Ashes of Hama: The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria

by Raphael Lefevre

  Methods employed by the Syrian security services to “treat” alleged Muslim Brothers followed a ritual process, exposed by a team of human rights activists who carried out an investigation into the repression of the late 1970s and early 1980s:

  Interrogation sometimes begins immediately after arrest, but prisoners may be held in these centers for days—even weeks—before their interrogation commences. Severe mistreatment usually begins during this time to break the prisoners’ spirit and will to resist. Guards may prevent captives from sleeping, force them to stand on one leg or to crawl on the floor, and pour boiling or freezing water on their naked bodies. Sounds of torture of other prisoners echo through the halls. Prisoners’ fear builds and their physical strength ebbs as food is withheld and guards assault them with curses and threats.11

  The most common technique used by the security services to torture alleged Muslim Brothers was the dullab (“tyre”). Walid Safour recounted how, after refusing to sign an official document confessing that he was a Muslim Brother, he underwent the dullab. “[Military intelligence officers] squeezed me into a painful position inside a tire so that my feet could touch my eyes. Unable to move and to properly breathe, I was flogged and boxed by the group of men for two to three hours every day for 21 consecutive days.” “Sometimes they beat me with their Kalashnikov, sometimes with electric wire,”12 he recalled. Syrian intelligence officers were known for their sinister inventiveness. Beyond the dullab, they practiced the farraj (“chicken”) whereby the victim is tied to a rotating bar resembling a roasting spit while being exposed to severe beatings; exposed prisoners to the ghassala (“washing machine”), a spinning drum into which the individual must put their arms before having fingers and forearms crushed; and asked their victims to sit on the kursi al-Alman (“the German chair”), a metal chair with hinges on the back which, when lowered backwards, causes unbearable pain in the spine, neck and legs.13

  The Muslim Brotherhood’s political leadership also became a key target of the Syrian mukhabarat. An intimidation campaign was undertaken by the Ba’athist authorities aimed at deterring any prominent Muslim Brothers from engaging in opposition activities. If they did participate in the opposition, the most sacred of all boundaries would be crossed: their own families would become targets of the state’s security apparatus. Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni thus recalled that, while he was at an opposition conference in Europe, the Syrian security services raided his home in Aleppo and seized both his son and his son-in-law as hostages. “My son was later released but my son-in-law was killed in prison—although he was not a member of the Ikhwan,”14 al-Bayanouni recalled. The family of Issam al-Attar, who had then resumed his political activities from Aachen in Germany, met a similar tragic fate. His daughter recalled how, on 17 March, 1981, a team of three men entered the family house and savagely slaughtered her mother. Issam al-Attar’s presence in Aachen continued to be considered by the German government as a serious threat to the security of the surrounding residents until well after the murder of his wife. According to his own account, the German security services even banned him from public speaking and ordered him to change residence on a regular basis, in neighbourhoods as remote as possible from important residential areas.15 Exiled leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood came to be constantly harassed. The message sent to them by the Syrian mukhabarat was very clear: no protection, even from abroad, would ever shield them and their families from the wrath of the regime were it to find out that opposition activities were being carried out or planned.

  The regime’s uncompromising stance towards the Muslim Brotherhood seems to have been primarily—but not chiefly—guided by the Syrian President’s own brother, Rif’at al-Assad, who at the Ba’ath Party’s 7th Congress called for a “national purge” and the setting up of “labour and re-education camps in the desert.” When an attempt on Hafiz al-Assad’s life nearly succeeded, in June 1980, hardline elements in the regime are reported to have ordered a reprisal against the inmates of a prison where many Islamic militants were held, located in the desert surrounding Palmyra—though the full extent of the involvement of the Syrian President and his family is not clear to this day. At any rate, commandos from the aforementioned and much feared Defence Brigades were taken on helicopters to Palmyra where they landed the morning after and carried out the massacre of so many jailed prisoners that the approximate number of deaths can only be estimated, ranging between 500 and 1,000.16 One of the soldiers later described what happened at the Palmyra prison.

  They opened the door of a communal cell for us—that is about sixty or seventy people. Personally, I must have machine-gunned fifteen or so. Altogether, we must have killed about five hundred and fifty of those nasty Muslim Brothers; the Defence Brigades had one dead and two wounded. We left again. Lieutenant Ra’if Abdullah went off to wash his hands and feet, which were covered with blood… The operation lasted about half an hour. During it, there was a terrible tumult, with exploding grenades and cries of ‘Allah Akbar!’ Finally, we got back in the helicopters… At Mezze, a Major welcomed us and thanked us for our efforts.17

  Whatever the degree of the Assad regime’s actual involvement in the Palmyra massacre, the President’s brother seemed emboldened enough to publicly assert, barely a week later, that “if necessary we are ready to engage in a hundred battles, destroy a thousand citadels and sacrifice a million martyrs to bring back peace and love, the glory of the country and the honour of the citizen.”18 But, for all of Rif’at’s particularly strong hand in dealing with the Islamic militants, his opinions on the methods used seem to have been shared by most other senior Ba’athist figures at the time. This refutes the long-standing idea that such policies reflected the winning hand of the regime’s “hawks” against supposed “doves”. “The atmosphere was very tense both at the security and political level,” recounted ex-Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam. “Blood was spilling in every province, the climate was not one in which conciliatory measures could have been put forward.”19 If Rif’at was therefore subsequently “blamed” by Hafiz al-Assad for all the bloodshed, it was because of the bitter rivalry which emerged between the two brothers and led to the younger fleeing to exile in 1984, according to Mohammed Aldik, a former Ba’athist official who was on intimate terms with both Assads. “If Rif’at was blamed for Palmyra and for Hama, it’s because Hafiz wanted his son Basil to succeed him after his death and was ready to do anything to decredibilize his own younger brother Rif’at!” he asserted. “Having acted as a main confident to Hafiz al-Assad, I can today assert having witnessed a lot of cynicism and a certain cowardice in the way the President lay all the blame on the advisors he was politically fearing the most.”20

  At any rate, Syria’s security officers were soon given the legal tool to implement the harsh policies they wished to pursue. On 7 July 1980, the notorious “Law No. 49” was promulgated by the Parliament, with Article 1 stipulating that “each and every one belonging to the Muslim Brethren organization is considered a criminal who will receive a death punishment.”21 An exiled Syrian Brother summed up the situation: “We were being tracked by the security services; and if they found us we faced four options: prison, torture, death, or one after the other.”22 In such circumstances, the leadership of the Syrian Ikhwan soon became overwhelmed by increasingly loud demands from rank-and-file members to act more violently against the regime.

  The Muslim Brotherhood’s jihad

  “We had no other option but to defend ourselves,”23 Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni now argues. At a meeting of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Consultative Council in October 1979, it was decided that the organization would set up a “military branch”. The Syrian Brother Adnan Sheikhouney was chosen as its first leader, but when he was murdered by the regime a few months later, Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni took over as “military commander” of the Brotherhood, though he insists that such description of his role is “not the most suitable”—preferring instead “coordinator of the communication between the membership ins
ide Syria and the leadership established outside the borders”.24 By the end of the 1970s, increased state repression had forced most of the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood to seek exile in Jordan and, to a lesser extent, in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. For their part, however, most members on the ground had not been able to flee the daily harassment and torture they were suffering at the hands of the security forces. Hence the idea of creating a “military branch” with a leader outside Syria who would give orders and provide weapons to a small group of Ikhwani fighters inside the country so that they could carry out “protection operations”. “Such operations were always characterized by their defensive nature,” claimed Muhammed Riyadh al-Shuqfah, a Hama-based Syrian Brother who also came to hold responsibilities in the “military branch”. “Our mission was to set up a group of fighters and train them so that they could exfiltrate outside of the country those accused of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood who were tracked down by the Syrian intelligence services,” he explained. “Since the Law No. 49 was punishing by death anyone proved to be an Ikhwani sympathizer, we advised people inside Syria to not surrender to the authorities.” “In the end, we managed to safely exfiltrate thousands of Brothers,”25 al-Shuqfah asserted.

  His proud assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood’s military achievements was not, however, shared by everyone—certainly not by Fighting Vanguard members, who spoke of the amateurism displayed by the Brotherhood’s “military branch”. Abu Mus’ab al-Suri thus wrote that if “the Muslim Brotherhood claimed to have created a special independent institution dedicated to waging military operations” it was “dead on arrival”. “Just like all their other institutions, it was run by incapable elders lacking the determination and qualifications to bring this idea into fruition.” The Brotherhood’s “military branch”, just like the Ikhwani organization itself, was thoroughly structured into committees and subcommittees, leading al-Suri to mock its “open ended useless meetings” which gave the impression that it was “closer to a board of directors for a financial institution than a leadership council for gang warfare.”26 Eventually, al-Suri suggested, “the very little military operations they initiated ended up in dismal failure”.27 His negative views of the military jihad waged by the Brotherhood against the regime also seem to have been shared by other Syrian jihadists who would rise to prominence inside al-Qaeda decades later. A document found by American forces at Abbottabad indeed stated that, when the Brotherhood decided to go to war, “it lost big”. “The Brotherhood became serious and it called for the removal of the regime and to create an Islamic government,” the document stated, before stressing that “the [Ikhwan] never bothered to calculate, however, what it needed to accomplish all of that.” “The Brotherhood’s calculations were unrealistic: it even thought that, after it was able to topple the regime, it would take on Israel. But the Brotherhood did not have enough personnel who had the expertise or prudence to lead their military operations,”28 the document critically concluded. But if the Muslim Brotherhood’s own military activities therefore seem to have had little impact on the security situation on the ground, why does it keep being held responsible for the violence which shook many of Syria’s cities at the time?

  Here, at least two factors seem to have been at play—beyond the regime’s interest in blaming the violence on its Islamic competitor. First, while the Ikhwani leaders are today keen on arguing that they never resorted to armed violence against targets inside Syria, at the time they seem on the contrary to have displayed a particular willingness to suggest their own involvement in such attacks, as a way to increase their popularity inside Syria. Abu Mus’ab al-Suri thus fiercely criticized the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood, “through the use of its media outlets,” “resorted to taking credit for the military activities of the mujahedeen [of the Fighting Vanguard], claiming them as its own, bragging and exaggerating.” “They used the blood of our martyrs to claim fictitious glory and collect donations in their name,”29 he bitterly summed up.

  Second, the violent image still associated with the Syrian Ikhwan stems from the short-lived yet highly significant alliance they entered when, in December 1980, they temporarily joined forces with Issam al-Attar’s “Damascus wing” and, more importantly, the jihadist fighters of Adnan Uqlah. “At this point in time, we faced two options”, explained a prominent Syrian Brother. “Either the organization would distance itself from those who were fighting the Ba’ath or, on the contrary, it could decide to side with them and support their struggle.” He admitted, “We decided to choose the latter option even if, in retrospect, the Ikhwan should have opted for more democratic means than the use of violence.”30

  To this day, it remains unclear exactly to what extent the collective body formed by the three wings of the Islamic movement, also referred to as the “Joint Command” (wifaq), carried out violent activities as a coherent unit against the Ba’athist state. Muhammed Hawari, a longtime member of the “Damascus wing”, claimed that Issam al-Attar’s faction made its adherence to the “Joint Command” dependent on the Fighting Vanguard and the Ikhwan agreeing not to use arms against the regime. “If we, the Damascene Brothers, accepted to integrate the ‘Joint Command’, it was because we wanted to lead the anti-regime campaign in a peaceful way and to bring the militant youth back into the right path,”31 he explained. Issam al-Attar had been in touch for some time with Adnan Uqlah who had for long been an admirer of the Damascene leader’s religious credentials. “Adnan was writing me from Syria,” the head of the “Damascus wing” acknowledged, continuing, “He wanted me to become the leader of the violent struggle against the Ba’ath but I always refused and instead attempted to convince him that another path of resistance was possible. When Adnan came to visit me in Aachen, we had a long discussion and I came to the realization that he would never change his mind and turn his back on armed struggle.”32 It is certain, indeed, that Adnan Uqlah’s Fighting Vanguard did not cease its violent activities in the framework of the “Joint Command”. The Brotherhood, for its part, maintains that it kept carrying out “defensive actions” throughout the early 1980s.

  At any rate, the setting up of a “Joint Command” stemmed from a common realization on the part of the three wings that, despite the significant ideological differences setting them all apart, harmony and unity were needed if the Islamic movement was to effectively topple the Assad regime. An executive team of twelve men, four representing each faction, was set up under the command of Hassan al-Houeidi, a Brother from Deir ez-Zoor affiliated with the “Damascus wing”. His actual influence at the helm of the “Joint Command” is still debated as several analyses suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Adnan Saadeddine was in fact the true power broker in the coalition. “The title of leader was given to the weak Hassan al-Houeidi yet Adnan Saadeddine was able to run things his own way,”33 the jihadist Abu Mus’ab al-Suri recalled. Such comments also reflect the way in which the Muslim Brotherhood took on a most prominent role inside the “Joint Command”—fuelling resentment against it on the part of the two other wings which gradually grew frustrated with the alliance.

  At first, the coalition nonetheless held as all three parties expressed an interest in joining forces. Indeed, while the setting up of the “Joint Command” marked the return of the “Damascus wing” to the political chessboard of the Syrian Islamic movement, the Fighting Vanguard could benefit from the Muslim Brotherhood’s financial and material capabilities in its pursuit of jihad against the Ba’ath. The Ikhwan, for their part, felt that the exile of most of their senior members had greatly weakened the organization’s grip on its political base inside the country, to the advantage of the Fighting Vanguard. In this respect, Adnan Uqlah’s jihadist organization had grown to such popularity that, by 1980, it had gained the title of the “Internal Muslim Brotherhood”34—a reflection both of the prominent influence it had come to wield over the Syrian Islamic movement and of the marginalization of the traditional Ikhwani leaders in exile. Membership of the Muslim Bro
therhood was about to decline as many of its activists were joining the Fighting Vanguard instead. A cable from the US Defense Intelligence Agency, which at the time closely monitored the unfolding of the protests in Syria, stated that while it was estimated that the Fighting Vanguard counted, in the late 1970s, only a few hundred members, by the early 1980s it had reached over 1,000 jihadist militants.35 In the words of a Syrian Brother, the Ikhwan were therefore in the midst of a “struggle for control,”36 doing their utmost to prevent their influence on the ground from declining further. By declaring jihad against the Ba’ath and joining forces with the Fighting Vanguard, the exiled leadership of the Syrian Ikhwan was therefore trying to reassert its political position inside Syria and regain some of the popularity which it had lost after it had to leave the country. The Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership also certainly wished to “retain control”37 of Adnan Uqlah after his Aleppo Artillery School massacre had backfired on the whole of the Islamic movement. After the “Joint Command” was set up, the Muslim Brotherhood exfiltrated the Fighting Vanguard’s “Caliph” to Amman where he remained with the Ikhwani leadership for some time. As months passed by, however, the underlying divergences which had always existed within the “Joint Command” started to manifest themselves with more acuity, hindering the collective nature of its work and eventually leading to its demise.