the Egyptian-brokered deal to release Gilad Schalit. Iran is angry but powerless to prevent this shift.

The jewel in Iran’s crown – the Lebanese Hezbollah – is also feeling the chill. Syrian refugees are finding their way in increased numbers across the border into Lebanon. The Hezbollah-backed government remains staunchly behind the Assad regime. The Lebanese Armed Forces are busily rounding up Syrian refugees and oppositionists. In a notable incident last week, local residents of the town of Arsal in the Bekaa Valley physically prevented the Lebanese army from apprehending Syrian fugitives. A number of military vehicles were burned. The opposition Future movement, led by former prime minister Said Hariri, held a huge rally in the Sunni town of Tripoli. Anti-Hezbollah, anti- Assad and anti-Iranian placards were displayed.

Hezbollah’s physical domination of Lebanon is not at risk as long as Assad remains in place. But the movement is storing up growing resentment of it on the part of non-Shia Lebanese, which may well have consequences if the Syrian dictator falls.

So the Resistance Axis is buffeted by a storm blowing across the region. Add to these examples the failure to make any real headway in sustaining dissent in Bahrain, or fermenting it in eastern Saudi Arabia, and the result is a somewhat bleak picture.

Mysterious explosions in security facilities and the curious deaths of research scientists on the streets of Teheran are not reassuring either.

Iran and its allies, suffering the blows of a covert war, are not succeeding in turning the “Islamic Awakening” into an asset. Iran’s leaders and its regional loyalists are aware of this and are concerned.

One of the Resistance Axis’s most eloquent spokesmen, Ibrahim al- Amin, editor of the pro-Hezbollah Al-Akhbar newspaper, described the Iran-led bloc as currently “focused on withstanding the war of attrition waged against it forced to hunker down and fend off threats.” He promised, however, that Iran was preparing to take on a “new regional role.”

Amin concluded with characteristic bombast that “fire cannot be stopped by steel walls or multinational forces.” The Iran-led Resistance Axis is currently finding out, to its evident dismay, that this latter point works both ways.

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Civil war begins in Syria; Turkey’s stance will prove crucial

Posted on November 27, 2011 by jonathanspyer

A civil war is now under way in Syria. It is a contest in which the two sides are vastly mis-matched. Without increased international pressure and possible intervention, the blood-letting looks set to continue for a long time ahead. The divided Syrian opposition, meanwhile, remains unable to articulate a coherent strategy for removing the dictator. The stance of external powers is now the decisive factor.

Despite an ongoing haemorrhage of desertions, the Assad regime maintains overall control of the 220,000 strong Syrian Arab Army. The Alawi 4th Armored Division and Republican Guard still constitute fearsome tools of repression. In addition, Assad possesses four powerful security agencies, as well as the amorphous and brutal gathering of irregular Alawi gunmen known as the ‘Shabiha.’

In the face of this formidable killing machine’s onslaught, the Syrian opposition continues to find it impossible to unite.

Personal ambitions and rivalries are a major element of this. But substantive divisions also exist. The main opposition factions are divided in particular on the question of foreign intervention. The Turkish-influenced and Islamist-heavy Syrian National Council has a vague and non-committal policy on this matter, in line with the ambiguous position of Turkey itself and of the Gulf Arab states. The smaller, leftist-dominated National Coordination Committee, meanwhile, is staunchly opposed to any external interference.

But for all the divisions, a more fundamental absence remains common to the opposition groups. This is the lack of a coherent policy for the attainment of power.

The Syrian National Council this week outlined what has been called its ‘transitional’ program for a new Syria. According to the plan, Assad would be replaced by an interim government supported by the army, which would organize internationally supervised elections within a year. These would elect a ‘founding assembly’, which would draw up a new constitution. The new constitution would then be put to a referendum. Parliamentary elections would be organized within six months.

That all sounds eminently sensible. It fails, however, to make clear exactly how the dictator is to be removed, to enable this orderly transition to take place. This fundamental drawback remains common to the myriad of opposition groups, and a more general blind spot in commentary on Syria.

Some Arab commentators have suggested that the regime’s clear lack of popular legitimacy will lead to its unraveling suddenly and rapidly. Rami Khoury, for example, writing in the Beirut Daily Star, contended that if the violence increases, the regime is likely to find its pillars of support shifting. Khoury lists these ‘pillars’ as the military, the business class, the Alawis, other minorities, and the ‘Aleppo-Damascus silent middle classes.’

It is of course impossible to predict what will happen, but certainly until now, there are few serious signs of these ‘pillars’ shifting over to the opposition – despite the undoubted courage and resolve of the protestors and insurgents. This may well be partly because the opposition has failed to present a credible and united alternative leadership around which to rally.

Absent this, the violence is set to continue. When the guns talk, the muses fall silent. For this reason, it is important to note the emergence of the rebel Free Syrian Army of Colonel Riad Asaad as an alternative opposition movement in its own right in recent weeks. Asaad’s group lacks the political sophistication of the civilian movements. But in Syria, force tends to have the final word. The Free Syrian Army is likely to emerge as a key player. But in this case, too, a 15-20,000 strong militia cannot hope to destroy a well-entrenched regime unless the regime crumbles from within – or a superior external force enters the fray to assist it.

So the key question remains the international response. France has now declared itself in favor of the establishment of secure areas to protect Syrian civilians. But Turkey is likely to be the main player if such ideas reach the implementation stage. Ankara cleverly maintained unseen links to the Syrian Sunni opposition even as it overtly developed its much heralded rapprochement with the Assad regime prior to the uprising. It has played a central role in building the external opposition from the onset of the uprising. Turkey hosted the initial conferences of the opposition, took in refugees, helped coordinate the foundation of the Syrian National Council, and is offering bases and assistance to the Free Syrian Army.

But all this is only sufficient to maintain the pressure on Assad. To tip the balance is likely to require more direct involvement.

Assad’s forces this week opened fire on two buses carrying Turkish citizens in Syria. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s response was to call for the first time on the Syrian dictator to resign immediately. In a potentially far-reaching move, Turkey is now reported to be considering the establishment of a buffer zone in the border area between the two countries. Such an area could provide a foothold for Syrian insurgents to organize and build their challenge to Assad’s rule. But it could also raise the possibility of Syrian-Turkish clashes. Turkey will not act without international support and an international mandate. It may be that the statement by the French foreign minister was the first step in an attempt to assemble such a mandate. With the opposition divided and the regime defiant, the crisis in Syria seems nowhere near conclusion. The direction of events in the next phase will be decided in Ankara.

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A cold war re-emerges

Posted on October 22, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post, 21/10/2011

The underlying strategic contours of the Middle East remain largely unchanged; the contest between Iran and Saudi Arabia remains central.

Winston Churchill, speaking in the British House of Commons in 1922, discussed the transformative effect of the 1914-18 war on Europe. “Great empires have been overturned,” he said. “The whole map has changed, the modes of thought of men, the whole outlook on affairs.” But, he continued, “as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short, we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again.” Churchill was referring to the durability of the Irish question.

A sense of the weary re-emergence of previous patterns is apparent also in the revelations of the Iranian plot to kill Saudi ambassador Adel Jubair in Washington. The plot’s revelation casts the spotlight on a crucial fact underlying the upheavals that have shaken the Arab world this year: Namely, for all the sound and fury that the ‘Arab Spring’ has wrought, the underlying strategic contours of the Middle East remain largely unchanged. As the wave of popular discontent begins to draw back, so these structures are once again becoming apparent.

The contest between Iran and Saudi Arabia formed the central dynamic in the larger regional cold war which has defined the Middle East in recent years. Iran has sought very publicly in recent years to build its regional popularity through enmity toward Israel. But the primary strategic ambitions of the Islamic Republic are directed not westward toward the Mediterranean – but rather southward, toward the Persian Gulf. Iran is the most populous country of the Gulf region, with the largest army. It sees domination of this area as a matter of manifest destiny. Tehran seeks to replace the United States as the guarantor of the security of Gulf energy routes. This ambition by its very nature brings it into a situation of conflict with the main beneficiary of that American guarantee – the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

This core geo-strategic basis to Iranian-Saudi enmity is reinforced and deepened by the stark sectarian and ideological divide between the two countries. Saudi Arabia holds to an ultra-conservative interpretation of Sunni Islam which demonizes Shia Muslims.

Riyadh has long scorned the Iranian regime as a purveyor of fitna (discord) in the Muslim world.

Ayatollah Khomeini, meanwhile, described the Saudi monarchy unambiguously as “heretics” and “vile and ungodly Wahhabis.”

Saudi-Iranian rivalries have underlain a number of recent central events in the region – some related to the so-called “Arab Spring,” some clearly separate.

When the Shia majority in Bahrain proved restive, the Saudis discerned Iranian fingerprints. A new regime in Bahrain aligned with Tehran would mean Iranian control of the western littoral of the Persian Gulf. The uprising was also interpreted as the beginning of an Iranian attempt to spread Shia sedition southwards toward the majority Shia Saudi eastern province. The Saudis led a military expedition to crush the revolt in its infancy.

In Syria, the Saudis see the uprising as an attempt by a Sunni Arab people to throw off the yoke of an Iran-backed, heretical regime.

Through his maternal line, Saudi King Abdullah has close kinship ties with Sunni clans in Syria.

Riyadh discerns a strategic opportunity in Assad’s current travails.

The Iranians too understand the disastrous implications for them of the danger to the Assad regime, and are consequently making every effort to preserve it. The Saudis were the first Arab country to remove their ambassador from Syria, and to denounce Assad.

There are reports of Saudi links to radical Sunni preachers in Syria.

In Lebanon, of course, members of the Iranian client Hezbollah organization are wanted by the tribunal investigating the 2005 murder of Saudi citizen and former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al- Hariri. The Saudi-backed March 14 movement in the country was eclipsed by the pro-Iranian forces after a brief clash in May/June 2008. Yet, by backing the opposition to the Assad regime in Syria, Riyadh hopes to cut Hezbollah off from its hinterland and source of weaponry, leaving it dangerously isolated on the Mediterranean.

In Iraq, with the US set to leave, the Saudis and the Iranians are once again set to face each other.

The Shia-led government in Baghdad already enjoys close relations with Tehran. Iran also sponsors powerful Shia militia groups.

Riyadh, meanwhile, has actively funded Sunni insurgents. The presence of US troops in Iraq was a disincentive to more overt support.

With an increasingly pro-Iranian Shia government in Baghdad this disincentive will no longer apply.

The Iranians are by far the stronger of the two rivals. They have compromised their ‘brand’ in the Arab world through their support for the Assad regime in Syria. This, however, could be rapidly reversed in the wake of new confrontations with the US or Israel. Their nuclear program is proceeding apace. The Tehran regime looks safe in its seat at home. It still possesses powerful assets across the region.

The Saudis, by contrast, can offer a credible barrier to Iranian ambitions only as part of a larger, de facto alliance including the US and Israel.

The Saudi-Iranian cold war was one of the factors defining the Middle East prior to the upheavals of 2011. It has been a significant element in determining the course of those upheavals so far. In Bahrain and in Syria, the Saudis are winning. Iranian anger and frustration at Riyadh and a desire to strike at it should therefore come as no surprise. As the deluge subsides, the dreary minarets of Riyadh and Tehran are emerging once again.

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Reflections on the Shalit deal

Posted on October 19, 2011 by jonathanspyer

The most common response in Israeli public discussions to any expressions of doubt regarding the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal of recent days has been ‘well, what if it was your son who had been kidnapped?’ This phrase, with its underlying accusation of patriotic posturing and hypocrisy, is something of a discussion-ender. It implies that you, the doubter, are willing to strike a cruel and self-righteous pose because of indifference to the fate of a stranger. The statement further implies that this mask of supposed strength and realism would of course rapidly collapse if an individual dear to you, the doubter, were involved in the equation.

This statement expresses two seemingly contradictory assumptions. The first is an immediate conclusion that any appeal to the general good and the collective interest contains an essential hypocrisy and artificiality. The second, however, is a passionate affirmation of loyalty to the communal interest expressed in a particular way: namely, that of non-indifference to the fate of the fellow community-member Gilad Shalit.

The seemingly simple, impassioned statement ‘Well, what if it was your son who had been kidnapped?’ is thus not simple at all. Rather, it is an accurate reflection of the attitude of a large body of Israeli Jews today vis a vis the collective – Israeliness – to which they belong. This attitude, in turn, represents a strategic dilemma for Israel, on which its enemies have pinned their hopes of eventual victory in their long war against Jewish sovereignty. What explains this attitude?

The deal for Shalit’s release saw the release of the kidnapped soldier in return for Israel’s freeing of 1027 Palestinian prisoners. Those freed included the planners of some of the most shocking and universally condemned attacks on Israeli civilians to have taken place in recent years.

From a strategic point of view, it is perfectly obvious that this deal makes no sense at all. Indeed, it is quite unimaginable that any country other than Israel would even contemplate concluding such an agreement. To assert this is not merely speculation, but verifiable fact. A near-direct parallel to the Shalit case currently exists in the case of US Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who has been held by the Taliban in Afghanistan since June, 2009.

Bergdahl’s captors are demanding the release of 21 Afghans currently in US captivity. There are no indications, however, that the US is considering the offering of any terms at all in return for Bergdahl, a man whose name few Americans know.

So Israel’s response does not typify that of western democracies. Is it then to be explained by reference to Israel’s unique Jewish identity, and to deeply-rooted Jewish communal norms?

It is not. It is important to understand that whatever Jewish tradition may have to say regarding the redeeming of captives, the practice of massively lopsided prisoner exchanges is not of particularly long vintage in Israel. It dates in essence from the Jibril exchange of 1985.

So where has this entirely unique, relatively new, seemingly counter-intuitive, passionately supported practice emerged from? I would suggest that it derives from Israel’s unique situation as a western democracy which is forced by circumstance to require from its citizens a greater degree of collective involvement and willingness to sacrifice than any comparable society. The result is a curious and possibly dysfunctional version of communal concern. The essential atomization and self-absorption of human beings and skepticism toward communal obligations is taken for granted, in a manner reflective of mainstream public views in most western democracies today. But unlike in the case of the unfortunate Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, simply forgetting about the fate of a kidnapped soldier is impossible.

Israel, after all, is a small country which demands a great deal from the Jews who live in it. The country, in order to survive, has no choice but to maintain military conscription (only partially imposed in practice, but that is another discussion.) So individuals are bound up in the experience of the state. But the attitudes they take toward that state are increasingly those of any other early 21st century skeptical public. They are utilitarian, self-centered, disenchanted.

For this reason, the public identifies with Gilad Shalit and his family. But any argument to the effect that the country is at war, the attitude toward the preservation of every life that would be desirable in peacetime is impossible in such a reality, we must all make sacrifices for the common good and so on becomes literally un-makeable. The ground-level assumptions upon which such a case would rest are simply not there, or are not there with sufficient depth and weight.

Quite understandably, but dangerously, Israelis demand after 100 years of conflict to live under the rules of peace and normality. They want, they insist upon the natural, warm and caring attitude to the life of their young that peace makes possible.

The problem is that the long war in which Israel is engaged is not merely an illusion. It possesses also tangible reality. There really is a coalition of countries and movements – including Iran, Shalit’s Hamas captors, Syria, Hizballah and other elements which are committed to the destruction of Jewish sovereignty.

The leaders of this coalition are entirely indifferent to the lives and welfare of their own people. Their strategy is based on exploiting precisely the contradiction which the Shalit episode and others of its type exposes . This contradiction is the very great difficulty which a modern, atomized, individualistic western society has with the notion of engagement and sacrifice on behalf of the collective. The United States and other western countries get round this by maintaining volunteer militaries whose members are loyal to a professional code, and with whom the public are largely unfamiliar except on a symbolic level.

Israel is too small and exposed for an option of this kind. More must be required of the citizens. Israel’s enemies wish to locate the particular gap between what the state must logically require, and what the society of individuals will be willing to give. In this space, they believe, is located the factor which if properly exploited will lead to their eventual strategic victory and the termination of Jewish statehood. In this space, they believe, they can paralyze the Jewish state, leave it without options, render all its shining machinery useless.

This space does exist. As the Shalit deal and other episodes of its type suggest. This does not mean that Israel’s enemies will be victorious. There are many other factors and variables at play, many or most of them to Israel’s advantage. Yet the question of how to adequately combine the modernity of outlook essential for social and economic success, with the communal commitment necessarily for societal survival remains a central and currently insufficiently unanswered one for Israel – on which the hopes of its enemies rest.

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Why did the Syrian regime kill Maashal Tammo?

Posted on October 16, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Pajamas Media, 16/10

The murder this month by the Assad regime’s security forces of Syrian Kurdish leader Mashaal Tammo is the latest act of unprovoked brutality by this most cruel of regimes. Tammo was killed in his own home in the northern Syrian town of Qamishly by regime gunmen. Afterwards, Syrian security forces opened fire on a crowd of 50,000 at his funeral procession. Two more Syrian Kurds were killed and many more wounded. Tammo, leader of the Kurdish Future Party, favored non-violent opposition to the Syrian regime.

The killing of Mashaal Tammo might at first glance appear to be just the latest atrocity by a regime whose hands are deeply stained with the blood of its own citizens. About 2,900 Syrians are estimated to have been killed so far as Assad fights for his political life against his own people.

Yet Tammo’s murder also contains within it a mystery. Kurds represent between 10-15% of the population of Syria. They have been perhaps the most harshly oppressed section of the population since the Arab nationalist Ba’ath Party came to power in 1963. Many Syrian Kurds have been deprived of citizenship. Others were expelled from their homes in the early days of the regime, as the Ba’athists created a belt of Arabic speaking communities along the Syrian-Turkish border.

But for all this, the Kurdish population of Syria has largely avoided direct involvement in the current uprising. This wariness derives not from any sympathy for Bashar Assad. Rather, the Kurds carried out a revolt of their own in 2004, and found that their Arab fellow citizens did not join them. On this occasion, therefore, they have preferred to wait things out. Only when the Assad regime started to look in real and imminent danger, it was assumed, would mass action by Syrian Kurds begin.

Given this, and given that the Kurdish region in north-east Syria has been one of the quietest parts of the country over the last seven months, why would the Syrian regime choose to gun down Tammo in his home, in an act that was bound to galvanize a furious response from Syrian Kurds?

Doesn’t the regime have enough trouble on its hands? Its stretched security forces are going from town to town in the Sunni Arab parts of the country, crushing an increasingly determined opposition. Armed resistance has broken out. The regime recently fought a pitched battle against fighters loyal to the opposition Free Syrian Army in the town of Rastan north of Damascus. The rebels are reported to control whole neighborhoods of the Sunni city of Homs. They are active also in the Turkish border area.

Even the hitherto staunch support of Syria’s allies is looking shaky. Russia and China united to block any possibility of sanctions against Syria in the UN Security Council. But in the same week, Russian President Dimitri Medvedev told Assad that he must either reform or step down. The formerly friendly Turkish government has also turned against the regime.

And in the midst of all this, the regime decides, of all things, to target a popular leader from a powerful community which has so far for its own reasons preferred to largely keep out of the fray. Why?

In answering this question, it is important to note that the regime denies responsibility for the murder of Mashaal Tammo. The government propaganda channel SANA reported that members of a mysterious “armed terrorist group” were responsible for the killing. Such crude propaganda seems curiously anachronistic. It is as though whoever constructed it neither expected nor particularly wanted to be believed. This impression is correct. It offers a clue as to the modus operandi of the Syrian regime.

Media accounts of the “Arab Spring” repeatedly claimed that the old methods of political repression could no longer be employed. In the new world of satellite communications, the internet, and so on, the naked violence and openly absurd propaganda of the old dictatorships would prove brittle and useless.

The Syrian regime has set out to try and disprove these claims. With a fervor worthy of a better cause, the Assad regime is trying to prove that there is life and efficacy in the old methods yet — that savage repression and killing, even apparently against the regime’s own immediate interests, will succeed. It will succeed, the regime believes, because in the end, if the sufficient measure of force is applied, the result will be a terrorized, cowed population. This has certainly worked before — notably in 1982, when the regime murdered around 20,000 people in the city of Hama, and put an end to a rising against Assad’s father, Hafez.

The regime of Bashar Assad in Syria is officially committed to Islam. The Syrian constitution requires that the state president be a Muslim. In reality, however, the only higher power that the Assad family bows down to, in whose capacity for deliverance it continues to firmly believe, is violence itself. The invocation and application of this power is its very raison d’etre. Mashaal Tammo was the latest victim to be sacrificed to its creed. The Assad regime will continue to make further sacrifices before this altar, until either its faith is confirmed by renewed quiescence, or it ceases to exist.

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