by
Umar FarooqFor more than thirteen years, Turkey has made a slow but steady transition towards a free and democratic society, despite the occasional pang of apprehension among some about where that road might lead. The men at the helm of that transition, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fethullah Gulen, began as allies, perhaps the most powerful post-modernist Islamists in world. But now the two are estranged, locked in a downward spiral of distrust that may undo the progress made. At the heart of this estrangement lies a difference over how Turkey should assert its power in the Islamic world.
On December 18, a judge in Istanbul issued an arrest warrant for Gulen, following a week that saw the detention and questioning of dozens of journalists and police officers allegedly linked to the 73- year-old cleric. Gulen lives in Pennsylvania but is thought to lead a movement of millions in Turkey, popularly referred to as the “Hizmet,” or “the Service.” Erdogan has called for Gulen’s extradition, charging that he heads a “parallel state” within the country’s judiciary and bureaucracy.
Turkey has a history of violent crackdowns, but Erdogan claims this one will be clean: “Nobody is being lynched before the process is over,” he said December 20, before launching into a tirade against a statement by European Union that called the recent detentions “incompatible with the freedom of media, which is a core principle of democracy.” But the carrot of EU membership no longer seems important to Erdogan (or to most Turks).
Erdogan now sees the West’s support for Gulen, combined with an apparent indifference towards the military coup in Egypt last year and its reluctance to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as indicators it is not interested in seeing a democratically elected Islamist government in Turkey, or anywhere else.
While tensions between Erdogan and the Gulenists have been mounting for several years, the current crisis heated up last December, when prosecutors announced they would open corruption cases against 53 AK Party allies, including members of Erdogan’s cabinet. Police officers who, according to Erdogan supporters, were loyal to Gulen, had wiretapped hundreds of people’s phones; as well as Erdogan’s own offices. Turkish media had leaked incriminating recordings, providing right-wing and secular opposition parties with powerful ammunition in advance of this year’s presidential elections. The government responded by transferring or sacking hundreds of judges and police, and, in some cases, opening cases of abuse of power against them.
Since then, Turkish media outlets closely tied to the Hizmet have taken an increasingly confrontational stance against Erdogan. Boosted by his victory in August’s presidential election, Erdogan struck back this month, reactivating a three-year-old complaint of slander by Mehmet Doğan, a former Gulen ally who spent 17 months in prison before being exonerated on charges of being a part of al-Qaeda. Dozens of journalists, two top counter-terrorism police officials, and even the writer of a soap opera were hauled to police stations across the country for questioning, not just on the Doğan complaint, but on the wider aims of Hizmet and Gulen as well.
Erdogan and Gulen may both be Islamists, but they have different visions of how and whether Turkey should assert its historical Islamic identity. Erdogan’s popularity stems from his bluntness: “Our minarets are our bayonets, our domes are our helmets, our mosques are our barracks,” recited the then-mayor of Istanbul in 1997, who was successfully prosecuted for “inciting hatred” with those words and soon found himself shuttled off to prison, accompanied by a 2,000 vehicle-convoy of fans.
A self-educated Islamic scholar, Gulen spent much of his youth as a state-appointed imam at mosques in western Turkey. He set up dorms and study centers for pious students from the Turkish countryside who had arrived in cities for study or work. As his popularity increased, Gulen travelled the country, dishing out sermons and advice to crowds of thousands of young Muslims on how their faith could fit into a secular Turkey. During the 1971 military coup, Gulen spent six months in prison for his movement.
In 1999, Gulen found himself unable to return to Turkey after he issued a characteristically guarded statement, directing his followers in public offices to learn the workings of legislative and administrative bodies, but “wait until the conditions become more favorable” to show their Islamist intentions. Gulen’s movement only grew stronger in his absence.
A quarter of private schools in Turkey, as well as hundreds of others across the world, including at least 16 in the United States, are run by the Hizmet movement. Gulen’s political and religious commentary, often distributed by the media outlets currently under scrutiny, is widely read throughout the Muslim world. Hizmet also includes one of Turkey’s most powerful business groups, the Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialist (TUSKON), and its own Sharia-compliant bank, Bank Asya.
Under the Justice and Development (AK Party) government, which took power in 2002, the 1999 case against Gulen was tossed out, but the cleric preferred to stay in Pennsylvania, watching Erdogan chart a path towards democracy, built on a wide mandate that probably would not have been possible without his movement’s support.
Buoyed by his success at transforming Istanbul into a cosmopolitan city with infrastructure on par with Europe, Erdogan’s party was swept into power twice with mandates never seen in the country’s history. Opposition parties issued statements lamenting the victory, and a Turkish court even heard a petition to ban the AK Party on grounds that it threatened the country’s secular foundation, but none of that panned out. In 2007, Erdogan stood firm against an implicit coup threat by the military command, sometimes referred to as the “e-coup” or “virtual coup.”
Erdogan and his allies pushed ahead with reforms widely praised as groundbreaking for Turkey and for the Islamic world, putting the country on firm footing towards meeting conditions for accession to the European Union. In 2007, the Israeli President addressed the Turkish Parliament, heaping praise on Erdogan’s reforms and his peace-making efforts between Tel Aviv and its neighbors. A referendum that year and another in 2010 pushed through constitutional revisions that, among other measures, enhanced labor rights, gender equality, and civilian oversight of a military that had a history of toppling democratic governments. In 2008, the government launched the prosecution of nearly three hundred military officers, journalists, and lawmakers accused of plotting to topple the government and spark a military takeover in what became known as the Ergenekon case.
Throughout these years, Gulen and Erdogan were allies, particularly with respect to efforts to subordinate the military.
But by 2010, each showed signs of growing uncomfortable with his partner.
Having broken with Israel over the 2008 Gaza war and re-oriented Turkish foreign policy toward the Arab Middle East with his “zero problems with neighbours” program, Erdogan was making a name for himself in the Islamic world to the growing annoyance of the more cautious and reserved Gulen.
After Erdogan stood behind the Mavi Marmara and its failed attempt to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, Gulen openly criticized him, insisting that aid should have gone through only with the approval of Israeli authorities. As part of a confidence-building measure with Iran, Hakan Fidan, Erdogan’s head of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), also reportedly leaked the identities of ten Mossad agents operating in Turkey to Iran, prompting additional murmurs of disapproval from Gulen.
According to Erdogan supporters, Gulen directed his network of followers in the media, judiciary, and police to work together to undermine the prime minister and his hold on the AKP.
An allegedly Gulen-linked prosecutor summoned MIT head Fidan to explain 2009-2010 meetings with Kurdish rebels in Oslo, widely believed to be part of the government’s peace process with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), which is still listed as a terrorist organization in Turkey.
The AK Party, which enjoys an absolute majority in Parliament, responded by changing the law to bar future such oversight of the intelligence agency and floating the idea of shutting down hundreds of Gulen’s private tutoring centers, a move that would decimate the cleric’s grassroots network in Turkey.
When Erdogan took a divisive stand on the civil war in neighboring Syria, calling for the removal of Assad, by force if necessary, prominent Gulenists publicly dissented.
This January, police allegedly loyal to Gulen raided the offices of an AK Party linked aid agency, İnsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri (IHH), in Kilis, near the Syrian border, and told journalists they had arrested 28 suspected members of al-Qaeda. The next month, police stopped a convoy of seven trucks belonging to the MIT near the Syrian border and claimed to have found a cache of weapons intended to supply the Islamic State.
These moves mirrored rhetoric from the cleric himself warning of Erdogan’s stance against Assad. When the Turkish parliament passed legislation authorizing military intervention against ISIS in Syria and Iraq in October, Gulen warned it could drag the country into “a new World War I.” Ali Bulac, writing in the Zaman newspaper, which regularly features Gulen’s views on Turkish politics, called the idea of Turkish intervention in Syria “an ambitious and imperialist project.”
To Erdogan, the Hizmet’s actions—warning against intervention in Syria, linking the AK Party to al-Qaeda and Islamic State, or to Iran, and branding it as a troublemaker in the Middle East—was seen as a betrayal by a former ally in the face of mounting pressure and frustration with the Turkish leaders by western leaders, some of whom have long been skeptical of the Turkish leader’s ultimate aims.
At home, opposition groups have adopted the narrative. When tens of thousands protested against Erdogan in Taksim Square in June 2013, Gulen issued a gentle reminder to Erdogan not to let things get out of hand by ignoring the protesters’ demands. A year later, Erdogan decried the opposition’s embrace of the demonstrators who he accused of being “terrorists who smash things up.”
Those kinds of remarks and the willingness to crack down on civil society seen this month have lost Erdogan a large number of secular allies in Turkey and may just isolate him from his remaining friends in the West. While Erdogan became the country’s first directly elected president with 52 percent of the votes in August, his mandate is built on the lowest turnout rate in Turkey’s history, partly due to millions of secular voters who saw no credible alternative.
Parliamentary elections are due in June of next year. If a viable opposition party springs up, one that can cater to seculars, minorities like Kurds, as well as Hizmet members, it could become a serious challenge to the AK Party. Any opposition would have to draw votes from millions of Turks who do not support the traditional nationalist parties, as well as AK Party voters who see no other Islamist alternative.
For now, however, Erdogan appears convinced that he has popular support for his actions, which he describes as a final purging necessary to save Turkey from an international conspiracy. His crackdown has effectively crippled the Gulen network in Turkey: graduates from the Gulen-inspired Fatih University can’t find jobs; newspapers like Zaman have lost advertisers and hundreds of thousands of readers; and Bank Asya, which caters to his TUKSON business network, lost a third of its worth this year.
For more than a decade, Erdogan has worked to establish what he regards as a stable democratic system to Turkey, and now he wants to reap the rewards of his labor by extending influence far beyond its borders. In his mind, Gulen stands in the way.
Umar Farooq is a freelance journalist based in Turkey whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and a number of other outlets. He tweets @UmarFarooq_
]]>Tuesday’s release by the Senate Intelligence Committee of its long-awaited report on the torture by the CIA of detainees in the so-called “war on terror” does not go far enough, according to major U.S. human rights groups.
While welcoming the report’s release, the subject of months of intensive and sometimes furious negotiations between the Senate Committee’s majority and both the CIA and the Obama administration, the groups said additional steps were needed to ensure that U.S. officials never again engage in the kind of torture detailed in the report.
“This should be the beginning of a process, not the end,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “The report should shock President Obama and Congress into action, to make sure that torture and cruelty are never used again.”
He called, among other steps, for the appointment of a special prosecutor to hold the “architects and perpetrators” of what the George W. Bush administration called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs) accountable and for Congress to assert its control over the CIA, “which in this report sounds more like a rogue paramilitary group than the intelligence gathering agency that it’s supposed to be.”
He was joined by London-based Amnesty International which noted that the declassified information provided in the report constituted “a reminder to the world of the utter failure of the USA to end the impunity enjoyed by those who authorised and used torture and other ill-treatment.
“This is a wake-up call to the USA; they must disclose the full truth about the human rights violations, hold perpetrators accountable and ensure justice for the victims,” said Amnesty’s Latin America director, Erika Guevara.
The Senate Committee’s report, actually a 524-page, partially-redacted summary of a still-classified 6,300-page report on the treatment of at least 119 terrorist suspects detained in secret locations overseas, accused the CIA not only of engaging in torture that was “brutal and far worse” than has previously been reported, but also of regularly misleading the White House and Congress both about what it was doing and the purported value of the intelligence it derived from those practices.
Water-boarding, for example, was used against detainees more often and in more of the CIA’s “black sites” than previously known; sleep deprivation was used for up to a week at a time against some suspects; others received “rectal feeding” or “hydration’; and still others were forced to stand on broken feet or legs.
In at least one case, a detainee was frozen to death; in the case of Abu Zubayda, an alleged “high-value” Al Qaeda detainee who was subject to dozens of water-boardings, the treatment was so brutal, several CIA officers asked to be transferred if it did not stop.
While the CIA officers and former Bush administration officials, notably former Vice President Dick Cheney, have long insisted that key information – including intelligence that eventually led to the killing of Osama bin Laden — was obtained from EITs, the report concluded that these techniques were ineffective.
Seven of 39 detainees who were subject to the most aggressive EITs provided no intelligence at all, while information obtained from the others preceded the harsh treatment, according to the report, which relied on the CIA’s own cables and reports.
In some cases, detainees subjected to EITs gave misinformation about “terrorist threats” which did not actually exist, the report found. Of the 119 known detainees subject to EITs, at least 26 should never have been held, it said.
Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, who fought hard for months to release the report over the CIA’s fierce objections, wrote in its Forward that, in the aftermath of the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks, “she could understand the CIA’s impulse to consider the use of every possible tool to gather intelligence and remove terrorists from the battlefield, and CIA was encouraged by political leaders and the public to do whatever it could to prevent another attack.”
“Nevertheless, such pressure, fear and expectation of further terrorist plots do not justify, temper or excuse improper actions taken by individuals or organizations in the name of national security,” according to Feinstein.
For his part, CIA director John Brennan, a career CIA officer appointed by Obama whose role in the Bush administration’s detention programme remains cloudy, “acknowledge(d) that the detention and interrogation program had shortcomings and that the Agency made mistakes.”
“The most serious problems occurred early on and stemmed from the fact that the Agency was unprepared and lacked the core competencies required to carry out an unprecedented, worldwide program of detaining and interrogating suspected al-Qa’ida and affiliated terrorists.”
But he also defended the EITs, insisting that “interrogations of detainees on whom EITs were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives.” A fact sheet released by the CIA claimed, as an example, that one detainee, after undergoing EITs, identified bin Laden’s courier, which subsequently led the CIA to the Al Qaeda chief’s location.
With several notable exceptions, Republicans also defended the CIA and the Bush administration’s orders to permit EITs. Indeed, the Intelligence Committee’s Republican members released a minority report that noted that the majority of staff had not interviewed any CIA officers directly involved in the programme.
“There is no reason whatsoever for this report to ever be published,” said the Committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. Saxby Chambliss. “This is purely a partisan tactic” which he said was designed to attack the Bush administration. Republicans also warned that the report’s release would endanger U.S. service personnel and citizens abroad by fuelling anti-American sentiment, especially in the Muslim world.
But Sen. John McCain, who was himself tortured as a prisoner of war in the Vietnam war, defended the report, calling it “a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose …but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.”
McCain has championed efforts to pass legislation outlawing torture, particularly because Obama’s 2009 executive orders prohibiting such practices could be reversed by a future president.
Passage of such a law – whose prospects appear virtually nil in light of Republican control of both houses of Congress for the next two years – is one of the demands, along with release of the full report, of most human-rights groups here.
“The Obama administration and Congress should work together to build a durable consensus against torture by pursuing legislation that demonstrates bipartisan unity and fidelity to our ideals,” said Elisa Massimino, director of Human Rights First.
Many groups, however, want Obama to go further by prosecuting those responsible for the EIT programme, a step that his administration made clear from the outset it was loathe to do.
“We renew our demand for accountability for those individuals responsible for the CIA torture programme,” said Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has represented a number of detainees at Guantanamo, including Abu Zubaydah, in U.S. courts. “They should be prosecuted in U.S. courts; and, if our government continues to refuse to hold them accountable, they must be pursued internationally under principles of universal jurisdiction.”
“The report shows the repeated claims that harsh measures were needed to protect Americans are utter fiction,” according to Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth. “Unless this important truth-telling process leads to prosecution of the officials responsible, torture will remain a ‘policy option’ for future presidents.”
Noting that health professionals, including doctors and psychologists also played a role in the EITs, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) also called for legal accountability. “For more than a decade, the U.S. government has been lying about its use of torture,” said Donna McKay, PHR’s executive director.
“The report confirms that health professionals used their skills to break the minds and bodies of detainees. Their actions destroyed trust in clinicians, undermined the integrity of their professions, and damaged the United States’ human rights record, which can only be corrected through accountability,” she said.
This article was first published by IPS and was reprinted here with permission.
]]>The wisdom of any application of military force will involve much more than the goals initially laid out and the resources initially applied to achieve those goals. Those initial conditions are only a snapshot in time of what is inevitably a dynamic process. History has repeatedly shown that overseas military endeavors have a way of becoming something much different from what they began as. History also has repeatedly shown that the dominant type of change is escalation to something bigger and costlier than originally intended, sometimes even to the point of expanding to blunders of tragic proportions.
Several processes, working together or independently, drive the process of escalation. Some of these processes are, considered in isolation, logical and reasonable. Some of them are rooted in universal human nature; some are more characteristically American.
The “Win the War” Objective. A distinctively American (and non-Clausewitzian) way of approaching the use of military force is to believe that if something is worth fighting for, then we ought to realize that we are “at war” and ought to do whatever it takes to “win” the war. This mindset has had a huge influence through the years on discourse in the United States about using the military instrument in foreign affairs, including in more recent years with a so-called “war on terror”. The attitude severs the use of force from all other calculations about the costs and benefits of using it in particular ways and particular circumstances. There thus is no limit to potential escalation as the sometimes elusive “win” is pursued.
Standard Procedures and the Military’s Operational Requirements. Military forces, for quite understandable reasons of operational security or effectiveness, insist that if they are called on to perform certain missions then they must be permitted to use certain minimal levels of forces, to put their troops in certain places, or to operate in certain other ways regardless of the political or diplomatic side-effects. Some of the classic and most consequential examples occurred at the onset of World War I, when mobilization schedules of armies helped to push statesmen into a much bigger armed confrontation than they wanted, and when German troops violated Belgian neutrality because that’s what a military plan called for. More recent U.S. military history has had many more modest examples of military requirements driving escalation, such as ground forces being needed to provide security for air bases. In the interest of force security, a remarkably large amount of firepower has sometimes been used in support of quite small objectives (such as the deposition and capture of Manuel Noriega in Panama in 1989).
Hoping That Just a Little More Will Do It. If a given level of force does not accomplish the declared objective, then an understandable and quite reasonable next question is whether a bit more force will be sufficient to do the trick. It may be logically sound to decide that it is worth trying some more force. The calculation of the moment weighs the marginal costs of doing so against the marginal benefits. The marginal cost of a slight escalation may be low, with the benefit being the chance of a significant breakthrough. But a series of individual decisions like this, while they may be individually justifiable, can result in escalation to total costs that are far out of proportion to any possible benefit. The U.S. escalation of the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1968 is an example.
One Objective Leads to Another. The nature of some objectives is such that if they are to be achieved—or as a consequence of being achieved—some other objective needs to be pursued as well. Or even if it does not really need to be pursued, it comes into play naturally and is not easily dismissed amid the momentum and fog of war. This is the process that often is given the namemission creep. An example is how Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, which began as an offensive to oust the Taliban, became a long-term nation-building effort.
Responding to the Adversary’s Escalation. It take two to tango and to make war. The adversary has many of these same reasons to escalate a conflict against us, and perhaps other reasons as well. When he does, we are apt to counter-escalate, not only for emotional reasons of revenge but also perhaps for more justifiable reasons of deterrence. This is the chief type of escalation that was the subject of much strategic doctrine developed during the Cold War.
Domestic Political Vulnerability. Statesmen do not make their decisions about military force in a political vacuum. They have domestic political flanks to protect. Mitigating charges of weakness or wimpiness is an added, and possibly even the principal, motivation to escalate the use of force against what is widely perceived as a threat.
The emerging military campaign against ISIS will not become another World War I or Vietnam War, but all of the above factors are seeds of escalation of that campaign, possibly to levels well above what either the Obama administration or its more hawkish critics are talking about. Some of the factors are already quite evidently in play. The absolutist vocabulary about being at war and having to win the war is very prevalent. The president already has been pushed by the political and rhetorical forces this vocabulary represents toward greater use of military force than he otherwise would have preferred. The dynamic of each side in the armed conflict escalating in response to the other side’s escalation also has already begun. A major stimulant for the American public’s alarmist and militant attitude toward ISIS was the group’s intentionally provocative videotaped killings—which the group described as retaliation for U.S. military strikes against it.
The military’s operational requirements are also starting to come into play as a mechanism of escalation, as we hear military experts telling us how air and ground operations really are inseparable, and how effective air strikes depend on reliable spotters on the ground. There also will no doubt be decision points ahead about whether a little more use of force will do the job, as the United States pursues the impossible to accomplish declared objective of “destroying” ISIS. Finally, the potential for mission creep is substantial, with unanswered questions about what will follow in the countries in conflict even if ISIS could be “destroyed.” Perhaps the most glaring such question is in Syria, where, given the anathema toward dealing with the Assad regime, it remains unclear what would fill any vacuum left by a destroyed ISIS—and what the United States can, should, or will do about it. The much-discussed “moderate” forces are far from constituting a credible answer to that question
There is significant danger of the campaign against ISIS and the costs it incurs getting far, far out of proportion to any threat the group poses to U.S. interests.
This article was first published by the National Interest and was reprinted here with permission.
]]>Last week epitomized the highs and lows of hoping for an improvement in US-Iran relations. A BBC report on Sept. 5 that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had approved Iranian cooperation with the US military in the fight against ISIS was met with near elation in many quarters. Some analysts (myself included) felt this announcement would clarify the strategic value of normalized US-Iran relations for the publics and policymakers of both countries. But after the ensuing Iranian denials that cooperation was in fact approved, the Americans went even further by denying even the possibility of formal cooperation. A Sept. 8 State Department briefing reiterated the exclusion of Iran from the broad 40-nation coalition announced by President Obama to combat ISIS, and Secretary of State John Kerry’s Sept. 12 assertion in Ankara that including Iran “would not be appropriate” because of its involvement in Syria and its alleged status as a “state sponsor of terror in various places” put the icing on the cake.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Iranian hardliners have taken heart from this very public snub. Even Marziah Afkham, the spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry, a stronghold of pragmatists who favors improved relations with the West, felt compelled toregister “serious doubts about [the coalition’s] seriousness to fight against the root and true reasons for terrorism.” She noted without elaboration that “[s]ome of the countries in the coalition are among the financial and military supporters of terrorists in Iraq and Syria.”
Unlike US policymakers, Iranian statesmen—and the wider public—have a long memory. As the recent anniversary of Sept. 11 reminds us to “never forget,” we can do little but remember the lives lost and contemplate how the United States was drawn into a global conflict with religious extremists 13 years ago. For Iranians, however, the fateful date came four years before.
The Taliban reached global prominence in 1998, a year when its fighters launched a devastating offensive in northern Afghanistan. Much as the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS) last month swept across northern Iraq, forcing the Kurdish Peshmerga to retreat to within 40kms of Erbil, the better-armed and better-organized Taliban overcame all resistance by the Iran and Uzbekistani-backed coalition there during that summer. On Aug 8, it captured Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan’s fourth largest city, located just 100km from the border with Uzbekistan. Overwhelming local militias, Taliban troops and their allies massacred an estimated 2,000 Hazara civilians in what Human Rights Watch called “one of the worst atrocities of Afghanistan’s long civil war.” In addition, they stormed the Iranian consulate, killing a journalist and ten members of the diplomatic mission, despite assurances from the government of Pakistan, a chief sponsor of the Taliban at the time, that diplomats would not be targeted.
The diplomats’ murder—as well as the massacre of civilians—outraged both the Iranian regime and the broader public. Foreign Ministry officials mourned their fallen colleagues, whom they celebrated as martyrs akin to those who died ”defending the borders of this great country during eight years of holy defense” during Iran’s 1980-88 war with Iraq. An official statement broadcast on Iranian state television asserted Iran’s ”right to defend the security of its citizens” and warned that “the consequences of the Taliban action is on the shoulders of the Taliban and their supporters.”
For Iran, there was no question that the Taliban enjoyed the support of two states: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Without significant financial support from Saudi sources and the help of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Taliban would not have been able to stage such a brutal offensive. While it had taken Kabul two years before, the conquest of Mazar-e Sharif consolidated the Taliban’s position as the ruler of virtually all of Afghanistan, a status that no doubt contributed to its increasingly close cooperation with al-Qaeda.
Iran responded by building up its forces along the Afghan border and conducting major military exercises. But the Islamic Republic felt unable to commit to a costly and unpredictable war in Afghanistan unilaterally. It was only three years later, with 9/11, that the US came to realize the full nature of the threat posed by al-Qaeda and its Taliban collaborators.
Suddenly, Iran and the United States had a common enemy. As Washington mulled its strategy to rout the Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda, officials in Tehran reached out to offer strategic support. Years of experience in Afghanistan had given the Iranians deep insight into how the Taliban operated in the ethnically and geographically complex nation.
The secret discussions that occurred between American and Iranian officials in the weeks that followed were the highest-level talks held between the two countries since the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the subsequent hostage crisis. Many analysts believed that the new-found alignment of strategic interests, combined with President Mohammad Khatami’s reformist policies and conciliatory tone, would spur the US and Iran to normalize relations and actively cooperate against the terrorist threat.
In a grave blunder, however, neoconservatives and other hawks in the Bush administration opposed collaboration with Iran, thus depriving coalition forces of a valuable ally. Two months later, in a triumph of politics over pragmatism, Bush gratuitously lumped Iran together with Iraq and North Korea in his infamous “axis of evil,” a move that greatly strengthened hard-line forces in Tehran who had long argued that Washington simply could not be trusted.
It is striking how this situation mirrors that faced by the US and Iran today as both countries face the threat posed by ISIS. The Rouhani administration has opened the door to reconciliation, and the rise of reinvigorated Sunni extremism in the region gives Washington and Tehran a common enemy. Indeed, Iran has sent arms and advisers to Iraq to help the Peshmerga and Iraqi forces roll back ISIS’s recent advances.
Nonetheless, the US remains unwilling to include Iran in its coalition efforts. This position has given hardliners in Iran yet another opportunity to instill doubts about Washington’s sincerity and trustworthiness. Unsurprisingly, the events of 1998 and 2001 weigh heavily on Iran’s collective memory. Indeed, the conservative website Javan Online last week recalled “Iran’s bitter experience of cooperation with the US in Afghanistan,” citing it as reason to dismiss cooperation with Washington against ISIS. The conservative refrain that members of the coalition are “among financial and military supporters of terrorists” is also rooted in the historical memory of the 1998 offensive. Iran also continues to view Saudi Arabia as a key source both of funding for ISIS and other radical Sunni groups and of their intolerant and violent ideology, just as it was for the Taliban.
That Riyadh and its Gulf allies should be treated by Washington as central partners in the anti-ISIS coalition, while Tehran is excluded from any formal participation is particularly galling to Iranians who have suffered the brunt of US sanctions. Not only is this, in their view, illogical. To them, it also suggests that Washington is simply unable to learn from its past mistakes.
–Esfandyar Batmanghelidj is a founding partner of the 1st Europe-Iran Forum, a conference focused on commercial opportunities in Iran to be held in London in October. He has conducted extensive research on Iranian political economy and social history.
Photo: Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif shakes hands with US Secretary of State John Kerr on July 14, 2014 in Vienna.
]]>by Patrick Cockburn
[This essay is excerpted from the first chapter of Patrick Cockburn’s new book, The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising, with special thanks to his publisher, OR Books. The first section is a new introduction written for TomDispatch.]
There are extraordinary elements in the present [...]]]>
by Patrick Cockburn
[This essay is excerpted from the first chapter of Patrick Cockburn’s new book, The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising, with special thanks to his publisher, OR Books. The first section is a new introduction written for TomDispatch.]
There are extraordinary elements in the present U.S. policy in Iraq and Syria that are attracting surprisingly little attention. In Iraq, the U.S. is carrying out air strikes and sending in advisers and trainers to help beat back the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (better known as ISIS) on the Kurdish capital, Erbil. The U.S. would presumably do the same if ISIS surrounds or attacks Baghdad. But in Syria, Washington’s policy is the exact opposite: there the main opponent of ISIS is the Syrian government and the Syrian Kurds in their northern enclaves. Both are under attack from ISIS, which has taken about a third of the country, including most of its oil and gas production facilities.
But U.S., Western European, Saudi, and Arab Gulf policy is to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, which happens to be the policy of ISIS and other jihadis in Syria. If Assad goes, then ISIS will be the beneficiary, since it is either defeating or absorbing the rest of the Syrian armed opposition. There is a pretense in Washington and elsewhere that there exists a “moderate” Syrian opposition being helped by the U.S., Qatar, Turkey, and the Saudis. It is, however, weak and getting more so by the day. Soon the new caliphate may stretch from the Iranian border to the Mediterranean and the only force that can possibly stop this from happening is the Syrian army.
The reality of U.S. policy is to support the government of Iraq, but not Syria, against ISIS. But one reason that group has been able to grow so strong in Iraq is that it can draw on its resources and fighters in Syria. Not everything that went wrong in Iraq was the fault of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, as has now become the political and media consensus in the West. Iraqi politicians have been telling me for the last two years that foreign backing for the Sunni revolt in Syria would inevitably destabilize their country as well. This has now happened.
By continuing these contradictory policies in two countries, the U.S. has ensured that ISIS can reinforce its fighters in Iraq from Syria and vice versa. So far, Washington has been successful in escaping blame for the rise of ISIS by putting all the blame on the Iraqi government. In fact, it has created a situation in which ISIS can survive and may well flourish.
Using the al-Qa’ida Label
The sharp increase in the strength and reach of jihadist organizations in Syria and Iraq has generally been unacknowledged until recently by politicians and media in the West. A primary reason for this is that Western governments and their security forces narrowly define the jihadist threat as those forces directly controlled by al-Qa‘ida central or “core” al-Qa‘ida. This enables them to present a much more cheerful picture of their successes in the so-called war on terror than the situation on the ground warrants.
In fact, the idea that the only jihadis to be worried about are those with the official blessing of al-Qa‘ida is naïve and self-deceiving. It ignores the fact, for instance, that ISIS has been criticized by the al-Qa‘ida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri for its excessive violence and sectarianism. After talking to a range of Syrian jihadi rebels not directly affiliated with al-Qa‘ida in southeast Turkey earlier this year, a source told me that “without exception they all expressed enthusiasm for the 9/11 attacks and hoped the same thing would happen in Europe as well as the U.S.”
Jihadi groups ideologically close to al-Qa‘ida have been relabeled as moderate if their actions are deemed supportive of U.S. policy aims. In Syria, the Americans backed a plan by Saudi Arabia to build up a “Southern Front” based in Jordan that would be hostile to the Assad government in Damascus, and simultaneously hostile to al-Qa‘ida-type rebels in the north and east. The powerful but supposedly moderate Yarmouk Brigade, reportedly the planned recipient of anti-aircraft missiles from Saudi Arabia, was intended to be the leading element in this new formation. But numerous videos show that the Yarmouk Brigade has frequently fought in collaboration with JAN, the official al-Qa‘ida affiliate. Since it was likely that, in the midst of battle, these two groups would share their munitions, Washington was effectively allowing advanced weaponry to be handed over to its deadliest enemy. Iraqi officials confirm that they have captured sophisticated arms from ISIS fighters in Iraq that were originally supplied by outside powers to forces considered to be anti-al-Qa‘ida in Syria.
The name al-Qa‘ida has always been applied flexibly when identifying an enemy. In 2003 and 2004 in Iraq, as armed Iraqi opposition to the American and British-led occupation mounted, U.S. officials attributed most attacks to al-Qa‘ida, though many were carried out by nationalist and Baathist groups. Propaganda like this helped to persuade nearly 60% of U.S. voters prior to the Iraq invasion that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and those responsible for 9/11, despite the absence of any evidence for this. In Iraq itself, indeed throughout the entire Muslim world, these accusations have benefited al-Qa‘ida by exaggerating its role in the resistance to the U.S. and British occupation.
Precisely the opposite PR tactics were employed by Western governments in 2011 in Libya, where any similarity between al-Qa‘ida and the NATO-backed rebels fighting to overthrow the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, was played down. Only those jihadis who had a direct operational link to the al-Qa‘ida “core” of Osama bin Laden were deemed to be dangerous. The falsity of the pretense that the anti-Gaddafi jihadis in Libya were less threatening than those in direct contact with al-Qa‘ida was forcefully, if tragically, exposed when U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens was killed by jihadi fighters in Benghazi in September 2012. These were the same fighters lauded by Western governments and media for their role in the anti-Gaddafi uprising.
Imagining al-Qa’ida as the Mafia
Al-Qa‘ida is an idea rather than an organization, and this has long been the case. For a five-year period after 1996, it did have cadres, resources, and camps in Afghanistan, but these were eliminated after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001. Subsequently, al-Qa‘ida’s name became primarily a rallying cry, a set of Islamic beliefs, centering on the creation of an Islamic state, the imposition of sharia, a return to Islamic customs, the subjugation of women, and the waging of holy war against other Muslims, notably the Shia, who are considered heretics worthy of death. At the center of this doctrine for making war is an emphasis on self-sacrifice and martyrdom as a symbol of religious faith and commitment. This has resulted in using untrained but fanatical believers as suicide bombers, to devastating effect.
It has always been in the interest of the U.S. and other governments that al-Qa‘ida be viewed as having a command-and-control structure like a mini-Pentagon, or like the mafia in America. This is a comforting image for the public because organized groups, however demonic, can be tracked down and eliminated through imprisonment or death. More alarming is the reality of a movement whose adherents are self-recruited and can spring up anywhere.
Osama bin Laden’s gathering of militants, which he did not call al-Qa‘ida until after 9/11, was just one of many jihadi groups 12 years ago. But today its ideas and methods are predominant among jihadis because of the prestige and publicity it gained through the destruction of the Twin Towers, the war in Iraq, and its demonization by Washington as the source of all anti-American evil. These days, there is a narrowing of differences in the beliefs of jihadis, regardless of whether or not they are formally linked to al-Qa‘ida central.
Unsurprisingly, governments prefer the fantasy picture of al-Qa‘ida because it enables them to claim victories when it succeeds in killing its better known members and allies. Often, those eliminated are given quasi-military ranks, such as “head of operations,” to enhance the significance of their demise. The culmination of this heavily publicized but largely irrelevant aspect of the “war on terror” was the killing of bin Laden in Abbottabad in Pakistan in 2011. This enabled President Obama to grandstand before the American public as the man who had presided over the hunting down of al-Qa‘ida’s leader. In practical terms, however, his death had little impact on al-Qa‘ida-type jihadi groups, whose greatest expansion has occurred subsequently.
Ignoring the Roles of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan
The key decisions that enabled al-Qa‘ida to survive, and later to expand, were made in the hours immediately after 9/11. Almost every significant element in the project to crash planes into the Twin Towers and other iconic American buildings led back to Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden was a member of the Saudi elite, and his father had been a close associate of the Saudi monarch. Citing a CIA report from 2002, the official 9/11 report says that al-Qa‘ida relied for its financing on “a variety of donors and fundraisers, primarily in the Gulf countries and particularly in Saudi Arabia.”
The report’s investigators repeatedly found their access limited or denied when seeking information in Saudi Arabia. Yet President George W. Bush apparently never even considered holding the Saudis responsible for what happened. An exit of senior Saudis, including bin Laden relatives, from the U.S. was facilitated by the U.S. government in the days after 9/11. Most significant, 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission Report about the relationship between the attackers and Saudi Arabia were cut and never published, despite a promise by President Obama to do so, on the grounds of national security.
In 2009, eight years after 9/11, a cable from the U.S. secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, revealed by WikiLeaks, complained that donors in Saudi Arabia constituted the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide. But despite this private admission, the U.S. and Western Europeans continued to remain indifferent to Saudi preachers whose message, spread to millions by satellite TV, YouTube, and Twitter, called for the killing of the Shia as heretics. These calls came as al-Qa‘ida bombs were slaughtering people in Shia neighborhoods in Iraq. A sub-headline in another State Department cable in the same year reads: “Saudi Arabia: Anti-Shi’ism as Foreign Policy?” Now, five years later, Saudi-supported groups have a record of extreme sectarianism against non-Sunni Muslims.
Pakistan, or rather Pakistani military intelligence in the shape of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was the other parent of al-Qa‘ida, the Taliban, and jihadi movements in general. When the Taliban was disintegrating under the weight of U.S. bombing in 2001, its forces in northern Afghanistan were trapped by anti-Taliban forces. Before they surrendered, hundreds of ISI members, military trainers, and advisers were hastily evacuated by air. Despite the clearest evidence of ISI’s sponsorship of the Taliban and jihadis in general, Washington refused to confront Pakistan, and thereby opened the way for the resurgence of the Taliban after 2003, which neither the U.S. nor NATO has been able to reverse.
The “war on terror” has failed because it did not target the jihadi movement as a whole and, above all, was not aimed at Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the two countries that fostered jihadism as a creed and a movement. The U.S. did not do so because these countries were important American allies whom it did not want to offend. Saudi Arabia is an enormous market for American arms, and the Saudis have cultivated, and on occasion purchased, influential members of the American political establishment. Pakistan is a nuclear power with a population of 180 million and a military with close links to the Pentagon.
The spectacular resurgence of al-Qa‘ida and its offshoots has happened despite the huge expansion of American and British intelligence services and their budgets after 9/11. Since then, the U.S., closely followed by Britain, has fought wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and adopted procedures normally associated with police states, such as imprisonment without trial, rendition, torture, and domestic espionage. Governments wage the “war on terror” claiming that the rights of individual citizens must be sacrificed to secure the safety of all.
In the face of these controversial security measures, the movements against which they are aimed have not been defeated but rather have grown stronger. At the time of 9/11, al-Qa‘ida was a small, generally ineffectual organization; by 2014 al-Qa‘ida-type groups were numerous and powerful.
In other words, the “war on terror,” the waging of which has shaped the political landscape for so much of the world since 2001, has demonstrably failed. Until the fall of Mosul, nobody paid much attention.
Patrick Cockburn is Middle East correspondent for the Independent and worked previously for the Financial Times. He has written three books on Iraq’s recent history as well as a memoir, The Broken Boy, and, with his son, a book on schizophrenia, Henry’s Demons. He won the Martha Gellhorn Prize in 2005, the James Cameron Prize in 2006, and the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2009. His forthcoming book, The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising, is now available exclusively from OR Books. This article was first published by Tom Dispatch. Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook and Tumblr. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me. Copyright 2014 Patrick Cockburn
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The saga of the three kidnapped Israeli youths in the West Bank took a tragic, if expected, turn today, when their bodies were discovered near Hebron. None but the most starry-eyed optimist thought the young men would be found alive after all this time. But the story is [...]]]>
by
Mitchell PlitnickThe saga of the three kidnapped Israeli youths in the West Bank took a tragic, if expected, turn today, when their bodies were discovered near Hebron. None but the most starry-eyed optimist thought the young men would be found alive after all this time. But the story is far from over.
Even before the announcement was made that the bodies were found, clashes were reported between Israeli forces and Palestinians in the town of Halhul, where the grisly discovery was made. A massive Israel Defense Forces (IDF) presence was reported, roads were closed and the area was generally closed down. The Israeli security cabinet is meeting at this writing to decide on further measures.
The only thing that seems certain right now about the Israeli response is that it will be unjust and have nothing to do with addressing the terrible crime that has just been confirmed. For the moment, at least, it appears that the perpetrators, Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisha, are beyond the reach of Israel. Since Israel cannot punish those who so profoundly deserve punishment, they will punish those that they can. This, sadly, is the calculus of occupation. There is already violence reported by residents of Hebron. Some might see justice in that, but ask yourself how you would feel if your son, brother or father – or just a neighbor— was a murderer and you were the one who had to pay for their crime.
There is still no evidence that the two killers, who were apparently members of Hamas, did not act alone. Nonetheless, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that he will hold Hamas responsible and has repeatedly called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to sever the unity government that he only recently forged with Hamas. Now, Netanyahu has declared, in a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet that “Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay.”
What might that mean? Well, earlier, some members of Netanyahu’s Likud party described the response they wanted to see.
Danny Danon, the Deputy Defense Minister said “This tragic ending must also be the ending of Hamas! The nation is strong and ready to absorb [attacks] for the sake of a mortal blow against Hamas. … [W]e have to destroy the homes of Hamas activists, wipe out their arsenals everywhere, and stop the flow of money that directly or indirectly keeps terror alive… make the entire Palestinian leadership pay a heavy price.”
For Danon, it is not even enough that Hamas pay for this, but the Palestinian Authority as well. Yet there remains no evidence Hamas, as an organization had anything to do with this. The Shin Bet, Israel’s intelligence service, issued a very telling statement about the murders: “Following intensive operational intelligence work by the Shin Bet, less than 24 hours after the kidnapping it became evident that two Hamas activists, Marwan Qawasmeh and Amar Abu Aisha, are those behind the kidnapping of the three teens.” No mention made of Hamas’ involvement; merely that the two men were members. If Bibi really has anything connecting Hamas to this crime, he’s keeping it inexplicably secret.
No matter to the outspoken Tzipi Hotovely of Likud, who said, “The despicable kidnapping and murder of the students cannot go by in silence, and those responsible in Gaza must pay the price. The government of Israel must declare a war to the death on Hamas, which is responsible for the murders, and return to the policy of [targeted] assassination.” Like Danon, Hotovely expresses no concern about the Israeli lives this will put at risk, much less those of innocent Palestinians. Nor do they care about the consequences of such actions.
One might think that these Likud members might have some interest in actually tracking down the murderers. But no, they’d prefer to cynically use this despicable crime to further a political agenda of the worst kind—one that legitimizes intense violence that will mean a far greater loss of innocent life. In this, they are joined by their fellow travelers of the American right wing. The extreme pro-occupation forces took to Twitter even before Netanyahu made his announcement to politicize and distort these events.
Whatever the two killers were thinking, their monstrous crime will yield no positive results for anyone. The PA is crippled, quite likely permanently, by its response to the initial kidnapping. Hamas has been devastated in the West Bank by the Israeli response, leaving it unable to take advantage of any political opening that might be created. The people of the West Bank will see a major crackdown, and Israel will surely follow the call of Housing Minister Uri Ariel for more settlements to be built in response. Gaza will be hit by more missiles. The only victors might be the most radical elements in the Occupied Territories, the ones Hamas has been in conflict with in Gaza and who have generally laid very low in the West Bank.
There seems to be little interest in capturing the perpetrators of the crime, and a great eagerness to make Hamas in particular and the Palestinians in general suffer for this outrage. And I’m sure that is just what will happen. The question will then become how Hamas, Islamic Jihad and even the PA will respond.
Will they attempt to hit Israel back with more attacks on civilians? If they do, we may well have witnessed the beginning of a third intifada. Will they make a mere show of firing a few rockets that land harmlessly as most do? If they do that, there may be a backlash of rage that strengthen the more radical groups in the Territories. There are ISIS- and al-Qaeda-like groups there, which have seen little support among the Palestinian people, but this could change if the existing groups are seen as doing nothing in the face of Israeli aggression.
Whatever the outcome, the episode demonstrates yet again the futility of acts of violence. No one will gain from any of this, even if they think they will. And lost in it all, the murder of three young men, a heinous crime which everyone condemns, while everyone who gets hurt on both sides will have had nothing to do with it.
This article was first published by LobeLog and was reprinted here with permission. Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook
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by Thomas Lippman
Has King Abdullah backed away from his longstanding refusal to have anything to do with an Iraqi government that includes Nouri al-Maliki? Reporters who were in Jeddah when Abdullah met with Secretary of State John F. Kerry Friday seemed to think so, based on a background briefing by the [...]]]>
by Thomas Lippman
Has King Abdullah backed away from his longstanding refusal to have anything to do with an Iraqi government that includes Nouri al-Maliki? Reporters who were in Jeddah when Abdullah met with Secretary of State John F. Kerry Friday seemed to think so, based on a background briefing by the ubiquitous “senior official.”
Abdullah reportedly said that he would urge Iraq’s Sunni Muslims to join a new, more inclusive government in Baghdad to help save the country from itself by fending off the radical Sunni Muslim forces known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS]. These militants have overrun much of northern Iraq and are marching toward the capital. According to the senior official, Abdullah did not specifically say that any new government would have to exclude Maliki, whom he loathes and mistrusts, an apparent softening of his adamant position.
“It was clear,” the senior official told reporters after the Kerry-Abdullah meeting, “that the two shared a view that all of Iraq’s community should be participating on an urgent basis in the political process to allow it to move forward and that each—both the Secretary and King Abdullah in their conversations with Iraqi leaders—would convey that message directly to them.”
That could signal a willingness to recognize a new government headed by Maliki, but it could also mean the opposite – since Maliki is unlikely to be able to form a government that would have substantial Sunni representation, what Abdullah really wants is a government headed by someone else.
There is no doubt that the Saudi leadership regards ISIS as a threat to regional stability and a menace to themselves, but the king has long believed that Maliki is the cause of the problem in Iraq and cannot be part of the solution. In his view, Maliki is an Iranian agent whose exclusion of Sunni Muslims from positions of power is what motivates the ISIS rebels. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, restated that view the day before Kerry met the king.
“Maliki is the one to blame,” he said, according to the Saudi Press Agency, because he “stirred up the sectarian fight” and encouraged sectarian militias to fight each other.
Prince Saud himself met with Kerry on Friday, along with the foreign ministers of Jordan and United Arab Emirates, and gave no indication that King Abdullah was reconsidering his position. On the contrary, a “senior official” told reporters, the Saudi position was “exactly” the same as what the kingdom has said publicly, which is that Maliki must go. “They talked about their concerns about the lack of inclusivity of the current leadership. That’s obviously a reference to Maliki, so…”
Because Saudi Arabia has supported a Sunni insurgency against the Iran-supported government in Syria, many analysts in the Gulf of suspect Saudi Arabia of also encouraging the ISIS uprising in Iraq. In both countries, Saudi Arabia would gain through the downfall of regimes aligned with Riyadh’s arch-rival, Iran, a Shiite state that supports Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. King Abdullah’s belief that Maliki is an Iranian agent can only be reinforced by news reports this weekend that Iran is preparing to return to Iraq warplanes that it had refused to give back after defecting Iraqi pilots flew them there during the 1991 Gulf war.
Saudi Arabia has a nominal ambassador to the Maliki government, but he lives in Amman; the kingdom does not have an embassy in Baghdad, has offered no economic or military support to the Maliki government, and has not encouraged Saudis to do business in Iraq. Iraq does have an embassy in Riyadh. Diplomats who have served there say King Abdullah’s senior advisers all recognize that his refusal to engage with Iraq has been counter-productive because it has left the field of influence to Iran, but they have been unable to persuade the king to soften his position. He believes that Maliki lied to him when he pledged, upon taking office eight years ago, to run an inclusive government that would give a sense of dignity and responsibility to Iraq’s formerly dominant Sunnis, whose power vaporized with the fall of Saddam Hussein and the U.S.-orchestrated purge that followed.
The question facing King Abdullah now is whether the ISIS threat is sufficiently dangerous to Saudi Arabia to persuade him to accept a new Baghdad government run by Maliki, and cooperate with it – and possibly with Iran directly – to thwart the rebellion and preserve the unity of the Iraqi state.
The militias grouped under the ISIS name are ruthless, well-financed, and now quite well armed with U.S.-made weapons seized from the fleeing Iraqi army. Even so, they present no direct military threat to Saudi Arabia, which is not their primary target. What Riyadh fears is that radical jihadists, Saudi and otherwise, who have joined ISIS’s ranks will infiltrate Saudi Arabia and attempt to destabilize the kingdom through terrorism and guerrilla attacks. The Saudis, like the ISIS fighters, are Sunni Muslims, but to the extent that ISIS has an ideology it derives from that of al-Qaeda, which originated as a Saudi movement dedicated to bringing down the al-Saud monarchy.
On Thursday, King Abdullah ordered Saudi security forces to take “necessary measures” to defend the kingdom against ISIS. Whether “necessary measures” might mean acceptance of Nouri al-Maliki’s role on Iraq is not yet clear.
This article was first published by LobeLog and was reprinted here with permission. Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook
Photo: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on June 27, 2014. Credit: State Department photo/ Public Domain
]]>by Derek Davison
The resurgence of “Salafi-jihadist” terrorist groups is once again at the forefront of national security thinking in Washington. A report released this week by the RAND Corporation, “A Persistent Threat: The Evolution of al Qa’ida and Other Salafi Jihadists,” explains why.
There were 20 active “Salafi-jihadist groups” around [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
The resurgence of “Salafi-jihadist” terrorist groups is once again at the forefront of national security thinking in Washington. A report released this week by the RAND Corporation, “A Persistent Threat: The Evolution of al Qa’ida and Other Salafi Jihadists,” explains why.
There were 20 active “Salafi-jihadist groups” around the world in 2001, according to Rand; last year this number was 49. In 2007 there were around 100 attacks around the world by al-Qaeda and affiliated groups; in 2013 there were over 900. The report offers many of the same dire assessments as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s (CEIP) May 30 conference, “Al-Qaeda Transformed,” which featured a talk by Georgetown professor and terrorism expert, Bruce Hoffman, titled “Al-Qaeda’s Curious Comeback.” Not only is the number of terrorist groups at unprecedented levels, but their geographic reach has expanded as well, particularly into Africa.
What explains this turn of events? The key lies in the word the CEIP used in the title of its conference: transformation. Al-Qaeda is no longer the single, hierarchical group that perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. That hierarchy still exists in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, but its direct role in carrying out terror attacks is negligible and its function is more an ideological totem than an active terror network. In its place is a network of local terror groups, who share a similar Salafi ideology and who to varying degrees have chosen to align themselves with al-Qaeda’s reputation or “brand.” These local groups may be directly affiliated with “core” al-Qaeda (like Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusra) or may share only the barest of connections (like Nigeria’s Boko Haram). But the overall result is a global, ideologically similar, collection of terrorist “franchises” that can exploit any local opportunity to expand their reach and capabilities. The Arab Spring, which was arguably a repudiation of violent Salafi extremism in favor of civil protest and reform movements, has actually enabled the rise and development of many of these local groups. It has led to lawless chaos and anti-government violence in places like Syria and eastern Libya, and Salafi terror groups have thrived in those conditions.
The other conclusion that can be drawn from this resurgence of Salafi terrorism, and the reemergence of al-Qaeda in its new, atomized form, is that the US’ “War on Terror” is failing. Every face of America’s counterterrorism policy has to be called into question, from the War in Afghanistan, to drone strikes (which have very likely created more terrorists than they killed), to the indefinite detention and torture of suspected terrorists (which have only served as rallying cries for terror groups).
Yes, America has managed to avoid another 9/11-style attack, but the decentralization of terror networks explains that as well. Al-Qaeda has always had two targets: the “far enemy” (America, the West) and the “near enemy” (hostile and/or secular governments in the Middle East). As al-Qaeda’s organization has decentralized, its local networks have refocused their attention on the “near enemy,” sparing America the brunt of their efforts. These regional al-Qaeda affiliates recruit new followers based on local conditions, to join a local fight. But the danger is that, as their capabilities grow, these locally focused groups will shift their attention to the far enemy. The fact that so many Salafi groups see a benefit to being connected to Al-Qaeda’s name, its cause, and its reputation shows that al-Qaeda’s core ideology still has resonance with potential recruits, so the chance that at least some of these affiliates will eventually take up Al-Qaeda’s fight against the West is not insignificant.
Both Hoffman and Rand suggest a number of policies to counter the rising Salafi tide. They range from direct US military action to countering Salafi propaganda online, to the increasingly popular idea of aiding Middle Eastern governments as they try to develop governing institutions, to improve their internal security situations, and to stabilize regions (eastern Libya, for example) that are currently outside government control. The latter is the focus of President Barack Obama’s newly proposed “Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund,” a $5 billion program aimed at training local security forces to respond to internal threats. While improving governance and security is a worthwhile goal in the abstract, these funds should not be misused. It’s a cliché to say, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” but if US counterterrorism resources are used by authoritarian regimes to stifle legitimate political opposition, then this program, too, will only damage America’s reputation and work against its long-term national security goals.
After 9/11, George W. Bush informed Americans that “they [the terrorists] hate our freedoms.” That notion, ridiculous when it was first uttered, appears all the more ridiculous today, after we’ve watched Arabs, Iranians, and Turks take to the streets to fight — and in some cases die — for their personal freedom over the past five years. It is accordingly past time for the US to reckon with how its own policies have legitimized Salafi/Al-Qaeda propaganda about “the far enemy.” Drones, detention, and torture may well have created more terrorists than they’ve killed or otherwise prevented, but there is more to it than that. A foreign policy that supports Israel regardless of what Israel does to Palestinians trapped in Gaza or forced into Bantustans in the West Bank creates anti-US sentiment. When US weaponry, whether wielded by American forces or by American clients, is killing civilians in places like eastern Libya, Gaza, and Sinai, anti-US sentiment will increase. American patronage of authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes absolutely creates anti-American sentiment. That sentiment is what will allow currently localized terror networks to shift their attention from the enemy at home to America, the enemy abroad.
It’s easy to rattle sabers about “freedom” and “human rights” when the target has already been cast as the villain, so it’s no surprise that US foreign policy has emphasized these issues when it comes to Bashar al-Assad, or Saddam Hussein, or the Iranian clerical regime. But unless America embarks on some hard choices about holding its allies to the same standards it demands of its enemies, its reputation will continue to suffer. The Leahy Amendment, a 1997 law that requires the US to cut off aid to foreign security forces that are suspects of human rights violations, ought to force these hard choices, but it needs to be applied consistently rather than ignored when it becomes inconvenient (as in, for example, Bahrain). The US military establishment chafes against Leahy’s restrictions, arguing that it constrains them from aiding foreign militaries that are confronting potential threats to the US, but this criticism is short-sighted. It’s far better for US security in the long-term if it can avoid links to acts of oppression or violence perpetrated by authoritarian regimes.
When US actions contradict US rhetoric, it damages America’s stature in the world and gives more ammunition to the message of groups like al-Qaeda. Without the political willingness to frankly and honestly examine America’s role in the world and the impact of US policy choices, then Salafi terrorism in all its forms will remain a potential threat.
Photo: Sinai militia carrying al-Qaeda flags head for a funeral of killed militants on August 10, 2013. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.
]]>by Wayne White
Last week, Jasmin Ramsey pointed out how problematic the recent US decision to deliver attack helicopters to Egypt is in terms of US human rights policy. The move also portrays the US as actively taking sides in a conflict pitting a repressive regime against armed opposition, with potentially [...]]]>
by Wayne White
Last week, Jasmin Ramsey pointed out how problematic the recent US decision to deliver attack helicopters to Egypt is in terms of US human rights policy. The move also portrays the US as actively taking sides in a conflict pitting a repressive regime against armed opposition, with potentially adverse consequences for the US and its citizens. It mirrors Washington’s decision earlier this year to send Iraq’s abusive Shi’a-dominated government advanced weaponry to use against Sunni Arab militants. And then there is the possibility that Egyptian leaders might not have done all they could to secure Sinai, in part to extract US military aid.
Smokescreens and inconsistencies
Seemingly in no mood to help Washington defend its decision, Egypt declared officially on April 24 — two days after the delivery of 10 US Apache helicopters and $650 million in military aid to Egypt was announced — that its army had “complete control over the situation” in the Sinai! This statement directly contradicted the Pentagon’s rationale for delivering the helicopters: to “counter extremists [in Sinai] who threaten US, Egyptian and Israeli security.”
The Egyptian army’s claim appears to be unfounded, merely self-serving propaganda. A less questionable source, a recent Reuters investigation, concluded several hundred militants were still at large in Sinai and “are nowhere near defeat.” To wit, the day before the army’s announcement, a Sinai-based group almost certainly carried out a bombing that killed an Egyptian police general near Cairo (in addition to various attacks by Sinai militants in recent weeks).
Jihadist activity in and emanating from Sinai soared following the military’s overthrow of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi last year. Three groups stand out: Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM), Ansar al-Sharia of Egypt, and, since early this year, Ajnad Misr (AM). Although there have been attacks against the Israeli border and foreigners, the vast bulk of them since Morsi’s overthrow have targeted Egyptian military and police personnel.
Despite the army’s sweeping public reassurance concerning Sinai, senior Egyptian officials must have shared a more sober assessment with Washington. Indeed, more pessimistic Egyptian analysis was likely discussed during Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s exchange with his Egyptian counterpart last Tuesday.
Meanwhile, US policy aimed at reducing repression in Egypt, already struggling, has been further undermined. To justify the helicopter delivery, Kerry on April 29 cited in his news conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy the passage of the Egyptian constitution as a “positive step forward.” This is hardly in line with the facts. It hands more power to the military, and was passed with a highly suspicious 98% of the vote amidst relatively low turnout. Kerry himself back in January expressed great concern about the entire constitutional process, noting “the absence of an inclusive drafting process or public debate before the vote, the arrests of those who campaigned against it, and procedural violations during the balloting.”
The decision to go forward with the helicopter delivery became especially embarrassing on April 28 when the Egyptian government resumed its harsh repression in a stunning fashion: a judge sentenced Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie and nearly 700 supporters to death. This threw Kerry even more on the defensive; while sticking with the helicopter decision, he conceded in the same news conference, among other things, that “disturbing decisions in the judiciary process” pose “difficult challenges.”
Terrorism trumps pluralism and human rights
An ominous pattern of US regional policy choices appears to be taking shape that, effectively, sweeps aside very real concerns about widespread repression and abuse in order to help regimes friendly to the US crackdown on Muslim extremists.
To place this in perspective, despite what many believe, extremists do not typically place a high priority on attacking Americans, the US and other foreigners. Most are highly localized franchises, seeking mainly to overthrow local regimes. And even when they do target foreigners, attacks almost always involve only those inside countries where the violence is taking place.
Related to the pattern noted above, for years the US has pressed Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to end his exclusionist, repressive policies toward much of Iraq’s Sunni Arab community. Maliki ignored these appeals. Mostly the result of Maliki’s purging from government, arresting, and even assassinating Sunni Arabs, al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) — nearly defeated during Iraq’s Sunni Arab “Awakening” (welcomed by the US, but largely shunned by Maliki) — has rebounded dramatically in a devastating wave of violence.
Then, with its fortunes declining in Syria, fielding a sizeable Iraqi component, and responding to protests against Baghdad’s ill treatment of Sunni Arabs, a contingent of the jihadist Sunni Arab Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group seized and held the Iraqi city of Fallujah (and a few portions of nearby Ramadi) in early January; it was joined by some disgruntled Sunni Arab tribesmen. Unable to oust ISIL from Fallujah, Maliki appealed for urgent US military aid.
Despite Maliki’s role in provoking Sunni Arab violence and ignoring US pleas for moderation, Washington quickly dispatched Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, as well as ScanEagle and Raven drones to help him retake Fallujah. Since then, ISIL and its allies in Fallujah have suffered significant losses from Hellfire missile strikes.
There was, of course, a long history of American military assistance to governments with loathsome human rights records going back decades — driven by Cold War imperatives and the “friendliness” of such regimes. More recently, however, with the emergence of robust militant Islamic groups, a new driver for such aid emerged: terrorism. This trend became especially compelling after 9/11.
Potential anti-US blowback
There is, however, danger associated with such assistance: the US risks becoming a far more important target of extremist groups on the receiving end of regime repression than is the case now.
With respect to Algeria, the US distanced itself from a military-backed regime never close to the US during most of the 1990’s in reaction to its anti-democratic and ruthless behavior that played a major role in triggering and sustaining a huge Islamist uprising. Up to 200,000 died in a savage conflict that eventually spawned several extremist groups.
By contrast, France helped the Algerian regime crush the rebels and became a prime target for extremist reprisals. When the last militant holdouts morphed into al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), they shifted their operations out of Algeria into the weaker nations of the Francophone Sahel.
France was compelled to step in militarily last year to prevent Mali from being overrun by a collection of northern Malian separatists, AQIM and other extremists. In defeat, AQIM and closely aligned militants fell back into a lawless portion of Libya, but quickly lashed out at a southern Algerian natural gas facility in order to get their hands on foreigners there.
Likewise, Sinai extremists along with ISIL in Syria and Iraq, especially in their bitterness if and when they are defeated, could shift from a narrow focus on Egyptian, Syrian and Iraqi government targets toward Americans and the US. Yet, whether Iraq (where Maliki never retook Fallujah), Syria (where ISIL’s woes stem mainly from regime forces and rebel rivals), and Egypt (where US military aid probably will not determine the outcome in Sinai), the US could loom far larger as an enemy and scapegoat.
In Sinai, for example, surviving jihadists could make a far more serious effort to target the largely American Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) peacekeeping contingent based along the southern coast. Until now, MFO has been left alone except for one September 2012 attack against its base camp.
Egyptian scheming?
Lastly, Egyptian leaders appear to assign Sinai security a much lower priority than Egypt proper despite US and Israeli concerns. I learned when I served a year in Sinai as a peacekeeper that Egyptian troops loathed duty in Sinai, regarding it as a wasteland of little value compared to Egypt’s Nile Valley core. And unlike more rugged south Sinai, the north (where most attacks occur) is considerably less difficult to monitor.
This negative Egyptian attitude toward Sinai, combined with the government’s keen desire to secure renewed US military support, might have inclined Egypt’s military brass not to pursue Sinai security full-bore. If true, not pressing the fight to the maximum while Sinai simmers might be meant, at least in part, to increase Egypt’s chances of getting US policymakers to do precisely what Cairo wanted: release their hold on attack helicopters of great value in suppressing opposition in Sinai, but also in Egypt proper.
Photo: Sinai militia carrying al-Qaeda flags head for a funeral of killed militants on August 10, 2013. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.
]]>by Aurélie Daher
As the Syrian uprising against the Baathist regime enters its fourth year, it is clear, given the changing balance of power on the ground, that predictions about the imminent collapse of the Assad dynasty, which constituted conventional wisdom from 2011-12, are far from the mark. Once derided [...]]]>
by Aurélie Daher
As the Syrian uprising against the Baathist regime enters its fourth year, it is clear, given the changing balance of power on the ground, that predictions about the imminent collapse of the Assad dynasty, which constituted conventional wisdom from 2011-12, are far from the mark. Once derided by its neighbours for the obsolescence of its equipment and what was perceived as the cluelessness of its soldiers, the Syrian army has retaken from opposition fighters several strategic positions, including the latest, Yabroud, which, according to all major actors, is of pre-eminent importance. The same observers also agreed that recent victories by the regime are in reality less those of the Syrian security forces than of Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon, both in terms of the manpower they provided and the strategic advice they offered their Syrian counterparts.
Hezbollah’s open intervention in its neighbour’s civil war has from the outset posed many questions and provoked not a little anxiety. What exactly are Hezbollah’s aims in Syria? In light of the reprisals that have been conducted by its Syrian foes and their sympathizers in areas sympathetic to the group or under its control, doesn’t it have more to lose than to gain? Finally, and in particular, does Hezbollah risk losing its popular base and its pre-eminence on the national level in Lebanon?
Flashback to an intervention outside national borders
If Hezbollah’s leaders have supported — and from the beginning — the Lebanese government’s policy of non-intervention in the Syrian crisis, that has not prevented them from taking a clear position in favor of Assad’s regime, even while calling for a negotiated settlement between the belligerents. It must not be forgotten that cooperation between the Baathist regime in Damascus and Hezbollah began in the early 1990s and their strategic alliance has consisted essentially of Syria’s facilitating the transfer of arms from Iran to Hezbollah. In its various defeats of the Israeli army, the group became to a certain extent indebted to the Assad dynasty, which explains why, despite Damascus’s decades-long abandonment of any armed challenge to Tel Aviv, Hezbollah still considers the Syrian leadership to be a “regime of resistance against Israel.”
This arrangement would probably not survive in the event that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) or the Sunni jihadi groups actually took power. The Syrian opposition factions didn’t wait for Hezbollah fighters to actually cross the border before declaring their hostility for — and issuing threats against — the party. In December 2011, for example, Burhan Ghalioun, who then headed the Syrian National Council (SNC), declared that if indeed the Assad regime was defeated, “the new authorities would drastically review their relations with Iran and Hezbollah” (Al-Arabiya, 12/2/11). The following month, FSA spokesman, Col. Ammar al-Wawi, warned that Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, will be “held accountable for his actions before revolutionary courts after the victory of the Syrian revolution” (L’Orient-Le Jour, 2/1/12). Then, in the fall of 2012, the head of al-Qaeda in Syria (as it was then known), Majid al-Majid, issued a specific threat against Hezbollah, announcing his plans to conduct attacks against tourist sites in Lebanon if the government in Beirut continued to support the party (Al-Joumhouriya, 9/3/12). Similarly, the FSA’s leadership promised to bring the war into the heart of southern Beirut (a Hezbollah stronghold) if the party “didn’t end its support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad” (L’Orient-Le Jour, 10/9/12). The rhetoric became if anything more virulent and increasingly characterized by a sectarian, anti-Shiite hostility as the Sunni jihadi groups, which made clear that the conflict went far beyond any ideological or economic differences, gained ascendance among the opposition forces.
It bears repeating that all of this preceded Hezbollah’s intervention, which in fact took place in two stages. The first real appearance of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon (IRL), Hezbollah’s paramiltary, mother organization, dates in all likelihood to the latter half of 2012 (the IRL is normally presented as the military wing of Hezbollah. In reality, it preceded Hezbollah and originally helped create it. The relationship is thus the opposite: Hezbollah is the civil extension of the IRL). It didn’t involve sending combatants to fight alongside regime forces. Rather, the first units were members of local self-defense forces that formed spontaneously in the increasingly conflicted zone along the border. Having never been precisely demarcated, the border between northeast Lebanon and Syria constitutes a large area that is home to some 30 villages actually inhabited by Lebanese — mainly Shiite — citizens, all of whom, however, are subject to Syrian sovereignty. Given their sectarian character, these villages were targeted early on by Sunni jihadi groups linked to the opposition. Small groups of local youth — all Lebanese — thus took up arms to defend their families and homes against those attacks. Some among them were members of Hezbollah and the IRL whose initial purpose was thus simple self-defense.
The second stage of Hezbollah’s intervention on Syrian territory came with the battle of Quseir in the spring of 2013, when IRL combatants fought side by side with regular Syrian army forces. This more extended intervention resulted from the confluence of the interests of both the regime and Hezbollah, a confluence that is readily apparent from a glance at Syrian geography. The IRL hasn’t fought in the central, southern or eastern part of the country and does not (yet) appear to be committed to helping Assad re-conquer his country. Rather, its zone of intervention has been confined to the swath of territory around the Aleppo-Homs-Damascus axis, stretching roughly from the northwest coast of Syria (immediately north of Lebanon) along the border down to the Lebanese Shiite region of Baalbeck al-Hermel. The northwest coast is largely Alawite (Shiite) and Christian; that is, the two sectarian constituencies most closely allied with the regime. The regime, with IRL’s help, has been focused on clearing the major transportation routes that link the capital, Damascus, to the northwest, and making it more difficult for Syrian rebels to gain access to Sunni sympathisers in the Bekaa who have provided them with safe haven and, above all, a base for resupply.
But IRL’s intervention in Syria is motivated primarily by the defense of its own interests, reflecting less an attempt to save the Syrian regime than a proactive effort to anticipate the potential impact of Assad’s fall on its ability to act in Syria. Hezbollah and IRL don’t need to be welcome throughout Syria; if Syria breaks up into various zones of influitence as has already more or less taken place, a stable and protected sanctuary is sufficient for their purposes; that is, to ensure that key supply routes remain intact. It is thus not by chance that IRL fighters have focused their intervention in this area.
Bad for Assad, good for March 14?
Lebanon’s political scene has been split since 2005 between the March 14 Alliance — an essentially Sunni and Christian coalition of parties and individuals opposed to the Syrian regime and consisting mainly of the Sunni “Future Current” (FC) of Saad Hariri and the Lebanese Forces of Samir Geagea — and the March 8 Coalition, which has favoured maintaining close ties with Damascus and is led by Hezbollah with the support of the “Free Patriotic Current” of Michel Aoun.
It has been assumed by the March 14 movement — and some of its western supporters — that Assad’s ouster and the advent of real democracy in Syria would result almost automatically in Lebanon in a decisive victory for its forces over March 8, and thus the marginalization of Hezbollah. In this view, the changing balance of power between the Syrian regime in Damascus and its opposition would logically and necessarily replicate itself in Lebanon between the two coalitions there. In reality, however, the belief in such a direct relationship between the politics of the two countries ignores the nature of the leverage exerted by Hezbollah on the political stage in Lebanon, just as it wrongfully assumes that any successor to the Assad dynasty will necessarily act in favor of anti-Syrian Lebanese forces. Contrary to the popular adage, the ramifications in Lebanon of what happens in Syria demonstrates that the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.
Indeed, the major role played by the radical Islamic groups in the Syrian opposition hardly strengthens the March 14 movement; on the contrary, it simultaneously weakens both of the major sectarian factions within it: Christian and Sunni.
Lebanese Christians of all political persuasions are not happy with the growing role played by the Sunni jihadists at the heart of the anti-Assad networks. Shocked by what their Iraqi co-religionists have suffered in recent years and what has begun to happen to their counterparts in Syria — the treatment of the nuns in Maaloula offers one recent example — Lebanese Christians see their worst nightmare as the arrival in Lebanon of a similar regime of repression, abuse and ultimately forced exile.
Within the Lebanese Christian community, two main political factions have vied for popular support. While Geagea, the leader of the Christian faction within the March 14 movement, depends on the moderate and Western-allied Sunni (FC), Aoun, who heads the opposing camp, is wary of Hariri’s close links with Saudi Arabia and pushes for an alliance with a Hezbollah whose behaviour regarding Islamo-Christian relations has for years been seen as exemplary. Thus, its media, which diligently covers all abuses committed against Christians by Sunni jihadi groups throughout the region, takes every opportunity to highlight Hezbollah’s strong ties with Christians.
They recall, for example, the joint project announced by the Maronite Patriarch and Hezbollah to promote the concept of a “civil State of believers,” in January 2011; Hezbollah’s reception of Pope Benedict’s September 2012 visit to Lebanon (on his arrival at the Beirut airport, it sent a welcome escort consisting of hundreds of the party’s Scouts sporting berets adorned with the Vatican’s coat of arms); the construction work of Jihad al-Binaa, a Hezbollah organ which, after the 2006 war with Israel, repaired at its own expense churches damaged by Israeli bombs and artillery shells during the month-long conflict; Hezbollah’s support for the so-called “orthodox” electoral law that had long been a pet project of Christian conservatives, the majority of whom belong to the March 14 movement; and the November 2012 invitation to Hezbollah’s leadership by the Maronite Patriarch, Monsignor Bechara al-Rahi, to send its own delegation to accompany him for his formal installation as cardinal at the Vatican.
Thus, Christians who are already favourable to Hezbollah have no reason to change their position. All the more so in light of the embarrassing position in which their March 14 co-religionists find themselves in given the rise of jihadi groups in the Syrian opposition. Indeed, Geagea, who had argued for months after the outbreak of the insurrection in Syria that an Islamist regime in Syria would not prove harmful to Christians, abruptly abandoned that claim by the end of 2012. At the same time, the Gemayel family, the second political grouping within March 14’s Christian constituency, never endorsed Geagea’s initially enthusiastic embrace of the rebellion and has preferred instead to support the government’s position of not taking sides.
The destabilization of the anti-Assad line resulting from the disarray among the March 14 Christians is enhanced by the weakening of the Sunnis’ position in Lebanon. Syria’s turmoil has effectively accelerated the shattering of Sunni unity, which was already under stress in recent years due to a series of setbacks suffered by the FC and its leader, Saad Hariri, as well as by the emergence of pockets of radical Islamists, particularly in the northern part of the country around Tripoli.
Faced with the militarization of the conflict next door, the temptation to provide reinforcements and logistical support to the insurgents there became too strong for the FC to resist. Despite some initial official denials, Hariri himself opted for silence in November 2012 when pressed about the mounting evidence implicating his associates regarding the supply of arms and funding for the rebels. This direct involvement in the Syrian conflict, which occurred before Hezbollah’s intervention, as well as the clear support for the rebels provided by the FC’s external sponsor, Saudi Arabia — not to mention the overt support voiced by several FC members of parliament in 2012 and 2013 for the radical Sunni cleric Ahmad al-Assir — fatally undermined the efforts by Hariri’s faction to present itself as an effective firewall against extremist groups.
All the more since, when the radical Sunni groups challenged the state’s authority and even, at times, confronted it with violence, FC MPs from Tripoli defended their actions without any public rebuke from the leadership. Thus, Hariri’s pledges of moderation have consistently proved difficult to uphold, as he showed himself either unwilling or unable to rein in these groups.
Indeed, this fragmentation among the Sunnis poses a serious threat to Hezbollah because of the risk that their actions could spark a sectarian civil war in Lebanon. On the other hand, while Sunnis across the political spectrum have long been hostile toward Hezbollah — including well before its intervention in Syria — it appears that the majority of the community still values the civil peace — however tenuous — that has reigned in Lebanon for the past two decades sufficiently to avoid letting themselves be dragged into war against the party.
The community that would logically appear most susceptible to change its political allegiance in light of the Syrian crisis remains the Shia themselves. Indeed, IRL’s intervention on the side of the loyalist forces across the border has reverberated strongly in Lebanon, especially with respect to security. Reprisals by the Syrian opposition have already taken the form of several car or suicide bombings in two Shiite strongholds — Beirut’s southern suburbs and the northeastern Bekaa. While it is undeniable that these incidents have spread unease and fear among the Shiites, any thought that they could trigger a massive desertion by the community would seem deluded.
Why Lebanese Shia don’t support Assad’s fall
The Shiites of Lebanon have three reasons for not supporting the fall of Assad’s regime. The first relates to the bipolarity of the political scene. The two camps and their followers hold highly defined views regarding their political, factional, regional, and international allegiances. On the one hand, March 8 is allied to Syria and Iran and looks positively at Russia. On the other, March 14 followers have no problem dealing with Israel, are friendly to Saudi Arabia, and, at the international level, consider France and the US their natural protectors. Thus, without necessarily retaining any admiration for the Damascus regime — let alone any endorsement of its policies and behavior — the strong majority of the Shia “naturally” prefer it as the lesser evil compared to one which would upset the regional equilibrium.
It is for the same reason that the Shiite community disapproved of March 14’s adherence in 2005 to an American neoconservative policy aimed at upending the existing regional balance of power. Asked to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea, Lebanon’s Shiites feel more at home and comfortable — and secure — under the Syrian-Iranian umbrella than being subject to US-European (and Saudi) adventures in the Middle East — particularly in the wake of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Over the past 20 years, the community has also developed a very special, very strong and very sophisticated relationship with Hezbollah. The party’s successive victories over the Israeli occupation and its social and political achievements on the domestic front have built a solid confidence in its strategic acuity. Those accomplishments have also sparked a revival of communal identity, based on a new “Shiite pride,” the promotion of a collective self-image. In so doing, the party has permitted the community to rid itself of inferiority complexes that it has suffered for decades, if not centuries, thus inspiring a strong, durable feeling of gratitude towards Hezbollah and, accordingly, cementing an enduring political bond between the party and the community.
The last reason why the majority of Shiites are unlikely to desert Hezbollah is their strong hostility towards the Sunni jihadist groups in the Syrian opposition. Christians are not the only religious group anxious about their growing importance. Shiites feel much the same fear because they know that the hatred directed by these groups at them is based more on religious than on political differences; that is, they are hated for what they are, rather than for what they think. In a country whose state lacks the resources to assure its citizens’ security, Hezbollah appears — as paradoxical as it may seem — as the only group capable of defending the nation — and its community.
In other words, the Syrian crisis has not changed the basic political configuration of Lebanon. Hezbollah’s critics still criticise it; those who support it also continue to do so. Those feelings have perhaps become more polarized as a result of Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria, but no consequential political defection is in view — from one side or the other.
Photo: The Syrian flag is seen as people watch Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah speaking to supporters via live broadcast during a May 25 2013 event in Bekaa Valley, Resistance and Liberation Day, which marks the anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Credit: Sharif Karim
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