Ashes of Hama: The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria

by Raphael Lefevre

  8

  STRUGGLING FOR RELEVANCE

  THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD’S EXILE

  “The Muslim Brotherhood has changed,”1 argued a secular left-wing opposition activist, after dismissing a question on whether he feared a takeover by the Syrian Brothers should the Assad regime be toppled. The violent and sectarian image long associated with the Syrian Ikhwan had mainly been due to the radical path pursued by the organization in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But, for all the regime’s attempts at making such picture endure throughout the years, most analysts and militants agreed that, by the late 1990s and early 2000s, the period of the Brotherhood’s radicalization had passed and that the time had come to give the organization a second chance. It is against that backdrop that, just about a decade before the “Arab Spring” started to shake Damascus, the Ikhwan regained their influence as a powerful component of the Syrian opposition—battling the regime from abroad, this time, and with words rather than swords.

  The Brotherhood’s comeback on the Syrian political chessboard was not, however, an obvious development as the state repression of the early 1980s, culminating with the Hama massacre of February 1982, had dealt it a near-fatal blow. As a result, the organization had been left for decades with neither a base inside the country nor the credibility it once enjoyed. Forced into exile, and with members scattered throughout the world, the organization temporarily lost relevance. The disastrous state of the Brotherhood unleashed a blame game amidst its ranks, trapping the group in a cycle of internal bickering and political dramas which greatly fragmented its work for decades and left scars still visible today. The regime’s hand was never far from any of these happenings. Still watchful of the Brotherhood’s each and every move, it became skilled in putting forward policies which only heightened the Ikhwan’s successive crises of identity.

  So how did the organization, against all these odds, eventually manage to get back on its feet and regain its former position as Syria’s most influential opposition group? The answer lies partly in the ability of the Syrian Brotherhood’s leadership to review its past policies and undergo a profound ideological evolution. In many ways, however, telling the story of the Brotherhood’s evolution boils down to recounting how the Ikhwan’s “Aleppo faction” took up the leadership and trod a different path to that of the more hard-line “Hama clan”.2

  Divided between the “Hama clan” and the “Aleppo faction”

  Divisions have long plagued the Muslim Brotherhood’s ranks, but all its members agree on one thing: the February 1982 uprisings at Hama, which the group eventually supported (see Chapter 7), came to have disastrous consequences for the whole of the Islamic movement. The blame game which ensued would have far-reaching implications as the two competing leaderships which then emerged from inside the Ikhwan projected seemingly irreconcilable visions of the organization’s future. “Hama was like an earthquake for the Muslim Brotherhood,” a former Ikhwani leader recognized in retrospect. “The differences among us surfaced and some of us started looking for scapegoats”.3 In the eyes of many inside the organization, the “Hama clan”, in charge of the organization from 1975 to 1980—but in fact chiefly influential until February 1982—was responsible for the dynamics which led the Ikhwan to enter into a fatal partnership with its radical offshoot, the Fighting Vanguard. Many Hamawite members of the Muslim Brotherhood had also belonged to the Fighting Vanguard, and this helped to blur the lines between the two organizations and thereby played into the regime’s argument that it was unnecessary to distinguish one from the other.

  For their part, the Hamawite members of the Ikhwan have shunned all responsibility for the bloody events of the late 1970s and early 1980s, instead blaming the Fighting Vanguard and its “Caliph” for the violent dimension the struggle then assumed. Shortly after the crackdown in Hama, Adnan Saadeddine declared that “all of Adnan Uqlah’s actions proceeded from want of prudence, undue haste or sheer recklessness,” stressing that the leader of the Fighting Vanguard had provoked “considerable damage” to the Islamic movement by the way he “conducted the fighting in Aleppo” and “drew the mujahidin into the ill-timed confrontation at Hama.”4 This is also the reading of events provided to this day by most prominent members of the “Hama clan”. For Muhammed Riyadh al-Shuqfah for instance, now the leader of the organization, the once-political struggle between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Ba’ath turned into a doomed military fight, pitting the most irreconcilable Ba’athist figure, Rif’at al-Assad, against the zealous “Caliph” of the Fighting Vanguard, Adnan Uqlah, hence its tragic outcome.5 To the present day, many Hamawites still hold Adnan Uqlah’s troops responsible for the violence which descended on Hama in early February 1982—though it is worth bearing in mind that the distinction between many of Uqlah’s men and Ikhwani Hamawites was not always clear-cut. However, the sense of lasting bitterness still found among Ikhwani ranks at the evocation of the events of 1982 has been less between members of the Muslim Brotherhood and the activists of the Fighting Vanguard than between Ikhwanis from Aleppo and those from Hama. Eventually, the former accused the latter of having been the real driving force behind the movement’s radicalization at the time.

  The blame game was eventually settled as the Muslim Brotherhood’s consultative body (Majlis al-Shura), decided to set up a special committee headed by the Syrian Brother Muhammed Ali Ashmi, tasked with investigating what had gone wrong inside the movement. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Adnan Saadeddine and Said Hawwa were very uneasy about the idea of having such a “truth-seeking committee” set up.6 Because of their fierce opposition, the evaluation report was never made publicly available and its content remains, to this very day, a closely guarded secret. According to Alison Pargeter, it is reported to have placed much of the blame on Adnan Saadeddine, accused of having set up a special committee tasked with secretly coordinating actions with the Fighting Vanguard in 1977—something the former Ikhwani leader has denied in a booklet defending his record.7 At any rate, the accusation exacerbated the already existing tensions between the “Aleppo faction” and the “Hama clan”. The first group, principally based in Amman, had by the mid-1980s regrouped around Sheikh Abdel Fattah Abu Ghuddah while the other, led by Adnan Saadeddine, had settled in Iraq.

  From their respective exiles, the two groups started to put forward seemingly irreconcilable visions of the way in which the Muslim Brotherhood, defeated and based abroad, should now best deal with the Ba’ath regime. The “Aleppo faction” quickly realized that the Hama massacre had been such a great loss of human life that it was impossible to bear any more. If some within the group, such as Zouheir Salem, had always criticized the Ikhwan’s violent policy of 1980–82, others, such as Abdel Fatah Abu Ghuddah and Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni, reversed their formerly radical positions and came to hold a compromising stance towards the Syrian Ba’ath. For the Hamawite Brothers, however, the issue was more than merely political or strategic: it was emotional. Many had lost one or several relatives in the bloody governmental retaliation of February 1982. Still bitter at the destruction of their home town by the Ba’athist troops, the “Hama clan” carried on its radical policy by continuing to advocate armed struggle against the regime. From Baghdad, the group managed to gather sufficient material and financial resources to continue its violent endeavours. Upon Said Hawwa’s resignation from the Muslim Brotherhood’s Executive Council, in 1983, it is reported that the Hamawite Farouk Tayfour took over the group’s “military branch” and led sporadic attacks inside Syria until the late 1980s. In its violent endeavour, the “Hama clan” could benefit from Adnan Saadeddine’s excellent relations with the Iraqi ruler who provided it with weapons, money and training. In turn, as a show of his loyalty to Saddam Hussein, the leader of the “Hama clan” would go as far as stating that members of the Iraqi Ba’ath are “true Muslims” and that “their leadership is devout”—whatever the contradiction in terms. He would also turn his back on al-Tali’a whose “Caliph” was unsuccessfully required to ask
forgiveness for having accused the Iraqi Ba’ath of “blasphemy”.8

  For a time, it seemed as if the Syrian regime hesitated as to which policy it should pursue in order to definitively crush the remnants of the exiled Muslim Brotherhood. At first, an assassination campaign was carried out in order to deter any further political and military activity against the Syrian Ba’ath. As quoted before (Chapter 7), the regime was eventually successful in infiltrating the remnants of the Fighting Vanguard, regrouped in Amman, and through an elaborate scheme, lured Adnan Uqlah back to Syria where he is believed to have been immediately arrested and killed. The current leader of the Ikhwan, Muhammed Riyadh al-Shuqfah, remembered having suffered four assassination attempts after fleeing Hama for Baghdad in the early 1980s, three of them foiled by Iraqi Intelligence, which underlines the extent to which Saddam Hussein’s security apparatus was active in protecting members of the “Hama group” living on its territory.9 Whether the leaders of the Islamic movement were based in Aachen, Amman or Baghdad, the message sent to them by the Syrian mukhabarat became as clear as it could get: all attempts to resume opposition activities would be met with a disproportionate response against both them and their families.

  In parallel to the regime’s willingness to maintain its repression against known Muslim Brotherhood leaders, however, there co-existed another policy, in appearance more conciliatory, but in reality as cynical as the former. In late 1984, Ali Duba, Hafiz al-Assad’s head of Military Intelligence, made it known to the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership based in Amman and Baghdad that the regime would be prepared to engage in negotiations with the ultimate goal of achieving a compromise acceptable to all parties. While the Hamawite members of the Ikhwan were deeply reluctant to participate, they were nonetheless convinced by the rest of the organization that a dialogue with the regime, at such a catastrophic stage for the Islamic movement, was the only way forward. Several thousand members of the Muslim Brotherhood had been forced to flee the repression they suffered in Syria, many of them finding refuge in Jordan, Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. “In exile, our situation was desperate,” remembered Walid Safour, who fled to Jordan in 1979 before settling in London where he set up a human rights group. “The organization did whatever it could to support us, providing a monthly assistance of around 30 dinars to each refugee, but this was hardly enough in a country where 5 dinars a day are needed to survive.”10

  Keen to seize every possible opportunity to have its members safely return to Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood agreed to meet Ali Duba to start negotiations with the Ba’athist regime. These took place in December 1984 in a hotel in Bonn, in Germany, where Ali Duba and two aides, Hisham Bukhtiar and Hassan Khalil, met the leader of the Syrian Ikhwan, Hassan al-Houeidi, assisted by Munir al-Ghadban and Muhammed Riyadh al-Shuqfah. According to the latter, it quickly became clear that the regime’s real aim was to provoke divisions within the Muslim Brotherhood by sowing confusion in its ranks. Thus, it was reported, while Ali Duba and Hassan al-Houeidi isolated themselves in a separate room—suggesting that progress was made towards a negotiated settlement—Hassan Khalil came to Muhammed Riyadh al-Shuqfah and expressed, for his part, a clear lack of willingness to proceed with the negotiations. Confused and exhausted after a day of talks and counter-talks, hope and disappointment, both camps agreed to take some rest before carrying on with the next round of negotiations. “A few hours later, Ali Duba called Hassan al-Houeidi: the Syrian intelligence officers were on a train back to Berlin before taking off for Damascus, they had fooled us,”11 al-Shuqfah commented.

  By holding out the prospect of settling the dispute with the Ikhwan, the regime had managed to achieve two goals. While its offer had exacerbated the tensions between the Brotherhood’s two wings as to whether a conciliatory approach should be adopted or not, it had also had a glimpse into how fractured and weak the Brotherhood had become in exile. “There never was any serious intent on the part of the regime to actually settle the dispute with the Muslim Brotherhood, these negotiations were doomed in advance,” confessed Abdel Halim Khaddam. “The delegation led by Ali Duba suggested to the Ikhwan that they could be allowed to return to Syria but only under the condition that they do so as individuals and refrain from any political activity…In reality, the regime did not wish to see any form of agreement being reached with the Muslim Brotherhood.”12

  If the regime’s real intention was to sow division among Ikhwani ranks, it was successful. The frictions between the “Hama clan” and the “Aleppo faction”, already present in 1982 and 1983, came to a head with the failure of the 1984 negotiations. Back in Baghdad, the “Hama clan” led by Adnan Saadeddine continued to plan attacks against Ba’athist installations inside Syria. Members of the “Aleppo faction”, for their part, persisted in believing that negotiations with the regime were still the only way forward, despite the failure of the earlier attempt. It is against this ideological backdrop, of dispute between those favourable to armed struggle and those privileging negotiations, that the 1986 leadership crisis emerged. “Tensions [which] had been simmering since the Hama massacre, became evident with the failure of the 1984 negotiations and emerged publicly with the advent of the 1986 leadership crisis,”13 confirmed a source close to the Syrian Ikhwan. The struggle was between the moderate Aleppine scholar Sheikh Abdel Fatah Abu Ghuddah, who favoured talks with the regime, and the more hard-line Hamawite Adnan Saadeddine, for whom there was “nothing to discuss with these criminals; they are not a government, they are a mafia.”14 But, while the leadership crisis was depicted as an ideological struggle between the organization’s moderates and hard-line members, more profound underlying factors were separating the “Hama clan” and the “Aleppo faction”.

  “The debate on armed struggle was a façade,” Muhammed Riyadh al-Shuqfah, a long-time member of the “Hama clan”, admitted. “It provided a useful pretext to decide who should be the next leader and, in my opinion, Adnan Saadeddine was by far the best.”15 It is quite clear that a clash over ideology was only one of the many elements that led to the split between the two wings of the Muslim Brotherhood. Prominent among other factors was the clash of personalities and very distinct styles of leadership that the two leaders were known for. “While Abu Ghuddah was a respected conciliatory figure whose academic background gave him a broad outlook, Saadeddine was on the contrary an impulsive and individualistic character who had a narrow view of the situation,”16 explained a leading member of the “Aleppo faction”. To a certain extent, such criticisms might also have reflected cultural differences between members of the Ikhwan from Hama and those from Aleppo. Indeed, in recurring conversations with members of both the “Hama clan” and the “Aleppo faction”, mention was made of regional differences, emphasizing a strong cultural component that might account for much of the still-existant tensions between the two wings. It was suggested that Hama’s tribal structure and harsh socio-geographical surroundings bind its inhabitants together with a sense of inner solidarity and these self-described “men of action” instinctively favour tough, conservative policies, while the inhabitants of Aleppo, a sizeable commercial city with a large variety of religious and ethnic groups and socioeconomic classes, are more moderate and prone to dialogue; Aleppines are said to engage in politics in a business-like manner, favouring pragmatic compromises to rigid ideology. Thus, if the 1986 struggle between Abu Ghuddah and Saadeddine took on a strong personal dimension, it might well be because their diverging outlooks and visions reflected the traditional regional divide between Hamawite and Aleppine Ikhwanis inside the organization.

  Between 1984 and 1985, elections contested by the two figures were held inside the movement, and since Abu Ghuddah’s declared victory was not recognized by Saadeddine, an interim leadership was created, putting Adeeb Jajeh and then Munir al-Ghdaban at the helm of the organization for six consecutive months each. Ultimately, however, Adnan Saadeddine unilaterally declared that he was taking up the leadership position, exacerbating the rif
t of mistrust to an extent still felt until today in relations between Ikhwani members from Aleppo and those from Hama, who then largely rallied behind their chief.

  By 1986, the personal, ideological and cultural differences setting the “Aleppo faction” apart from the “Hama clan” had effectively fractured the Islamic movement into two clearly distinct organizations. The first, led by Sheikh Abu Ghuddah, was recognized by the international body of the Muslim Brotherhood as the legitimate representative of the Syrian Ikhwan. It also adopted a more conciliatory stance towards the Ba’athist regime. A new round of negotiations between this organization and Ali Duba was carried out in Frankfurt throughout September 1987, though with no more success than the preceding talks. It has been reported that, when Hassan al-Houeidi met Ali Duba for the second time and asked that the security services release the thousands of Muslim Brothers still imprisoned inside Syria as a gesture of goodwill, Hafiz al-Assad’s chief of Military Intelligence replied arrogantly, “But, you want the end of the regime!”17 The Syrian Ba’ath, aware of the existing divisions separating the two wings of the Ikhwan, certainly intended to use the 1987 negotiations as a way to further exacerbate tensions within the Islamic movement. In retrospect, those inside the “Aleppo faction” who were responsible for the 1987 negotiations acknowledged they were aware of the risk that the regime might instrumentalize the talks to the detriment of the Ikhwan. “We knew that the regime wanted to play a game with us but we still thought that we should take up every opportunity to negotiate and give dialogue a try, believing that by reaching out we would all move forward and that, in the end, progress would be made in the interest of all,”18 Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni explained in an interview.