Ashes of Hama: The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria

by Raphael Lefevre

  According to Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, a member of The Fighting Vanguard who would become al-Qaeda’s main ideologue in the early 2000s, the period ranging from 1976 to 1980 proved to be the “Golden Age” of Syria’s jihadist current. “Due to its small size and secrecy, the Fighting Vanguard was able to retain the initiative until 1980,”50 he explained. Ayman al-Shorbaji detailed in his memoirs the impressive list of actions carried out by the organization during this period. Following Hafiz al-Assad’s re-election as Syrian President on 8 February 1977, explosive charges were simultaneously detonated at headquarters of the Ba’ath Party and the National Progressive Front (a coalition of pro-regime political groups) and at the People’s Assembly. The Fighting Vanguard’s field commander for the region of Damascus also recounted how, shortly afterwards, Abd-us-Sattar az-Za’im ordered the assassination of Ibrahim al-Nasiri who, besides being Hafiz al-Assad’s nephew, was also a prominent member of the Ba’ath Party and the chairman of the Syrian-Soviet Friendship Association. “When he got out of his Peugeot 504 and walked towards the entrance of the building, one Brother followed him and called five steady shots in the head from a gun equipped with a silencer before withdrawing quietly,”51 Shorbaji recounted. Prominent security officers, Ba’athist politicians, university professors affiliated with the ruling party, high-ranking civil servants of the regime: virtually all the personalities representing Ba’athist rule in Syria became targets of the Fighting Vanguard, whether they were of Alawi, Christian or Sunni faith.

  All of these actions represented major successes for the Fighting Vanguard as they proved to the regime that the jihadist organization had managed to outlive its charismatic leader’s death. In Islamic circles, Abd-us-Sattar az-Za’im is often praised as the man who gave the Fighting Vanguard its “organizational foundations” and “disciplined military character”. In addition, Marwan Hadid’s successor was keen on maintaining strong co-ordination between all local cells while leaving each regional commander with a degree of autonomy. This allowed the organization to increase the efficiency of its attacks while decreasing the risk of a total destruction of the group in case the attackers were caught. Under his leadership, the Fighting Vanguard also managed to penetrate the Syrian armed forces, having convinced a few high-ranking Sunni officers of the need to overthrow the “impious” regime—even though their attempted coup d’état, named the “Decisive Plan”,52 eventually failed. Overall, while upon Marwan Hadid’s death Abd-us-Sattar az-Zaim had taken over a loose group of jihadist fighters spread throughout Syria, he had by the late 1970s managed to transform the Fighting Vanguard into a terrorist organization of a professional dimension. Its fighters were carefully selected and so well-trained that those who survived the state repression would later rise to prominence in other organizations such as al-Qaeda (see Appendices for an account of the type of training followed by the Fighting Vanguard fighters).

  Operating in secrecy and without publicizing its exploits, the jihadist activists of al-Tali’a did not draw the attention of a regime which thought, at first, that the terrorist attacks were carried out by its Iraqi neighbour and rival. When it became clear, however, that the violent campaign was being led by the former companions of Marwan Hadid, the Ba’athist authorities dramatically increased their surveillance and repression of the movement. Sometime in mid 1979, Abd-us-Sattar az-Za’im was tracked down and killed. His death would have far-reaching consequences on the evolution of the Fighting Vanguard, for his immediate successors—Hisham Jumbaz, Tamim al-Shuqraqi and Umar Jawad—were not as gifted and eventually failed to contain rising divergences within the movement. By 1979, there were increasing tensions inside the Fighting Vanguard between jihadist fighters from Hama and Aleppo, who both wished to sharply step up violence against the regime, and the more cautious Damascene members who were “careful not to do more harm than good”53 to the organization. One figure was particularly keen on accelerating, at any price, the pace of jihad against the Syrian Ba’ath: Adnan Uqlah from Aleppo.

  Those who have known Adnan Uqlah, whether critics or admirers, all refer to his deeply entrenched and uncompromising character. Zealous and charismatic for some, over-ambitious and self-centered for others, Adnan Uqlah’s persona quickly grew to mythical proportions in Syrian Islamic circles. In June 1979, he took the initiative—alongside a small group of fighters aided by the Ba’athist Ibrahim Youssef—of launching an attack against the Aleppo Artillery School, slaughtering eighty-three Alawi cadets and wounding many others. The attack was significant in the meaning it conveyed. From assassinating personalities affiliated with the Ba’ath regime, the Fighting Vanguard had transformed into an overtly sectarian terrorist organization willing to go as far as resorting to indiscriminate mass killings. According to the converging accounts of militants then close to Fighting Vanguard circles, Adnan Uqlah, who was only the head of a local commando group when he executed the operation, carried it out without consulting either Hisham Jumbaz, then the organization’s leader, or Husni Abu, its field commander for the region of Aleppo, who both “would never have agreed to it”.54 The violent campaign led by the Fighting Vanguard soon escalated in both intensity and scale as the organization became in effect directed by Adnan Uqlah from the time of the June 1979 Aleppo massacre until his capture by the Syrian security services in late 1982.55 At the height of the regime, the state of paranoia became such that, while the Syrian president is reported to have surrounded himself with a personal guard of several thousand elite troops, the three generals heading the security services constantly had sixty soldiers at their disposal tasked with protecting them.56 In June 1980, Hafiz al-Assad himself miraculously survived an assassination attempt.

  However, if Adnan Uqlah proved to be an effective commando leader, the grand ambitions he charted for the Fighting Vanguard soon came to provoke a harsh backlash on his organization. Abu Mus’ab al-Suri for instance suggested that, instead of leading to victory against the Ba’ath, Uqlah’s decision to widely increase the number of Fighting Vanguard recruits throughout the country marked the slow demise of the jihadist movement. “Within [a] few months hundreds of youth joined in, the organization expanded beyond its financial capabilities, they were unable to train properly or arm sufficiently, things got out of control, the influx created a fishing ground for moles and spies, and even though they were few—caught and executed in accordance with the Islamic rules of the organization—they caused a lot of harm.” He concluded that, eventually, “a series of confessions and arrests led to exposing the entire hierarchy of al-Talia and to its destruction.”57

  In addition, since the big increase in numbers of Fighting Vanguard recruits could not be properly balanced by an equal increase in the organization’s financial and material resources, the new fighters proved to be less prepared for jihad—both ideologically and physically—and therefore less committed to it than the generation of jihadists that had emerged under the leadership of Marwan Hadid and Abd-us-Sattar az-Za’im. “The base membership became a group of enthusiastic youth who lacked ideological strength; with the passing of every day their enthusiasm cooled down and many of them lost their connection to the cause”,58 al-Suri remembered. Their young age did not help matters as they did not seem to display the same level of educational preparedness for jihad as their elders. Obeida Nahas, a Syrian Brother living in London, thus recounted that “within al-Tali’a a new generation of jihadists started to emerge who had not gone through the proper educational process”; “Drawn to the organization by Adnan Uqlah’s charisma, they were usually recruited just out of the mosques, universities and even high schools”.59 An analysis of the social base of the Fighting Vanguard, on the basis of the memoirs written by Ayman al-Shorbaji, confirms that most of the fighters were indeed barely twenty years old when recruited into the jihadist organization. Hanna Batatu has confirmed that pattern in his study of the background of those who were arrested by the Ba’athist authorities in the period ranging from 1976 until 1981, pointing out that the student body
was by far the social group most represented in Syrian jails at the time—totalling at least three times that of schoolteachers and professionals.60

  However, if the exponential growth and ever-younger outlook of the Fighting Vanguard’s fighters were the products of decisions taken by Adnan Uqlah, these were not properly approved by the jihadist organization’s consultative body. Such a state of affairs symbolized the Fighting Vanguard’s increasingly personal dimension centered on the persona of its “Caliph”, as Uqlah was reported to enjoy being called.61 Abu Mus’ab al-Suri described the situation and analysed the consequences of the “one-man rule” which came to characterize the Fighting Vanguard from 1979 until 1982. “Adnan Uqlah, in spite of his consultations with the [consultative] council, decided and ruled independently, and thus rendered that council obsolete.”62 In al-Suri’s view, the Fighting Vanguard’s “Caliph” was of course a gifted military leader whose charisma had drawn enthusiasm from the Sunni crowds in Syria: “Adnan Uqlah was a role model for a leader: he was daring, sacrificing, fundamentalist, revolutionary, and persistent in his principles and path, steadfast in his resolve, his virtues were attested to by his enemies before his friends, he had a history of exemplary jihad and seniority in preaching the doctrine.” Yet the problem with Uqlah, al-Suri suggests, lay in the shortcomings which emerged from those traits. His style of management could be best described as filled with “extremism, excessive emotionalism and inflexibility even on the slightest of matters”. In addition, he lacked the “judiciousness and political savvy” needed in an effective leader. The analysis of the personality of the Fighting Vanguard’s “Caliph” offered by a member of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood to Abu Mus’ab al-Suri sums it up quite well. “I do not doubt Adnan Uqlah’s loyalty and integrity as a leader, nor do I doubt his courage. I also have no doubt that he lacks the wisdom to benefit from those two characteristics,”63 the Syrian Brother was reported to have told him. With time, the pre-eminence of the “Caliph” over the whole of the Fighting Vanguard became the organization’s Achilles heel. “Al-Talia revolved around the persona of Adnan Uqlah, which led to its fragmentation and demise.” “Those were the negative results of the one man rule,” concluded al-Suri. Because the “Caliph” became the “sole decision-maker on all matters,” “when he was captured and imprisoned the entire organization collapsed and ceased to exist.”64

  6

  ENDORSING JIHAD AGAINST THE BA’ATH (1980–1982)

  The Syrian Ba’ath was quick to blame all of the Fighting Vanguard’s attacks on the Muslim Brotherhood. For a time, this attempt at discrediting its most serious political competitor proved fruitless as, despite the links existing between both groups, the two remained for the large part organizationally and ideologically distinct. A dose of competition and, to a certain degree, bitterness at one another even came to characterize the relationship between the Fighting Vanguard and the Syrian Brotherhood. By late 1979, however, and particularly following the June 1979 Aleppo Artillery School massacre, state repression had become such that the Ikhwani leadership decided it was time to respond to Ba’athist provocations by raising the banner of jihad itself. The subsequent alliance it made with the jihadist forces of the Fighting Vanguard and Issam al-Attar’s more moderate “Damascus wing” in late 1980 would provide the regime with the pretext it had long been seeking to brutally crush the Islamic movement. Under the cover of a “war against terrorism”, Ba’athist officers came to kill and torture thousands of members of the Syrian opposition as well as their relatives.

  The Muslim Brotherhood had been trapped: by resorting to violence and allying with the jihadists, it had played to regime propaganda which claimed that it was “terrorist”. The brutality of state repression, as illustrated by the February 1982 Hama massacre, was then such that the Islamic organization would never truly get back on its feet. Its public image, long shaped entirely by the Syrian Ba’ath’s rhetoric, became for decades associated with radicalism and violence. How was the Muslim Brotherhood lured into such a trap? Why exactly did the organization start out on a path it knew was potentially self-destructive? Such questions are not only relevant for those experts and scholars who seek to better understand the exact flow of events and the dynamics leading to the tragic confrontation between government forces and the Islamic opposition at Hama in 1982, but also for those Syrians who, today more than ever, look into their past to learn more from the crucial 1980–82 period. This chapter presents an attempt at uncovering the complex dynamics which, in relation both to how the Brotherhood dealt with the regime and to how internal Ikhwani politics came to influence the policies it carried out, led to the eventual disaster of February 1982.

  State repression

  By mid-1979, the ideological shift within Muslim Brotherhood ranks had finally come to a head. At a meeting of the Ikhwan’s consultative body (Majlis al-Shura) held in October of that year in Amman, the leaders of the organization officially endorsed the use of violence as a legitimate means to fight the Ba’ath regime.1 Shortly thereafter, it was decided that the Muslim Brotherhood would set up a “military branch” and would enter into a partnership with the forces of the Fighting Vanguard. But, for all the regime’s attempts at describing such a radical turn as reflecting the Brotherhood’s supposedly inherent violent doctrine, the endorsement of violence should be viewed as an exception in the movement’s history, to be seen through the lens of the increased repression it suffered at the hands of the regime. Until today, official Muslim Brotherhood statements relating to the use of violence at the time are unsurprisingly filled with references to “self-defence” and “option of last resort”.2 For instance, in an April 1980 issue of An-Nadhir, an information letter published outside Syria by the Muslim Brotherhood, Ikhwani leaders stressed that “we did not begin our jihad until the oppressors had begun to exterminate Islam and until after having received the broken bodies of our brothers who had died under torture.”3 In fact, it is unquestionable that increased state repression did have a polarizing effect on the political situation in Syria. This is even recognized retrospectively by the country’s former Vice President, Abdel Halim Khaddam, who recalled, “the regime made a mistake by increasing the repression after the Aleppo Artillery incident [of June 1979], as it only further radicalized many Brothers who came to feel they had no option but to use violence.”4

  To this day, many Muslim Brotherhood members hold the view that the June 1979 Aleppo massacre represented an opportunity long awaited by the regime to blame the violence on the Ikhwan and portray it as “terrorist”—despite the publication by the then leader, Adnan Saadeddine, of an official communiqué denying the organization’s responsibility shortly afterwards. In fact, there is evidence that the regime knew that the Muslim Brotherhood was not responsible for the attacks yet maintained its claim to legitimize its repression of the movement. Yahya Bedin, a member of the Ikhwan living in Turkey, thus recounted how the Interior Ministry published a list of seventeen names accused of being behind the massacre of the eighty-three Alawi cadets—they were all Muslim Brotherhood members and none, it was reported, belonged to the Fighting Vanguard:

  My name was on the list even though I was a student in Riyadh during the summer of 1979! I left Syria for Saudi Arabia on April 26th, 1979, and still have the certificate of passport registration stamped at the Syrian Embassy in Riyadh during the summer of 1979 […] the regime accused me of having participated into the attack because I was a known Muslim Brotherhood member as it wanted to involve the Ikhwan into the story! When, after having fled for Turkey, I went to the Syrian Embassy in Ankara in order to show the official stamped documents proving I was not in Aleppo at the time, Syrian officials warned me to neither come again nor to talk with the media. The sixteen other people who were on the list have all been killed.5

  This version of events was not only voiced by Brotherhood members but also supported by former members of the Fighting Vanguard who went on to work with al-Qaeda when the Syrian jihad came to an end. In a doc
ument found by American forces during the Abbottabad raid on Bin Laden’s home, it is confirmed that, at the time, “the Syrian regime treated the Brotherhood as if it was the one who assassinated its officials” even though “the regime knew that it was not the case”. “The Syrian government saw this as an opportunity to demolish the Muslim Brotherhood, and forever,”6 concluded the anonymous al-Qaeda document. Significantly enough, the regime’s narrative of the June 1979 Aleppo massacre has continued to dominate not only the official Ba’athist discourse but also much of the work of scholars of Syria who, out of ideological bias or lack of detailed information, have rarely questioned the Muslim Brotherhood’s alleged involvement in the incident.7

  Refusing to draw a distinction between the Fighting Vanguard and the Brotherhood, the regime greatly heightened its repression against the Islamic movement. “The situation became untenable”, a prominent Syrian Brother, in Aleppo at the time, describes it today. “The leadership of the movement was shocked: we did not know who the perpetrators [of the Aleppo Artillery School attack] were, a crisis was unfolding and we could feel it.”8 After officials in the Interior Ministry vowed to “exterminate” the Ikhwan, over six thousand Syrians were arrested across the country.9 Walid Safour, a London-based human rights activist who was living in Homs at the time, recalled that the June 1979 attack indeed marked a turning point in the intensity of the repression suffered by those accused of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. “From then on, life became a hell: I was arrested several times between June 1979 and October 1980 and tortured so severely by the Military Intelligence that I would later need to undergo three surgeries, leaving my back disabled until today.”10