The regime’s multiple provocations have indeed unleashed a wave of radical Islam which, by its very nature, potentially threatens the Syrian revolution’s initially inclusive and democratic message—thus also playing into the rulers’ hands. A small but rapidly growing number of radicalized protesters have started to shout slogans calling for revenge against the country’s minority communities, hailing the legacy of the controversial Ibn Taymiyya, most famously known for his rulings condoning the killing of the “infidel” Alawis. International media covering the Syrian conflict have reported the shouting of catch-phrases such as: “Christians to Beirut, Alawis to coffins.”10 More recent protests held throughout the country have also seen the advent of Adnan al-Aroor as an increasingly popular figure among some members of the opposition. A 73-year-old religious scholar based in Saudi Arabia whose sermons are watched by many Sunni Syrians on a TV channel, he famously warned in July 2011 those Alawis who participate in repression that they would be “minced in meat grinders” and their flesh would be “fed to the dogs”.11 Whatever the efforts made by opposition leaders of all hues to avoid derailing the course of the Syrian uprisings, the anti-regime protests, at first representing a social movement not putting forward any particular religious demands, are on the verge of turning into a distinctively Sunni “awakening”.
This dynamic, in turn, combined with the increasing militarization of the Syrian opposition in the aftermath of the regime’s brutal crackdown against Homs and others cities from early 2012 onwards, contributed to fuelling an anti-regime religious rhetoric increasingly associated with the use of force. Calling for jihad against the Ba’ath has, for instance, become a main rallying cry for the opposition inside Syria. “Those whose intentions are not for God, they had better stay home whereas if your intention is for God, then you go for jihad and you gain an afterlife and heaven,”12 a rebel leader shouted in Aleppo in July 2012 when exhorting his followers to fight back against the occupation of the city by government troops. Many of the rebel fighting units which have sprung up throughout the country under the shadowy umbrella of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are now of an Islamist bent. These include groups relying on a relatively moderate Islamist ideology, such as the Farouk Battalion in Homs and the Tawheed Brigades in Aleppo. But organizations with a more conservative, sometimes Salafist-jihadist agenda are growing in Syria as there is no end in sight to the stalemate between mainstream rebel groups and regime forces. The north-western and overwhelmingly Sunni region of Jebel al-Zawiyah, surrounding Idlib, has in particular witnessed the rapid expansion of such groups. Some, such as Suqour al-Sham, do not seem to have a sectarian agenda in mind yet.13 But others, such as Ahrar al-Sham, have been criticized for targeting specifically Alawis and Christians.14 “The more time the revolution extends, the stronger the salafists will be,” argued one activist who went on to explain that “each month that goes by, the movement turns more Islamic and more radical.”15
Of these radical groups, it is the al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al-Nusrah that caught the attention of most Western media.16 Its creation, announced in January 2012, was followed by a wave of suicide bombings claimed by the organization, which struck at the heart of Aleppo and Damascus. Shortly thereafter, a statement from Ayman al-Zawahiri, Usama Bin Laden’s successor to the helm of al-Qaeda, appealed to Muslims across the region and particularly in Syria to raise the banner of holy war against the Syrian Ba’ath.17 The Jabhat al-Nusrah quickly became highly effective in its violent and sometimes spectacular campaign against the regime. A study of its reach and capabilities showed that the organization increased the pace of its activities from seven attacks in March 2012 to sixty-six in June of the same year while concentrating the bulk of its efforts on Aleppo and Damascus.18 The Jabhat al-Nusrah also came to embody the merger of the trends analysed in Chapter 7: not only is it successful in recruiting the skilled jihadists who, after 2003, made their way through Damascus to fight the American occupiers of Iraq with the blessing of the Syrian security services, but it also seems increasingly likely to attract the former Syrian members of the Fighting Vanguard who later joined the global jihad in the 1980s and patiently waited for the right time to return home to settle scores with the Ba’ath regime.
Significantly enough, this trend embodies precisely what the regime had been looking for to crush the wider protest movement while blaming its brutal repression on the existence of terrorist networks in Syria. This was made clear when, in February 2012, and as the government forces’ siege of Homs was intensifying, the Syrian security forces deliberately released Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, a former jihadist of the Fighting Vanguard turned al-Qaeda ideologue, who had been in prison in Damascus since 2005.19 The release of a figure whose custody for seven years in a Syrian prison probably did little to moderate his radicalism would, in due course, play into the regime’s long-time argument that the rebellion is led by “Islamic terrorists” and “affiliates of al-Qaeda”.
The Brotherhood’s rebirth from ashes
While the painful stalemate between rebel groups of all hues and the Syrian regime lingered, the increasing political void left by the chaos came to represent, for the Muslim Brotherhood, a golden opportunity to make a historical comeback at the forefront of Syrian politics and society. But this was not a self-evident development, given the Ikhwan’s long struggle for relevance from exile and the harsh repression of their social base at home. Law No. 49, punishing by death any known members of the Muslim Brotherhood, effectively prevented the organization from participating in the unfolding of the protests when they erupted in March 2011. In fact, its influence on the ground was at first considered so irrelevant that, when groups started to organize meetings in Doha in early September 2011 to negotiate the creation of a unified opposition umbrella, the Muslim Brotherhood was excluded from the talks.
However, the organization’s leader, Muhammed Riyadh al-Shuqfah, had warned, “In the outside, nothing can happen without the Muslim Brotherhood.”20 Quickly, most opposition leaders came to the realization that, if the Ikhwan’s presence inside Syria was indeed limited, their ideological influence, history of unyielding opposition to the Ba’ath, significant financial resources and organizational capacities would nonetheless make them an essential future component of any post-Assad settlement. Eventually, the Syrian Brotherhood was therefore invited to participate at a meeting held in Istanbul in early October 2011, which set up the Syrian National Council (SNC)—a body also comprising groups such as the secular Damascus Declaration, the mildly Islamist National Bloc, some Kurdish factions, a myriad of independent figures and representatives of the Christian and Alawi communities.
For the Ikhwan, much was at stake. From the outset, the Brotherhood had been targeted by the regime’s rhetoric, according to which it was behind the instigation of the protests and the use of violence—despite its repeated denials and assertions that “no one owns the Syrian uprisings”.21 Remembering the harsh consequences they had suffered in the past from their lonely struggle against the regime, the Ikhwan saw it as more fit to act and speak within the framework of a broad-ranging opposition umbrella than as a single group. “Whatever we do and say in public,” interviewed Syrian Brothers like to stress, “it is on behalf of the SNC.”22 The SNC, despite internal divisions between its secular and Islamist components and ideological squabbling over issues such as Kurdish autonomy and international intervention, rapidly gained support as the most comprehensive Syrian opposition platform. In April 2012, the Friends of Syria group comprising nations hostile to the Assad regime recognized the body as a legitimate representative of the Syrian people. With time, however, the SNC became the target of left-wing militants who accused it of being a mere “liberal front for the Muslim Brotherhood.”23 “The Brotherhood took the whole council!”24 complained a small group of influential opposition figures when they broke away from the SNC.
A close look at the Ikhwan’s role within the opposition, however, suggests that, if they wield great influence, it is nonetheless mi
sleading to imply that they unilaterally took control. Indeed, Ikhwani representation inside the SNC’s decision-making bodies does not, as such, exceed that of any other political blocs. As of September 2012, of the 310 members of the council, only twenty are Muslim Brothers and, if they are also represented by Farouk Tayfour as deputy head and member of the Executive Committee, they are only three out of thirty-three on the General Secretariat. The council’s leader, at the time of writing Abdul Baseet Sieda, is not a Muslim Brother; nor was his predecessor, the secular Burhan Ghalioun. Why, then, are the Ikhwan often perceived by outsiders as the power behind the throne?
The answer lies partly in the confusion some observers make when analysing exiled Islamic political groups. As will be shown later, the landscape of political Islam has become highly heterogeneous and complex since the Brotherhood was forced out of Syria in the early 1980s. Many opposition figures classified as “Islamists”, such as Imad Eddine al-Rashid or Haitham al-Maleh, actually do not belong to the Ikhwan and are even personally and politically hostile to them, if not ideologically so. In addition, the SNC also includes a group of former members of the Muslim Brotherhood who distanced themselves from the organization—out of ideological divergence and of lack of proper political opportunities—and have regrouped into a National Action Group for Syria often confused with the Ikhwan in media coverage. All in all, it can be estimated that the influence of Islamists of all hues over the SNC comprises 35 per cent of the council’s membership and that the Brotherhood accounts for less than half of this proportion.
That said, it is fair to argue that the Ikhwan is the opposition’s most powerful component. This is mainly because, whatever its history of internal divisions, the group has remained united in the uprisings—not a small achievement given the permanent shifts in loyalty seemingly gripping Syrian politics to this day. Such unity has, in turn, allowed the Ikhwan to act as a coherent, disciplined and organized unit within the SNC and, therefore, to wield great influence over its policies and decisions. “We bicker while the Brotherhood works,”25 a liberal member of the council summed it up with frustration. While on the one hand the Ikhwan deliberately did not put up a candidate for the chair of the SNC so as to not play into the regime’s argument that the opposition is dominated by Islamists, they have, on the other, been keen to increase their representation within two of the council’s most significant offices: military affairs and development aid. In turn, Brotherhood control over these two divisions—funded on a weekly basis through a purported $1 million regularly transferred to SNC bank accounts by outside donors26—meant that the Ikhwan was able to slowly start rebuilding its social base in Syria.
The Islamist organization helped funding, setting up and running camps for Syrian refugees fleeing the bloodshed to Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan—where the group also counts on logistical and financial support from the local branches of the Muslim Brotherhood. The chaos in Syria also enabled the Ikhwan to reactivate their long-dormant networks throughout the country in order to give much needed medical assistance, food and money to the inhabitants of the besieged cities of Homs, Aleppo and Hama. Even activists long suspicious of the Syrian Brotherhood’s intentions have started to accept the financial help offered to them by members of the Islamist organization. “I approached them and they instantly gave me 2,000 euros when I asked for help […] and I am not even Ikhwan,”27 recounted an activist in the region of Idlib. There are, of course, also many non-Brotherhood groups and individuals providing relief and assistance to Syrian activists, often benefiting from the donations of wealthy Syrian expatriates, Western organizations and countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. But most are situated locally, limited to one domain, and very few have the national reach and organizational capacities of the Syrian Ikhwan. “There is effectively no Law No. 49 any more,” said Obeida Nahas, an active opposition figure long close to the Brotherhood’s leadership. “Over the past few months, the Brothers have been very active in recovering their civilian base: the revolution enabled them to reconnect with Syrian society.”28
But keeping in touch with the Syrian street also meant that the Brotherhood had to adapt its approach and thinking as events unfolded on the ground. When, in early 2012, the regime shifted its response to the uprisings from a security to a military option, many militants inside Syria started to organize self-defence brigades—most of which regrouped under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The militarization of the Syrian revolt could well have caught the Muslim Brotherhood off guard and reopened the old wounds of internal divisions. After all, the debate over armed struggle had split the Ikhwan throughout the 1980s and had been painfully closed with the reintegration of the “Hama clan” into the organization in the early 1990s and the signing of two documents in the 2000s stating the group’s renunciation of violence to overthrow the Syrian Ba’ath. But, instead of proving a contentious topic, the Brotherhood’s active support for the FSA and the fighters on the ground actually came smoothly, if not rather belatedly, at a meeting of the organization in late March 2012. The uprisings, against all odds, seem to have strengthened the Ikhwan’s internal cohesion and discipline rather than fostering new divisions. This was certainly not a development expected by most outside observers given the tensions that rose as a result of an internal party election in July 2010, witnessing the advent of a leadership dominated by the “Hama clan”.
Then, in the pre-Arab Spring mindset of the time, the election of the Hamawite Muhammed Riyadh al-Suqfah prompted fears that the return of the Hamawites to leadership would signal an ideological shift questioning Bayanouni’s “moderate” legacy and would therefore prove to be a “setback” for the organization. Since then, of course, the meaning assumed by a word such as “moderation” has profoundly changed: would it be “moderate”, today, to call for negotiations with a regime killing its own people, or “hard-line” to refuse all dialogue with a state trying to divide the opposition and rule? In the early context of the Syrian uprisings, few would now agree with that. Shuqfah’s election, therefore, was perhaps the Brotherhood’s single luckiest event in decades: when the time came for Syrians to rise as one man against the Ba’ath, the Islamist organization was not to be caught negotiating with the regime. At the time, however, the return of the “Hama clan” to leadership sent an uncompromising message to Damascus not shared by everyone in the organization: the time for mediation was over and the Brotherhood would resume its unyielding opposition to the Ba’ath—the truce with the regime having, for Shuqfah, ended the day the Israeli war on Gaza did. The ideological squabbling that then began between the Brotherhood’s most uncompromising members and those more prone to dialogue with the regime quickly took the form of resurgent regional, clan and personal divisions between the “Hama clan” now in charge and the “Aleppo faction” it decided to sideline. Prominent Aleppine figures such as Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni and Zouheir Salem were marginalized from a leadership controlled by Muhammed Riyadh al-Shuqfah, who would count on the support of the powerful Farouk Tayfour as deputy leader, Muhammed Hatem al-Tabshi as head of the Shura Council and Moulhem al-Droubi as spokesman—all important figures close to the “Hama clan”.
But, if it was fortunate for the Ikhwan to have been led by uncompromising figures precisely when the powerful wave of the Arab Spring reached Syrian shores, it also meant that, at the very beginning at least, the Brotherhood faced this historical event disunited and disorganized. Quickly, however, the Hamawite leadership realized the unprecedented importance of the uprisings in Syria: this was something long awaited by all its members and the divisions had been due more to the regime’s divide and rule policy than to a real divergence on topics of state and society. To face a regime fighting for survival, the Syrian Brotherhood would, this time, need to be strongly united and disciplined. In a gesture of appeasement towards the “Aleppo faction”, Muhammed Riyadh al-Shuqfah restructured the Ikhwani leadership in late March 2011. Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni was made the organization’s first deputy�
��thereby formally exercising more authority than Farouk Tayfour, its second deputy—and Zouheir Salem became the organization’s spokesman. Working for unity within Muslim Brotherhood ranks also embodied a shared sense among all members that the uprisings finally represented the historic event they had so long waited for: Syrians were finally taking revenge for the brutal crushing of the Islamist uprisings in the 1980s and the time would soon come for the Ikhwan to make their formal comeback at the forefront of Syrian politics and society—not only in Hama or Aleppo but also in the rest of the country.
The events on the ground prompted all members of the organization to rethink their approach to the regime in a fairly homogeneous way. On the one hand, the Ikhwan agreed they would not negotiate with the Ba’ath regime as long as repression continued and Bashar al-Assad remained in power. When, in late October 2011, the Brotherhood’s leadership was made an offer by Iranian businessmen close to the regime in Tehran to form and lead a transitional government in Syria but with Assad remaining as President, the idea was outright rejected by the organization. On the other hand, it was decided that the Ikhwan would only endorse armed struggle when it became an absolute necessity and then only through a careful framework, so as not to repeat past mistakes. This meant that, for quite some time, the Brotherhood’s leadership insisted on the need for the Syrian revolution to remain peaceful and rejected growing calls to act violently against the regime—something the organization’s most uncompromising figures also stressed.29 Such caution, however, was not necessarily appreciated by those outside the group. A left-wing activist encountered in February 2012 put it this way: “We are liberals but we are more hard-line than the Ikhwan, it’s crazy!”30 Another opposition figure explained: “The Muslim Brotherhood is still busy trying to clean up its name, it has a major complex with violence.”31 When, in late March 2012, the Brotherhood finally endorsed the idea of supporting the FSA and providing weapons and funds to Syrian rebels on the ground, it did so under the collective framework of the SNC and stressed its commitment to a “democratic Syria” respecting the “rights of all ethnic and religious communities” in a published document—which, in a bid to stress the Ikhwan’s inclusive message, did not include a single reference to Islam.32
Ashes of Hama: The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria Page 24
