Ashes of Hama: The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria

by Raphael Lefevre

  Such willingness to engage in a political dialogue with other Syrian opposition forces, even forces ideologically antagonistic to them, was not new to the Ikhwan. A few months after the Hama massacre, in March 1982, Muslim Brotherhood leaders had joined Amin al-Hafiz’s dissident Ba’athist faction as well as the Arab Socialist troops of Akram al-Hawrani in forming the National Alliance for the Liberation of Syria (NALS). The effort was short-lived, however, as the Iraqi location of the Alliance’s headquarters and the bitter infighting resulting in Akram al-Hawrani’s departure from it a few years later raised doubts over its sustainability as a credible opposition in exile. In the early 2000s, the Ikhwan expressed a renewed eagerness to join the dialogue carried out in the framework of the “Damascus Spring” by other Syrian opposition forces, including various prominent secular left-wing figures such as the Christian Michel Kilo and the Communist Riad al-Turk. Negotiations over a common opposition platform most notably culminated in October 2005 with the signing of the “Damascus Declaration”, in which the Muslim Brotherhood became a key participant. The declaration emphasized a set of democratic principles which dozens of exiled parties and independent personalities from all political, religious and ethnic backgrounds had agreed on. This marked a breakthrough in Syria’s political life, regardless of the foreign location of many of the signatories. According to Joshua Landis, “for the first time in decades, it seemed that Syria’s bickering political parties, outspoken intellectuals and civil society groupings were finding common ground.” “Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian nationalists put aside their ethnic squabbling” and “socialists, communists, liberals and Islamists were willing to unite over a single platform of democratic change and respect for one another,” wrote Landis. The pact between opposition groups represented in particular a tremendous boost for the Syrian Ikhwan. “The coalition set off alarm bells for a regime that had struggled for decades to deny the Muslim Brotherhood a foothold in Syrian society.”45

  The regime was even more unsettled when one of its most prominent members, Abdel Halim Khaddam, defected from Damascus and left for Paris in December 2005, shortly before announcing an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood in exile. While a long-time member of the Syrian Ba’ath, a regime in which he assumed the positions of Foreign Minister and then Vice President, Khaddam had opposed Bashar’s inheritance of power from his father upon the latter’s death in June 2000. According to a prominent opposition activist in Damascus, Khaddam’s defection represented a “thorn in the side of the Bashar al-Assad regime, especially because he has the ability to speak knowledgeably about inner circle corruption and to appeal to some Sunnis.”46 These were indeed the primary reasons behind the Muslim Brotherhood’s willingness to team up with Khaddam. According to the former Vice President, it was the Brotherhood that initiated the dialogue after Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni and Abdel Halim Khaddam had both taken part in a show broadcast on Al-Jazeera in January 2006.47 The two parties agreed to form a joint opposition platform which culminated with the creation of the National Salvation Front (NSF) at a meeting in Brussels in March 2006.

  For the Brotherhood, the alliance with the former Ba’athist Vice President represented a golden opportunity to regain a measure of relevance in the landscape of Syrian politics. According to Obeida Nahas, who was Bayanouni’s political adviser, “this was a serious enterprise as we thought our partnership with a former prominent Ba’athist would attract more defections on the part of regime officials”.48 At the time, the belief that the NSF was gaining momentum was also shared by many inside the Ba’athist regime who expressed “fear”49 at the emergence of such an alliance precisely when Bashar al-Assad’s grip on power was being greatly weakened by the forced Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and the threats of external intervention coming from Washington. For a time, it seemed as if the unlikely alliance was gathering momentum. Even though the “Damascus Declaration” group did not join the new coalition, the NSF managed to gather several independent personalities, small political parties and a sizeable proportion of Kurds who were won over through the NSF’s commitment to end discrimination against them—though one of the community’s representatives pointed out that they did not end up having a “great impact”50 on the opposition platform. For the Muslim Brotherhood, the stakes were high. According to Joshua Landis, “by linking up with the secular Khaddam, the Muslim Brotherhood showcased an eagerness to prioritize political pragmatism over narrow ideology” and “it may have alleviated the anxieties of Alawis and military leaders who believed that the Muslim Brothers’ first move in power would be to purge regime loyalists.”51

  As Ikhwani hopes for “regime change” in Damascus gradually died down, however, it became “embarrassing”52 for the Brotherhood to remain associated with a former prominent Ba’athist figure who had participated in the massacre of its own members. A cable from the US Embassy dated from April 2006—only a few months after the opposition coalition was set up—read that since “the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has more support in Syria than Khaddam, so it had more to lose from risking an alliance with him […] Many accused Bayanouni and the Muslim Brotherhood of unprincipled opportunism for their willingness to ally themselves with a pillar of the Hafiz al-Assad regime that was responsible for the violent suppression of their movement in the early 1980s.”53 In January 2009, Ikhwani leaders suspended their opposition activities, officially in order to show support for the Syrian regime’s popular anti-Israel stance during the war in Gaza. “While we, the Muslim Brotherhood, sided with the people of Gaza who were defending themselves, Khaddam was blaming Hamas for the escalation of violence and refused to freeze his opposition to Assad for the duration of the war,”54 Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni explained. This, however, was described as a “mere pretext”55 by Abdel Halim Khaddam, who claims that the real reason behind the Brotherhood’s withdrawal from the NSF was in fact Ikhwani willingness to negotiate their way back to Damascus with the Syrian regime. This is confirmed by Obeida Nahas, according to whom a “mediation” between the Ikhwani leadership and the Ba’athist rulers took place some time between 2009 and 2010, although he insisted that “the talks never moved beyond the mediation phase.”56

  9

  UPRISINGS IN SYRIA

  REVENGE ON HISTORY

  When the Arab Spring protests began to spread throughout the Middle East while focusing, at first, on Tunisia, Jordan and Egypt, Bashar al-Assad felt confident enough to declare his country immune from the uprisings and suggested that this was perhaps because his regime’s “ideology, beliefs and causes” were in tune with the mood on Syria’s streets. What the Syrian ruler failed to foresee, however, was that the historical narrative at play during the uprisings of the late 1970s would quickly resurface and that, when protests did erupt in March 2011, it would fuel them to the extent that they eventually exacted “revenge on history”. “We will not let the massacres of 1982 be repeated!”1 shouted protesters when the symbolic city of Hama was besieged by regime troops throughout June 2011. “Hafiz died and Hama didn’t. Bashar will die and Hama won’t,”2 shouted a rebel to sum up the way in which awareness of past events fuelled what quickly became an unyielding determination to get rid of the Syrian Ba’ath once and for all.

  But the historical continuity seemingly at play throughout the unfolding of the Syrian uprisings was not limited to the opposition. In a rhetorical twist echoing that of the late 1970s, early on the regime justified its crackdown on the protests by arguing that it had to uproot the “jihadist elements” and “gangs” supposed to be active in the demonstrations. Interestingly enough, Bashar al-Assad accused the Syrian Brotherhood by name of being behind the demonstrations—without evidence, it should be stressed, and despite the Ikhwan’s long exile from Syria. “We’ve been fighting the Muslim Brotherhood since the 1950s and we are still fighting with them,”3 he claimed in October 2011 to justify his crackdown on the protests. It seemed as if the regime’s obsession with the Islamist group was once again coming to the surface. To back up th
eir narrative, regime elements went as far as setting up a fake Syrian Muslim Brotherhood website account which would later claim responsibility for the terrorist attacks that ravaged Damascus in December 2011—a responsibility immediately rejected by the Ikhwan on their real website.4

  The irony is that, while at that point in time the Syrian Brotherhood’s role in the unfolding of the protests was actually marginal, its profile was to rise spectacularly shortly thereafter. The regime’s simultaneous attempt at radicalizing the role played by Islam in the protests, so as to pose as the ultimate guarantor of the country’s “stability” and “moderation”, would indeed fuel a wave of radical Islam leaving the centre ground open to the Brotherhood’s message. In parallel, the political and socioeconomic chaos emerging out of the increasingly violent confrontation between the regime and the opposition in early 2012 would provide the long sought-after opportunity for the Ikhwan to make a historical comeback at the forefront of the anti-regime struggle. But will its rising profile and the heavy price it paid for its unyielding opposition to the Ba’ath automatically pave the way for electoral success?

  Fostering Islamic radicalization

  When they started in March 2011, the Syrian uprisings were not bound to become markedly religious in tone and nature. At first, even though the country’s numerous mosques and prayer leaders played a key role in mobilizing parts of the population, the significance Islam would subsequently take on was not immediately obvious. In Dar’a, a relatively small tribal city on the border next to Jordan where popular anti-regime rallies first started before quickly spreading to the rest of Syria, the start of the protests was linked to local issues and demands voiced by local inhabitants. One of the city’s most influential clerics, Moti’ al-Batin, explained the way in which the uprisings there evolved into becoming noticeably religious in nature. “It all started when a group of twenty children painted the slogan ‘we want freedom’ on the wall of a street before they were caught by police officers who sent them directly to jail where they received bad treatment,” he recounted. “There had for long been dissatisfaction with the corrupt regional and local government led by the head of the local security services, Atif Najib, also the son of Bashar’s aunt, but this was too much […] The children’s parents were not allowed to get their kids back and, when fathers took matters into their hands and went to Atif Najib asking him to order their release, he literally told them: ‘Forget about your children, make others and, if you’re not able to do that, bring me your wives!’”5

  The inhabitants of Dar’a soon poured into the streets in an effort to support the parents’ call for justice and dignity. As mosques were the only places where public gatherings were allowed, they quickly became the focal point for protesters who marched throughout the city’s streets immediately after Friday prayers. For this reason, however, mosques themselves quickly became the targets of the regime. “Soldiers came into each and every of the city’s three mosques while randomly shooting at people and shouting ‘Allah is bad’,”6 explained Moti’ al-Batin, himself the imam of a local mosque before he was shot in the back by an army sniper and managed to flee to Jordan and then Turkey. Ever since, displaying their religious devotion has become a way for Syrian protesters to express their strong opposition to a regime often seen as too secular, if not downright atheist and impious. Signs of the growing importance Islam was to play in the unfolding of anti-regime protests then multiplied. In many of the country’s cities, the title of the weekly protests held after Friday prayers changed from “We won’t kneel” into “We won’t kneel except before God.” In addition, the men of religion, while leading the prayers, were often forced into taking a stand: either supporting the regime—in which they might have a vested interest—or using their sermons to incite the faithful to defy regime snipers and tanks. “Sheikhs have a role,” confirmed a cleric active in the Syrian opposition in Hama. “In an area where people are scared, a sheikh in his sermon can encourage them to go out.”7

  As protests multiplied across Syria, and in the enthusiastic aftermath of the toppling of dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, many analysts started to predict the quick demise of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. What they had not foreseen, however, was the regime’s unique capacity to look into its own past in order to find the resources needed to tame the rebellion. Today, more than ever before, the Syrian regime, composed of a number of officers and politicians who have themselves, or through the experiences of their relatives, lived through the internal crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s, is looking at the current uprisings through the lens of its own history. At that earlier time, the deadly cycle of sectarian retribution opposing radical Sunni militants to those seen as supporting the regime, namely the Christian and Alawi minorities, had paradoxically reinforced Hafiz al-Assad’s grip on power. The country’s minority communities, as well as those Sunnis who feared the inroads made by an increasingly radical Islamic opposition, had indeed rallied solidly behind the “lesser evil” represented by the Syrian President—whatever their distaste for his brutal methods and authoritarian tendencies. Ever since uprisings began to shake Syria again, Bashar al-Assad has been keen to use the lessons learned by his late father. In regime circles, it is now believed that, by deliberately sowing the poisonous seeds of sectarian resentment and Islamic extremism in today’s Syria, the President will ultimately be able to pose as the authoritative guarantor of the country’s unity and stability. It is, however, a highly toxic and risky gamble for a country sitting on a sectarian powder keg.

  Homs, a city of 650,000 people strategically standing between Damascus and Hama, has over the past year and a half emerged as the regime’s main laboratory for its dangerous sectarian experiments. There, the cycle of mutual retribution pitting the city’s various religious communities against one another (the Sunni majority versus the Christian and Alawi minorities) offers a gloomy prospect of what the future of Syria could look like. Throughout early 2012, the army’s shelling of the Baba Amr quarter, a stronghold of the primarily Sunni opposition, coupled with the cruelties carried out by pro-regime militias against its inhabitants, have ignited a dangerous dynamic doomed to transform the country’s peaceful protests into a distinctively sectarian and violent struggle. Already, there are reports suggesting that over 10,000 local Christians—or 90 per cent of the city’s Christian community—have fled Homs for fear that the predominantly Sunni rebels might take revenge for their tacit support of the regime. The city’s Alawis, needless to say, have lived in daily fear of being killed at rebel checkpoints. A rebel in Homs who admitted having carried out several executions of local Alawis belonging to the security forces explained: “I have been arrested twice, I was tortured for 72 hours, they hung me by the hands until the joints in my shoulders cracked. They burnt me with hot irons. Of course, I want revenge!”8

  Over the past year, the shabiha (or “ghosts”) unleashed by the regime have emerged as its most efficient way of sowing sectarian resentment in Homs and other cities. These pro-regime thugs, overwhelmingly Alawi in their composition, are ready to do whatever it will take to uphold Bashar al-Assad’s grip on power. “They behave in a very sectarian way,” explained Walid Safour, a London-based human rights activist originally from the city of Homs. “They want to dominate Syria and to show the extent to which they and Bashar al-Assad are the only rulers of this country: when they catch a Sunni rebel, they often beat him up in the street, humiliating him and insulting his religion.” Walid Safour, who was himself the victim of the shabiha when, in October 1980, his belongings were stolen and he was beaten up by such a group of thugs, gave details of the prominent role pro-regime militias have taken since the 2011 uprisings started: “In the past, the shabiha numbered 40,000, today they are soon likely to reach a quarter of a million as the Assad regime has asked every Alawi family to send at least one of their sons to these groups.”9 The link between these pro-regime militias and the Assad family ruling over the country is clear. For long tasked with carrying out the c
riminal activities of the Assad clan—from robbery and blackmail to assassinations and organized crime—the actions of the shabiha have lately become distinctively sectarian in nature. The provocations of these pro-regime Alawi militias, until recently led by Fawaz al-Assad, Bashar’s own cousin, have fuelled such sectarian resentment that they have also radicalized the role played by Islam in the unfolding of protest.