Jonathan Spyer

Jerusalem Post, 7/10.

It has long been apparent that the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has no intention of being driven from power by unarmed protests and demonstrations. The Syrian uprising is now seven months old. The regime has slaughtered 2700 of its own people.

The situation has reached stalemate. Assad does not have the power to simply drown the uprising in blood, without potentially triggering increased international attention, and possibly intervention. The protestors, meanwhile, do not possess a mechanism which can translate the ongoing demonstrations, slogans and protests into a tool for seizing power. Early attempts to tempt senior regime figures away from Assad got nowhere. The regime remains apparently united around its leader. The army, meanwhile, has not split.

There are some indications that EU- and US-imposed sanctions are beginning to bite. But few believe that the regime is anywhere near an economic crisis which could force political change. China, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran continue to conduct brisk trade with the Assad regime.

It is therefore not surprising that there are those in Syria for whom continued unarmed protests are no longer enough.

The refusal of either regime or protestors to buckle has placed Syria on the threshold of civil war for some months. The Syrian government is a seasoned and brutal practitioner of violence for political gain. In many ways, it has been conducting a one way war against its own people for the last half year. Elements on the other side are now crossing the threshold to armed resistance. This is set to transform the direction of events in Syria.

So who are the groups conducting or proposing armed activity against the regime?

The most significant organization to have emerged professing armed action is the Free Syria Army, led by the former Syrian Air Force General Riad Asaad. Asaad defected from the air force in July, taking refuge in Turkey.

The first leader of this group, Colonel Hussein Harmoush, was delivered back to Syria in dubious circumstances. In inimitable Assad regime fashion, he then appeared on Syrian state television professing his opposition to the uprising. This episode did not, however, signal the end of the organization.

The Free Syrian Army possesses the inevitable Facebook page. It is also prone to making occasional wild and unsubstantiated assertions of achievement against Assad’s forces. Asaad told reporters this week that the Free Syrian Army now numbers 10,000 members. This number is probably inflated. Still, clear evidence is emerging of action and organization on the ground. Of smaller dimension than the claims of the organization, but of substance nonetheless.

Desertions from the army are growing, as demoralized Sunni rank and file soldiers balk at engaging in further acts of bloodshed against their fellow Syrian Sunnis. Some of the deserters are now finding their way to organized rebel units.

A watershed moment in the emergence of armed insurrection against the Assad regime came in the town of Rastan, 110 miles north of Damascus at the end of last month. Syrian government forces used armor and helicopter gunships against army deserters in the town of 40,000. They were fighting against a Free Syria Army unit composed of army deserters calling itself the Khaled Ibn Al-Walid battalion, led by one Captain Abd-el Rahman Sheikh. This force, according to eyewitness reports, possesses some tanks as well as small arms.

Government forces regained control of the town after exchanges of fire. The fighting ended with the withdrawal of the insurgents, however, not with their defeat. At least 130 people were killed.

The name of the battalion in Rastan reflects the Sunni nature of the emerging military challenge to the Alawi-dominated regime of Bashar Assad. Khaled Ibn al-Walid was the Muslim Arab conqueror of Syria in the 7th century. The names of other units associated with the Free Syrian Army – such as the Omar Ibn-Al Khattab battalion in Dir Al-Zour – also offer evidence of this orientation.

Units associated with the Free Syrian Army are active mainly in the area of Homs. This Sunni city is reported to be now partly under the control of insurgents and is the base area of the Khaled Ibn al-Walid battalion. An additional area of activity is the Idleb province near the Turkish border.

What are the implications of this emergent armed challenge to Bashar Assad’s rule?

First of all, in common with the unarmed Syrian opposition, it is impossible to gauge the true extent of unity and central control prevailing among armed units operating against the Assad regime. Riad Asaad and the Free Syrian Army possess a communications mechanism and have an interest in claiming to control all armed action taking place against the regime. There is a need for caution regarding these claims.

Secondly, if the Libya model offers any lessons, a central one is that without the involvement of NATO air power and special forces assistance, the rebels on the ground would have stood little chance of victory. The initial goal of the Free Syrian Army is to carve out ‘liberated zones’ from which they can conduct their campaign. Without international assistance, it is difficult to see how the integrity of such zones could be maintained against the vastly more powerful forces available to the regime.

Thirdly, the emergence of armed resistance is likely to be used by the Assad regime as an easy foil for escalating its campaign of repression and killing.

But if the last six months indicate anything, it is that the tried methods of Ba’athist repression are not able any more to deliver quick and magical solutions for the Assad dictatorship. The Alawi regime remains determined to stay in power, by force of arms. The mainly Sunni resistance to it now looks set to meet fire with fire.

Over the Rosh Hashanah weekend, I decided to re-read Avraham Rabinovich’s estimable book about the Yom Kippur War of 1973. it was a good decision. Rabinovich’s prose evocatively conjures those terrible October days, when the future of Israel hung in the balance. The book also conjures a different Israel, in places oddly recognizable, in others utterly strange.

The shadow of the 1973 war has cast a recognizable shape over Israeli society since the guns fell silent on October 24th. One meets corners of this shape in unexpected places. I remember speaking to a friend of mine one morning in the late 1990s whose father died in the fighting on the Lexicon Way in Sinai, in the last days of the War. That same afternoon, I had to go over the minutes of some Cabinet meetings in the summer of 1973. In the dry record of the proceedings, one could feel and hear the hubris and smug overconfidence of the political leadership of the day. All the way up until September 1973, a month before the war, still talking with blithe confidence about the low chances of war. I wanted to leap into the pages and shake them. Fools. Look what’s coming down the road.

Military intelligence was still preaching the ‘conceptzia’, according to which Egypt would never dare to attempt war until it had acquired Scud Missiles and long range fighter bomber aircraft. And all would be well. In the meantime, my friend’s father and other members of his generation were living the easy, bohemian lives of students in Jerusalem. And all the while, the volcano waiting to erupt.

In the event, of course, once the mountain erupted, that generation, both the leadership and the fighters, acquitted themselves rather well. Here too, Rabinovitch’s book is full of curiosities. Part of its strangeness comes in the juxtaposition of figures seemingly half-legendary from Israel’s creation with more contemporary and familiar types. Here are Moshe Dayan and Chief of Staff David Elazar, discussing the unruly tendencies of Major-General Ariel Sharon. Here is Major Shaul Mofaz, now a somewhat lackluster politician of the Kadima party, but then a courageous and intrepid airborne officer, on a hill deep behind Syrian lines with the Paratroopers’ reconnaissance company. With Syrian troops all around, whispering his guidance to the helicopter on its way to rescue them.

Most notable is the hellish, Armageddon-like intensity of the combat described. Above all in the desperate stand on the Golan Heights that stopped the Syrians from rolling into northern Galilee. Here is Lieutenant Tzvika Greengold, head of ‘Force Tzvika’. A ‘force’ which for most of the night of October 7th consisted only of himself and his crew. Presented as a call sign on the communications to stop the Syrians from learning that all that stood between them and northern Israel was one ginger-haired Kibbutznik and his three comrades, on the Tapline Road.

Why is all this important to remember? When I spoke to my friend whose father died in Sinai, it was the 1990s, and we were students. The Yom Kippur War was taking on the sepia tones of sacrifices safely distanced in the past. It was generally assumed that Israel’s great clashes with the states of the region were over. What remained by way of conflict was a sort of mopping-up operation against minor local opposition.

This assumption can no longer, of course, be maintained. The rise of Iran in recent years, and the changes currently under way in the region are raising once again the prospect of state to state conflict involving Israel.

The picture is very different now. Whereas in 1973, Israel faced a solid pan-Arab front against it, today the Arabs are hopelessly divided among themselves. The two most powerful regional states besides Israel are the two other non-Arab countries of the region – Iran and Turkey. But the former is an enemy of Israel, the latter in the process of becoming one.

In 1973, Israel’s strategic alliance with the US was only just beginning. And the vital US weapons airlift highlighted Israel’s diplomatic isolation, with the states of western Europe refusing to allow the supply of arms to pass over their airspace.

Today, Israel is a stronger, more populous country, a vastly stronger economy, a more mature, integrated society. And while there is much talk of its ‘isolation,’ it is noteworthy that in addition to its ongoing bonds with the US, Israel is manageing to forge ahead in building connections to some of the most dynamic new players on the world stage – India, South Korea, the new democracies of central europe.

Still, the region in which the Jewish state lives is becoming less predictable. And there is unease. Israel backed the right side in the Cold war, and has grown used to feeling part of the winning arrangement in the region. This arrangement is now in flux and decline. We are in the transitional moment. To an uncertain future.

Most fundamentally, the deep currents of hatred and rejection of Jewish statehood that fuelled the rage of 1973 are clearly very far from being mined out. Public opinion in Egypt and beyond it is more or less where it was 38 years ago regarding Israel.

So nearly four decades after the maelstrom of Yom Kippur 1973, the wellsprings that drove the attackers on remain in operation. They have shifted, metamorphosed, changed their language. The bottom line – destruction of Jewish sovereignty – remains the same. Israel has shifted and changed too. Yet, again, the deepest essence, which was there with Tzvika Greengold and his friends on the Tapline Road on the darkest night of October 7th, 1973, remains the same.

Guardian comment site, 7/9

In recent years, Israeli strategists have identified an Iran-led regional alliance as representing the main strategic challenge to the Jewish state. This alliance looks to be emerging as one of the net losers of the Arab upheavals of 2011. This, however, should be cause for neither satisfaction nor complacency for Israel. The forces moving in to replace or compete with Iran and its allies are largely no less hostile.

The Iran-led regional alliance, sometimes called the muqawama (“resistance”) bloc, consisted of a coalition of states and movements led by Tehran and committed to altering the US-led dispensation that pertained since the end of the cold war.

It included, in addition to Iran itself, the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, the Sadrist movement and other Shia Islamist currents in Iraq, Syria’s Assad regime, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organisation. It appeared in recent years also to be absorbing Hamas.

The muqawama bloc presented itself as the representative of authentic Islamic currents in the Middle East, and as locked in combat until the end with the west and its clients. These included Saudi Arabia, Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, and above all, Israel.

However, the alliance always had a rather obvious flaw: while presenting itself as an inclusive, representative camp, it was an almost exclusively Shia Muslim club, in a largely Sunni Muslim Middle East.

The Iranians evidently hoped that militancy against the west, above all on behalf of the Palestinians, could counteract the league-of-outsiders aspect of their alliance.

For a while, this project appeared to be working. The Iran-created and sponsored Hezbollah movement managed to precipitate Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000, and then avoided defeat in a subsequent round of fighting in 2006. In a poll of Arab public opinion taken in 2008, the three most popular leaders were Hassan Nasrallah, Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, in that order.

But this sense of inexorable ascendancy in which the Iran-led bloc liked to cloak itself has fallen victim to the Arab spring. First, the Saudis crushed a largely Shia uprising in Bahrain which the Iranians backed. But more importantly, Iran’s tooth and nail defence of the brutal Assad regime in Syria is progressively destroying its already shallow support Sunni Muslims.

Thus, a recent poll by the Arab-American Institute asked more than 4,000 Arabs their view of Iran. In Saudi Arabia, 6% had a positive view – down from 89% in 2006. In Jordan, the positive rating fell from 75% to 23%, in Egypt from 89% to 37% in the same period.

The uprising in Syria placed Iran in an impossible position. Maintaining its ally in Damascus formed an essential strategic interest. Iran hoped, following the US departure from Iraq, to achieve a contiguous line of pro-Iranian, Shia states stretching from Iran itself to the Mediterranean. But keeping this ambition alive in recent months required offering very visible support to a non-Sunni regime engaged in the energetic slaughter of its own, largely Sunni people. This has led to the drastic decline in the standing of the Iranians and their friends.

Such a decline was probably inevitable. Outside the core areas of Shia Arab population, Iran’s support was broad but shallow. It is noteworthy that since the Arab Spring, Hamas appears to have distanced itself both from Assad and from the Iranians. According to some reports, this has led to Iranian anger and a cessation of the flow of funds to the Hamas enclave in Gaza.

These setbacks do not mean the end of Iran and its allies as a regional power bloc. Assad has not yet fallen. The Iranian nuclear programme is proceeding apace. Tehran’s Hezbollah client is in effective control of Lebanon. But it does mean that in future the Iranian appeal is likely to be more decisively limited to areas of Shia population.

The less good news, from Israel’s point of view, is that the new forces on the rise in the region consist largely of one or another variant of Sunni Islamism. AKP-led Turkey has emerged as a key facilitator of the Syrian opposition, in which Sunni Islamist elements play a prominent role. Turkey appears to be in the process of making a bid for the regional leadership also sought by Iran.

In Egypt, too, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist forces look set to reap an electoral dividend in November. The Sinai area has already become a zone of activity for Islamist terror directed against Israel, because of the breakdown in law and order in recent months. The attacks on the pipeline bringing Egyptian gas to Israel, and the recent terror attack in Eilat, are testimony to this.

So while the “Shia crescent” may have suffered a strategic setback as a result of the upheavals in the Arab world, the space left by the fall of regional leaders looks to be filled largely by new, Sunni Islamist forces.

Israel remains capable of defending itself against a strategic threat posed by any constellation of these elements. But the current flux in the region is likely to produce a more volatile, complex Middle East, consisting of an Iran-led camp and perhaps a number of Sunni competitors, rather than the two-bloc contest of pro-US and pro-Iranian elements which preceded 2011.

Jerusalem Post 26/8

The apparently imminent eclipse of the Gaddafi regime in Libya has re-ignited hope among some Western commentators concerning the so-called Arab Spring. The entry of Libyan rebels to Tripoli is being depicted in some circles as the removal of a major obstacle to the onward march toward freedom alleged to be taking place this year throughout the Arabic-speaking world.

Some of the more enthusiastic observers are now turning their hopeful gaze toward Syria. They hope that with liberty victorious in Libya, the Assad regime will be the next to fall.

These hopes are mistaken on two levels.

First, it is mistaken to maintain that a great battle for liberty is currently under way in the Arabic-speaking world. Sober analysts of the region have long noted that the key stand-off in the main countries of the Arab world is between sclerotic and dictatorial regimes, and popular Islamist movements seeking to overthrow them.

Nothing has yet happened in the Arab Spring to radically alter this picture. Rather, what has changed is the relative strength of these rival forces. Until this year, the regimes had largely managed to contain the Islamist forces. Today in Egypt, this is no longer the case. In Libya, too, the balance looks about to be upended.

Second, the Assad regime in Syria still stands a fair chance of surviving the current revolt against its rule. The eclipse of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi will not cause Bashar Assad to alter his assessment of his own chances of survival. This is because he is aware of the very different arrangement of forces regarding Syria, both within the country itself and internationally.

The Assad regime is undoubtedly beleaguered. Its claim to any legitimacy was always paper-thin. Its information outlets blared out endless propaganda against Israel, the West and, famously, the “half-men” of the Westernaligned Arab countries. In practice, it rested on the narrowest of bases: the support of Syrian Alawites, and the acquiescence, with greater or lesser degrees of consent or fear, of all other sections of the population.

The events of the last few months have torn through this thin veneer. The Assad regime now rules over the large majority of the Syrian population by open coercion.

International anger at the regime is coalescing. US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton all issued statements last week saying that Assad should step down.

Even the United Nations Human Rights Council turned against Assad this week. The council, which for years maintained a polite silence (or concentrated on condemning Israel) as the regime jailed and disappeared its opponents, now suspects Assad of possible crimes against humanity. A team of redoubtable inspectors are to be sent to Syria to look for evidence of this.

The sanctions are intensifying. The US has already imposed a ban on Syrian oil imports. EU countries are currently drawing up plans for a similar embargo. The oil sector accounts for between one-quarter and one-third of Syrian state revenue, so sanctions would be significant.

A draft UN resolution drawn up by the US and the EU will call for sanctions against Assad himself, 22 officials and the country’s General Intelligence Directorate.

Yet with all this, the regime shows no signs of yielding, and apparently remains confident that it can continue its rule. Why? Is Assad now simply delusional, like an earlier dictator who spent his last days in his bunker marshalling phantom divisions that existed only on paper?

He is not. Ramadan, the month that was supposed to witness the mass protests that would take the revolt against Assad to new heights, is almost finished. But Assad is still there. His security forces and Alawite irregulars are still moving from town to town, energetically butchering their fellow countrymen.

At the beginning of the Syrian uprising, it was clear that for as long as Assad maintained the following elements, he stood a good chance of survival: unity of the regime elite, unity of the security forces, the geographically limited nature of the uprising, the support of allies, a weak international response, and a divided opposition.

Of these, items one to three are largely intact. There are no indications yet of cracks in the regime elite’s stance of unity. Evidence of strains in the security forces is patchy and appears partial at best. The Alawite elite around Assad appear convinced that their choice remains to survive with the dictator or go down with him.

The vital, practical support of Iran is also there. Tehran considers Assad’s survival a key strategic goal. Russia and China voted against the condemnation of Assad in the UN Human Rights Council.

The dimensions of the uprising have spread. But the two main cities of Damascus and Aleppo remain largely untouched by it. The absence of ferment in the commercial center of Aleppo is vital for the regime.

The differing international response remains the central factor keeping Assad from a Gaddafi-like fate. If NATO air power were to be deployed against him, it would be a game-changer. This looks highly unlikely.

And finally, despite efforts at unity, the opposition remains divided. Attempts in Turkey to create a single “National Council” for the opposition appear to have foundered. The Syrian Kurds are staying away, incensed by what they perceive as the Arab nationalist tones of other elements. The strong representation of the Muslim Brotherhood in the unity discussions in Istanbul should also be noted.

None of this guarantees the survival of the Assad family dictatorship. But the prospect is for a long, drawn-out struggle ahead, rather than a rapid resolution of the matter. In this struggle, the key opposing forces are the Iransupported regime, and a divided opposition in which the most determined elements are Sunni Islamist and local tribal forces. Those still hoping that this situation will deliver democracy to Syria by immaculate conception are likely to be disappointed.

The Assad regime’s brutal assault on the town of Hama should serve to dispel any notion that the struggle in Syria is nearing its end, or that the Assad regime has accepted its fate.

The general direction of the revolts in the Arab world now suggests that the region’s worst dictators have an even chance of survival, on condition that they have no qualms about going to war against their own people.

Syrian President Bashar Assad appears to have internalized the lesson.

Military theorists today are divided regarding the role of the main battle tank in the battlefield of the future. Assad over the past 48 hours has demonstrated that whatever the outcome of this debate, the role of the tank as an instrument of war against civilians remains highly relevant in the Middle East.

The Syrian President’s elite 4th Armored Division would be unlikely to last long against the IDF’s 7th Brigade on the Golan Heights.

Against the civilian protesters of Hama, however, it has proven a highly effective instrument. The death toll from Assad’s reducing of Hama now stands at around 140. There are hundreds more wounded.

Assad’s military machine is reported now to be descending on Deir a-Zour. The neighborhood of Al-Joura in the town is being shelled, according to opposition sources. There are persistent reports of large-scale desertions from the army in the Deir a-Zour area.

Protests in support of Hama have begun in Deraa, the birthplace of the revolt against the Assad regime.

Renewed protests in the environs of Damascus are also taking place. The response of the West to the events in Hama has been an additional notching- up of the rhetoric.

US President Obama is now “horrified” by events in Syria.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague, meanwhile, professed himself “appalled” by the latest reports. Both the German and Italian governments have called for an urgent discussion of the issue at the UN Security Council.

Assad is unlikely to be unduly alarmed at this prospect. The international community remains divided on Syria. Russia, a long-term close ally of the Assads, has been critical of regime tactics but would be likely to veto any attempt at an effective response via the UN. The West itself is also lukewarm.

There is no enthusiasm among any Western public for further embroiling in Middle East affairs. Hague has explicitly ruled out military action.

The small demonstrations outside Syrian embassies in Europe are attended by Syrian expatriates alone. Those who were predicting a wave of democratization in the region six months ago now look hopelessly naïve. As a consequence, the US and European countries have yet to even call for the resignation of Assad. And the sanctions in place against him are far less than would be required to really force a change of policy.

And yet, with all this, the regime has found it impossible to quell the revolt. Since mid-April, it has been in a state of more or less open war against its own people. The latest increase in repression was designed to re-assert control over areas of particular rebel support before the onset of Ramadan. Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, has been the main focus of protests.

The regime doubtlessly calculated, correctly, that with the onset of Ramadan, the volatile crowds that have manned the demonstrations would be on the streets on a daily basis. It was therefore imperative to re-assert control in rebel areas.

In Hama, the Syrian military pursued this mission with extreme vigor. But if the regime hoped that this would finally allow them to begin to contain the unrest, it was wrong.

The crucial question now, is where all this is heading. The irresistible force of the uprising has met with the immovable object of the Assad regime. What is the prognosis? The answer appears to be an intensification of the efforts of both sides. The Assad regime’s efforts to crush the regime are taking on a more nakedly sectarian hue.

This is the Alawi ruling elite in Syria fighting for its survival.

Alawi military units and Alawi militias (the Shabiha) are the instruments remaining to the Assads. Sectarian revenge killings of Shabiha men by Sunni Syrians in Homs earlier this month may presage the opening of a new, uglier chapter.

The key issue remains whether the security forces will stay united. There are persistent, hard to verify reports of desertions in considerable numbers. An army colonel, Riad al-Asaad, has emerged in the last days, claiming to be the leader of a “Syrian Free Army,” on the country’s border with Turkey. It will soon become clear if there is anything to this claim.

But with neither side willing to back down, increased violence may well be the only logical direction for events to take. Assad has gathered the core of his Alawi regime around him, for a fight to the end. There are increasing numbers among the rebels, especially after the latest events in Hama, who will be determined to meet him head-on. The result: Syria today stands on the threshold of a slide into sectarian civil war.

Jerusalem Post, 29/7/11

The uprising against the rule of Bashar Assad in Syria is continuing to grow. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are now taking part in the protests. As the month of Ramadan approaches, the prospect is for intensified strife.

Still, serious fissures have yet to appear in the regime, and the Assads show every intention of fighting on. This opens up the prospect of a long period of violence ahead.

One of the signs of the unflagging strength of the uprising in Syria is the broadening involvement of different sections of the population. An example of this is the Kurdish minority in Syria, which in the last weeks has begun to play a greater part in the protests. The role of the Kurds is complicated, however, by indications that elements of the Syrian opposition are determined to preserve the overtly Arab self-definition of the country, even following the hoped-for downfall of the Assad regime.

Last week saw the first major attempt by the Assad regime to crack down on Kurdish support for the uprising. Syrian police and militiamen loyal to the authorities used batons and tear gas against demonstrations in Qamishli, a Kurdish-majority city in the north-east. In the Kurdish neighborhood Ruknuddin in Damascus, meanwhile, two protestors – Zardasht Wanli and Khezwan Safwan – were killed and dozens more injured.

Demonstrations by Syrian Kurds in Qamishli, Hassake, Amouda and the surrounding villages have been steadily increasing in size over the last month. The Kurds were slow, however, to join the uprising against the Assad regime. This was not out of any sentiments of loyalty to the dictatorship, but rather because of wariness and skepticism regarding the Arab opposition. This skepticism was the product of experience.

In March 2004, a small prelude to the current uprising in Syria took place. Kurdish citizens of Syria, encouraged by the toppling of Saddam’s regime in Iraq, rose up against the Assad regime. The revolt was swiftly and brutally crushed. 36 Syrian Kurds were killed. Hoped-for support from the Syrian Arab opposition did not emerge. This experience made the Kurds reluctant to join the current revolt until it became unmistakably clear that the rebels were in earnest.
There is no remaining doubt in this regard. Still, the regime has done its best to induce the Kurds to stay on the sidelines in the last months by offering a series of cosmetic ‘concessions.’

The nature of these gestures highlights the depths of systematic brutality that characterize the Assad regime. This is because of the details they reveal regarding the existing reality of life under Assad.

Since the coming to power of the Arab nationalist Ba’ath party in Syria in 1963, Kurds have suffered systematic discrimination in all areas of life.

Kurds number between 10-15% of the population of Syria. They are the largest non-Arab minority in the country. Among this community, there is a population of around half a million Syrian-born Kurds who lack citizenship, depriving them of even the most minimal entitlements from the state under whose rule they were born. They have limited access to education and health provision, and no ability to acquire a passport.

This population is further subdivided into two groups, ‘maktoum’ (people of no country)– who lack all citizenship rights and ‘ajanib’ (foreigners) – who have ID cards and some limited rights.

The Ba’ath regime systematically de-populated Kurdish areas, attempting to create a belt of Arab population along the border with Turkey. The use of the Kurdish language and Kurdish names for children were banned, as was the celebration of Kurdish festivals.

In an act of characteristic cynicism, as the uprising against his rule began to spread, Bashar Assad on April 7 announced the provision of full citizenship rights to those Syrian Kurds known as ‘ajanib.’

Activists say that this promise has yet to be fulfilled. In any case, it leaves around 200,000 remaining Kurds lacking any status. But it was the first evidence of the regime’s determination to keep its most oppressed minority out of the circle of dissent.

Further gestures followed. For the first time this year, Kurds were permitted to celebrate their Nowruz new year festival. Then representatives of 12 Kurdish parties were invited to meet with Assad (they declined.)

This attempt to placate the Kurdish population now seems to have been abandoned. Increased Kurdish participation as the revolt gathered steam may have led the Assad regime to conclude that any further gestures were irrelevant. The default option of unambiguous repression has returned.
For Syria’s Kurds, unfortunately, there have recently been discouraging signs of Arab nationalist sentiment also among the opposition. Kurdish organizations withdrew from participation in a ‘National Salvation’ conference of Syrian oppositionists held in Istanbul, Turkey, earlier this month. They did so to protest the fact that the conference was held under the title of the ‘Syrian Arab Republic.’ The Kurds want to see the name of the country changed to the ‘Syrian Republic’ to reflect their own status as a national minority.
This symbolic issue reflected deeper concerns regarding Turkish backing for the emergent opposition leadership, and the prominent role of the Muslim Brotherhood within it.

Shirzad al-Yazidi, a Syrian Kurdish opposition activist, told the Sharq al-Awsat newspaper that “The alternative to the ruling mob in Damascus must be a democratic one that is agreed upon by all Syrians, both the Arabs and the Kurds, and not a tyrannical alternative that is tailored to well-known regional standards.” Should such an alternative fail to emerge, Yazidi added, then Syrian Kurds will look to the recent declaration of ‘democratic autonomy’ in the Kurdish region of Turkey as a model for their own situation.
Far from the media attention afforded the ‘Arab Spring’, the past months have been eventful and dramatic ones for the region’s Kurds, too. The declaration of ‘democratic autonomy’ in Turkey and Iranian attacks on Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq have combined with the dramatic events in Syria to produce a sense of ferment, flux and imminent change. The Kurds of Syria remain divided into 16 different political factions. They are nevertheless genuinely determined this time to ride the wave of change – rather than be crushed once more beneath it.

Pajamas Media 30/7/11

Five years have passed since the Second Lebanon War. Five years since the burnt forests, the Katyusha rockets, the blazing sunlight, and bitter lessons of that July and that August 2006. A half-decade on, Israel has improved both its battle readiness and its knowledge of the enemy. As for Hizballah, it is both stronger yet paradoxically also more vulnerable and isolated than it was back then.

Hizballah and its allies constructed a story of ‘divine victory’ from the 2006 events. This claim was hollow. Israel’s mistakes and shortcomings were many, amply detailed in Judge Eliyahu Winograd’s investigation.

Still, southern Lebanon was left devastated by the war. Hizballah had no way to prevent this. The movement lost at least 500 fighters dead. It also lost open control of the border area with Israel. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizballah, himself in the months after the war admitted that had he known of the consequences, he would never have launched the initial operation to kidnap IDF soldiers which led to the war.

The 2006 war was, however, but a single engagement in a larger conflict pitting Iran and its allies and clients against the West and its regional allies. The war failed to settle this issue in any significant way. After the ceasefire, Israel and Hizballah remained arrayed against one another along the border. Both sides began a rapid process of review and rebuilding. In Hizballah’s case, this clearly contradicted UN Resolution 1701 which ended the war and promised that Hizballah would not be allowed to return to the south and rebuild its fortifications there.

Today, the Israel Defense Forces has significantly improved its stance vis-a-vis Hizballah. Tactics and equipment have been modified, training has focused on specific countermeasures, and there is a far higher rate of combat readiness.

Yet Hizballah too has vastly increased its capabilities. It now possesses 60,000 short range missiles aimed at Israel. It has also, according to reliable sources, significantly improved its medium- and long-range missile capabilities. The movement’s possession of the M-600 missile system gives it the ability to hit populated areas in central Israel. It is reported also to possess a number of Scud-D missiles which might possibly strike targets anywhere in Israel.

The most significant change in the situation since the 2006 war relates to Hizballah’s relative political standing. A creation and client of non-Arab Iran, Hizballah posed in 2006 as the representative of all Arabs and Muslims in fighting against Israel. Since the war, paradoxically, Hizballah has grown politically and physically more powerful. But its claim to represent a general Arab or Muslim interest, as opposed to a particular Shia and pro-Iranian one, looks more and more flimsy.

In 2006, the movement was an independent political and paramilitary element in a country ruled by a pro-Western coalition government. Following the war, Hizballah launched a campaign to bring down and discredit this government. This has now been achieved and Hizballah is the dominant force in Lebanon’s government. The line marking where Hizballah ends and the “legitimate” Lebanese state begins is hard to identify and in many ways does not exist at all.

But with this strength has come reduced legitimacy. Hizballah had always claimed that its weapons existed only for action against Israel. Its takeover of west Beirut in June 2008 belied this claim. More profoundly, the indictment of four movement members this year for the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri damages the movement’s standing among non-Shia in Lebanon and beyond it.

Hizballah has also come out badly from the political upheavals in the Arab world this year. The movement has strongly supported the Assad regime in Syria. This has accentuated its being seen widely as part of the largely Shia bloc led by Iran. Should the Assad regime fall and be replaced by a Sunni regime, this would increase the organization’s isolation and be a heavy blow for the pro-Iranian alliance.

In addition, Hizballah militants are training Iraqi Shia terrorists to fight the Americans in Iraq. There are rumors of its involvement in repression in Syria. It rules by fear in Lebanon, creating resentment and enemies rather than letting Hizballah play the part of a patriotic defender of the country.

So Hizballah is physically stronger than in 2006, but it is also more vulnerable.

In February, 2008, its most senior military activist, Imad Mughniya, was assassinated in Damascus. Hizballah, blaming Israel, wants revenge for this. This could be the spark for a renewed conflict.

Should conflict with Israel return, it would acquire dimensions that would make 2006 look like a small rehearsal. This time around, Israel would be likely to regard the conflict as a state-to-state war– the first between Israel and an Arab state since 1973.

For the moment, Israel and Hizballah-controlled Lebanon watch each other across the border. The frontier is unusually quiet, but permanently tense.

So if war comes, Hizballah will enter it physically stronger than in 2006, but also politically more isolated, more exposed, and hence more vulnerable. As for Israel – it will be at this point, and only at this point, that it will be possible to examine the claims of greater readiness, better planning and better intelligence against the test of reality.

A border dispute between Iran and the Kurdish region of Iraq underwent a significant escalation this week, as Iranian Revolutionary Guards crossed the border to engage with guerrillas of the PJAK (Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan) organization. The incursions began on Saturday night. Fighting continued throughout most of Sunday. By late Sunday afternoon, a tense quiet had returned to the border area.

Reports differ regarding the number of casualties, and the areas of engagement. The official Iranian news agency (IRNA) said that five PJAK members and one Revolutionary Guardsman had been killed in fighting in the area of Sardasht, a Kurdish town close to the border. The Iranians also claimed to have captured a wounded PJAK member. A Colonel of the Revolutionary Guards, Delavar Ranjbarzadeh, told IRNA that PJAK had suffered a ‘heavy and historic defeat.’

The Kurdish rebels dismiss this version of events. PJAK spokesman Sherzad Kamankar, said that 53 Iranians had been killed in the clashes, along with two PJAK members. He added that PJAK had succeeded in forcing the Iranians to retreat back across the borderline. Kurdish sources reported the deaths of two Revolutionary Guards officers in the fighting, naming one of them as Colonel Halit Sure.

Kurdish sources in the area also confirmed that Iranian bombardments took place at a number of other points along the border. The areas of Sehit Harun, Sehit Ayhan and Dola Koke, inside the Kurdish ruled part of Iraq, also came under fire.

Both Iranian and Kurdish sources noted a build up of Iranian forces, possibly indicating further escalation ahead. IRNA reported the presence of 5000 Iranian troops along the border. PJAK sources noted that Iranian forces were equipped with armor, missile launching equipment and helicopter gunships.

The Iranian incursion into the Kurdish ruled area of northern Iraq is the latest stage in a process of escalation that has been under way over the last month.

On July 3, Massoud Barzani, President of Iraqi Kurdistan, warned the Iranians over ongoing cross border operations by their forces. Iran responded a week ago by accusing Barzani’s government of allocating 300,000 hectares of land to PJAK without the knowledge of the central government in Baghdad. Iranian officials said that the land was intended to be used as a base for training and for launching attacks into Iran. An official quoted by the Fars news agency said that Iran ‘reserves its right to target and destroy terrorist bases in the border areas.’ Barzani denied that any lands have been allocated to PJAK.

The Iranian decision to strike across the border at this time, analysts say, may be related to Teheran’s broader strategy of encouraging disorder in Iraq as a means of placing pressure on the USA and the west. With the US Administration hoping to conduct an orderly withdrawal from Iraq at the end of the year, Washington is particularly vulnerable on this front. The Iranians are keen to remind the Americans of this vulnerability.

Some Kurdish sources note Iranian concern at the possible loss of Teheran’s main Arab ally – Assad’s Syria. It is generally accepted that firm western support of the Syrian opposition could form a decisive factor in bringing Assad down. Such support has not yet materialized. Iran may well consider that one of the ways of preventing the emergence of such support would be to remind Washington of its own vulnerability to disruption and subversion in Iraq.

The events of the last days thus cast a spotlight on a largely ignored element of the cold war under way between Iran and its enemies in the region. Increased activities by Iranian-supported Shia terror groups in southern and central Iraq have been noted in recent weeks. Actions by such groups resulted in the deaths of 15 US troops in Iraq in June.

It now appears that the Kurdish-ruled areas of northern Iraq are also set to be included in this Iranian campaign of destabilization. Stirring up a crisis in Iraqi Kurdistan is of particular value because this area has been the quietest and most well-administered part of the country since the US invasion.

The presence of anti-Iranian and anti-Turkish guerrilla groups in the Qandil Mountains border area has posed a dilemma for the Kurdish authorities. Mindful of the very difficult conditions facing their fellow Kurds in these countries, they have been reluctant to act against these elements.

The result is that Iranian bombardments and Turkish air raids form part of the reality of life in these areas. This has continued even as the Kurdish authorities have attempted to establish normal relations with Iran and Turkey.

Iran now appears to be activating this front, for its own purposes. The official Iranian media and the Kurdish rebels broadcast widely differing accounts of what exactly happened in the Iran-KRG border area in the last days. The accounts agreed, however, on one central point: considerable bloodshed took place, in fighting between the Revolutionary Guards and PJAK, following Iranian incursions across the border. Further escalations in the weeks ahead appear likely.

Entering the bookshop at the American Colony Hotel recently, I noted a prominently placed display of four books directly facing the entrance. The books were the first thing seen by any visitor to the shop. They were evidently intended to give a representative sample of the kind of fare available there. They succeeded in this, and in something more.

The American Colony is one of the best hotels in the city, a favored place for European diplomats, journalists, peace processors, and others in the colorful array that the city attracts. While sometimes described as “neutral ground,” it may more accurately be seen as the main stronghold of the international pro-Palestinian presence and sentiment in Jerusalem. It is therefore as good a place as any for assessing that sector of opinion.

The choice of books displayed at the bookshop’s entrance sums up elegantly the main components of the disturbing ethos among supporters of the Palestinians in the West.

The books on display were The Founding Myths of Modern Israel, by Roger Garaudy; Married to another Man: Israel’s dilemma in Palestine, by Ghada Karmi; I Shall Not Hate, by Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish; and The Palestine Papers – the end of the Road?, by Clayton Swisher. Come with me on a brief tour through them. And let’s speak plainly, as the time requires.

Roger Garaudy is a veteran French Communist who later converted to Islam. His book combines Holocaust denial with calls for the destruction of Israel. He marshals the “evidence” assembled by Holocaust deniers over the years to dispute the existence of gas chambers in Nazi death camps. The Holocaust, Garaudy thinks, was a myth intended to create sympathy for the theft of Palestine by the Jews. Hitler’s main enemies were Communists, says Garaudy, and he had no plan for the destruction of the Jews. Garaudy’s book is a straightforward example of Jew hatred of the most vitriolic and extreme type.

Ghada Karmi’s book seeks to refute the idea of Jewish peoplehood. She repeats a number of myths recently revived by anti-Zionist propagandists in the current battle to delegitimize Israel. The claim that Ashkenazi Jews are descended in the main from Turkic “Khazars” is re-aired. This claim, a favorite of anti-Israel propaganda recently restated by Professor Shlomo Sand, is intended to disprove the notion that Ashkenazi Jews descend from Jewish communities originating in ancient Israel. Karmi blithely dismisses as “open to question” recent evidence deriving from thousands of DNA studies that refute these claims. She believes, as she has stated elsewhere, that the Israelis and Palestinians are heading for an apocalyptic “cataclysm,” out of which a Palestinian Arab state will emerge.

Clayton Swisher’s contribution is to argue that there is no basis for a peace process that includes accepting the continued existence of any Jewish state. He argues that recent leaks from the offices of PA chief negotiator Saeb Erekat mark the final demise of the “two state solution.” Swisher argues that it is all Israel’s fault, despite the fact that the leaks show many examples of the opposite. For example, the leaks showed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressing willingness for concessions including the redivision of Jerusalem and the ceding of 98.7% of the West Bank. Swisher, as he has said elsewhere, favors those Arabs “committed to liberating all of historic Palestine.”

Dr. Abuelaish’s book is a work by a Gaza physician whose three daughters were tragically killed during Operation Cast Lead. They died as IDF troops battled Hamas snipers and mortar teams in the area of Beit Lahiya. There is no reason to believe that Abuelaish shares any of the opinions contained in the other three volumes. But given the overall display, it is reasonable to assume that the store’s goal is to stress Israel as committing war crimes rather than Abuelaish favoring conciliation. Certainly, and unsurprisingly, one would search in vain for any volumes discussing similar losses of civilian life among Israeli Jews.

Here, then, is the display that greets European diplomats, salaried peace processors, and elegant locals meeting in the courtyard and coffee shop, passing or entering the bookshop of the beautiful and peaceful American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem.

Four volumes. One of which, though written by a man of conscience, serves the purpose of describing an instance of Israeli killing of civilians. The other three are united in calling for the destruction of Israel. One of them denies the Holocaust. All of them, in great detail, set about seeking to deny the most basic facts of Jewish history, to ridicule all Jewish concerns deriving from that history, and to make of the Jews a non-people, not to be included in the general mass of humanity but rather to be uniquely singled out in illegitimacy.

This is the ideology behind the flotillas, boycotts, and furious demonstrations against Israel in the year 2011, decades after the Palestinians supposedly accepted Israel’s existence and turned toward seeking a two-state solution. This is the idea behind which Islamists and “progressives” can happily unite. This is the channel through which the familiar and foul substance of antisemitism is going to flow right back into the Western mainstream. Unless it is prevented from doing so.